Paid trolls? Somebody is funding this seminar. BUSTED!

[Atman]

Tea Party activists being trained in how to screw with blogs, post negative comments and product ratings as a form of keyboard activism. Are they paid per post? Maybe not. But we all know seminars like this usually aren't cheap. SOMEONE is funding this. So yes, even if indirectly, these are paid trolls. Busted.

[NoMoreRepugs]

1. If I'm not mistaken

these poor saps attending the seminar are KOCH-SUCKERS

[Sopkoviak]

2. Gosh, I wonder why someone on the left, or at least liberal doesn't do something like this?

We are so technologically backwards and deficient.

No wonder we're so screwed.

[arcane1]

5. Why would liberals want to hire paid trolls? We have good ideas.

And we're a thousand times more technically savvy than conservatives.

They have to resort to these ridiculous scams because conservative ideas cannot stand on their own merits. Conservatism can only survive by tricking idiots into falling for it. This is why they use such deceptive, unethical practices.

I'm GLAD nobody on the left is doing this!

[blm]

7. Wrong, Sop - The left is 'deficient' only in psychotic @ssholes. RW is overflowing

with psychotic @ssholes who are perfect trolls for the task. Aren't they?

Thank Rev Moon and Rupert Murdoch for the radicalization of the dumbed down GOP voter base through intense, pro-fascist propaganda campaigns targeted to appeal to the Rightwing mindset since the 80s.

You are familiar with Rev Moon and Rupert Murdoch and their longtime alliance with GHWBush, arentcha, Sop?

[Thor_MN]

18. +1000

If I went to hear a speaker and was told that he spends a half hour a day telling lies, I would leave. These dumbasses were tickled that he claimed to be a liar.

[blm]

20. Exactly. GOP 'strategists' craft their appeal towards psychopaths and @ssholes

because they found it to be effective.

[GoneFishin]

9. Our ideas stand on their own merit if delivered honestly, which is why RWNJs rely on dirty tricks.

I'm not saying that their dirty tricks don't work. But it shows that they know that their ideas suck and cannot be represented honestly.

[RoccoR5955]

16. You are mistaken

We are so technologically ahead of these bass turds, that we can shut down their sites with sophisticated cyber attacks.

[YOHABLO]

17. Not sure who 'WE' is. But I have always believed that the truth will stand on it's own.

Never ever trust MSM in this country. EVER! Progressives have to work ten times as hard to get the message out. We don't have an endless supply of financial backing (i.e.KOCH Ind) Progressives have to beg and beg for money to keep the truth alive. Money owns their message .. doesn't matter how technically savvy they are. Thank god for DU and other places we can go for information. Democracy Now, Thom Hartmann, Ring of Fire, Jon Stewart etc. just to name a few .. there is no way they can skew the message we get from these outlets.

[starroute]

3. Americans for Limited Government has always been dodgy about its funding

But yes, there does seem to be a definite Koch connection.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2006/12/21/8967/three-big-donors-bankrolled-americans-limited-government-2005

December 21, 2006

Americans for Limited Government, the tax-exempt organization that bankrolled a series of controversial ballot initiatives this year, raised 99 percent of its $5.4 million in total contributions in 2005 from just three donors, the Center for Public Integrity has learned.

The number of ALG’s major donors in 2005, but not their identities, was disclosed in financial statements obtained by the Center.

New York political activist Howard Rich, the organization’s high-profile chairman, did not respond to the Center’s requests for information about ALG’s financial affairs, including a question about how much of his own money, if any, he has given to the group. Rich has repeatedly declined to disclose the identities of donors to ALG and eight other tax-exempt organizations that share common management.


http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/238/index.html

Over the past 30 years, New York real estate magnate Howard Rich has steered millions of dollars toward the libertarian causes he has long championed, though he has managed to largely remain under the political radar while doing so. The 66-year-old Republican, who goes by "Howie," serves as chairman of Americans for Limited Government, a national coalition that works with local groups to "protect property rights, stop out-of-control government spending, and hold judges accountable to the rule of law."

