Today, CNN obtained a memo from Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR) sent to tea party organizations and conservative think tanks urging a coordinated approach to attacking health reform. The memo argues that a synchronized messaging strategy will help “to deliver a decisive ‘knock out’ punch” to health care legislation. CPR was started this year by health clinic and hospital executive Rick Scott, who helps to self-fund advertisements dishonestly smearing health reform. Although Scott has focused his attention on killing the public option, he has never acknowledged working directly with the health insurance industry.

However, yesterday CPR filed its third quarter lobbying disclosures with the U.S. Senate, revealing that the Swift-Boat style attack group has contracted veteran health insurance lobbyist Brian McManus. McManus, while at the same time advising CPR, is currently the Director of Federal Affairs at the Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI), a private health insurance trade group advocating Health Savings Accounts. So while CPR has paid McManus at least $60,000, he continues to also collect an income from a private insurer-backed group.

CPR’s call to target an anti-reform message comes on the heel of news that Senate Republicans plan to kill reform by delaying a vote for as long as possible. A Roll Call article today explains that the GOP plan is to “delay, define and derail” health reform:

Senate Republicans, acknowledging they lack the votes to block a health care reform bill outright, have implemented a comprehensive political strategy to delay, define and derail. [...] The Republicans also plan to use the time between now and a final floor vote to deliver a narrowly focused message via a series of floor speeches, press conferences and media appearances. And even though GOP Members will discuss their counterproposals for health care reform, criticism of the Democratic bill will be the priority.

Despite the “hatchet job” report last week distorting the Finance Committee bill, the health insurance industry has tried to pretend it still supports reform. However, with the revelation that industry operative McManus is working with CPR, it appears the overall strategy for the insurers is to have Republicans slow down debate so that attack groups will have more time to air ads undermining reform.

McManus has a history of coordinating efforts among right-wing outside groups with lobbyists inside DC to advance legislation favorable to the private health insurance industry. After serving as the Vice President of Golden Rule, a subsidiary of health insurer giant UnitedHealth, McManus founded the “Health Care Freedom Coalition,” a network of astroturf front groups and think tanks. The Coalition works in tandem with organizations like FreedomWorks to promote a deregulation approach to health reform that would hurt consumer protections while adding to insurer profits.

ThinkProgress has documented how insurers have long used a “two-faced” campaign to, on the one hand present themselves to the public as committed to producing change, while at the same time orchestrating front-group based attacks on reform.

There was some good news on the regulatory reform front today, as Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL) has agreed to drop an amendment to the House Financial Services Committee’s reform legislation that would have prevented state governments from enforcing regulations that go further than those set by the federal government:

In a piece of political theater, Bean now plans to introduce the amendment and then to withdraw it, according to people familiar with the matter. She then plans to engage in a scripted conversation with [Committee Chairman Barney] Frank, in which both are to affirm the importance of further discussions about the issue. Bean can then reintroduce the amendment once the bill comes before the full House, but lobbyists on both sides say they regard the battle as over.

But is anything really “over” when it has yet to come before the Senate? Indeed, while the bill without federal preemption for national banks is “likely to pass the House,” the Washington Post reported that “it faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where financial lobbyists regard some moderate Democrats as more sympathetic to their concerns.”

There is also a second preemption amendment that is alive and well in the Financial Services committee, which would allow federal preemption “when a state law has a ‘discriminatory effect’ on national banks.” The amendment would also “allow the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to determine if a state law prevents or interferes with a national bank’s business.”

This is a terrible idea, as the OCC has repeatedly issued specific exemptions for national banks. In 1999, the OCC “said national banks did not need to comply with a California law limiting the fees banks could charge for ATM withdrawals.” And then, in 2000, “it lifted a Rhode Island law limiting changes in the interest rates on credit cards.” Finally, in 2002, the OCC “overrode a Texas law that barred banks from charging check-cashing fees.” Meanwhile, the current OCC head, John Dugan, has a very dim view of states that want to rein in national banks, saying that “we have a system that works fine in terms of examination and enforcement of consumer protection.”

And while Bean has shelved her amendment for the time being, I wouldn’t be as quick as the Post to declare that the big banks are “losing power on Capitol Hill.” After all, mortgage cram-downs — which the banks bitterly opposed — passed the House, only to be ultimately defeated by a furious lobbying campaign in the Senate. Bean backing down is a good thing, but it’s by no means the end of the preemption debate.

This morning, activists from the Yes Men troupe claiming to represent the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced the organization was reversing its years of opposition to any climate bill before Congress, saying in jest that the “Kerry-Boxer Bill is a good start to a strong climate bill.” CNBC and the Fox Business Network cited the many companies who have quit the Chamber as a reason for the fictional about-face.

The Chamber of Commerce quickly tried to quash the reports that it had reversed its “Scopes monkey trial” stance. Chamber of Commerce official Eric Wohlschlegel broke into the press conference held by the Yes Men at the National Press Club, shouting, “This guy is a fake!” After a “mild shoving match at the podium,” Wohlschegel told reporters, “It is a very sad day.” U.S. Chamber of Commerce official Thomas J. Collamore decried “public relations hoaxes” and called for “law enforcement authorities to investigate this event”:

Public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change. These irresponsible tactics are a foolish distraction from the serious effort by our nation to reduce greenhouse gases.

