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As Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was about to sign their union-busting right-to-work-for-less bills into law, Chris Matthews spoke to UAW President Bob King and the State Director of the Michigan chapter of Americans for Prosperity's Scott Hagerstrom. Matthews attempted to get Hagerstrom to come clean about who "signs his paycheck" and despite repeated badgering from Matthews, refused to acknowledge that AFP is just a front group for the Koch brothers.

He just works for a grass roots organization, like the Red Cross don't you know! And they have lots of donors. He didn't want to talk about their one big one though. Here's more on Hagerstrom and his remarks back in February of 2011 from Think Progress: Koch Front Group Americans For Prosperity: ‘Take The Unions Out At The Knees’:

In a speech earlier this month at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual conference, Americans For Prosperity-Michigan Executive Director Scott Hagerstrom revealed the true goal of his group and its allies like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) efforts. Speaking at CPAC’s “Panel for Labor Policy,” Hagerstrom said that AFP really wants to do is to “take the unions out at the knees”:

HAGERSTROM: It’s easy to go out there and fight taxes and increased regulation, you know we send out an action alert on taxes to AFP and we get thousands of people to respond. You send out one on a more complicated issue and it just doesn’t quite resonate…We fight these battles on taxes and regulation but really what we would like to see is to take the unions out at the knees so they don’t have the resources to fight these battles.

Taking “the unions out at the knees” has long been a goal of the Koch brothers and their many front groups. In the run-up to the 2010 elections, the Kochs worked with other anti-labor billionaires, corporations and activists to fund conservative candidates and groups across the country. Now after viciously opposing pro-middle class policies for years, Koch Industries is trying to eliminate the only organizations which serve as a counterweight to the well-oiled corporate machine.

Sadly they managed to succeed in that goal today in Michigan. Sourcewatch has more on Americans for Prosperity here and the fact that they are indeed just a front group for the Koch brothers here.

This interview has a bunch of right wing blogs worked up of course, the usual suspects that I'm not going to link to, calling Matthews "unhinged" and claiming he "berated" Hagerstrom because he asked him time and again who funds AFP. If they think this is Matthews coming "unhinged" they must not watch the show much, because this is pretty mild by his standards. There are times that stuff can be annoying out of him. This wasn't one of them.

The AFP chair was on there pretending he's got the interest of those workers in Michigan at heart and that they're just some grass roots organization instead of an AstroTurf front group who only care about a race to the bottom on wages so their rich donors can squeeze some more blood out of the working class.

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GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was out paying homage to the Koch brothers this Friday evening at an event hosted by their front group, Americans for Prosperity in Washington DC and I could not do a better job of summing this speech up if I tried, so I'll just refer everyone to this post by Stephen D. Foster Jr. at Addicting Info -- Mitt Romney Vows To Privatize Medicare, Raise The Retirement Age, And Fire Thousands Of Government Workers:

During a speech to a group of conservative activists on Friday in Washington, Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said exactly what right wing extremists want to hear. Romney laid out his vision of government which includes privatizing Medicare, raising the retirement age, wiping out government agencies and jobs, making balanced budgets mandatory via constitutional amendment, and slashing funding for the arts, public broadcasting, family planning and passenger rail services. He also wants to give states more budget power.

The biggest and most critical portion of Romney’s plan is, of course, Medicare. Romney intends to privatize Medicare and turn it into a voucher system like Paul Ryan wanted to do in his budget plan.

“Medicare should not change for anyone who is in the program or who is about to be in it, we should honor the commitments we have made to our seniors. Tomorrow’s seniors should have the freedom to choose what their health coverage looks like. Younger Americans today, when they turn 65 should have a choice between traditional Medicare and other private health care plans. Competition will lower costs and increase the quality of health care.”

“Tomorrow’s seniors” will also have to wait much longer for Medicare since Romney also intends to raise the retirement age which is already 65 and 67 for people born after 1959.

Go read the rest since he goes into more detail of some of the other items Romney laid out in his speech. The clip above is the very end of his speech where's Romney is talking about raising the retirement age and privatizing Medicare. I've got more video below the fold.

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Every time you think these guys can't possibly stoop just a little bit lower with the tactics they're willing to resort to, they manage to sink to a new low. From the Detroit Free Press -- Conservative group: Fake eviction notices were 'meant to startle people':

The state director of the conservative group Americans for Prosperity offered no apologies today for papering homes in Detroit’s Delray district Monday with fake eviction notices.

