The American Energy Alliance describes itself as a "not-for-profit organization that engages in grassroots public policy advocacy and debate concerning energy and environmental policies." As a point of reference, those policies don't include the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, which, AEA's website announces "will further cripple our already struggling economy."

AEA's policy ideas supposedly come from the industry-funded Institute for Energy Research (of which they are an affiliate) which supposedly conducts "intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets."

The idea here, as always, is that the think tank provides the organizers with intellectual cover for promoting wrongheaded policy ideas. But that doesn't really work if those ideas are lifted directly from debunked Republican party talking points. AEA announced yesterday the creation of "an integrated education and advocacy campaign aimed at helping Americans understand all the facts surrounding 'cap-and-trade'," which, they say, "will potentially cost families more than $3,100 a year."

Ring a bell? The number has a long and unseemly history, rooted in a Republican mischaracterization of an MIT study of the costs of cap-and-trade legislation. That talking point has filtered down since then to lobbyists and advocates, including those at AEA, which claims they have "has no ties to any political party, and it has no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party." Except, of course, when they do.