If Liz were Queen

Americans for Prosperity was one of the lead organizations behind the Tax Day Tea Party protests April 15, 2009.  In mid 2009, Americans for Prosperity launched an advertising and advocacy campaign opposing U.S. health care reformed named “Patients United Now.”

AFP was established in last 2003 as a successor to Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation–an industry funded think tank.

AFP advocates pro-tobacco industry positions on issues like cigarette taxes and clean indoor air laws.  The name “Americans for Prosperity” is familiar to tobacco prevention policy advocates as Americans for Prosperity worked in the U.S. in recent years to defeat both smoke free workplace laws and cigarette excise tax increases.  The AFP are nothing, if not consistent in their anti-health messages.

Americans for Prosperity opposes smoking bans by using slippery-slope arguments (”where will it stop”) and erroneous arguments that smoking restriction are economically damaging.

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Americans for Prosperity is one of the conservative groups involved in organizing “town hall protests” and “recess rallies” where participants oppose health care reform by rambunctiously shouting own members of Congress while they are holding public meetings to inform the public about the proposals.

They bring speakers into to communities (ironically not unlike the brown shirts of Hitler’s team) to rally people and encourage them to oppose health care reform by bringing up distortions like “death orders” and “death sentences.”   These speakers are fear mongers who typically compare the proposed health care reform to the regimes of Mugube, Hitler Stalin and Pol Pot.  The speaker advises audiences to “go to offices of members of Congress and put the fear of god in them.”

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Funding for Americans for Prosperity comes from the Koch Family foundations, the Scaife Family Foundations.

According to Forbes, Koch Industries is the second largest privately held company and the largest privately owned energy company in the United Sates.  Koch industries made its money in the oil business.

Americans for Prosperity is also connected to oil giant ExxonMobil.

The first president of Americans for Prosperity was Nancy Pfotenhauer who left AFP in 2007 and joined the John McCain campaign.

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MORE ABOUT THE CORPORATE FUNDED “DISSENT” OF AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY

1. Chairman of the board is David H. Koch.  With his brother he runs the Koch Family Foundations, one of the largest single sources of funding for conservative organizations in the USA.

2. Art Pope is a Director. Art Pope has been described by the Daily Kos as “Rove+Abramoff”  In 2006 Pope created a 527 organization called the “Republican Legislative Majority (RLM) of North Carolina, Inc.  RLM engaged in illegal electioneering during North Carolina May 2006 primaries. According to many he sought to polarize the legislature and the electorate, destroy common ground, punish those who reach across the aisle and subvert the will of the people.

3. Wayne Gable a Director ( He is also the Managing Director of Federal Affairs at Koch Industries and president of the Charles G. Koch Foundation)

SOURCES INCLUDE WIKI AND SOURCE WATCH