Yesterday, ThinkProgress released an exclusive investigation into the underhanded and surreptitious campaign waged by a lobbying firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an well-heeled association representing big business. The report detailed how Hunton & Williams, a lobbying firm hired by the Chamber, solicited “private security” companies to investigate the Chamber’s political opponents, including ThinkProgress, the labor coalition Change to Win, SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com. Their tactics included planting false documents, creating fake personas, and targeting opponents’ families and children.

In response, the Chamber of Commerce said these were “baseless attacks” because the Chamber had “never seen the document in question.” In addition, they mention that the security firm in question (presumably HBGary) had not been “hired” by the Chamber or on the Chamber’s behalf.

However, as Marcy Wheeler wrote, their response is a “carefully worded nondenial denial.” In reality, the reason why the Chamber can claim not to have “hired” HBGary is because until as recently as a week ago, the security firm was working on spec. As Wheeler pointed out, a February 3 email shows that Hunton & Williams simply got “HBGary to do a month of work for free to decide whether they want to hire them.”

In fact, the Chamber conveniently used Hunton & Williams as a go-between for the Chamber and private security firms including HBGary, as the following graphic shows:

Indeed, leaked emails show that Hunton & Williams met with the security firms in late 2010, including a November 3 meeting at H&W’s offices and a phone discussion on November 8.

On January 13, 2011, an email shows that the private security firms assumed the project was “a go.” However, an email on February 3 showed that Hunton & Williams wanted the firms to work on spec “and then present jointly with H&W to the Chamber” on or around February 14. Then, after their work was approved, the security firms planned to “begin enduring work at agreed upon rates (approx. $250-300k per month for the entire team – both services and license fees).”

It is not clear if that meeting will still happen after HBGary’s emails were leaked.

The Obama administration has, once again, proposed cutting the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies that are given every year to Big Oil companies (often for activities that they would have undertaken anyway). Republicans in both the House and the Senate are, once again, going to bat for the oil companies, as they have over and over for the last couple of years, calling an attempt to cut subsidies a “proposal to raise skyrocketing gas and energy prices and destroy American jobs.”

House Democrats yesterday introduced legislation to cut $40 billion in oil subsidies. And bolstering their case is an unlikely ally — Former Shell Oil CEO John Hofmeister:

“In the face of sustained high oil prices it was not an issue—for large companies—of needing the subsidies to entice us into looking for and producing more oil,” John Hofmeister told National Journal Daily…“The fear of low oil prices drives some companies to say that subsidies should be sustained,” Hofmeister said. “And my point of view is that with high oil prices such subsidies are not necessary.”

In an age of deficit hysteria — where Republicans are proposing cuts to food programs for infants, trade assistance, job training, community health centers, and a host of other programs providing work and security to Americans across the country — oil companies have so far emerged unscathed. Even with oil prices clearing $100 per barrel, billion of dollars are uncritically turned over to oil companies.

Republicans assert that removing the subsidies will cause job loss and an increase in oil prices. However, according to the Office of Economic Policy at the Department of Treasury, cutting the subsidies would affect domestic oil production by less than one-half of one percent. In fact, the United States produces about the same amount of oil now that it produced in the 1950s, despite billions in subsidies that were handed out over the past 30 years.

As for prices at the pump, the Joint Economic Committee looked at one particular tax subsidy — which was intended to preserve U.S. manufacturing jobs but is continually claimed by oil and gas companies — and found that, “In the long run, the removal or modification of the tax deduction is unlikely to have any effect on consumer prices for oil and gas.” Job loss from removing the subsidies is also likely to be minimal, since there would be little change in production.

Other Big Oil CEO’s — like Exxon’s Rex Tillerson — have vigorously defended the subsidies, even as they made astronomical profits. The five biggest oil companies alone — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — “made a total profit of nearly $1 trillion over the past decade.”

Yesterday, ThinkProgress’ Lee Fang and Scott Keyes reported that a law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had been working with a set of “private security” companies to undermine the Chamber’s political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign. The emails from Aaron Barr, an executive at the private security firm HBGary, detailed information about political opponents’ children, spouses, and personal lives. While Barr had no problems using the personal information of his opponents, he applies a different standard to himself.

Recall, the document disclosures arose when Barr — while working for corporate clients — triumphantly proclaimed to the Financial Times that he had uncovered the identities of “Anonymous,” the pro-WikiLeaks hacktivist community. The hackers then responded by leaking Barr’s emails. When that occurred, Barr moaned that his personal privacy had been violated:

Why did he talk to the Financial Times in the first place? Barr says he had been preparing to give a talk at the B-Sides security conference in San Francisco on Feb. 14 about information security in social media, and he wanted to drum up some publicity ahead of time to help spur the debate.

“Do I regret it now? Sure,” he says, with a short laugh. “I’m getting personal threats from people, and I have two kids. I have two four-year old kids. Nothing is worth that.”

In another note of irony, the lobbyist firm of Hunton & Williams, which had been serving as an intermediary between the Chamber and HBGary on the private security work, was just named the “top firm for privacy” this week by Computerworld. As Glenn Greenwald notes, “[P]erhaps most disturbing of all, Hunton & Williams was recommended” to Bank of America by the Justice Department as a specialist worth hiring.

The private security firm Palantir, which had been working with HBGary on the snooping project, issued a statement last night announcing that it had severed connections with HBGary while touting its involvement in “supporting progressive values and causes.” As Marcy Wheeler notes, Palantir benefits from millions of dollars in government contracts.