Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 08/18/2009 9:17:42 PM PDT by Tessared
A leaked memo sent by an oil industry group reveals a plan to create astroturf rallies at which industry employees posing as "citizens" will urge Congress to oppose climate change legislation.
The memo -- sent by the American Petroleum Institute and obtained by Greenpeace, which sent it to reporters -- urges oil companies to recruit their employees for events that will "put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy," and will urge senators to "avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill."
(Excerpt) Read more at tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com ...
The memo -- sent by the American Petroleum Institute and obtained by Greenpeace, which sent it to reporters -- urges oil companies to recruit their employees for events that will "put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy," and will urge senators to "avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill."
API tells TPMmuckraker that the campaign is being funded by a coalition of corporate and conservative groups that includes the anti-health-care-reform group 60 Plus, FreedomWorks, and Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform.
The memo, signed by API president Jack Gerard, asks recipients to give API "the name of one central coordinator for your company's involvement in the rallies."
And it warns: "Please treat this information as sensitive ... we don't want critics to know our game plan."
Aside from the astroturf nature of the planned events, which appear aimed at passing off industry employees as independent citizens, the memo also raises questions about the positions of several major oil companies on the issue of climate change. BP and Shell both are members of API, and also of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of groups that supports Waxman-Markey, the very climate change legislation the memo criticizes.
API has spent over $3 million lobbying against that bill this year.
Bill Bush, a spokesman for API, told TPMmuckraker that there's no deception involved with the rallies. "I don't think anyone's hiding the ball about this," he said. "I don't think anyone's trying to suggest that this doesn't have anything to do with the oil and gas industry."
He described the campaign as preliminary. "A good bit is still in the planning stages," he said.
In a letter to Gerard, Greenpeace has called on API to reveal the member companies funding the astroturf effort.
A Greenpeace spokesman declared in a statement to reporters:
The question is, will BP and Shell continue to hand out millions to the API after this? If these companies want us to believe that they are serious about legislation to reduce climate emissions, it's time for them to pull funding from lobby groups who use underhand tactics to create a false impression of voter concern over Waxman-Markey.
Bush said he's not aware of any planned response to Greenpeace. And he said the campaign is being funded by members of the "Energy Citizens" alliance -- a coalition of corporate and conservative groups that 60 Plus, FreedomWorks, Americans For Tax Reform, the American Conservative Union, and the National Taxpayers Union.
A Washington lobbying group has already been caught sending forged letters, on behalf of a coal industry organization, purporting to come from local minority groups and urging lawmakers to oppose the climate change bill. A congressional inquiry into the matter is ongoing.
Late Update: Shell Oil Company, which is a member both of the anti-Waxman-Markey API, and of the pro-Waxman-Markey USCAP, says it won't be involved in the rallies. A spokesman sent TPMmuckraker the following statement:
Shell's position is not aligned with the consensus opinion of the API on Waxman-Markey, therefore Shell will not participate in the rallies.
Shoot, lets all Astroturf, if it’s good enough for the Pres__ent it’s good enough for all.
Seriously, I expect this to turn out a hoax.
Posing as “citizens”. Funny I work for an oil company and I still consider myself a citizen. Greenpeace probably bought the memo from Dan Rather.
ROTFL!!! Somebody been smokin' da happy smoke!
Just like Obamanoid rent-a-mobs posing as "workers".
Trying to cut opponents off at the knees before they can speak out. Greenpeace? Yeah, reliable there. THEY’D never make this up.
Gee, I never knew that one had to forfeit one’s citizenship to work in the energy industry.
So?
Who on the left is to be the face of the outrage? Moveon.org? SEIU? ACORN?
Gee, the Democrats are doing it with the DNC, SEIU, ACORN, OFA etc etc
but I guess its news when somebody else considers doing it
This sounds like BS to me. Greenpeace isn’t what anyone would call a “credible” source of anything except BS. I think they made it all up.
