The coal industry lobbying outfit the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is pressing forward with an aggressive astroturfing campaign going after U.S. senators — despite the recent revelation that it was responsible for forged “grassroots” letters to lawmakers, attacking the American Clean Energy and Security Act:

Paid staff will both call people already on the group’s list and talk to other people at public events, asking them if they want information or T-shirts or would be interested in asking a question at a town hall meeting. “This is the purest form of grassroots,” Lucas said. “It’s facilitating constituents to talk one-on-one with members of Congress.

The new project will use 225,000 volunteers dubbed “America’s Power Army.” They will visit town hall meetings, fairs and other functions attended by members of Congress and ask misleading questions about energy policy.

ThinkProgress has discovered that ACCCE has subcontracted its astroturf operations to the Lincoln Strategy Group, a GOP-tied firm notorious for voter fraud. The LinkedIn profile for Lincoln Strategies staffer Courtney Forrester reveals that her employer is engaged in a massive effort to recruit supporters on behalf of the coal industry. Steve Gates, communications director for ACCCE, told ThinkProgress that Lincoln Strategy Group ran their grassroots campaign last year as well.

The new firm managing the “grassroots” campaign for the coal industry has a history that distinguishes it as being one of the most notorious voter fraud organizations in the country:

- In Oregon and Nevada, Lincoln Strategies — then known as Sproul and Associates — was investigated for destroying Democratic voter registration forms. The Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign paid Sproul $7.4 million for campaign work. [CNN, 10/14/04; KGW News, 10/13/04; East Valley Tribune, 09/07/06]

- In Nevada, people who registered as Democrats with Lincoln Strategies — then known as Sproul and Associates — found their names absent from the voter registration rolls. [Reno Gazette-Journal, 10/29/04]

- During the 2006 midterm elections, Wal-Mart banned Lincoln Strategies for partisan voter registration efforts in Tennessee. The Republican National Committee had hired the firm. [Associated Press, 08/24/06]

- In Arizona, Lincoln Strategies employed a variety of deceptive tactics — including systematically lying about the bill — to push a ballot initiative to eviscerate the state’s clean elections law. [Salon, 10/21/04]

- Lincoln Strategies, then employed by the Republican Party, was behind efforts to place Ralph Nader on the ballot in states such as Arizona. [American Prospect, 06/25/04]

Even former Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT), during a hearing on voter fraud, admitted that “the difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn’t throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out.”

After the coal industry was caught red-handed stealing letterhead and forging fake letters in opposition to clean energy reform, they simply blamed their contractor — a firm with a long track-record of providing exact type of astroturfing they were caught doing. Now with the coal industry hiring a firm with a long history of fraud and possible criminal activity (the Bush administration declined to ever investigate Sproul and his Lincoln Strategy firm), it is clear the industry is interested in defeating clean energy with deceit and purchased support.

Today, the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 9.4 percent in July, and “businesses cut a much-less-severe 247,000 jobs from their payrolls.” Analysts had anticipated something to the tune of 325,000 jobs lost and a 9.7 percent unemployment rate.

As the New York Times reported, an analysis of the stimulus plan offered by economists “suggests that the punch from increased government spending has helped the economy begin to bottom out faster than it would have otherwise.” However, the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore appeared on Fox News this morning and said that, despite the report, he is “ready to declare the economic stimulus plan a failure.” Watch it:

Moore is right that this is by no means a “good” report overall, but declaring the stimulus a failure at this junction is to ignore the effect that it has already had. “The signs of the stimulus are there,” Allen L. Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics, told the New York Times. “Government — federal, state and local — is helping take the economy from recession to recovery. I think it’s the primary contributor.” This graph, from a report by the Council of Economic Advisers, shows the impact on job loss that the stimulus has had.

Due to the stimulus, the actual loss has been much less than the projected. So as Tim Fernholz put it, “I hope that these arguments will dispel the ignorant discussion over whether or not the stimulus is ‘working.’ It is doing exactly what economists thought it would, even if the policy wound up being executed in an economic environment that was much worse than expected.”

David Leonhardt noted that the jobs report also shows that “the average hourly pay of rank-and-file workers, which had been flat in June, rose 3 cents in July, to $18.56 an hour. That wage is up 2.5 percent over the past year, while inflation has been roughly zero.” These are encouraging signs. To be sure, the economy is still in a very weak state, and it remains the case that finding a new job is extremely challenging for those who have lost theirs. But that’s precisely why the stimulus dollars need to keep flowing into the economy, boosting demand and stimulating spending as the economy starts to slowly turn around.