After the recent exposure of the shadowy and well funded “non-profit” Generation Opportunity – illustrating the lengths that corporate political spin-masters go to turn free market power into a populist or rebellious cause for youth – comes news of big tobacco lobbyist Rick Berman's new series of corporate propaganda launched on social media and the Internet.

ActivistFacts.com, formerly called ActivistCash.com, and a handful of other sites – the Environmental Policy Alliance (EPA,) the Center for Consumer Freedom and the Center for Organizational Research and Education (CORE) – are the latest campaign tools of misinformation that seek to fool voters into adopting pro-corporate positions on many of the most pressing current economic issues.

Posing as activist watchdogs, Berman’s assorted media machines claim to “expose” what they ironically call “financial goliaths” in the fields of issue advocacy, which they say use “junk science, intimidation tactics and even threats of violence to push their radical agendas.”

Targeting such radical and violent institutions as the Humane Society, Greenpeace and One Wisconsin Now, ActivistFacts is engaging in contortion acts of logic in its attempt to portray the care of animals, the protection of the environment and the circulation of petitions as evil Machiavellian ploys.

Most recently, Berman’s fly-by-night non-profits have [focused particular wrath](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8AB1zyRv2s wrath) on the Center for Media and Democracy as well as various anti-fracking groups. Highlighting that these and other organizations sometimes have millions of dollars in operational revenue, ActivstFacts neglects to disclose the sources or totals of its own financing.

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The Umbrella of PR spin

Berman’s own PR firm, Berman and Company, serves as both sponsor and contractor of the myriad corporate fronts in his operation. These groups net Berman millions of dollars annually while serving as the PR vanguard for his numerous corporate clients. Berman’s array of conservative campaigns routinely attack critics, activists and watchdog groups with claims and propaganda that have been debunked so often that Berman earned the nickname “Astroturf Kingpin.”

In 2006, at the behest of corporate clients, Berman launched The Center for Union Facts, or CUF. Presenting itself as a non-partisan, non-profit public interest group, CUF follows the Berman and Co. trend targeting organizations it views as a threat to those corporate clients. CUF sought to elevate union-busting in the public sphere, taking out ads against unions and union leaders wherever industrial giants faced the prospect of an organizing workforce.

Through print, television and online media campaigns, CUF, by way of lucrative contracts with Berman & Co., has routinely lashed out at union organizing efforts, political action and related union activism by way of invoking stereotypes such as the ones seen here.

In 2009, Berman’s union busting activities came into the spotlight with his [efforts to help kill](http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/199391-card-c... kill) the Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA. Using another multi-million dollar ad-hoc group, the Employee Freedom Action Committee, Berman once more displayed his penchant for slandering worker rights campaigns through satirical public demonstrations and television spots that railed against the bill.

Or take as another example the Environmental Policy Alliance, or so-called EPA. A cursory glance at the webpage might lead one to believe the “Alliance” is itself an environmental group; it offers visitors a wallpaper image of a serene natural setting, similar to many environmental organizations and conservationist websites. But read the group's mission statement and you learn that the EPA is “devoted to uncovering the funding and hidden agendas behind environmental activist groups and exploring the intersections between activists and government agencies.”

The organization goes on to attack “big green radicals” whose aims it claims are nothing short of the destruction of the energy and food production industries, and whose “multi-million dollar lobbying machines” employ “questionable tactics to scare the American Public and policymakers into supporting unnecessary and unreasonable policies.”

Donors and supporters of Berman's anti-environment group are undisclosed and unknown. But the amount of pro-fracking and -petroleum references on the site leaves little to the imagination regarding the interests being advanced.

Berman's Deceptive "Advocacy" Under Fire

Berman and his operation have come under substantial scrutiny in recent years by the Internal Revenue Service, which claims he is in violation of IRS requirements for tax-exempt status due to the profits he has made through non-profit endeavors.

Also in response to his work, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics In Washington launched a website, Berman Exposted, that lays out the architecture of Berman's nationwide corporate fronts and calls on viewers to “follow the money” behind his causes.

Though Berman and Co.'s tax status protects its individual donors from having their identities and contributions disclosed, [reports](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/CCF_funding CCF finances) provided by an internal whistleblower to the Center for Media and Democracy read like a VIP guest list of corporate food and agro-business supporters, from Coca-Cola and Cargill to Tyson Foods and Monsanto.

As dark money political operations continue to evolve and expand, and as corporate interests continue to peddle influence through well-funded disinformation campaigns, spin-masters like Berman may continue to enrich themselves as they mislead American voters. Until, that is, the facts come out and someone turns the lights on.

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