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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Significant Republicans
Wednesday 19 May @ 15:05:25 |
 The extreme liberal slant of your publication is so imbalanced as to be ludicrous, don’t you think it’s time to get with the program and understand that a significant part of your readership is Republican and not Democrat? The President’s jobs and growth policies have put the economy on the road to recovery, but there is more work to be done.
 The President has outlined a six-point plan to create even more job opportunities for America’s workers and keep America the best place in the world to do business. The plan includes: enabling families and businesses to plan for the future with confidence by making tax reductions permanent; making health care costs more affordable and predictable; reducing the burden of lawsuits on our economy; ensuring an affordable, reliable energy supply; streamlining regulations and paperwork requirements; and opening new markets for American products and services.
Nowhere in your publication is this important information reflected.
Sincerely,
Julie Ann
St. Paul
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RE: Significant Republicans
Dear “Julie Ann,”
Your letter is a word-for-word replica of this website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/economy/more-20040402.html. Similar letters have appeared in papers across America, as Republican Party officials have urged their supporters to cut and paste text from their web sites and send them to large numbers of newspapers as fake “letters to the editor.” Since I am registered as a Republican “team leader,” I myself receive numerous e-mails from the GOP, asking me to commit fraud.
For example, a letter identical to this one — not similar, identical — appeared in the May 26, 2003 issue of Time magazine, ostensibly from one Thomas Stokes. Other identical letters appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune on May 8 of that year, the Glasgow, Kentucky Daily Times on May 7, the Las Cruces, New Mexico Sun-News on May 6 and the Gallatin, Tennessee News Examiner on May 5 – all signed with different fake names.
This scam has been covered in more depth at http://www.failureisimpossible.com/dosomething/sod.htm, irregulartimes.com/astroturf.html and Tom Tomorrow’s weblog, http://www.thismodernworld.com.
These actions are immoral, of course, since it disrupts public access to the media with a flood of spam. They create the illusion of massive grass-roots support for Bush where none exists. It allows a miniscule number of unethical people to pressure the media into supporting the ruling party even more than they already do.
“Julie Ann,” your e-mail is an untraceable Hotmail account and your alleged address is an apartment building in St. Paul, where a reverse telephone directory has come up with no one named “Julie Ann.”
Ironically, your letter arrived right after Ed Felien’s article accused Rep. John Kline of letting Republican leaders do his thinking for him. Your letter proved that Kline is not the only one.
To address your concern, however: I’m sure some of our readers are Democrat, but there are more than two categories. Some, I’m sure, are populists, Libertarians, Greens, moderates, anarchists, Socialists, liberals, progressives, traditional conservatives (the ones who conserve) or just independents who don’t fall into the media’s easy categories. I’m sure some are Republicans, too, for some Republicans have class.
“Julie Ann,” thank you for giving us an opportunity to educate the public on your attempt at fraud. Please, readers, the next time you read a newspaper’s letters to the editor, be aware that some of them may have been manufactured by the ruling party.
Brian Kaller
Managing Editor
Pulse of the Twin Cities
612-824-0000
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