Via Right Wing News:
While Barack Obama is calling for Americans to give up their freedom, their rights, and their guns, we’re calling for Americans to resist. We’re calling on Tea Partiers, moderate Republicans, Libertarians and even moderate Democrats to stand up one month from today, on the 23rd of February and say, “No more!” Right Wing News is joining Dustin Stockton, Western Representation PAC andThe Tea Party.net in calling for rallies all across the nation next month on the 23rd. It’ll be a Day of Resistance where gun owners and patriots can peacefully gather and show Barack Obama, the media, and the knockkneed Republicans in Congress that we may have lost a battle last November, but we haven’t lost the war. Don’t meekly give up your 2nd Amendment rights when you can stand with us and RESIST!
Oh, my, my, my. Now, these folks would love for everyone to believe this is just a grassroots effort by dedicated patriots, right?
Western Representation PAC (WRPAC) was born in the astroturf health care reform wars of 2009. Formed in April, 2009, it morphed into just another arm of the Republican money river by 2012. WRPAC's director is Roger Stockton of Nevada, who also serves as President of Innovative Networks, Inc., an company which coincidentally earned a whole lot of money from the WRPAC 2012 election efforts for providing email services. Along with Dustin Stockton,
WRPAC supported Allen West's 2012 campaign along with Richard Mourdock and several others.
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Put Niedermeyer on it, he's a sneaky little sh*t!
One of WRPAC's more interesting consultants is Edward Niedermeyer, who wrote op-eds for the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal, and has been a vocal critic of the Chevy Volt, which I'm sure has contributed to Fox News' and Rush Limbaugh's periodic trash talk about the Volt.
Neidermeyer was paid $11,000 total from September to November 11, 2012. In the days leading up to the election, his op-ed pieces about the Chrysler Jeep story, long debunked, were published on the Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard. He received a check for $5,000.00 on November 11, 2012. Nowhere did he disclose that he was being paid by a political action committee for "consulting services" in those articles.
WRPAC also made five-figure transfers on a regular basis to "Stop This Insanity, Inc", a 501(c)4 organization run by Todd Ceferatti, better known as TeaParty.Net. Stop This Insanity's consulting firm is DB Capitol Strategies, run by attorney Dan Backer. Ceferatti is a pyramid builder in Arizona. Here's some background on him:
Among the findings of the CBS 5 News investigation, the organization spent $181,000 on Google, Facebook and other websites for advertising. As a result, when CBS 5 producers typed the phrase “tea party” into the Google search engine, the first paid advertisement that popped up was for JoinTheTeaParty.us. Additional digging into the organization’s background revealed the director of the nonprofit also has ties to companies that collect and sell people’s personal information. Todd Cefaratti is listed as the director the the nonprofit, as well as a company known asreverseleadclub.com.
Raw Story reported on them in 2010, and it wasn't pretty. They collected nearly $500,000 in donations, but none of it went to support candidates.
I'm certain Fox News and Rush Limbaugh will be picking up the drumbeat for this "Day of Resistance" after Dan Backer reaches out to them and they pay a few more "journalists" to write about it without disclosing their affiliation.
They're not going to get away with it this time. We've all gotten a little smarter and a little quicker about identifying these so-called grassroots efforts for what they are: cheap, dirty astroturf.
