photo by arimoore

Playboy.com had a fascinating article on the whole Chicago Tea Party scam. It’s gone now for reasons unknown, but you can still find it here. As the authors point out, Santelli’s CNBC rant sounded just a little too well thought-out to be a pure lizard-brain outburst:

The government is promoting bad behavior! Do we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages?! This is America! We’re thinking of having a Chicago tea party in July, all you capitalists who want to come down to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.

And boom, just like that, there’s Malkin and Heritage and Instacracker and every network hack spontaneously promoting these Tea Parties. Which turned out to be absolutely pathetic, especially given the money and the marketing muscle behind them. Evidently nobody trusts the people who cheered George Bush’s unparalleled raid of the taxpayer trough to be leaders of a "fiscal responsibility" movement. Go figure.

Anyway, my personal alarm bells went off when I got an email from a guy named Jared McKinney with a gmail address:

Dear Firedoglake editors:

I thought you may be interested in a new site opposing the government bailouts: Right.org. Our purpose is simple; to oppose the $8 trillion in bailout guarantees our government has given to failed companies (on average, more than $60,000 per family in America). We are a non-partisan group of individuals who have banded together to raise public awareness of the bailouts (not the recent stimulus package, that is something different entirely).

Would you be willing to consider linking up the site, or do a short post on it? In addition to keeping the public attention on the bailouts, we also promoting a petition that will be sent to Congress . The site also has a personal bailout calculator so the public can figure out just how much it is costing them. Additionally, we are personally sponsoring a $27,000 video submission contest–the author of the best video submitted wins his/her own personal bailout.

I’m thinking, this thing totally stinks. I’m a liberal, so of course the "stimulus bill" is okey-dokey. A $27,000 video contest? Who’s got that kind of money right now? Any organization that does is going to want to take credit for it. The site is super slick, nobody lands a coveted url like "right.org" without some juice, and it’s up in a heartbeat.

So, I look at the "about us" page:

Right.org is a grassroots online community created by a few friends who were outraged by the bailouts. So we gathered some talent and money and built this site. Please tell your friends, and if you have suggestions for improving it, please let us know.

Respectfully,

Evan and Duncan

Evan and Duncan? That’s it?

Since we’re email pals I decide ask my good friend Jared, WTF? Who’s financing this operation, and what are your plans? Jared responds:

Sure, Ms. Hamsher.

Evan Baehr is the founder and director of our efforts. There are a couple more of us who help with the site when we can. Company Fifty Two did our website design and their responsible for our technology. The site is be financed by various people who realize that the bailouts are really bad ideas. There is not some big political machine behind us–we’re a group of individuals working together to do what we believe is right. Our email list will be used to keep folks updated regarding the bailouts. We do not sell emails or spam.

It’s been a long time since anyone thought my last gig was the turnip truck, so now I’m amused. I look through teh Google for Evan Baehr, and there ain’t much, but what do I find? TBogg and World O’Crap! Oh, lordy, he’s a yellow elephant of the Virgin Ben variety.

So, I go back to my good friend Jared:

That’s still quite vague, people think bailouts are a bad idea for a variety of reasons across the political spectrum. How do the people who financed the effort hope to make their money back? Are you organized as a PAC, a 527, a C(4), or a for-profit? Do you intend to pursue a political agenda, advocate for policy or support candidates?

It takes him a couple of days, but he finally gets back to me:

My apologies in the delay. Here’s some more information for you. I took some time and tried to get you some more precise answers. Please let me know if this is helpful:

Who’s behind Right.org? + What’s the purpose of the site?

Right.org is grassroots: it grew out of conversations on an e-mail list of friends who work in journalism, finance, law, and the non-profit sector. As the bailouts began in earnest last fall, two things dismayed us: first, how non-transparent they were; and second, how they contravened common sense and what we think of as sound economics.

Some guy who doesn’t want to put his last name on a website is preaching about transparency? Not helpful, Jared.

He extolls a bit more about the philosophy behind the effort, and concludes:

What kind of entity is Right.org?

Right.org both a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization as well as a 501(c)3 research organization. The work of Right.org includes both issue advocacy as well as research.

After I get this email, the Playboy thing hits. And funny enough, I’m not the only one who smells well-funded, right-wing, astroturf campaign:

FreedomWorks, along with scores of shady front organizations which don’t have to disclose their sponsors thanks to their 501 (c)(3) status, has been at the heart of today’s supposed grassroots, nonpartisan “tea party” protests across the country, supposedly fueled by scores of websites which masquerade as amateur/spontaneous projects, but are suspiciously well-crafted and surprisingly well-written. One slick site pushing the tea parties, Right.org claims, “Right.org is a grassroots online community created by a few friends who were outraged by the bailouts. So we gathered some talent and money and built this site. Please tell your friends, and if you have suggestions for improving it, please let us know. Respectfully, Evan and Duncan.” But funny enough, these regular guys are offering a $27,000 prize for an “anti-bailout video competition.” Who are Evan and Duncan? Do they even really exist?

Good question. So I figure, Jared has to have some official response to this, right? I can’t be the only one who is asking. . .

Any comment on the Playboy piece? I gotta tell ya, the minute I saw the site, it’s exactly what I thought — and the vague answers about who’s behind it only reinforce those suspicions. If that’s wrong, some specifics would be helpful.

Jared responds:

Yeah, I definitely see where you’re coming from. Did I get you all the information you are looking for?

Jared, Jared. This just doesn’t cut it. I decide to give him one more try:

I have several questions it would be great if you could answer.

1) Who is funding the C3 C4?
2) Why is a well-funded organization using gmail?
3) What kind of coordination with other organizations was involved in the tea party movement, and what was the timing?

That was two days ago. The site’s still up, but Jared has disappeared. And so has the Playboy piece.

It actually says more about the people who would organize on a site like this than anything it does about the funders. I mean, can you imagine nodding like a giant bobblehead and giving your personal information over to some group of folks with a lot of money who refuse to identify themselves in any meaningful way? They just start offering up big cash and collecting emails, and nobody thinks anything of it? And everyone involved in this thing acts like this is perfectly normal, everybody is linking to it and just assuming they have good intentions.

Are they all just really. . . limited? Or is the idea of true grassroots movement so deeply frightening that they find comfort in a little wink-wink, nudge-nudge from something so weird and Big Brother-ish? Do they just need Daddy’s approval before they can give themselves permission to go to the park, all 250 of them, waving signs with a tragic lack of self-awareness and saying a bunch of really stupid shit?

I do not know if this online activism thing is ever going to gel for people whose impulse to kowtow to authority is outstripped only by a congenital lack of curiosity. But they’ll no doubt be coming into those Nigerian inheritances soon, so it won’t really matter.