API’s Recycled Astroturf

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Have you heard about the massive public uprising to protect Big Oil’s tax breaks? No? Oh, probably because it doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean the American Petroleum Institute won’t try to convince you it does!

API has launched a “new” Energy Citizens campaign to convince you, the average American, to help the oil industry trade group protect the lavish tax loopholes they currently enjoy. With that whole oil disaster in the Gulf, it looks like Congress might cut off the gravy train for oil companies when it comes to billions of dollars in tax breaks and direct subsidies every year. Now API has launched a new ad campaign to protect the handouts, as well as a new “grassroots” campaign to protect them. One big problem: Their latest astroturf effort looks a whole lot like their last astroturf effort.

Let us recall last summer’s Energy Citizens campaign, wherein the oil industry trade group (and No. 5 on our list of the top dozen organizations supporting climate change denial) took the liberty of organizing “citizen” rallies around the country in protest of cap and trade legislation. Turns out, as I reported last summer, nearly all of the rallies were directly organized lobbyists for API and its state affiliates.

API’s newest effort, also called “Energy Citizens,” introduced itself in an email blast on Tuesday as a “new movement of citizens focused on countering reactionary policies and restoring a common-sense perspective.” The email claims to come from an organization called Partnership for America’s Energy Security, and it’s signed by Deryck Spooner, the executive director of Energy Citizens. (Spooner also happens to be the “external mobilization director” that API hired away from the Nature Conservancy earlier this year.)

The Energy Citizens website (the “new online headquarters of our nationwide movement”) doesn’t make much mention of API, other than to note that it is “supported by” the trade group. The site warns that Congress is considering “crippling tax hikes that will threaten thousands of jobs and hurt investments in new technologies”—without mentioning anywhere which “job-killing energy taxes” they mean, specifically. They’re also endorsing an anti-moratorium rally in Louisiana taking place tomorrow, as Josh notes on the MoJo blog.

Here’s what the letter they sent out Tuesday has to say about the oil spill:

Nonetheless, this tragedy is being exploited to undermine realistic energy policies that would benefit our nation. In fact, some policymakers are attempting to levy billions of dollars in new taxes on America’s energy companies—taxes that could impact every American industry employee, and every American energy consumer.

If you’re going to fake grassroots citizen mobilization, API, it would probably be worth the time (and money, which I am well aware API has quite a bit of) to come up with a new name, or at least make an attempt to cover your tracks.

 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate