Ever heard of American Commitment? No, probably not, but it's yet another Koch brothers organization, led by Phil Kerpen, a former top aide at the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity, according to
Politico. And they might be astroturfing Congress to get them to kill net neutrality
in your name.
A majority of emails to lawmakers purporting to be from average constituents who oppose the Obama administration’s net neutrality rules "do not appear to have a valid in-district address," according to the company that manages the technology for some House members.
The emails have identical wording to those organized by a group called American Commitment, which is led by Phil Kerpen, a former top aide at the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity. […]
The flood of email traffic seemed to raise some lawmakers' eyebrows, including Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of California, whose office soon determined some of the messages had come from constituents who didn't recall sending them. And she pointed to a memo sent to members' staff last week by Lockheed Martin, which manages the technology behind some lawmakers' "contact me" Web pages. Lockheed said it had "some concerns regarding the messages," including the fact that "a vast majority of the emails do not appear to have a valid in-district address." In some cases, Lockheed also questioned the "legitimacy of the email address contact associated with the incoming message[s]." […]
Kerpen told POLITICO that American Commitment hadn't impersonated members' constituents. But he said that other groups had mounted similar campaigns, and borrowed the pre-written text available on his website.
"We're aware that other groups used identical language in their campaigns and we cannot speak to those efforts," Kerpen said. "We verified our data through postal address verification and follow up phone calls. We stand by our campaign and Congress should work to stop President [Barack] Obama's plan to regulate the Internet at the request of these constituents."
Rep. Speier has it right: "This is identity theft, but instead of impersonating for financial gain, the originators of this theft are striking at the heart of our representative democracy." Her staff calculates that 98 percent of these net neutrality emails her office received were people they'd never heard from before, and when those people were contacted as her staff tried to follow up, they said they'd never contacted her office on net neutrality.
Maybe they're impersonating you in one of these emails.
Sign and send the petition to your members of Congress making it clear to them that the anti-net neutrality emails they’ve received have been astroturf funded by the Koch brothers. We’ve included a link to the article for them to read.