We were just talking about how one of the worst tricks of DC lobbyists is to get various special interest groups to send letters on your behalf, even though those are really written by the lobbyists themselves. The quote in that original article that highlights the practice shows how it works:
“You go down the Latino people, the deaf people, the farmers, and choose them…. You say, ‘I can’t use this one–I already used them last time…’ We had their letterhead. We’d just write the letter. We’d fax it to them and tell them, ‘You’re in favor of this.’”
Indeed. Well, it looks like in the process of faxing and telling a senior citizen’s group what they were in favor of, AT&T’s anti-net neutrality lobbyists forgot to do a bit of searching and replacing. Karl Bode points us to a hilarious letter filed with the FCC about net neutrality (pdf), officially on behalf of the Arkansas Retired Seniors Coalition — the exact type of group often used in these astroturfing campaigns — which suggests that someone didn’t proofread the letter first:
Right in the first paragraph, it looks like the Arkansas Retired Seniors (or perhaps the lobbyist directly) forgot to change out the boilerplate statement: “XYZ organization shares this concern.” XYZ organization, huh? Here’s an editing tip for AT&T’s lobbyists: when crafting such letters with boilerplate language that’s supposed to get changed at a later date before being sent off to the FCC, you should highlight that text in a different color. Saves embarrassing mistakes like this one.
In researching this further, Karl also can’t find any other evidence that the Arkansas Retired Seniors exist. Separately, he found another mistake by the lobbyists when it sent a different anti-net neutrality letter from Grumman Shipbuilding (ship builders against neutrality?). This one wasn’t as egregious, but the lobbyists forgot to remove the header info that says “Governor/PUC Letters to FCC on Net Neutrality” with the neat little classification system the lobbyists use: “Letter 2: Specific to Investment and Employment.” Wonder what the original header for XYZ organization was?
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