What to do when your astroturf campaign is exposed? If you're Allegheny Energy, American Electric Power and Charles Ryan Associates, you try to rebrand and perpetuate the charade!

West Virginians for Reliable Power is now West Virginians for Reliable Energy. Shakespeare once said, "An astroturf front group by any other name still smells as fishy!" Yes, indeed, it does!

With a minimal amount of effort, Charles Ryan Associates bought a new domain name (and actually figured out how to correctly register a private domain this time, although that seems to be where their learning stopped) and changed the word "Power" to "Energy" in all parts of their front group website that they can control. But what about those parts they don't control? What happens to all their press equity? It's all still in the name of West Virginians for Reliable Power -- do they risk looking shady and stupid by trying to continue using previous press, or should they dump it all and start from scratch? Apparently shady and stupid is Charles Ryan's game plan. Your past doesn't match your present, ladies and gentlemen, and your image is now as fake as someone whose carpet doesn't match the drapes. How many ratepayer dollars did you charge the power companies for this idiotic decision? Just another waste of money -- and, yes, we are keeping track here.

Is Charles Ryan Associates using a couple of interns from the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Clown College for concept and web development to design their campaigns this summer? Whoever came up with this "solution" is a moron who knows nothing about web development.

There's still plenty of evidence of astroturf in Charles Ryan's glaring errors. Let's take a look.

They're still using the same logo! They changed the word "power" to "energy" in the graphic. Dumb.

Their simple word-replacement and re-direct of the old url results in cached pages that look like this. Yeah, right, West Virginians for Reliable Energy has absolutely nothing to do with the known astroturf group West Virginians for Reliable Power.

Their website domain name has gotten even more cumbersome. Any web developer should know that short, sweet and to the point is optimum. Long, cumbersome names with repeating letters at the end & beginning of words are hard to remember and just sound stupid. When your target audience can't remember your name, they tend to look it up in a search engine, which leads to the next problem. Try it and see what happens when "West Virginians for Reliable Energy" is googled. Nope, nobody is going to figure out that this is astroturf, no sir!

They still didn't bother to register and protect the corporate name they're "just using". This means that anyone can register that name with the West Virginia Secretary of State and then prevent Charles Ryan and the power companies from using it, which effecively shuts down their astroturf campaign again, requiring more billable hours in the form of badly-conceived rebranding. Just remember, electric ratepayer, you're footing the bill! Of course, there's really not much they can do with corporate registration because in order to register a corporation, someone would have to be named as legally responsible. They would have to file a tax return. There's always a trail -- just follow the money. So, they think they're fooling the public by operating outside the bounds of legality and "just using" a selected name. Just remember, it all catches up to you in the end.

And the really, really big mistake they made is.... well, we're keeping that one to ourselves for now. Let Charles Ryan figure it out. After all, they're the ones being paid millions of dollars for interactive web campaigns that more closely resemble a 6th grade "Introduction to Web Development" class assignment!

QUIT WASTING THE RATEPAYERS' MONEY ON ASTROTURF! NOBODY IS FOOLED ANYMORE!

More fun stuff!

Here's more Charles Ryan Associates web screw-ups from the past, just for fun!

From the old "Coalition for Reliable Power" website that they just recently took off-line: See this fine example of slick content. "West Virginians for Reliable Power -- a diverse coalition of concerned citizens, business owners, government officials and labor leaders -- was formed to support these projects and other efforts to expand and improve our electric infrastructure. But we can't do it alone. We need the support of other recognized leaders, like you, to help ensure that Pennsylvanians have access to a reliable supply of electricity now and for years to come."

Why are West Virginians ensuring a reliable supply of electricity for Pennsylvanians? Yeah, that makes me want to join right up! Maybe they got tripped up on the fact that their front group is trying to ensure access to a reliable supply of profit for a Pennsylvania company (Allegheny Energy) for years to come at the expense of West Virginians.

Kevin can't spell. Look up whois for the web address westvirginiasforreliablepower.com Ooops, my bad, make that westvirginasforreliablepower.com. The third "i" in "Virginia" is missing too. Consider this a working example of what happens with these long, cumbersome urls -- nobody can remember them, even when they're staring right at them. Thanks to the avid reader who pointed this out. Even Kevin couldn't get it right, and he's the one who registered it! What happened to your second "n"? Who paid for that useless domain name? Me?

Let's also not forget about last summer's gigantic failure by Charles Ryan Associates! Meet "PEAT", the PATH Education Awareness Team. Although not astroturf, this attempt to spread propaganda fell flat on its face when the hired spokesman got cornered by an astute reporter in his press debut and admitted that Charles Ryan Associates was paying him to spread "the real facts" about PATH. If PATH was Charles Ryan Associates' client in December 2008, and still their client in August 2009, then PATH was Charles Ryan Associates' client in May 2009 when they created the PATH astroturf groups. Busted.

Charles Ryan Associates needs to give up the astroturf business. They're much too sloppy. And they suck at it.