By Rodney Brown

Whatever side of the net neutrality debate you fall down on, you have to be able to recognize a bonehead when you see one.

I offer an example of such individuals — the executives at AT&T Inc., who think sending pre-fab letters opposing net neutrality to possibly non-existent organizations is a good lobbying scheme, and the people at those alleged groups who forget to take out the boilerplate AT&T allegedly wrote for them.

A number of websites and bloggers have pointed out a letter to the Federal Communications Commission from one supposed Arkansas Retired Seniors Coalition — good luck finding them on the web — that contains the following brilliantly boneheaded passage: “Access to a robust, reliable Internet has become an important component in the day-to-day lives of many seniors in Arkansas; consequently, the elderly community here is concerned about the proposed rule making on net neutrality. XYZ organization shares this concern.”

Aside from being another example of why proofreading is vital, the letter shows that this alleged grass-roots opposition to net neutrality is fake, a process known as “astroturfing” in the lobbying circles.

This is yet another example of how the major Internet connectivity providers like AT&T, Verizon Communications Inc., and Comcast Corp. desperately want to keep the new net neutrality regulations being proposed by the FCC from ever being enacted, but it is not the most troubling. According to online reports, Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s chief lobbyist, sent a memo around to AT&T employees encouraging them to send e-mail messages opposing the new rules from their home e-mail addresses.

Now what happens if any one of those employees who did not participate in that spam campaign gets fired, even for cause? How quickly will a lawyer be knocking on his or her door to encourage a wrongful dismissal suit? Aside from pulling a truly sleazy lobbying move, AT&T may have just put the gun to its own temple.

Massachusetts Biotechnology Council is a mouthful, and MBC, as local life sciences insiders call it, doesn’t mean anything to anyone outside of the state. So just call them MassBio.

The organization has officially changed its name, its logo and its website. The new site prominently lists the services and educational programs the organization provides.

In this economy, it’s not all about the miniatiure crabcakes. Biotech companies want to know their dues — which range from $1,500 per year for tiny companies all the way up to $18,000 for the Pfizers of the world — are getting them something of tangible value. So the new MassBio offers everything from group purchasing for natural gas to partnering events geared to spur deals between the small companies and big pharma.

The new name creates congruence between the Massachusetts organization and several other high profile groups, including the San Francisco Bay region’s “BayBio.”

“It also helps because we are doing more work in Washington, and before people would say, ‘MBC? Is that a TV network’?” MassBio President Bob Coughlin said.

Finally, the name casts a wide net. Coughlin said if any biomass or biofuels companies want to join, they are more than welcome.

- Julie M. Donnelly

Look to the past in order to move forward. That’s the mantra we followed in putting together our latest Mass High Tech issue in print today. This isn’t the first recession environment that businesses have faced. And in fact, many well-known companies launched during past recessions and depressions have not only survived, but thrived.

We talked to a few of these companies and got their “survival stories.” But we’re sure there are other stories of birth and survival in a recession for other businesses — stories we’d like to hear about and potentially include in future issues. What are your stories? How did you manage innovation on a restricted budget? And what about those of you who may have launched a business in a recession or depression and were not so fortunate? What did you learn and where are you now? Leave us a comment below.

In the meantime, take a look at our “Born in the Recession” issue:

• Change, efficiency and messaging drove iRobot’s downturn survival
• Millipore built from military filtration system roots
• Twitter startup launched by ‘Pistachio’ with funding
• John Clancy expounds on Iron Mountain Digital’s growth
• Roger Greene bootstrapped Ipswitch, sans bank funding
• Omgeo learned lessons in a rough 2001
• Launched in Great Depression, Jackson Labs now thrives
• Recession leading unemployed engineers to incubators
• Execs advise fair compensation over cheap hiring in downturn
• 4 first-time CEOs hold their role from startup to growth firm
• How the 1987 stock market crash helped Avid Technology
• Three steps to add investment with fewer resources

Controversy swirled over the weekend around the close of the Arlington-based micropayments startup TipJoy Inc., which announced its shutdown late Thursday night, a few weeks after its husband-and-wife founding team moved to California.

