[NicolasOL]

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blo...y_bookman_blog

Imagine coming home from a hard day of work and finding a yellow eviction notice posted on your home. Imagine that your neighborhood is already struggling with foreclosures, and you yourself are unsure about being able to keep your property. Imagine the fear that would rush through your body.

Then imagine discovering it was just somebody’s cute and clever stunt to get your attention.

The somebody in question was Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group that calls itself “an organization of grassroots leaders.” And what did AFP, this “organization of grassroots leaders,” think it was doing?

“It was meant to startle people,” Scott Hagerstrom, the group’s state director, told the Detroit Free Press. “We really wanted people to take notice. This is the time that their opinions need to be heard. We wanted people to read it.”

The Michigan DOT has proposed to build a new bridge across the Detroit River. The bridge in question would probably require buying up some of the homes in Detroit’s depressed Delray district.

But there’s something else about the new bridge. If built, it would compete with an existing, privately owned toll bridge. As the Free Press reports, the owner of that existing toll bridge is fighting the proposal tooth and nail, because it would end the monopoly he now enjoys:“Businessman Manuel (Matty) Moroun, owner of the (private) Ambassador Bridge and its operating arm, the Detroit International Bridge Co., is lobbying heavily against the NITC project because it would draw traffic and toll revenue away from his privately owned bridge. His company is running a series of TV ads against the NITC project, claiming that the project would cost Michigan taxpayers $100 million a year, a charge that NITC supporters say is false.
Hagerstrom refused to say if the bridge company was supporting the Americans for Prosperity lobbying campaign, saying the group’s membership and donor lists are private.”In their battle against the new bridge, Moroun and his supporters have apparently taken to describing the project as a “government bridge.” But is this what the Tea Party now stands for? Has it been reduced to a sham, a mere front group to do the dirty work of its secret corporate funders? Somehow, this doesn’t strike me as something “an organization of grassroots leaders” would come up with.