God knows those people aren't citizens, thats why they get scare quotes
Oil company employees MUST kneel before Greenpeace and CodePink. NOW.
It doesn’t matter. The media will spew it out as fact. Then, we’ll find out it’s BS. Then, a month from now, we’ll hear the left cited it as evidence. I’ve had so many arguments with the left where they here the first “fact” but never get the memo on it being fiction and cite it until they’re blue in the face as a facgt and a reason why they oppose this or that.
Useful idiots. It’s all about the narrative and just like Hollywood, they get so pissed that their narrative isn’t true, that they fake it or forge it to make it true. Facts should not get in the way of the narrative.
P.S. When the results turn out to be devastating, and the facts would have predicted such, the left tries to spin it as the fault of the “naysayers” who didn’t make it work. Then they try to do the same thing again, telling all of us that it’ll work this time because we have different people doing it or we’re ready for it as a society now. LOL. Funniest s#$t ever to hear liberals ties themselves in knots to get their way.
NO Amnesty for oil industry employees.
The millions of oil industry employees masquerading as citizens must stop now.
This world of media propaganda is like a bad Emily Litella skit from SNL.
As if the same anti government health citizens aren’t against GW bull also, probably more.
The source of this article (TPM) looks fairly unreliable too. Perhaps it's another $oro$ front.
Consider the source - Greenpeace. As if the oil industry needed astroturf to get the same conservative response as they got from us in Drill here, Drill Now. My bet is that this is a case of enviro-RATs trying to poison the well by projecting their own tactics. Who is astroturfing the town hall? RATs, that’s who. Look at that berk Grayson FL-8 who held his town hall in a union hall immediately after the RAT committee meeting. Only a relative handful of outsiders made it in - but they were enough. We don’t need astroturf! see tagline
Well, does sound like a bunch of malarkey...so to speak.
We will be depending upon carbon fuels for some time into the future..regardless of the idiots on the left (whoops, excuse me, those on the left that believe that there are other alternatives as cheap).
So...to pacify those leftists, we will cut carbon emissions by 1/3 (heh, we have been doing that anyway) and still support all the electricity demands of the future (I sure hope so, since they keep bring more and more people online).
Not a problem, we can now provide “Wind Power” 1% of our power output (hopefully 3% if all works out well - heh the environmentalists keep us in the courts). In addition, we will further provide power through other means if we can keep the local fish in normal production...
Hey, if that does not work out, we can always go to coal - as long as the environmentalists allow it (without too many years of delay.) If that does not work out, we can always to nuclear pending other environmentalists problems.
So...no problem, you will have electricity just as long as we can provide it - depending upon environmental conditions...of course...
I wonder which liberal group “leaked” this?
I think this will be the blue print going forward to marginalize any opposition of their agenda. When ‘REAL’ people are angry and voicing their opinions, it’s really a hired protester.
What’s funny is how the left really has done this for years with their rent-a-mobs. It’s been well documented. What they are accusing us of is nothing more than their revealing what they have always done and gotten away with.
Sniff, sniff at post #1.
The greens in Australia couldn’t pass a cap & trade tax. I would be shocked if the USA did.
He received a George Polk Award in 2008 for reporting on the 2007 US Attorney firing scandal that led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and a Sidney Hillman award in 2006 for reporting on President Bush's attempt to phase out Social Security.
Marshall graduated from Princeton in 1991 and holds a doctorate in American history from Brown. He lives in New York City with his wife Millet, their sons Sam and Daniel and their dog Simon.
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".......And one reporter in particular: Joshua Micah Marshall, the thirty-eight-year-old founder and editor of TPM, who has grown the operation from a tiny center-left political blog that he began at the end of 2000. (Back then, referring to himself as the “founder” or “editor” of anything would have been an act of self-deprecating bloggy humor.) Today, Marshall presides over a staff of four reporters—one of whom also serves as deputy editor—three associate editors, and a small army of unpaid interns. Their work is posted on a quartet of interconnected sites: Talking Points Memo, as Marshall’s original blog is known; TPM Café, a two-year-old site devoted to policy and culture debates; TPM Muckraker, a year-and-a-half-old project that trawls for political scandal; and TPM Election Central....."
