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

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (45706)	9/8/2010 8:33:13 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

So leftwing sources with funding from Peter Lewis, McArthur Foundation (et al) and George Soros are ok by you, but anything funded by conservatives is baaaaad. ROTFL

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (45706)	9/8/2010 6:13:47 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

I'll be happy to venture an opinion on that one only AFTER I get a peak at their funding sources breakdown for, say, the last decade or two. That would be insufficent to tell you if they are astroturing, single source funding, or a narrow funding base with the funders known to support a certain range of ideological ideas, doesn't equal, imply, or even suggest astroturfing. Astroturfing is when you have a fake grassroots movements. The only thing really wrong with it is the fake part. Few of the organizations we are talking about present themselves as grass roots movements. A think tank pretty much can't astroturf by definition (well it could provide the money, and perhaps the ideas, for an astroturf organization, but it can't be one itself) If reports are even close to true they were basically almost founded by Koch money, and nurtured along for decades by that steady flow of (self-interested) funding. For many of them no. And even for those that where, that isn't enough to qualify as "astroturfing". That would just be a very narrow funding base, which really signifies just about nothing.