Organizations associated with Rich have funneled nearly $7 million into 2006 state initiatives aiming to limit government in 12 states, according to an investigation by The Oregonian published last month. Rich has generally declined to reveal how much of the money comes from his personal wealth, and is not required by campaign finance laws to report how much he privately funds his various groups.

Early in his career, Rich was active in the Libertarian Party and worked with other leaders of the party, such as powerful billionaire Charles Koch, to promote their small-government, free-market causes. But after an internal party dispute in 1983, Rich left the party and continued his activism with private groups and foundations. Rich also sits on the board of directors of the Cato Institute, an influential libertarian think tank founded and funded by Koch and based out of Washington, D.C.

[starroute]

6. More on ALG's dubious finances

Gosh, do you suppose these folks might have something to hide?

http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/04/27/whos-behind-the-rights-latest-anti-environment/186166

PBS reported:

"But here's where it gets really interesting: if you look at what's happening in other states, a clear money trail leads right back to Howard Rich and his groups. In Oklahoma, Americans for limited government gave a hundred thousand dollars to a group called "Oklahomans in action" who were pushing two initiatives -- one a spending-cap, the other targeting eminent domain. Same thing in Missouri -- Howard Rich's groups gave over two million dollars to a group called "Missourians in charge" -- they too supported a spending cap and eminent domain initiative. And in Arizona -- a group backing an eminent domain initiative -- got over a million dollars, traceable straight to Howard Rich. In these three states, Rich's groups are responsible for almost 99% of the reported contributions. All told, there are at least 11 states across the country where Howard Rich seems to be involved. In each case, there's always a local group out front, but in most cases, when you follow the money, its Rich's groups who pay the bills." [PBS, 9/22/06] [Missoulian State Bureau, 11/17/10]

The Center for Public Integrity reported:

"Americans for Limited Government, the Chicago-based tax-exempt organization that bankrolled a series of controversial ballot initiatives this year, has apparently been forced to move out of Illinois because it could not comply with the state's charity laws, the Center for Public Integrity has learned.

[...]

"In all, Americans for Limited Government spent at least $8 million in 2006 pushing takings initiatives and other ballot measures. The organization has repeatedly refused to disclose the sources of its funds.

"Although charitable organizations that operate in Illinois are required to furnish state regulators with annual financial statements audited by a certified public accountant, Americans for Limited Government never did so, the Center has learned."

[WhoIsNumberNone]

4. This is from like 2009.

You know- Back when the Tea Party was relevant. I still think it's important to keep this video in circulation of course, because this clown is still out there somewhere, still doing the same shit.


ETA: Unfortunately, the only paid troll in this video is the guy speaking. The trolls in training are all useful idiots eager to defend their right to remain in perpetual serfdom. Why pay trolls when you have an army of true believers who will do it all for free?

[starroute]

8. The American Majority logo was also on that bus

They got most of their funding from the Sam Adams Alliance -- whose CEO Eric O'Keefe was on the board of directors of Americans for Limited Government.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Sam_Adams_Alliance

The Sam Adams Alliance was a Chicago group that functioned from 2007 to 2012. It claimed to promote political activity among citizens at a grass root level. The goals of the organization included government accountability, government transparency, property rights protection, fiscal responsibility, free speech, and citizen initiative and referendum rights.

According to a 2010 article in AlterNet, the Alliance provides over 75 percent of the funding for the libertarian conservative group American Majority.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/final-proof-the-tea-party_b_4136722.html

The Sam Adams Alliance's CEO, Eric O'Keefe, was described by sourcewatch as having "deep ties to the Koch brothers. He helped launch the American Majority Tea Party group which trains right-wing candidates to run for office. He sits on the Board of Directors of Club for Growth Wisconsin, which ran divisive ads [heavily funded by the Kochs] in support of [Republican] Governor Scott Walker's radical overhaul of collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin workers. He has also served on the board of Koch's Institute for Humane Studies" and other Koch-funded organizations.

