Corn farmers take anti-Google fight to Washington

If you think there's something a little odd about a bunch of corn farmers lobbying Congress to hold hearings on the details of a Google-Yahoo advertising deal, you may be right.

A letter (PDF) that the American Corn Growers Association and other farmers' groups sent to the U.S. Congress on Monday appears to be linked to a Washington, D.C., lobby group that does work for cable providers, some of Google's most potent political adversaries.

The letter warned Senate and House committee chairmen that any such deal would "create a monopolistic concentration of power in the market for online search and related advertising."

Excerpt from PDF of anti-Google letter signed by a corn farmers' group. The author's name is the same as a staffer for a secretive D.C. lobby shop used by Google's adversaries.

An examination of the metadata in the PDF version of the letter shows that the author was Alexandra Esser. That's the name of a staffer at a secretive Washington, D.C., lobby organization called the LawMedia Group, which currently counts the National Cable and Telecommunications Association as a client and counted AT&T as one in the past.

The LawMedia Group was founded by Julian Epstein, a former high-ranking House Democratic aide who The Washington Post once called a "dashing bachelor, a hip-hop aficionado who drives a soft-top Jeep Sahara and lives in an Adams-Morgan loft he designed himself." LMG once described itself as providing "grassroots lobbying" and "issue/initiative" management; among its hires is Jason Oxman, a former vice president at Comptel, which counts Sprint and Time Warner Telecom as members.

In the technology-meets-politics world, Net neutrality has been the hottest political conflict pitting businesses against each other in the last few years (the conflagration really started with the 2005 Madison River case). After Google emerged as a leader of the pro-Net neutrality forces, it was inevitable that its adversaries would employ the political process to trip it up in unrelated business dealings (c.f. Rep. Joe Barton).

Washington types seem to want to distance themselves from LMG. AT&T acknowledged through a representative that it once retained LMG but adds "the new AT&T is not a client." A Comcast representative said "it isn't being done on our behalf." A National Cable and Telecommunications Association representative said that "LMG is one of the many consultants that we work with, and I'm sure they work with many others, but we are not involved in this issue at all." LMG's Esser did not reply to phone or e-mail messages on Tuesday. Google declined to comment.

Corn farmers (and more) political time line

March 2008: Latino IT group sides with Comcast on Net neutrality

May 2008 (PDF): Latino groups ask Justice Department to investigate Google's "search monopoly." Also see press release (PDF).

June 2008: Latino IT group says it has "serious concerns" about a Google-Yahoo advertising deal

June 2008 (PDF): Corn growers ask Congress to investigate Google

LMG appears to be unusually tight-lipped about itself and what it does: its Web site requires a password even to click on the "contact LMG" link. A non-password protected version of the site saved by Archive.org offers to sell the ability to form "robust coalitions (that) can change minds--in the media, among lawmakers." Another page says "it is our longstanding policy not to disclose our client list."

Larry Mitchell, director of legislative affairs for the American Corn Growers Association, said in a telephone interview on Monday that farmers genuinely are interested in Congress holding hearings about the antitrust implications of a potential Google-Yahoo ad partnership.

"It's not unusual for farmers to look at technology," Mitchell said. Markets today "are very very concentrated. In fact all of us, in our day-to-day lives, are dealing with fewer companies and less and less competition, and we feel that's detrimental to a free enterprise system."

Mitchell said in response to a question that no outside groups were involved in the preparation of the letter to Congress.

One person who has been involved with creating fake coalitions said it was trivial to organize letters to politicians. "You go down the Latino people, the deaf people, the farmers, and choose them," said the person, who requested anonymity. "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.'"

Anti-Google politicking: First farmers, then Latino groups
In what could be a coincidence, three hours after the corn growers forwarded their anti-Google letter to journalists on Monday, the Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association (LISTA) followed up by circulating its own.

LISTA is a political ally of cable operators. LISTA supported them last year before the Federal Communications Commission; it supported them in a tussle over set-top boxes; it supported them in a digital TV coalition.

In March, LISTA sided with Comcast in opposing Net neutrality laws. LISTA President Jose Marquez has warned that for "Latinos working in the information and telecommunications sector, the chill (of) new burdensome regulations placed on investment will kill jobs and opportunity."

The letter that LISTA sent on Monday posed five questions to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. An excerpt: "Google has in the past been accused of using its search algorithms to favor certain search results over others. Such accusations are of particular concern to Hispanic-owned small businesses that rely on Internet search for a competitive equalizer in a marketplace dominated by large corporations."

That's not all. The American Corn Growers Association (along with the American Agriculture Movement, a "farmer-created, farmer-built organization") signed another anti-Google letter (PDF) on May 9. It was sent to the U.S. Department of Justice and alleged that "Google's Gmail service has already repeatedly violated basic tenets of consumer privacy by scanning the actual text of individual customer e-mails in order to extract information for its advertising."

