[Nick Danger]

Government watchdog group
the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization

It's a lobbying firm. It is the business of lobbying firms to do political advocacy for money.

Some years ago, Microsoft was in need of some support from the citizenry to convince state government officials to go easy on Microsoft during the anti-trust trial. And hundreds of citizens responded. They wrote nearly-identical letters to dozens of officials. So eager were these citizens to speak up for Microsoft that some of them actually rose from the grave to do so.

It was not really grass-roots support, it was "Astoturfing," managed by a lobbying firm that actually wrote the letters and told people what names to sign to them.

The name of that lobbying firm? Citizens Against Government Waste.

• 6/30/04 Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today applauded the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia approving, without modification, the antitrust settlement agreed upon by U.S. Department of Justice, 17 states and the District of Columbia, and the Microsoft Corporation.
• 6/28/04: Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today cited the decision by the European Commission (EC) to delay sanctions imposed against Microsoft until an appeal is addressed as the first correct action taken in the case by the EC.
• 6/30/2003 The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) today criticized Massachusetts Chief Information Officer Peter Quinn for his stated intention to move all state and local government computers to open-source operating systems.
• 6/28/2002Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today cheered the U.S. Court of Appeals for its landmark decision vacating the breakup of the Microsoft Corporation after more than three months of deliberation.

There is certainly nothing wrong with hiring a lobbying firm to advocate on your behalf. And there is nothing wrong with a lobbying firm dressing itself up as People For Goodness and Truth while churning out press releases for its clients. All of that is everyday fare in Washington.

Let's just be clear that that is what is going on here. This is a lobbying firm, and Microsoft is one of its clients.

[TechJunkYard]

.. there is nothing wrong illegal with a lobbying firm dressing itself up as People For Goodness and Truth while churning out press releases for its clients.

There ya go.

I suspected that something like that was going on.

It was all too ADTI-esque to be believable. No facts, no comparisons with real figures, just some honcho spouting old FUD (which is easily refutable).. but without the nasty "edge" to it.