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TPM Media is headquartered in New York City and has two staff reporter-bloggers reporting from Washington, DC.
Recent Press ...
The New York Times, "Blogger, Sans Pajamas, Rakes Muck and a Prize," February 25th, 2008
GQ, "Give This Man a Pulitzer," December 2007
Columbia Journalism Review, "The (Josh) Marshall Plan," September/October 2007
Financial Times, "Quick off the Blog," July 28th, 2007
New York Observer, "Josh Marshall's Optimistic Leap to Web TV," June 18th, 2007
Bill Moyers Journal, "Blogging for Truth: Profile of Josh Marshall," April 27th, 2007
NPR, "Talking Points Site Kept Attorneys Story Alive", March 22nd, 2007
Los Angeles Times, "Blogs can top the presses," March 17th, 2007
Columbia Journalism Review, "How TalkingPointsMemo Beat the Big Boys on the U.S. Attorney Story," March 15th, 2007
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All the lefties love him.
TPM’s Josh Marshall Encourages YouTubes “to Make Sen. Clinton Look as Foolish as Possible”
“Progressive” blogger Joshua Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo continues his obsession with the “Hillary Clinton-Bosnia-Sniper” story. On Thursday, as of 21:00 ET, Marshall totally ignores the major economic policy speech by Sen. Obama for more pressing matters: ...."
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Maureen Dowd Was Copying Off Of TPM Josh Marshall's Paper
".... a Talking Points Memo follower might've busted Maureen Dowd doing a little bit of plagiarism. At the very least, she's definitely being accused of it. Ruh roh...."
BS on the astoturf, we're pissed. And believe me none of us have been contacted by API.
I think it’s a hoax perpetrated by TPMuckraker, sort of a Perez Hilton type of the political world.
So?
Who on the left is to be the face of the outrage? Moveon.org? SEIU? ACORN?
No company will have to pay me to rally against the coming ‘crap & trap’ idiocy the left is planning on ramming down our throats next. I plan to keep pushing back at every piece of junk legislation they come up with.
No, no and no.
The insane power-grab coming from Washington needs to be shut down, and the only people willing to do it are those of us who are paying attention. MSM can keep working their double shifts at covering for their socialist buddies in power, but many of us don’t rely on them for much anymore beyond making themselves look ever more blatantly bigoted and ridiculous.
Sadly, I don’t think there’s much that can be done to stop these crap bills from becoming law. Education of the last few generations has been rather pitiful, resulting in the lack of real critical-thinking skills. Add that to the fact that the average American gets their news from MSM, and young people, from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, Saturday Night Live and AOL, beating back the socialist tide is close to impossible.
sniff........IBTZ
What a load.
Organizing is not astro-turfing, paying the homeless to come to a rally, as ACORN does, is.
NO TO CAP AND TAX!!!!!
“....at which industry employees posing as “citizens”....
Since when are industry employees NOT citizens? Hmmmm.
That’s a load of crap.
Oh yeah, this is from Greenpeace - very reputable source of intel......
NOT!
This is a very different MO from the Viking Kitties!
Protocols of the Elders of Exxon?
I think we’ve heard enough from the likes of you. Have fun back at huffpo, and remember to tell them that you were tolerated for months here, rather than the few seconds conservatives would get from the liberal bigots on your home planet.
Oh yeah, IB4Z.
So if one works for an industry that is adversly impacted by moronic ill advised dangerous useless legislation one can’t protest?
Hmm..
IBTZ
This has been an Astro-turf message.
Organized and funded by 'BIG OIL'. 
Where can I get in on some of this Money?
So where can join the “astro-turf” against the cap and tax?
IATZ to that.
LOL! Here come the big shooters again eh?
I love it!
IATZ! Bummer!
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