"Protesters Ambush Conservative Think Tank:

Speaker Applauded for Lambasting Bush"

At the Heritage Foundation's annual Resource Bank
meeting in Chicago last
Friday, protesters masquerading as a right-wing
think tank took the stage
and announced that in light of Bush's
shortcomings, they were nominating
former Reagan Attorney-General Ed Meese for
president.The audience applauded for nearly ten seconds.
Meese, eating at a table
just feet away from the podium where Andy
Bichlbaum of The Yes Men made
the announcement, grimaced and shook his head in
surprise.

Heritage is the most influential think tank in
Washington, spending over
$25 million annually to influence policy. Just as
the wildest anarchists
aim to "smash the state," Heritage hopes that
"the liberal welfare state
can be brought to collapse," in the words of its
current president.

The Yes Men registered for the Heritage event as
"The Society for
Socioeconomic Stability" and spent two days
mingling among the 650
participants before approaching the microphone
during a lull in the
closing luncheon.

Echoing sentiments expressed by others throughout
the event, Bichlbaum
condemned Bush as an inadequate free-markets
candidate. But while others
had condemned Bush's "No Child Left Behind"
program as "socialistic,"
Bichlbaum focussed on the administration's war in
Iraq, calling it "crony
corporate welfare" and "market distortion on a
fairly gigantic scale."

"The Iraq war was history's biggest illegal trade
subsidy," said Yes Man
Mike Bonanno, who was also in attendance. "One
thing we'll be trying to
do in the months ahead is lodge an official
complaint about this with the
WTO in Geneva."

"In a free market, companies like Halliburton and
Exxon should be funding
their own market expansion projects instead of
depending on the Federal
government for it," said Louise Smith, another Yes
Man attendee.

Please see
here for
pictures and video.

The Yes Men are best known for having represented
the World Trade
Organization in a number of venues; a movie about
these adventures will be
released by United Artists this coming August:
movie.

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CONTACT: The Yes Men
heritage@theyesmen.org