The same day that the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives, the oil industry examined the loopholes. The bill, which has yet to pass the Senate, would make refiners "buy allowances for carbon dioxide spewed from their plants and from vehicles when motorists burn their fuel. Imports would need permits only for the latter." So, oil companies "will probably cope ... by closing fuel plants, cutting capital spending and increasing imports." In Canada, the bill's passage rattled companies invested in Alberta's tar sands, an especially carbon-intensive oil source. However, "we're delighted that low-carbon fuel standards are not in the Waxman-Markey bill," said an executive with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Meanwhile, Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality -- a former civil rights group that now accepts industry funding, including from ExxonMobil -- bemoaned the bill's impact on "poor and working families" while criticizing measures that would lessen household costs as "energy welfare payments." Lastly, Our Country Deserves Better, an anti-Obama political action committee with links to the PR firm Russo Marsh & Rogers, has launched a "stop cap & trade" campaign. Fundraising appeal emails from the group call Waxman-Markey a "big government, quasi-socialistic policy" that's "predicated on the fraudulent 'junk science' of global warming alarmism."

Richard Scott, "a multimillionaire investor and controversial former hospital chief executive, has become an unlikely and prominent leader of the opposition to health-care reform," reports the Washington Post. But the public relations firm promoting Scott and his front group is a usual suspect. CRC Public Relations -- the conservative PR firm previously known as Creative Response Concepts -- is the firm "that masterminded the 'Swift boat' attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry." The firm is working with Scott and his group, Conservatives for Patients' Rights. "While disorganized Republicans and major health-care companies wait for President Obama and Democratic leaders to reveal the details of their plan before criticizing it, Scott is using $5 million of his own money and up to $15 million more from supporters to try to build resistance to any government-run program." The campaign includes television ads featuring "horror stories" of Canadian and British residents who "allegedly suffered long waits for surgeries, couldn't get the drugs they needed, or had to come to the United States for treatment" -- the same scare tactics industry groups used to respond to the 2007 Michael Moore movie "Sicko."

An internal document (pdf) of the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) -- an industry front group that disbanded in 2002 -- reveals that when the group chose to promote doubt about the reality of global warming it was ignoring the views of its own scientific advisers. In a backgrounder distributed to members of Congress and journalists in the 1990s, the GCC stated that “the role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood," though it added the qualifier that scientists disagreed on the issue. However, an internal document obtained as part of a court action against the automobile industry indicates that the GCC's advisers disagreed. '“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” they wrote.

A front group for the UK bottled water industry, "which is perceived to be expensive and environmentally unsound," signed a "six-figure" contract with the public relations firm Munro & Forster. The Natural Hydration Council was "set up by Nestle Waters, Highland Spring and Danone Waters last September." Its new PR firm "will attempt to stop bottled water being compared with tap water," reports PR Week. Natural Hydration Council director Jeremy Clarke claims that the recent decline in bottled water sales doesn't mean more people are drinking tap water. "Rather, they were turning to obesity-causing soft drinks, he argued." Munro & Foster will try "re-educating consumers about the benefit of drinking water, as Clarke argued consumers had become 'fuzzy' about what they should be drinking. Further, the agency will handle stakeholder engagement, reaching out to the Government and environmental groups, and lobbying the health community." British media have run negative articles about bottled water, under headlines like "Bottled water is an eco no-no" and "Bottled water is immoral."

As the Center for Media and Democracy reported previously, the Dewey Square Group lobbying firm is sending newspapers fake letters to the editor. The letters promote Medicare Advantage, a private health insurance plan, and are sent in the name of local seniors. The Eagle-Tribune paper was tipped off when Noah, really "an intern at the Boston office of the Dewey Square Group," called about one of the letters, claiming he was the letter writer's grandson. But the woman whose name was on the letter doesn't have a grandson named Noah, and didn't send the letter. Dewey Square is sending the Astroturf letters "under the banner of 'The Coalition for Medicare Choices,'" and also "bringing seniors to 'Medicare Advantage Community Meetings,' featuring 'free food' and 'door prizes,' with congressmen and senators, and offering them sample letters to Congress or local newspapers." Dewey Square's Mary Anne Marsh claimed, "no one's trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes." Instead, she suggested that "the time that elapsed between the meetings when the seniors saw the letters and the letters' arrival at the newspaper may have clouded some memories." The campaign comes after Democratic proposals, backed by President Obama, to cut funding to Medicare Advantage and use "the savings to expand health care coverage for all."

In 2008 the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coal industry lobby group, spent $9.9 million on federal lobbying as well as $38 million on advertising promoting "clean coal." The president of the coalition, Steven L. Miller, said "we’re fighting for our livelihood." Coral Davenport reports that the coalition "won't try to block a climate bill -- it's inevitable, Miller says -- but will try to influence how it's structured, chiefly by delaying emission limits until clean coal is a commercial reality -- if it ever is." The coalition also hired Quinn Gillespie & Associates. "We are ramping up even more beyond the effort we had last year," Miller said. However, some lobbying insiders doubt that the scale of the campaign is warranted. "You can only influence and pressure people so much. If you're spending that kind of money, you’re not getting your money’s worth," an anonymous insider said.

Following President Barack Obama's first address to Congress, which highlighted policy goals "ranging from expanding health-care coverage to cutting farm subsidies to cutting wasteful defense projects," corporate front groups are fighting back. The former head of the largest for-profit hospital chain, HCA, announced "a $20 million campaign to pressure Democrats to enact health-care legislation based on free-market principles," under the name "Conservatives for Patients Rights." Joe Lucas of the coal and utility industry front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity said his organization "will spend as much as $40 million to make sure Congress approved a global-warming plan" that includes funding for developing "carbon capture and storage" technology at coal-fired electric plants. The Aerospace Industries Association of America has already spent $2 million on ads arguing that military spending "shouldn't be slashed to offset shortfalls in other areas." Boeing recently added a new top lobbyist, David Morrison from the Podesta Group firm, and Lockheed is still trying to associate its F-22 Raptor fighter jet with stimulus efforts, via its PreserveRaptorJobs.com astroturf website.