From a Center for Union Facts TV adCorporate-funded attack dog Rick Berman, who has previously attacked Mothers Against Drunk Driving, tobacco control advocates and critics of fast food, is on the warpath against teachers' unions. In a speech at the Conservative Leadership Conference in Sparks, Nevada, Berman said "everybody should be afraid" of unions and warned that the Employee Free Choice Act, currently being considered in Congress, could lead to explosive growth in union membership and "change politics in this country forever." Teachers' unions in particular need to be attacked, he said, because people normally tend to like and trust teachers. "We have to reposition these people in the minds of the public," Berman said. "If you don't, you will always be fighting Mother Teresa. ... We have to marginalize their unwarranted credibility." A Berman front group, the Center for Union Facts, has been running TV ads featuring actors posing as unhappy union workers, and print ads comparing union leaders to Fidel Castro and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.

"Don't let union bosses eliminate your right to privacy!" warns an ad from the Center for Union Facts, one of many front groups associated with lobbyist Rick Berman. With the U.S. Senate deliberating over a bill that "would give employees at a workplace the right to unionize as soon as a majority signed cards saying they wanted to do so," Berman & Co. are busy. The Center for Union Facts has spent "$500,000 on newspaper and broadcast advertisements this week alone," reports the New York Times. The House has already passed the bill, but not by enough votes to override a presidential veto. In the Senate, "Republicans and their business allies are predicting that they can prevent even an up-or-down vote on the measure." Like the Center for Union Facts, many Republicans are saying that "majority sign-up is less fair than secret-ballot elections," and warning that labor organizers will intimidate "workers into signing pro-union cards."

A faux environmental ad campaign is ending. The ads "featured a series of somber models with smudged faces peering over a headline that said 'Face It, Coal is Filthy.' The ads ran in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and several newspapers serving Capitol Hill, as well as on local buses and in the subway system," reports John Fialka. The ads were placed by the "Clean Sky Coalition," which "was set up by the chairman of Chesapeake Energy Corp., an Oklahoma City natural-gas-production company." Some ads claimed that Environmental Defense and the Sierra Club had "joined" the coalition -- a claim that both environmental groups deny. Chesapeake Chair Aubrey McClendon said the coalition had other members, but wouldn't name them. He defended the ad campaign as part of "the American way for a company to try to increase their market share." The ads were produced by Strategic Perception, a Hollywood advertising firm that lists California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and President Bush among their past clients.

"The politics of Texas power and pollution have moved suddenly into the living rooms of millions of Texans," over "electric companies' plans to build 16 coal-burning plants using conventional technology that pollutes more than a newer coal system." In addition to lobbying, interested parties are launching ad campaigns and websites and forming new "pressure groups." Campaigning for the coal plants are: Texans for Affordable and Reliable Power, which receives funding from the Dallas-based energy company TXU and includes "mayors, officials and business leaders in towns with TXU plants"; and Texas Business for Clean, Affordable, Reliable Energy, which was founded by the Texas Association of Business. At least six groups are opposing the coal plants: Texas Business for Clean Air, which includes nearly 100 "local or state business leaders"; Texas Clean Air Cities Coalition, which includes the mayors of Dallas and Houston; Texas Clean Sky Coalition, which launched a $1 million ad campaign is funded "by unknown parties," though "natural-gas companies are involved"; Clean Coalition, which was founded by a Dallas developer; Stop the Coal Plant, a joint effort of Public Citizen and Sustainable Energy & Economic Development; and Robertson County: Our Land, Our Lives, which was founded by local citizens.