Our dedicated staff and passionate grassroots activists come from all different backgrounds and walks of life. What unites us is a steadfast belief in the power of the individual. Keep the country from going in reverse by telling lawmakers it's time to stop the spending spree.
Tell Congress Americans need personal options making it easier to get better, more affordable health care. Select State How do I request a ballot? When do I vote? When are polls open? Who Represents Me? Congress special elections Governors State executives State legislatures Ballot measures State judges Municipal officials School boards. How do I update a page? Election results. Privacy policy About Ballotpedia Disclaimers Login. Arlington, Virginia. Official website. Americans for Prosperity AFP is committed to educating citizens about economic policy and mobilizing those citizens as advocates in the public policy process.
AFP is an organization of grassroots leaders who engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state, and federal levels. AFP grassroots activists advocate for public policies that champion the principles of entrepreneurship and fiscal and regulatory restraint. Suggest a link. Americans for Prosperity weighed in, sending out a "mailer criticizing Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Joanne Kloppenburg for prosecutions that were trumpeted by her boss Wisconsin's Republican Attorney General J.
Van Hollen, who is defending Governor Walker's union-busting bill in court Considering that AFP and the Kochs have been pushing climate change denial and the repeal of environmental regulation[s], is it coincidence that they chose these examples? Then, on April 16th, , " Sarah Palin , former Governor of Alaska who quit her job in , headlined a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, bought and paid for by the front-group Americans for Prosperity AFP , but billed as a "grassroots" Tea Party event.
The Koch -funded AFP set up the stage and programmed 13 buses into Madison, but only six were labeled "full" on their website on Saturday. AFP also likely paid the airfare and fees of the national speakers. Wisconsin Wave held an early rally on the opposite side of the capitol, giving progressives a platform for the day but ending in time for attendees to march in opposition to Palin's speech Hundreds of protesters brought hand puppets to the event, illustrating the theme 'Walker and Palin are corporate puppets' of the Koch Brothers and other corporate interests.
In February , David Koch gave a rare interview to the Palm Beach Post and discussed his involvement with the Governor's pending recall election. We've gotten pretty good at this over the years," he told the Post, adding "We've spent a lot of money in Wisconsin.
We're going to spend more. The ad claimed that by eliminating collective bargaining, Walker had "put taxpayers back in control" and praised his record. The ad does not mention Scott Walker by name, but clearly articulates for his policies. When ALEC came under additional public scrutiny in , Wisconsin legislators received identical emails supporting ALEC from people claiming to be constituents, and the text of the emails was identical to the language in an online petition pushed by AFP across the country.
Across the country, AFP has been involved in a fight against regulations mandating that cars are more efficient. According to The New York Times, "in Illinois, it discouraged state officials from considering subsidies for electric vehicles. It also dovetails with their financial interests, which benefit from automobiles and highways," The New York Times reported in June of In July of , nineteen U.
Senators delivered a series of speeches denouncing climate change denial from 32 organizations with links to fossil-fuel interests, including Americans for Prosperity. Whitehouse RI-D , who led the effort to expose "the web of denial" said in his remarks on the floor that the purpose was to,. It's time to tell the other side of the story. Americans for Prosperity is working hard to bring you the missing half of the global warming debate.
What will the impacts of reactionary legislation be for you, your family and our economy? They wrote that the EPA "presumes that carbon is a problem in need of regulation. We are not convinced.
In the past, Upton has advocated taking action on global warming : "I strongly believe that everything must be on the table as we seek to reduce carbon emissions," he once stated on his website, which has since been removed. Following the Tea Party -aided Republican takeover of the House and a heated fight for the chairmanship of the energy and commerce committee, Upton's position on climate change has veered closer to those of global warming skeptics , like most Republican congressional members.
Upton is considering using the Congressional Review Act to block the EPA 's new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, in which Congress can overturn regulations from the executive branch within 60 days of their publication in the Federal Register, although the President retains the right to veto. Americans for Prosperity created an offshoot front group called Patients United Now , which organized what is estimated to be in excess of three hundred rallies against health-care reform.
In Americans for Prosperity, along with The Project , was one of the conservative groups involved in organizing "town hall protests" and "recess rallies" where participants oppose health care reform by rambunctiously shouting down members of Congress while they are holding public meetings to inform the public about the proposals. AFP started a group called " Patients First " to oppose health care. A speaker at an AFP co-sponsored event in Pueblo, Colorado repeated the discredited conservative idea that Democratic health care reform will mandate physician-assisted suicide or death for older members of society.
I kind of wonder what we're going to call ours," he said. The speaker further advises audience to "go to offices of members of Congress and put the fear of god in them. In July , Americans for Prosperity started an ad campaign aimed at young women in an effort to capture swing voters for the midterm elections. One of the ads features a young mother with a chronically ill child.
She expresses concern about being able to choose her own doctor and whether she can trust Washington to provide her family with healthcare. The ad is directly misleading, providing viewers with false information. Among the concerns brought up is not being able to choose your own doctor and having a limited network of doctors from which to choose.
Obamacare does not force patients to see certain doctors and current health insurance companies severely limit the network of practitioners from which a patient may choose. Another misleading claim is that patients will be paying higher premiums. In fact the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 19 million people, the majority of enrollees, will eventually receive subsidies to purchase comprehensive health care coverage from the exchanges.
AFP has also created a website to accompany the ad campaign. Viewers can input personal data to find out "risk factors" they may face under Obamacare. The site uses scare tactics to overwhelm viewers and intimidate them against the new healthcare reform law. After being accused of astroturfing for corporate interests, Americans for Prosperity volunteers started making hand-made signs for rally participants to have more of an appearance of an actual grassroots crowd. A week before the Nov. Well, I know.
Shona is a sobering example of how patients in other countries look to the U. Beginning in , Americans for Prosperity launched the website nostimulus. In North Carolina, AFP lobbied for a bill H that would raise the interest rate of some small loans by almost 40 percent. Opponents of the bill say the vote came after pressure from Republican leaders on behalf of an industry that helped bankroll the GOP takeover of the chamber.
It is intertwined with, and rivals in size, the Republican party itself. As a candidate, Walker barely mentioned collective bargaining or union busting. And we know this plan did not come from voters.
Before the legislation popped up on the agenda, Wisconsinites generally supported collective bargaining. Instead, to understand what happened in Wisconsin — and what is happening in states across the country — we need to look to the underappreciated organization that is at the center of the political network created and directed by the billionaire conservative industrialists, Charles and David Koch.
We are a group of Columbia and Harvard-based researchers who for the past five years have been investigating precisely how the Koch brothers work to influence US politics and the role played by AFP. In recent years, AFP has quietly pushed behind the scenes for many of the most important conservative victories across the nation, including the anti-union bills that passed in former union strongholds such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio.
But it also reflects strategic calculations. AFP has recognized that to make lasting change in US politics, the Koch network would need to permanently weaken the organizations that support liberal candidates and causes — and above all, the labor movement. To succeed in electing conservative candidates and promoting right-leaning policy, then, AFP would need to hobble unions, especially those in the public-sector that were powerful state-level allies of Democrats.
With fewer members and revenue, the political clout of the labor unions has fallen sharply. In presidential elections, Democrats lose around three percentage points after the passage of anti-union legislation, and turnout dips by around two points. In America, wealthy people have always thrown their weight around to influence elections and policy.
But what is newer and more portentous in the early 21st century, especially at the state level, is the rise of organized big donor collectives through which hundreds of billionaires and millionaires invest in organization-building to remake the very terrain on which US elections and government activities play out.
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