Of course, it is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other right-wing corporate groups that have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting “public relations hoaxes” to “undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change.” As PG&E Chairman and CEO Peter Darbee explained his company’s departure from the Chamber, “extreme rhetoric and obstructionist tactics seem to increasingly mark the Chamber’s stance on this issue.”

It’s doubtful that the Chamber — chaired by race-baiters and corrupt global warming deniers — will now be decrying clean coal carols, climate skeptics, fearmongering, and broken economic analyses as it spends over $100 million a year to lobby Congress.

A few weeks ago, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) said that he’s still vying for a vote on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) this fall. “I’m pushing for it,” he said. “I think it’s something that we have to do.”

Harkin is one of a handful of negotiators trying to craft a compromise version of EFCA that will prove palatable to a group of centrist Democrats, among them Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). But speaking before the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce today, Lincoln “received a round of applause” for saying that business and labor — not Congress — should be crafting the legislation. From the Associated Press:

Sen. Blanche Lincoln says business and labor groups, not lawmakers, should be the ones to work out a compromise on a union organizing bill. Lincoln said that she still opposes the Employee Free Choice Act and doesn’t think the legislation should be considered while lawmakers are dealing with health care and other issues…Lincoln said any compromise would need to come from business and labor groups.

Big Business and its ally, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have derided EFCA, calling it “a firestorm bordering on Armageddon,” saying that retailers who don’t oppose EFCA “should be shot,” and telling workers that unionizing means their benefits will be “thrown out the window.” With her approach, Lincoln is not only abdicating her responsibilities as a lawmaker to those special interests, but she is basically giving the business community a veto over any legislation that other lawmakers might craft.

And unfortunately, a stalemate over EFCA would be just fine with the business community, because under our current system for forming a union, employers hold all the cards. For example, they are able to force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union messaging, or compel employees to participate in anti-union discussions with their own supervisors. Employers threaten to close plants in 57 percent of union organizing drives, threaten to cut wages and benefits in 47 percent, and ultimately fire pro-union workers 34 percent of the time, while facing penalties that do nothing to deter such behavior, illegal as it is.

Meanwhile, unionized workers in Arkansas make an average of $1.26 per hour more than their non-unionized counterparts, a 7.7 percent increase. If Arkansas were to see unionization merely climb back to 1983 levels, workers there would earn an estimated $166 million more in wages and salaries per year. And consider this: “If Arkansas’ workers were rewarded for 100 percent of their increases in labor productivity between 1980 and 2008…average wages would be $23.29 per hour — 42.4 percent higher than the average real wage in 2008.”

Last month, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that EFCA was unnecessary “because we have very enlightened management in this country.” Is that how Lincoln sees it as well, despite the myriad benefits that EFCA could bring to workers in her state?

Today, for the first time in American history, half of all U.S. workers are women and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families. As recently as 1969, women made up only one-third of the workforce, marking just how much of a shift has occurred in the last few decades.

Last year, only one in five families with children (20.7 percent) consisted a traditional male breadwinner with a female homemaker, compared to 44.7 percent in 1975. And the current recession has only accelerated this workforce transformation, as men have lost three out of four jobs since it began in December 2007.

These changes have important ramifications for U.S. economic policy going forward — not that we’ve done much so far to acknowledge them. To that end, the Center for American Progress, in partnership with Californa First Lady Maria Shriver, released The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything. The report looks at the changing American workforce, and how policy can adapt to the new economic reality. “Institutions need to adapt to who the American family is today,” Shriver said on Meet The Press yesterday. “They need to get smarter. They need to get more progressive.”

First up, of course, is getting the pay gap under control. Women still make just 77 cents on the dollar compared to their male colleagues, which over the course of a career, will deprive a woman of $434,000 in lifetime earnings. With women more often becoming the primary breadwinner, this poses an obvious problem. The Paycheck Fairness Act, which prohibits retaliation against employees who actively seek knowledge regarding the pay rates of their coworkers, could help in this area.

But the problems don’t end there. As Ann O’Leary and Karen Kornbluh wrote “nearly all of our government policies—from our basic labor standards to our social insurance system—are still rooted in the fundamental assumption that families typically rely on a single breadwinner.” For instance, the U.S. is the only industrialized country without any requirement that employers provide paid family leave, while many employer-sponsored benefits are not designed with pregnancy or caregiving in mind.

Kornbluh and O’Leary advocated updating America’s social insurance policies (like expanding the percentage of the workforce covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act), and increasing support to families for child care, early education and elder care. “All families need real support when there is no longer a wife at home to provide these services free of charge. And our government should not stop at solving the child care crisis: Families also need real support and aid in providing elder care,” they wrote.

Read more about The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything in today’s Progress Report.