The Alliance's co-founder, John Tillman, is now the CEO of Chicago's Illinois Policy Institute, which was started in 2002. IPI's focus is described as "free market principles." Sourcewatch has shown that IPI is itself deeply tied to the Koch "nonprofit" money operation, including the American Legislative Exchange Council, and also the Cato Institute (Cato, for example, having donated $50,000 to IPI in 2006).

[starroute]

11. And that leads to the New Media Strategies connection

This is getting a lot closer to the concept of paid trolls. However, all this stuff seems to date from no later than 2011-12. The real question is what they've been up to since.


http://exiledonline.com/how-long-has-new-media-strategies-been-trolling-wikipedia-on-the-kochs-behalf/

March 18, 2011

It’s official: the Kochs pay social media PR companies to troll the Internet on their behalf.

According to Lee Fang over at ThinkProgress, an internal Wikipedia investigation revealed that a number of Wikipedia users making pro-Koch edits were actually sock puppets set up by employees at an Internet marketing company called New Media Strategies. After being outed, a New Media Strategies rep all but confirmed the findings of the Wikipedia investigation. . . .

New Media Strategies is not just a random Internet marketing company that Koch executives found by looking in the Yellow Pages. No, its relationship with the Kochs is deeper and much more meaningful.

They had worked together going back as far as 2008, when New Media Strategies partnered with the Heritage Foundation, Sam Adams Alliance and other Koch-funded organizations to set up and develop the imitation grassroots social media network that would be activated to push the Tea Party Movement. For example: In 2008, New Media Strategies was involved in a series of “RightOnline Summit” events for conservative new media activists, where its employees trained people how to use Wikipedia for “total reputation management” and worked side-by-side with star Koch media operatives like Eric Odom, who was a leading figure in the Tea Party AstroTurf campaign in February 2009.

[Sunlei]

10. 2009 thats about the time 'tea party' had many of those 'training camps' paid by republican party

Some of the tea party 'leadership' made millions in salary from those 'donations'

The chumps in their audience, basic tea party members wasted years of their time trying to keep Obama from his destiny but of course those 'free volunteers' helped get a lot of RW extremists elected to lower offices.

[gelsdorf]

12. Typical MBA bullshit!

As a sales rep I sat through many of these 'type' of meetings. Same style, same gung ho speaker, same bullshit. These types will do anything for a dollar

[Sunlei]

13. Herman Cain was a 'pep talker' for the Tea Party. RW rewards their most loyal & moves them up..

[nichomachus]

14. Commondreams has shut down it's comments section

They were being overtrolled. What was happening was that the comments on every story were personal attacks against the author, totally trashing him/her, instead of talking about the story itself.

There were also a bunch of the "My cousin made $6,000 a week on her laptop" spam comments.

[Jamaal510]

15. This vid

sort of answered my question as to how RWers outnumber LWers on almost every online comment section and review section. It was a neat little reminder to be wary of who posts what on many of these forums and on review sites. Online, it's obviously hard to know for sure that people say who they are. Many RW commenters are probably given orders just like the folks in this video to derail discussions and to push stupidity in the US of A as hard as they can, by any means necessary (even if it sometimes means posing as a progressive). This is one of my biggest pet peeves about Repubs/Libertarians/whatever they want to call themselves now--using tactics like these to either win people over to their ideas or to cause the other side lose support. It's plain that they're uninterested in a 100% honest debate on the issues.

[markbark]

19. He should keep doing this the old fashioned way.....

In the video, he says he wastes a half hour a day giving books he hasn't read a one star rating.
That means he's hitting, what? 25-30 a day?

A well written script (or bot) could do this on THOUSANDS of sites in seconds.
For someone who claims to be "social media savvy" he's certainly going about this the hard way.
(Which I shan't complain about )