Democrat Slush Fund Pays For Anti-Tea-Party Campaign

This is so typical of liberals, who can do nothing by actual grassroots, because their policies are too unpopular. They demonize their political opponents, and then pretend their own positions are more popular than they are, by using bought and paid for supporters, (astroturf).

Fox News has uncovered the latest scam:

A seemingly grassroots organization that’s mounted an online campaign to counter the tea party movement is actually the front end of an elaborate scheme that funnels funds — including sizable labor union contributions — through the offices of a prominent Democratic party lawyer. A Web site popped up in January dedicated to preventing the tea party’s “radical” and “dangerous” ideas from “gaining legislative traction,” targeting GOP candidates in Illinois for the firing squad.

“This movement is a fad,” proclaims TheTeaPartyIsOver.org, which was established by the American Public Policy Center (APPC), a D.C.-based campaign shop that few people have ever heard of.

But a close look reveals the APPC’s place in a complex network of money flowing from the mountainous coffers of the country’s biggest labor unions into political slush funds for Democratic activists.

Here’s how it works: What appears like a local groundswell is in fact the creation of two men — Craig Varoga and George Rakis, Democratic Party strategists who have set up a number of so-called 527 groups, the non-profit election organizations that hammer on contentious issues (think Swift Boats, for example).

Fox reports that public records show a number of political shops listed at Suite 1102:

…most of which are essentially clones of one another, but all of which have offered money — from measly thousands to game-changing millions — in state-level elections across the country.

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That means that taxpayer dollars, sent up as union dues, have been going to fund a host of Democratic causes and help quash the tea party movement.

What’s more, Varoga and Rakis are not actually present in Suite 1102. That is the office of their lawyer, Joseph Sandler, a longtime general counsel to the Democratic National Committee.

Jennifer Rubin notes that while legal, the practice is deceitful:

Fox has the list of donors, which comprises a set of interlocking slush-type funds that pay for the anti–Tea Party campaign. The largest of these is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME,) which has kicked in a total of $9.9M in a single year to two funds that provide the cash for the non-grassroots movement. Yes — government workers’ money is being used to fend off Tea Party protesters.–

It will be amusing to watch the  Democrat astroturf campaign accuse the tea party movement of being an Republican astroturf campaign.

You know it will happen.