The Wonk Room

Americans For Prosperity Are Polluters For Astroturf»

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a nationwide front group founded and funded by the right-wing polluter Koch Industries, is notorious for its fake grassroots efforts, funneling millions of dollars of oil and coal industry cash across the nation to spread their message of global warming denial. Just in the past month, it engaged in a typical act of astroturfing, using its state-level network to plant carbon-copy opinion pieces in local newspapers. Near-identical op-eds appeared in the Athens Banner Herald (Georgia) and the Arizona Republic from the respective AFP state directors defending carbon dioxide — “the life-giving gas that makes trees grow tall.”

Over the weekend, Americans For Prosperity held its national summit, “Defending the American Dream,” in Washington, D.C., where they blamed Washington for the global financial crisis — holding Wall Street utterly blameless. At a rally before the Capitol steps, Tim Phillips, AFP’s president, vowed “that his organization would not allow the growing financial crisis to be blamed on the greatest economic system in the world.” Dallas Woodhouse, AFP’s North Carolina director, claimed:

Free markets work. They work all the time and they work every time.

Under right-wing rule, a radical agenda of deregulation has given us the twin catastrophes of planetary and financial meltdown. It’s time for America to wake up.