Who is Ellie Light?

I predict you’ll start seeing the question as a popular bumper sticker soon (至 “谁是约翰·加尔特？”…和 瞧, someone has already made a T恤！）。

It’s a handy rhetorical rejoinder the next time the White House or your nutroots neighbors and co-workers try to tar the Tea Party or any other grass-roots revolts against President Obama as phony, top-down operations.

什么时候 Obama’s Soros-funded, Big Labor-directed, K Street-organized goons engage in classic projection and you need a glib way to call out the pot calling the kettle black, just snap back:

Who is Ellie Light?

A Cleveland Plain Dealer blog first broke the story over the weekend of a “suspicious” letter-writer named “Ellie Light” who submitted more than a dozen pro-Obama letters to the editors in recent weeks using addresses from Philadelphia to California 以及两者之间的所有点。 Open-source-optimizing blogger Patterico has 添加 许多 更多信息 on both “Donald Trump Astroturfing” (“a letter published in multiple places from one person claiming to live in multiple cities”) and “David Axelrod Astroturfing” (“identical letters published in multiple places claiming to be from different people”).

Kudos to the Plain Dealer for smoking out the initial ringer and Patterico and his readers/tipsters for delving deeper. But so much for the rest of the vaunted gate-keepers of the Fourth Estate, eh?

The bogus letters are just the latest example of Obama theater — doctors in costumes, town hall stage props, trumped-up Obamacare anecdotes, kiddie proxies等等等等

Underscoring this administration’s dependence on centrally planned, teleprompter-dependent perpetual campaigns of manufactured support, the other half of Obama’s Astroturf Twin Power — 大卫·普劳夫 — will soon rejoin Chicago cronies David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and the rest to rescue the Democrats in a new expanded role as outside White House adviser.

A reminder from my August 21, 2009 column on Corporate Shills for Hope and Change:

来自制药公司和医疗保健公司的资金是肮脏、邪恶和腐败的——除非奥巴马团队的主要成员将这些资金收入囊中。白宫发言人罗伯特·吉布斯嘲笑社会化医疗保健的草根反对者是行业资助的走狗，动机可疑，存在利益冲突。但是宾夕法尼亚大道 1600 号的公司托儿所呢？

Two weeks ago, the White House embraced $150 million in drug industry ads supporting Obamacare. This week, Bloomberg News reported that White House senior adviser and chief campaign strategist David Axelrod’s former public relations firm, AKPD Message and Media, has raked in some $24 million in ad contracts supporting Obamacare – along with another p.r. firm, GMMB, run by other Obama strategists.

这些广告由大型制药公司、美国退休人员协会 (AARP)、美国医学协会 (AMA) 和强大的服务业雇员国际联盟 (其紫衫党倾销了 80 万美元的独立支出以帮助奥巴马和民主党多数派当选) 资助。以阿克塞尔罗德式的标志性风格，特殊利益联盟采用了虚假的草根名称——首先打着“健康经济现在”的旗帜，最近又打着“美国稳定质量医疗”的旗帜。

因为，嗯，“希望和变革的企业托儿”并不具有完全相同的真实性。

Astroturf master Axelrod was president and sole shareholder of AKPD from 1985 until last December, when he resigned to take his White House position. His son, Michael, works there. So does former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. Axelrod is prominently featured on AKPD’s website, from a founder’s quote on the front page (“CHANGE IS SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO FIGHT FOR”) to the glamorous election night photos of Plouffe and Axelrod with the Obamas. AKPD still consults with Axelrod on “strategy and research” for the Democratic National Committee. The firm owes Axelrod $2 million, due in annual installments of $350,000, $650,000, $400,000 and $600,000.