On Saturday, TechCrunch reported co-founder Ivan Kirigin had landed a job at Facebook – presumably to work on Facebook Payments. No controversy there, except that it appears Facebook had sought to buy Tipjoy for $5 million, then walked away. The company’s investors, including the UK-based Accelerator Group, New York-based BetaWorks, ex-Googler Chris Sacca and Y Combinator, had put about $1 million in to TipJoy since its founding in 2008. Citing unnamed sources, TechCrunch reports some of those investors were not happy to learn of Kirigin’s new gig, saying the co-founder’s departure killed merger discussions that were still under way with Twitter and PayPal.

At least one investor, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, has come to the Kirigins’ defense. “They’d been talking to several potential acquirers, including Facebook, but those deals all fell through,” he wrote Sunday in a post to Hacker News. “So the Tipjoys were going to have to get jobs somewhere.”

Others were less than chuffed with Ivan Kirigin’s decision. “Not the way to go about things in my book,” grumbled Accelerator Group partner Robin Klein in a post to his Twitter feed yesterday.

It’s impossible to know whether there’s any truth behind TechCrunch’s anonymously sourced report. But anyone could have guessed the flak would fly when he went to Facebook so soon after trying to negotiate an M&A. On the other hand, I’m sure Ivan and Abby Kirigin have more important things to think about, like paying the mortgage.

The most important problem in all this, which TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld rightly mentioned, is for investors and founders in all small and nimble web companies: what about the startup that gets traction while it’s still just the fabled two people in a garage? Why would a company like Facebook buy that startup when they can hire the founders much more cheaply?

Long-time director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center — and tech startup scene stalwart Ken Morse — stepped down as head of the Entrepreneurship Center as of Monday. His replacement? Bill Aulet, a familiar face at MIT who was most recently CEO of SensAble Technologies Inc. of Woburn, a haptic feedback technology company spun out of MIT.

As first reported in Scott Kirsner’s Innovation Economy blog, , Aulet has been a lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Business since 2005. He notes that Aulet’s role is acting director, and that, although MIT isn’t actively looking for a permanent director, Aulet isn’t a shoe-in for the spot, according to Ed Roberts, who is quoted in the blog post. SensAble first gained recognition when it used its technology to help the Museum of Science Boston get a good look at one of its mummies.

Morse started at the Entrepreneurship Center in 1996 and two years later was named a Mass High Tech All Star.  As recently as June, Morse was serving as an adviser to the newly established, state-backed MassChallenge Venture Funds Competition, a business plan competition for entrepreneurs.

According to Kirsner, Morse plans to write a book on global entrepreneurship in his new free time.

By Jackie Noblett

Mass High Tech Staff

Congress’ decision to expand the wildly popular “Cash for Clunkers” program with stimulus funding earmarked for renewable energy projects has some cleantech leaders crying foul.

Congress authorized the transfer of an additional $2 billion to the program that provides rebates to car dealers that take in old, gas-guzzling cars for new, more efficient vehicles, but did so using money that was intended to provide loan guarantees to renewable energy project development. The DOE funds had been seen by many in the alternative energy sector as key to getting pilot plants and commercial scale wind and solar projects of the ground, spurring necessary private financing. Mass High Tech recently reported on the industry’s wait for stimulus cash.

“The ethanol industry understands the trying economic times this country finds itself in and thus supports ideas like the “Cash for Clunkers” program, but is concerned to see the program paid for by depleting the renewable energy loan guarantee program,” said Rob Dinneen, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, in a statement.

In addition to buoying the sales of Detroit’s Big Three, or more accurately Detroit’s Big One and Washington, D.C.’s Big Two, the program was also designed to reduce the dependence on foreign oil. But that will be difficult to do if alternative energy producers such as ethanol and biodiesel firms cannot get their production plants built in a timely fashion. Furthermore, advocates of renewable energy contend the environmental and economic benefits of clean energy generation outweigh the benefits of more efficient vehicles.

Even members of Congress are questioning the logic of this move. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California wrote a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, requesting data on what kinds of cars are being turned in and what cars are being purchased under the program.

“The tremendous number of sales in the first week of this program demonstrates that the CARS Act has succeeded in increasing new vehicle sales, but Congress needs this data in order to determine if the fleet modernization program delivered significant fuel economy gains and oil savings,” the letter states.

It is clear that Congress is interested in supporting a politically popular stimulus program, but how it did so raises significant questions about the original intensions of the program. A quick restoration of funds for renewable energy loan guarantees would likely resolve those questions.

[Editor's note: This entry is cross-posted and also appears on the Boston Business Journal's blog.]