And they are watching as too!

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by: Susan Webb, 8/6/2012

I have started receiving emails from a group called Generation Opportunity, which proclaims itself "one of the largest grassroots organizations connecting with Millennials through advanced social media outreach and traditional, boots-on-the-ground organizing."

A recent message begins with compelling statistics about youth unemployment from the July 2012 government figures.

Then, Generation Opportunity President Paul T. Conway - identified vaguely as a former chief of staff of the U.S. Department of Labor and former chief of staff of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management - is quoted as saying, "Instead of aggressively embracing policies that liberate businesses to create more jobs, the President and his appointees have pursued an agenda that suffocates economic opportunity under the weight of more spending, higher debt, more regulations, and higher taxes."

The header on the email I received urges people to call the White House and "tell President Obama to get out of the way of job creation."

In fact, Conway is a career Republican appointee who worked for the right-wing Heritage Foundation, was trained and also taught at the right-wing Leadership Institute, and was chief of staff for former Bush Labor Secretary and current Heritage staff member Elaine Chao. Notorious fraudster James O'Keefe also got "training and a little financial help from the Leadership Institute," its founder boasted on yet another astro-turf website, campusreform.org.

You can't learn about Conway or any of Generation Opportunity's other leaders on its website. The site is completely anonymous, except for the name of its communications director Matthew Faraci. It lists a northern Virginia phone number and a P.O. box mailing address in Arlington, Va. Faraci previously headed communications for Americans United for Life, and before that was a spokesman for the U.S. Council on Competitiveness and for former Labor Secretary Chao. The Center for Public Integrity and blogger Kevin Bondelli have researched the group's right-wing connections in detail.

Generation Opportunity says it is a nonpartisan, 501c4 organization. That means it is tax-exempt, and while it engages in political advocacy, it does not have to disclose its donors.

According to the Internal Revenue Service, 501c4 groups must have as their primary activity "the promotion of social welfare." That, says the IRS, "does not include participation in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any political candidate." This seems highly questionable for Generation Opportunity.

Read more here:  http://www.peoplesworld.org/generation-opportunity-another-republic...