patrick.net

Very good article. I can see why the government is scrambling to regulate internet speech, they are afraid of others doing what they do.

Another good article about military (linked from the first one in your post)...
http://www.alternet.org/world/150086/$1.2_trillion:_the_real_u.s._national_security_budget_no_one_wants_you_to_know_about

Hmmm..

Some people need to read the article again.

BTW, I'm not defending or condemning astroturfing. I agree with shrekgrinch, though, in his general assessment that they are opposite sides of the same coin both trying to hide their real intent by assuming a false identity.

False advertising is false advertising.

I'm always amazed at how comfortable defenders of left-authoritarianism are perfectly content with any means to justify their ends, while being quick to condemn others. It's called hypocrisy.

Ronnie Honduras says

If everyone became union, there’d be no extra benefit to being union,

Assuming we're talking about labor unions here, you're utterly wrong about that.

The bottom 90% of this country is only earning 50% of the income, and the top 1% has risen from under 10% pre-Reagan to approaching 25% today:

Labor unions winning some of that piece of the pie back from capital would be an immense win for everyone (except those top 1% poor rich people of course).

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer!

I suspect one or two Astroturfers on Patrick, but I will keep my suspicions low key for now.

You really have to wonder, when people defend the inexcusable in the worst of politicians.

Not so many suspects recently...
Possibly the one who write the 10 myths on housing recently...

Realted article:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2011/03/18/u-s-government-writes-software-to-enable-squads-of-propaganda-comment-trolls/

I am very interested in this topic. What are characteristics of Astroturfers?

I don't think we care enough if it is true or not.

For every outraged person over this, there's two, people that think you're opposed to this, because you oppose their party, some how.
So it would be very difficult to be effected by Government Trolls as there no Shortage of Trolls out in the Wild.

"I'll take "What is the AARP?" for $10,000 Alex!"