Another explanation is that the corn growers group, which is not the same as the National Corn Growers Association, simply believes in aggressive antitrust enforcement. It filed a private antitrust suit against Monsanto, for instance, last year. It has been involved in other policy debates before the FCC, and not always on the side of the cable companies.

Normally trade associations and nonprofit groups that engage in Washington politicking are eager to post their correspondence on their Web sites. (It makes them look busy, or at least like they're accomplishing something.) That's what groups like the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Competitive Enterprise Institute do.

But the corn growers do not; the only press releases listed discuss renewable energy and corn prices. Likewise, LISTA's letter from Monday does not appear on the group's Web site.

Similarly, there appears to be no mention of the Google-Yahoo letter on the Web sites of the National Association of Farmer Elected Committees, the American Agriculture Movement, the League of Rural Voters, the National Latino Farmers & Ranchers Trade Association, or the National Family Farm Coalition. All of those groups (plus the corn farmers) signed Monday's letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).

Surreptitious attempts by companies to influence the political process through front groups have a long, if not especially distinguished, history.

Astroturf campaigns in Washington have involved a Working Families for Wal-Mart (funded by Wal-Mart Stores) and the Save Our Species Alliance (funded by the timber industry). Comcast's hiring of people who showed up at a Net neutrality hearing and apparently applauded on cue may fit into that category too.

If there indeed is a broadband provider behind this flurry of farming-and-ranching outrage, an acute irony exists. The cable companies and the telecoms have the better of the Net neutrality arguments; technologists are now realizing that Google and its brethren backed legislation that would give far too much power to the FCC and do more harm than good. But hoping that proposals in Congress can be debated on their merits might be too much to ask.

[Update: 6/12 9:20 a.m.: We've posted a followup with LMG's response.]

Disclosure: Declan McCullagh is married to a Google employee.

[mycroft69]

Yes, and Majestic 12 is also connected, because this involves ufos. What's CNET going to contrive next?

[mscotthowell]

"It's not unusual for farmers to look at technology," Mitchell said. Markets today "are very very concentrated. In fact all of us, in our day-to-day lives, are dealing with fewer companies and less and less competition and we feel that's detrimental to a free enterprise system."

No... CORN FARMERS you are the biggest detriment to the free enterprise system -- you ethanol subsidy welfare queens! It's nice to see it is raining in corn country. Oh darn, more bailouts for the queens.

[spacebatman]

.

HAPPY to read that NOT ALL peoples, companies, websites, forums, blogs and newspapers have FEAR of Google!

I agree and support the corn farmers' take and EVERY other take against Google!

Google ALREADY IS A MONOPOLY in the search engines and web adverising market with an 80% Europe and 60% World market share!

Google is QUICKLY becoming the REAL Orwell's "Big Brother" of our present and future and I've (also) a personal BAD experience of the Google's "methods"...

http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts/008moonprize.html

STOP Google BEFORE it'll be TOO LATE for our freedom and democracy!

Don't let it make a deal with Yahoo and CUT (now!) Google in several "slices" like the US antitrust office made years ago with AT&T.

.

[Penguinisto]

Nice catch - it's satisfying to see that astroturfing, while not dead, is still easy enough to spot and expose.

[gerrrg]

LMG smells a lot like Abramoff mixed with a little CIA, served with a side of under-the-table-cash.

[FutureGuy]

wow, why don't you guys stop and think a bit. If Google and Yahoo tie up that would pretty much kill what ever little competition is left on the net for keyword marketing and spike the the already exorbitant prices. And yes it affects you, when online advertizers have to pay Google 5 to 6 dollars per click prices go up and you end up paying for it, Google is now the largest middle man ever.

[krosavcheg]

Let the ignorance flow! Farmers are FORCED to sign the subsidy bill every year. They are FORCED to set aside a percentage of land that crops CANNOT be farmed. This is YOUR Government at work. Farmers would love to be able to farm the land they are being forced not to grow on. The market supports the prices now, no subsidies necessary, nor do the Farmers want them. Besides Corn to Ethanol and Corn to rise in food prices is actually only 3%, it's the Oil, which is really controlled by the market manipulators.

[duggerdm]

Good article. Lots of daylight is the best cure for the LMG's and other secret and intrusive lobbying efforts of the world. Unfortunately, there are so many LMG type organizations.

[mikeburek]

Amazing amount of research and links. Thanks.

[artbrodsky]

Reinstating the non-discrimination principles of the Communications Act that allowed the Internet to be created and to flourish would not give too much power to the FCC or do more harm than good. It would preserve the "innovation without permission" environment while keeping the Internet from becoming run like a cable system.

