Right-wing opponents of healthcare and climate change reform continue to engage in Astroturfing (aka fake grassroots activism). To put it simply, these groups are like wolves in sheep's' clothing. They do their best to appear, act and smell like community groups...except they're not.

They're corporate front groups funded primarily, if not entirely, by corporate interests, political interests and/or PR firms who stand to either gain or lose a great deal of money and market share based on the legislation in question. Astroturf activism by right-wing front groups is particularly egregious because it masks the true motivations of the powerful interests with the most dollar signs at stake in these debates. Our friends over at Media Matters are looking to put a stop to this.

They have a new database that tracks the financial and political ties of conservative think tanks, nonprofit activist groups, and foundations for the public to see: ConservativeTransparency.org. The new database compiled and organized nearly 1,000 Internal Revenue Service filings to be provide the public-at-large with information on hundreds of "AstroTurf" organizations such as...

• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce - leads the way in opposition against federal reforms of....pretty much any kind that help working people. The Chamber is lobbying against consumer protections, limits on bank bonuses, financial reform legislation, legislation to lessen global warming and reform to healthcare and labor law.
• FreedomWorks Inc. - one of the *star* organizations behind the efforts to disrupt town hall meetings.
• The Heritage Foundation - a think tank that promotes ultra conservative policies and has repeated lobbied against increases in the minimum wage as well as health insurance reform.
• Conservatives for Patients' Rights - A $20 million operation that's running a national campaign against a public plan to kill progressive health care reform.
• Americans for Prosperity Foundation - helped organize tea party protests, opposes health care reform behind Patients United Now. Also sponsor of the Joe the Plumber tour and world-class climate change deniers.

See ConservativeTransparency.org for a wealth of information on the money behind the movement.

The Heritage Foundation responded yesterday to our campaign exposing the Lewin Group's conflict of interest on health insurance reform by saying, um, the blog version of "NUH UHHH!"

From the Heritage blog: "In fact, the Lewin Group is an independent and well-respected national health care and human services policy research and consulting firm with an expertise in modeling, statistics and actuarial analysis and more than 35 years experience." (Nice work. This could stand in for "About Us" language on the Lewin Group's own website. Oh look - in fact, it's fairly close to their own description.)

What Heritage declines to address is the very point of our campaign - the fact that in 2007, the Lewin Group was purchased by UnitedHealth - a health insurance company with a track record of breaking the law and defrauding customers. And that Republicans, who use Lewin Group studies in their attempt to derail health insurance reform, have long been claiming that this firm is "independent" and "non-partisan." Sorry, but that's simply not true.

The bloggers at Heritage try to spread the blame around, too, albeit sloppily. In defending Lewin Group statistics, they quote Democrat Ron Wyden's joint op-ed with a Republican colleague, in which they wrote, "The Lewin Group [is] the gold standard of independent, health-care analysis." (Did they find this on the Lewin Group website, as well? The quote is part of their website's template footer.)

This attempt at using Wyden's comment to prop up the Lewin Group's credibility is weak, at best. The op-ed in question was written in June 2007, mere days after the sale of the Lewin Group to UnitedHealth. It refers to studies conducted long before UnitedHealth had its hands in the policy research cookie jar. Maybe the Lewin Group was once the "gold standard" of health policy research - but that's certainly not the case anymore.

Sorry, but you're going to have to try harder, Heritage.