There have been a bunch of developments regarding the Bonner & Associates astroturfing of Rep. Tom Perriello’s office that are worth calling up.
- Bonner & Associates still says that a temp is at fault, and they fired him. They also say that they discovered the fraud, not Perriello.
- Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) is launching a congressional probe of these forgeries, wanting many of the same questions I asked.
- The Sierra Club is already running ads accusing “Dirty-Energy Washington Lobbyists” of being behind this.
- The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity says that they hired Bonner & Associates to astroturf for them, though they describe it as “outreach.” Grist Kate’s Sheppard also points out that article that Bonner & Associates was caught doing the same thing in 2002, forging a letter from a black charity on behalf of PhRMA.
- Think Progress has put together a timeline of Bonner’s 23-year history of astroturfing.
- A former employee of Bonner tells Talking Points Memo’s Zachary Roth that this is just how Bonner & Associates works. They put a huge amount of pressure on badly-paid temps to get signatures from community groups and turn a blind eye when they forge names to meet their quota.
- Paul Blumenthal at the Sunlight Foundation points out that Bonner hasn’t filed a lobbying disclosure form since 2001.
I think I understand the Bonner boner but could help me with astroturfing. Is it just forging letters to sway opinion?
@perlogik: It’s the stuff that people do to make it LOOK like a real grassroots movement, but in actuality is all fake, hence “astroturf.” It can range anywhere from planting questions in a townhall, having a small number of people mass-blog about something, to having a top-down organization of rallies/protests/etc. or yes, faking letters to congressmen.
Anything that is done to create the look and feel of a strong grassroots movement where there actually is none.
Hope this helps.
“Astroturfing” is a ginned up version of grass-roots politics. So, if grass-roots is citizens getting together and taking action (letters, phone calls, political protest, etc.), astroturfing is when somebody with more money than popular support tries to create a sense of citizen support. It doesn’t have to involve forgery. It just implies a paid “top-down” campaign, made to look like a “bottom-up” campaign.
Thanks, Meri and Harry that makes perfect sense.