Prosperity (AFP), which helped run the Tea Party protests along with the conservative organisation FreedomWorks (in 2004, the ‘single mom’ from Iowa who was a key cheerleader for George W. Bush’s plans to privatise Social Security turned out to be FreedomWorks’s Iowa state director). In Taki Oldham’s film (Astro) Turf Wars, a convener of the annual AFP ‘Defending the American Dream’ conference reports revealingly on efforts to fight healthcare reform: ‘We hit the button and we started doing the Twittering and Facebook and the phonecalls and the emails.’ A PR company called Bonner & Associates, funded by the coal industry, forged the signatures of local ethnic minority and elderly people on letters opposing a Bill to regulate greenhouse gases. Energy firms linked to the American Petroleum Institute hired an events-management company to bus in employees to ‘Energy Citizen’ rallies against climate-change legislation. Many such performances are brought to you care of Charles and David Koch, the multi-billionaire brothers who bankroll simulated bottom-up support for crony capitalism.
