Tomorrow and Saturday two of the Tea Party movement’s corporate shills, Eric Odom and Allen Fuller, will bring their unique brand of right-wing astroturf to their hometown of Nashville.
The two-day conference, RootsHQ2009, is being billed as a “center-right new media summit” and will cover “social media, new media technology, internet marketing, search engine optimization, collaborative information movements and NOW media.”
But the attention should be on the motivation of both Odom and Fuller and their willingness to misrepresent themselves in order to manipulate the people. The TNDP has the scoop:
Eric Odom and Alan Fuller founded two firms, Strategic Activism and Flat Creek Management, to provide strategic communications and on-line training for Tea Party activists.
“Tea Party demonstrators have been receiving how-to-disrupt packets from organizers like Odom and Fuller, who get paid to stop legislation opposed by their corporate benefactors,” Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Chip Forrester said.
“People need to stop for a moment and consider who organizes these events and the origins of this movement. It’s beginning to look more and more like corporate interests are fueling the Tea Party movement.”
Last February, Eric Odom was exposed as having ties to Rick Santelli’s rant on CNBC that “spontaneously” launched the Tea Party movement. On the same day of the rant, a website called Officialchicagoteaparty.com and registered to Odom went live. The summer before, Odom had organized DontGo.com, a fake grassroots campaign meant to pressure Congress and Nancy Pelosi to pass an offshore oil drilling bill. And who would this kind of bill benefit? Meet Fred Koch and his family, “multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America,” “funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups, from the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine to FreedomWorks,” and “co-founder of the notorious extremist-rightwing John Birch Society.”
Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake produced a Tea Bag movement timeline that prominently features Mr. Odom:
February 19 — Rick Santelli rant: “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.” First mention of the term “tea party.” Clip goes straight onto Drudge.
Within hours, a site called officialchicagoteaparty.com went up, with the domain name registered to Eric Odom. At the time he was working for a group called the Sam Adams Alliance, a 501 c(3) non-profit that legally can’t engage in political activity. Its chairman, Eric O’Keeffe, is on the board of the Club for Growth. He’s since been taken off the website, but it’s cached here.
Odom is one of the organizers of the Tax Day Tea Party group, and Matt Stoller accused him of astroturfing during the Drill Drill Drill campaign. Last year the Alliance started “an ambitious project … to encourage right-leaning activists and bloggers to get online and focus on local and state issues.”
February 20: A Facebook page goes up calling for Tea Party demonstrations across the country:
Rick Santelli is right, we need a Taxpayer (Chicago) Tea Party
Rick Santelli is dead right! Enough bailouts of everyone who acted recklessly! It’s time to stand up for all the regular people who played by the rules! Taxpayer Tea Party!
Listed admins include Odom and Brendan Steinhauser of Dick Armey’s Freedomworks. The creator is Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity, and the Facebook Group leads back to a site called taxpayerteaparty.com, run by Americans for Prosperity.
February 27 — the first official “Tea Parties” are held in eight cities across the country. According to John Hendrix, who organized the Tampa Bay event, the original idea came from Tom Gaithens of Newt Gingrich’s Freedomworks.
The idea that the Tea Baggers are a “grassroots” movement that Right Wing infrastructure subsequently tried to exploit is not supported by the facts.
Supported by facts or not, Odom and Fuller will insist that they are grassroots activists and not paid corporate shills.
They’re delusional, writes Matt Stoller at Open Left, “I mean, according to their theory, Newt Gingrich and House Republicans did the messaging and organizing work on a campaign, which was funded by billionaires, and used essentially the same playbook the right has used since 1978, but it finally tipped because some GOP junior consultants with blogs signed up for Twitter. F**king morons.”
Eric Odom is dangerous to this country. Only our free speech rights allow this radical guy to try to take over this country. He is evil. Those people that are listening to him and following him need to wake up and get the real truth. Don’t believe what he or any Republican tells you, they are lies. He is wanting to bring down our country by his actions.
Supreme Court – Multinational Corporations do “Victory” Dance.
The Robert’s U.S. Supreme Court decision changing the interpretation of the Bill of Rights from meaning “We the people” to mean “We the multinational corporations” on January 19, 2010 will live as a day of infamy in the history of our (what was our) Constitution. In one day, the Supreme Court has set themselves up as the “Fathers of a New U.S Constitution” and moved Americans from a “Representative Democracy” of individuals to a “Corporate Plutocracy” representing the rich and powerful.
Congress is in the bag, of course, and will not move to overrule Robert’s Supreme Court. The time for Justice and action passed by when impeaching Bush for War Crimes and nullifying his appointed (planted) neoconservative Supreme Court Justice appointees was possible. What George W. Bush blew-away of our American Democracy and Independents (Free Trade) in 10 years; it will take at least 100 years of struggle (probably 300 years) and millions of American lives to regain.
Today, the seemingly driver-less steam roller of Bush right-wing “your either with us or you are the enemy” unethical opportunist (no one can be identified as the driver) are on an itinerary. Follow the money, mass media propaganda, slander attacks, CASH-root organizations (Tea Baggers) and their Totalitarian agenda become apparent. 2010 is going to be one ugly year; the Dupes August assault on the Capital will be spectacular.
are’nt mcfeely pigout and faux enough corporate shills ?
Instead of enjoying his golden years doing acrostics, while waiting for “Judging Judy” to come on, President Peanut feels compelled to remind us all why he sucked as a leader: He’s just a bitter man who always saw America as part of the problem, never the solution. So even when America elects a black man as president, the act only masks a more sinister urge. Remember when Eric Holder said it was time for America to talk frankly about race? Well, the time’s now and for the left, that “frank” talk boils down to this: We’re all racists. End of discussion.
And that makes me think: If we all agree with the Carters of the world, will they finally stop their race-whining? I doubt it. If anything, once we say we’re all racists, they’ll probably say we just don’t mean it. And then they’ll accuse us of double secret racism.
The hypocrisy in all this? There are far more racists among the race-baiters. I mean, you can’t get more racist than hating black conservatives just because they’re black. Look, here’s the obvious: President Obama won. That wouldn’t happen in a racist country. Not only did he win, but he enjoys good faith among people like me — who didn’t vote for him. I admit I find his message at times to be as wrongheaded as Carter’s, but Obama seems like a good guy. Especially when he called Kanye West a jackass. I’d like him even more if he’d say the same thing about Carter. And if you disagree with me, then you’re probably a racist!
Now, you know a word has lost all meaning when Jimmy Carter finally gets around to saying it. America’s angriest has-been just had to weigh in on the Joe Wilson affair, linking it to inherent racism, following in the wispy footsteps of every bitter lefty blogger. Carter, who I’m now convinced is really Maureen Dowd in a fright mask, seems unaware that even the White House doesn’t see the racism he sees.
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I hope to see you there, BWLIB.