This is awful. Absolutely terrible. Its already pretty bad that the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) used the anti American, anti-democracy Bonner and Associates as their PR firm even though they are known for breaking the law by impersonating public groups and private individuals to promote such things as smoking in the workplace. Even though its a known fact that in order to create a false sense of public support for an issue they hire temp employees, pay them hourly with no benefits, give them two hours of training on an issue, and then tell them to generate as many phone calls and letters to congress as possible in an office that has been repeatedly referred to as a “white collar sweatshop”.

They even sent a fake letter to Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello from a non-profit group in his district that focuses on issues of importance to Hispanics encouraging Perriello to vote no on important climate change legislation. They also used the same tactic on several several other congressmen; faking letters from grassroots groups in their districts asking them to vote no on climate legislation -complete with fake letterhead and signatures.

It’s even worse that a new group, “Faces of Coal,” turned out to be complete farces of coal when their website, which was supposed to be showing the faces of people who supported coal, turned out to be photos purchased from istockphoto.com.

But this, what happened today, absolutely takes the cake. According to “The Hill”:

Jack Bonner, the president of Bonner & Associates, told the House Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence on Thursday that around June 22 the firm had discovered that a temporary employee had sent letters to Congress falsely representing local chapters of the NAACP, AAUW and other groups.

The panel has been investigating the forged letters since their discovery last summer. It released the results of its investigation at a hearing on Thursday.

The House voted on the bill on June 26, meaning Bonner knew of the forgeries as many as four days prior to the vote.

But that’s not even it. No, The worst of it all is that Bonner and Associates showed up in astroturf (a pun meaning ‘fake grassroots’) suits. Seriously, at a congressional hearing. The audacity! See for yourself.

Their suits say: Yes, we have always been faking it. Yes, we are a fatal cancer to the forces of democracy. Yes, we are proud to shove it in your face, and no we don’t care about the future of our country.

OK, actually this is my friend Tom Owens (thats him on the left) and his buddies from the Avaaz Action Factory. Yes, they are at the hearing -and Yes, they are awesome.

Apparently they even got to shake the hand of Jack Bonner himself. I bet Jack was a bit jealous that he wasn’t so clever in his choice of threads.

Update October 30th: Bonner: Sorry to fake letters (he really means he’s sorry he got caught, again).

Here is a video of these three clever folks from earlier today. Great Work!

You can click on the picture to see a slide show of the rest from this morning.