There's a new misinformation campaign being run in Pennsylvania to lie to voters about the Employee Free Choice Act by a group calling themselves "Citizens to Protect PA Jobs." I've noticed these ads running on my local Comcast system during (of all things) Countdown and The Rachel Maddow Show. (I've seen them in Lower Bucks County in the Philadelphia suburbs.)
(If I've missed anyone else's diary on this in my search, please let me know and I'll be happy to delete this.)
The general gist of this campaign is no different than we've heard before, "no private ballot", "Card Check bad", "Takes away employee's rights", and the rest of the pablum they've fed us for years. All with the "hard-working," "real American," actors we know and love.
If you check the Resources page of their website, the first three links on the page take you to "The Heartland Institute" (a Frank Luntz sounding name if I've ever heard one) which offers talking points on Global Warming denial. This is followed by a link to the "Commonwealth Foundation", which is an anti-tax group based in our Commonwealth. (Side note, if Pennsylvania is a "commonwealth," doesn't that mean we share the fruits of our earnings to each others benefit?) You can then go to the link provided to "The American Petroleum Institute", and at that point the circle seemed complete to me. They provide other links that are anti-union, anti-labor, anti-tax, and anti-environment, for your disinformation pleasure.
A "WHOIS" search for information on the domain owner finds no results (a political action group that doesn't want to be found? Really?) The site's IP address is being hosted by a company in the state capital, Harrisburg.
My guess is that they're pushing this due to Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party, and the suspicion that he may have to, oh, vote the way his party wants him to in order to beat off a primary challenge.
I've attached the YouTube links to a couple of these ads below, so feel free to amuse yourself with the audacity of the flawed information presented. Naturally, these are running locally on Comcast (along with the Billy Mays and Sham-Wow ads, where they fit right in.)
Here are two of the ads:
(I particularly like the actor in the second ad repeatedly looking to her right to read the script!)
This particular group is just running PA ads, but it's my guess there will be other shadow groups in other states to misinform the public before the next few elections.
I'm hoping that there will be truth ads to counter this, we don't need to have voters calling their legislators and telling them, "we don't support labor rights!"