--------------------------From Readers Digest--------------------------------- It's hard to know who to trust these days. When we see people staging protests we think, Wow! These folks are passionate about their cause -- otherwise, why would they stand in the rain for hours? But sometimes it's a sham: You and even your Congressman may have been set up by manipulative marketers who pay serious money to hire protesters. It's a sneaky trick. Let's say you want to stage a political rally, but you just can't find enough people for a good turnout. What you need are folks with lots of time on their hands, who can be persuaded to make a fuss over almost anything. Solution: Head down to a homeless shelter and dole out cash. No joke -- hiring the homeless is catching on. Last October, a Georgia activist pushing a state law to crack down on illegal immigrants paid 14 homeless men $10 each to hold signs and march around. It worked. People thought the rally was genuine -- a local radio station even broadcast it live. But listeners had no idea this was just a crowd for hire. Near Washington, D.C., a local carpenters union has hired around 100 homeless men, according to union official George Eisner. The men, paid $8 per hour, are "another source" of manpower for rallies and protests. The scheme is so effective that unions across the country are getting in on the act too. Pay for rage works -- the homeless get a little income and the lobbying group gets a crowd. The only losers are citizens and the media, who think the whole show is legit. After a Phoenix TV station recently noticed rallies featuring the homeless, they asked some of the protesters, who were holding signs about a local labor dispute, what they were so upset about. Many had no idea. "All we do is stand out here and hold the signs," said one. These are small examples of what's happening at every level of society. In business, "stealth marketers" are paying people to casually talk up their products to friends and co-workers and get word-of-mouth buzz going. And in politics, the biggest special-interest racket is so-called "Astroturf" lobbying. If you want to create the illusion of grass-roots support to help sway Congress, you might have to pay. "Contrived and organized, it's known as Astroturf lobbying," says Jeffrey Birnbaum, a Washington Post reporter and lobbying expert. Special interests spend millions on Astroturf campaigns in which they set up front groups, gather signatures, and hire telemarketers without disclosing their real agendas. And you could become an unwitting tool of these special interests. Say you get a call from someone who says he's with a citizens' group that's fighting a bill to raise taxes. He may offer to connect you directly to your Congressman's office so you can express your outrage. You may never know you've been duped -- a pawn of a tobacco industry front group battling a cigarette-tax hike. Astroturf lobbyists have even been known to "borrow" people's names. In one case a few years ago, members of Congress were swamped with telegrams about a telecom bill. But some constituents were confused when they got phone calls from their concerned Congressmen -- because they'd never written in to begin with. It turned out that thousands of the telegrams were faked by a telecom-industry PR firm. And guess what? No aspect of this campaign appears to have violated Postal Service regulations. That means your name could be used next in support of a corporate cause you've never heard of. All of this amounts to a corruption of our democratic system: You can't trust someone who's calling you about a political issue, and if you write to your Congressman, he might not trust that you haven't been manipulated. Maybe the solution starts with unmasking all those protest rallies that are just outrage-for-hire purchased down at the local shelter. Outraged? Write to Michael Crowley at outrageous@rd.com.