Bearing the words “Eviction Notice” in large type, the bogus notices told homeowners their properties could be taken by the Michigan Department of Transportation to make way for the New International Trade Crossing bridge project. The NITC is the subject of debate in Lansing, and Americans for Prosperity is lobbying heavily against it.

“It was meant to startle people,” Scott Hagerstrom, the group’s state director, said today. “We really wanted people to take notice. This is the time that their opinions need to be heard. We wanted people to read it.” Read on...

And from Think Progress -- Americans For Prosperity Places Fake Eviction Notices On Detroit Homeowners’ Doors To Scare Up Support:

The Michigan chapter of the Koch-backed conservative activist group Americans For Prosperity (AFP) has been campaigning against a new bridge project called the New International Trade Crossing (NITC) that the state is considering. While there may be some merit to some of the arguments against the NITC project, the tactics AFP has just been found to be using in campaigning against it are revolting.

Yesterday, numerous residents in the Delray area of Detroit came back to their homes to find eviction notices. The problem was that these notices were not authorized by any sort of local government authorities. Rather, they were mocked up by AFP to look like actual eviction notices. The “notices” sensationally claimed to homeowners that their property may be seized if the NITC is constructed. Some residents, particularly elderly ones, were physically shaken by the tactic [...]

AFP’s tactics are bad enough by themselves, but they are even worse when you consider where the fake eviction notices were delivered. Michigan has the country’s highest foreclosure rate, and Detroit in particular is perhaps the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis.

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Americans for Prosperity's Tim Phillips managed to get a nice softball interview from CNN's Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker. They allowed their viewers to come away hearing this guy complain that his ultra-rich corporate donors just can't be disclosed because they're going to be harassed. And he got praised by Spitzer for being "brave" enough to say the retirement age should be raised and that we should be going after both the jobs and the pensions of federal workers.

And of course there was no mention of how much backing his group has got from those that stand to benefit from our current health care system keeping the insurance companies when the conversation turned to Medicare reimbursements.

It's too bad he wasn't debating someone who would explain that we could make Medicare affordable if we weren't dumping the sickest and most expensive patients onto the government instead of having single payer where the young are contributing to the same system as well, and cutting his buddies out of the massive profits they've been making doing their best to insure as few people as possible while they line their pockets.

SPITZER: Our "Headliner" tonight is Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, a right-wing group who Barack Obama claims was at the center of questionable Republican campaign spending in 2010. He called out the group at least 19 times in campaign speeches. A highly unusual level of attention from the president.

PARKER: Phillips is a major player in the rise of Tea Party. His organization has invested heavily in the fight against health care reform.

Welcome, Tim.

TIM PHILLIPS, PRESIDENT, AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY: Nice to be here.

PARKER: How do you feel about being identified as a right-wing activist group? Is that accurate?

PHILLIPS: I think free market is the word. But we'll take whatever.

SPITZER: Those are words you guys use anyway. We're trying to be good to you.

PARKER: All right. Well, let me ask you this. Now that the elections are over --

PHILLIPS: Right.

PARKER: -- you recently had a meeting in Virginia with some other conservative leaders to develop a strategy for the next two years.

PHILLIPS: Right.

PARKER: So what did you come up with?

PHILLIPS: We're going to take on the Obama health care plan. We're going to make sure that issue stays in front of the American people. We think it's terrible legislation. The American people don't want it. And we're going to insist that this Congress continue to revisit that issue because it's crucial to our prosperity and individual health care choices.

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The American Petroleum Institute apparently thinks this is somehow a good marketing strategy given that fact that most Americans are not too happy with the oil industry after the BP disaster in the Gulf and with the general state of the economy where the average American is hurting while those at the top are all too often oblivious to their struggles. Heaven forbid big oil might be asked to get off of that government teat with their subsidies. Good thing the AFP is looking out for the little guy with their latest ad campaign.

I put this ad right up there with the tone deafness of those BP ads telling us all how they're still "looking for that oil" they made sure got dispersed so they can pretend it's not there any more. All those ads from BP do is serve as a constant reminder to me about how pissed off I am at what they did to the Gulf.

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