In response to the post about not trusting names of organizations, a reader supplies quite the list:
Here’s a few for you:
* Coalition for Health Insurance Choices
* Wise Use
* Citizens to Protect the Pacific Northwest and Northern California Economy
* National Smokers Alliance
* Americans for Properity
* American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy
* FACES of Coal
* Friends of Coal
* Energy in Depth
* CHANGEPAC
* VOTINGFORJUDGES.ORG
* Citizens for Judicial Integrity
* Consumers for Cable Choice
* Keep It Local New Jersey
* New Millennium Research Council
* Teach Plus
* Education Equity Project
* Educators for Excellence
* Alliance for Excellent Education
* Center on Education Policy
* Foundation for Educational Excellence
* Stop Too Big To Fail
* Consumers for Competitive Choice
* Alliance of Australian Retailers
* Working Families for Walmart
* Paid Critics
I’m not sure Friends of Coal fits the criteria – unless it’s trying to destroy the coal industry. Most of the rest I’ve not noticed. My personal favorite is Judicial Crisis Network, wherein the crisis appears to be that the judiciary doesn’t have enough right-wing activists as judges.
My reader continues:
There are also lots of other tricks, like Comcast’s paying people off the street to fill public spots in the audience of hearings to applaud for them (Comcast) and to take up seats which would otherwise have been filled by people more critical and the media. Or like organizations and politicians paying to set up fake social media accounts to praise them, e.g. https://twitter.com/queensquaykaren who is actually Toronto mayor Rob Ford’s deputy communications director, Fraser Macdonald.
Well, that’s certainly deceptive, but part of the job of the officials running hearings is to disregard hearings as indicators of popular support of any particular position on any issue; if an issue requires gauging public approval, then commission a poll. Hearings should be for collecting information from experts, and for limited public input.
I could research this stuff and list organizations and campaigns all day. Generally speaking, unless you know the source or can otherwise verify it, assume it’s someone trying to lie to you.
A sadly necessary bit of paranoia these days. Another reader remarks:
Al Gore never foresaw any of this when he invented the internet.
Which, for some reason, triggers me to think that the Web is a leading example of the old economic concept The tragedy of the commons. Although exactly whether or not the resource being harvested is of a limited or unlimited quantity isn’t entirely clear, is it? Perhaps the analogy is inapt. I’ll have to think about it.