阿克塞尔罗德和他的老公司从各自销售奥巴马医改的角色中相互受益，这一点应该是显而易见的。阿克塞尔罗德在电视新闻节目中宣传白宫计划。 AKPD 通过销售白宫认可的计划的广告合同获得巨额收入。这笔意外之财使 AKPD 能够清偿与阿克塞尔罗德的债务，阿克塞尔罗德的名字、面孔和强大的关系对于 AKPD 未来的润滑以及阿克塞尔罗德的儿子和亲密同事未来的工资收入至关重要。

The ‘Turf Gang: Gibbs, Plouffe, Obama, and Axelrod

Plouffe authored an op-ed for the “华盛顿邮报” over the weekend crusading to save the Demcare government takeover. His Washington Post byline does 不能 mention his position at AKPD and does not disclose his financial conflicts of interests in promoting Demcare while serving as senior adviser to AKPD, which raked in an estimated $24 million in drug industry ads supporting Demcare along with Obama-tied p.r. firm GMMB.

Another MSM failure to keep readers fully informed:

David Plouffe, campaign manager of Obama for America and Obama-Biden 2008, is the author of “Audacity to Win.”

On a related note, check out this recent Craigslist advertisement in the Astroturf gang’s hometown of Chicago soliciting paid canvassers for a Democratic National Committee-tied entity:

背景开启 Grassroots Campaign Inc. :

Grassroots Campaigns (GCI) is an independent organization that does strategic consulting, fundraising, and field organizing for good causes and candidates. We specialize in building and running face-to-face outreach operations in neighborhoods and in high-traffic public venues to build support for groups, issues, and campaigns.

GCI was founded in December of 2003, and by April of 2004 had opened offices in 40 cities throughout the country. By July 2004, we had over 2,000 staff knocking on doors and talking to voters on behalf of the Democratic National Committee. With continued work on behalf of MoveOn PAC in October, we added a volunteer force of 50,000 individuals canvassing their neighborhoods in 17 of the most hotly contested swing states of the 2004 Presidential Election. Since 2004, we’ve continued to partner with groups and campaigns to advance good issues, raise money for progressive causes, help take back Congress, and build activism at the grassroots level.

The people at GCI are seasoned organizing and fundraising professionals with a commitment to positive reforms. Our staff has over 150 years of professional experience. They have:

• Designed and implemented electoral, initiative, legislative, corporate, small donor fundraising, and petition gathering campaigns;

• Put together organization membership drives and raised over $500 million;

• Ran conferences of a couple hundred to a couple thousand college students;

• Trained thousands of professional organizers and campaign staff;

• Worked with scores of different groups on the national, regional, state, Congressional, local, and campus levels;

• Recruited and trained hundreds of thousands of volunteers;

• Helped launch or run over a dozen different organizations;

• Sat on the boards of directors for many groups and campaign steering committees.

Via Slate from 2004, GCI’s “for-profit canvassing” is seen as the “DNC’s secret weapon:”

Voters this fall in Democratic strongholds are witnessing an increasingly common sight. Staked out on busy sidewalks in at least 38 American cities, political activists carrying credit-card authorization forms are drumming up donations for the campaign to defeat George W. Bush. Outfitted in T-shirts emblazoned with star-spangled Democratic National Committee logos, these earnest young men and women come across as grass-roots volunteers of the most enthusiastic sort. Little old ladies interrupt their strolls to thank them for their hard work.

But appearances can be deceiving. The organization behind these fund-raisers is Grassroots Campaigns Inc., a for-profit company that counts the Democratic National Committee as one of its flagship clients. It’s a safe bet that few pedestrians talked into donating $149—”the price of a bus ticket from Washington, D.C., to Crawford, Texas”—realize that once these canvassers beat their daily quota, they keep up to 30 percent of the take.

In the rapidly shifting terrain of political fund raising, Grassroots Campaigns Inc. has emerged as a juggernaut.

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

Pretty much sums up the last year of the Obama White House — and the year to come with Axelrod, Plouffe, Gibbs, Jarrett & Co. working hard with their ringers and stagehands to put message over matter.

谁是 is Ellie Light?

***

Reader Bill e-mails about the Craigslist/DNC paid canvassing ad…

The ad offers a salary of $24k per year and says that the hours would be 80-100 per week.

Assuming 80 hours (the lower end)

$24,000/ 50 weeks (assuming 2 weeks paid vacation) = $480 per week

$480 / 80 hrs. = $6 per hour

Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

I wonder if these community organizers will be advocating for an increase in that?