That’s Quite a Story

Yesterday we reported that the US Chamber of Commerce had offered free trips to Hooters for people willing to join their online campaign against health care reform. In such unfortunate cases, often it’s a matter of a major organization dealing with one contractor who subcontracts to another astroturfer and so on down the line. That far removed from the vendor actually doing the work, the major org can plausibly claim that it didn’t sanction whatevrer ad scheme the contractor came up with. But when representatives from the Chamber got on the horn with TPMMuckraker reporter Zack Roth yesterday afternoon they had a very surprising explanation. The Chamber claims that there’s fraud afoot. An unknown entity has been furtively offering trips to Hooters using the Chamber’s good name, though why anyone would have an interest in committing such Hooters fraud remained unclear to us. Zack has the story.