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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (45692)	9/7/2010 11:08:53 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Cato, Reason, Heritage etc. are hardly astro-turf organizations, or organizations focused on helping the Kochs. Also for the most part they where not created by the Kochs, they just received contributions from them. If we follow your logic than NPR, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting aren't just liberally biased they are "astroturf" organizations for the promotion of government interests. The conservative and libertarian organizations I mentioned (and NPR, PBS, and CPB for that matter) have many other donors. But even if they where single source funded that wouldn't be enough to reasonably be considered evidence that they are astroturf organizations. Astroturf organizations are false fronts, not just narrowly funded organizations, they are also false front that try to project the image of spontaneous grass roots organizations (astroturf=fake grass). None of the organizations mentioned above try to present themselves as such. The tea party is a grass roots movement, and some of its organizations could in theory be astroturfing but the individual organizations aren't significant enough to make the whole issue very important. And again single source funding doesn't make them astroturf, if most of the people coming together under the umbrella of the organization are real unpaid grass roots activist then the organization isn't astroturfing no matter where its funds come from.