It's not just the healthcare "debate" that's being flooded with activists who've been worked into a froth by the particular industry in danger of being reformed. The oil industry one-ups the health insurance gurus with a whole new level of odiousness: a purported leaked email from the American Petroleum Institute says oil folks are sending employees to pose as concerned citizens to pressure members of Congress to vote against climate change legislation.
The memo appears to be genuine, because TPM Muckraker got API to comment on it:
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.
…
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.
In the email, this sentence appears:
At the rallies, we will focus our message on two points: the adverse impacts of unsound energy policy (e.g.–Waxman-Markey-like legislation, tax increases, and access limitations) on jobs and on consumers' energy costs. And we will call on the Senate to oppose unsound eneregy policy and "get it right."
That's a remarkable sentence in very many ways, but most especially the "get it right," as if they know that "right" does not equal that which they want. Or in its most harmless interpretation, they're putting words directly into the mouths of their sham independent citizens. And then there's the "we": in a country whose government is supposed to be "we the people," this particular "we" becomes quite complicated. This is "we the oil industry" trying to appear to be "we the people." It reveals an unfortunate truth that the extensive lobbying system and corporate "personhood" means the "we" in charge of government has so little to do with "the people" anymore.
Personally, this political version of viral marketing disgusts me thoroughly, no matter whose side does it. Our system of government seems to have ceased functioning in any fashion that represents the independent will of a well-informed populace. Instead, everybody with a buck to make tries to do the informing of said people to accomplish their specialized ends. What a fine situation that is. It's become a full-time job to merely attempt to stay informed via trustworthy, objective sources. Not many of us have that luxury, which, of course, enables the whole business to continue ad infinitum.