Art Brodsky
Public Knowledge

[crossingborders]

Why are the farmers worried about a Google-Yahoo deal for "advertising" when they are already reaping windfall profits from all this "pork" that has been passed in the area of ethanol subsidies? Take a dose of your own medicine for once...try taking your business to a market that is not so heavily subsidized. If farmers a forced to do all this please enlighten us because I don't know that I have heard too many complaints from farmers who are getting that sweet subsidy $$.

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=11412562
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/31/embedded-vs-non-embedded-inflation/
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=7308

[gefitz]

Amazing that almost all of the commenters above took the time to comment WITHOUT EVEN READING THE ARTICLE! It's idiots like these that make astroturfing and fraudulent lobbying possible, and unfortunately these idiots comprise most of the voting population of the US.

Keep on skimming those headlines, folks, and ignore the solid journalism below the headline...(let this be a leeson to CNET and everyone else: make sure your headline matches what you say in the article...don't use sarcasm in headlines....you know, Journalistic editing 101 stuff?)

[mikeburek]

A monopoly is when a company (or group) dominates a market and results in a lack of innovation and responsiveness to customers. Also related is the barrier to entry. Google, by promoting net neutrality, is actually ensuring that the barrier to entry is a low as possible, thereby encouraging competition. Google is not in the business of buying every other search engine, so they are not predatory. Google also strongly promotes their own innovation.
Why do so many people cry fowl and want to jump ship just because Google is big and successful. The idea of America is to be successful. If you get a job with a large salary, should all your friends and neighbors start to shun you because now you're an elitist? Can you only have friends when you are poor and struggling? Privacy concerns are legitimate because Google processes so much data. But if you hound only Google and not any other big web companies, then you are not helping the public, but only trying to hurt one company. Yahoo and Microsoft and AOL do also handle lots of traffic and email and you should have the same privacy concerns equally among everyone.

[mikeburek]

@spacebatman: A good way for a valid email to look like spam is to send it to all the email addresses in a company. The Google security team deals with security; the ad-words team deals with ad-words; the Google press team deal with sending news outward. Just send your emails to those people it pertains to.

[Laserdisc]

This sort of shenanigans has been going on for DECADES. Lobbying has in itself became an industry... filled with shady people. I just want to know who's dumb idea was it to use "farmers" as a group opposed to companies like Google who fight for net neutrality.
But what do I know... I'm a latino working in the IT industry for over 15 years and not once ever heard of or known about LISTA (Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Assoc.) until now. I don't have a good feeling about LISTA either. heh.

[inachu]

WOW!
One moment farmers are in love with google using google maps satelite imagery so
they can better manage their crops and such and now they slap them like this.

I think using letterheads that do not belong to you should be made illegal.

[sideshow1979]

You may be interested in the fact that the League of Rural Voters (and others) were completely in favor of the XM-Sirius merger, which seems a little hypocritical:

http://ruralpopulist.org/2007/07/07/why-is-the-league-of-rural-voters-shilling-for-corporate-interests/

Well now. The League of Rural Voters didn?t find their interest in satellite radio on their own. They entered the debate at the ?behest of XM and Sirius.? And that not-so-balanced report (pdf) published by the League of Rural Voters was actually written by the corporate interest under scrutiny for their proposed merger. I double and triple checked. There is nothing in the report that indicates any authorship other than the League of Rural Voters.

[dcplowboy]

Because Mr. McCullagh has refused to return my phone calls today, I?d like to set the record straight on why the ACGA has raised concerns regarding a Google-Yahoo! alliance.

First, Mr. McCullagh inaccurately describes our concern about the Google-Yahoo! alliance. Google consistently attempts to steer its search traffic toward the National Corn Growers Association, whose members include some of the country?s largest agribusinesses, instead of ACGA, which consists primarily of family farmers. As a result, given Google?s dominance of online search, lawmakers and concerned citizens seeking to learn about our issues are consistently driven to our competitors? Website, drowning out our point of view. Competition ? not consolidation ? in online search is critical; I can see that at least a few comments here agree.

Second, the assertion that an outside public relations or other firm wrote and released this letter is wrong, totally unsubstantiated and smacks of an inexperienced reporter seeking to create a false and sensational story. It also obnoxiously implies that folks from the heartland are not smart enough to understand their own economic interests or articulate those interests to elected officials. We regularly hire outside PR firms to help us pitch stories ? the shocking discovery that their metadata is on one of them is hardly a serious press ?scoop.?

CNET readers undoubtedly support extending broadband access in rural areas, and yet when an organization representing rural America talks about how we use the Web and attempts to influence its future, our viewpoint is met with skepticism and derision. That?s simply not right.

But that?s the feedback we received from a number of reporters, who noted that Yahoo and Google pushed them to ask about the illusory influence of an outside hand. It?s a shame that Google and Yahoo can succeed in diverting attention away from their potentially harmful merger. In CNET?s case, it?s especially upsetting that such distractions can include wild, unfounded accusations that belittle our work. This was yellow journalism in our opinion by a reporter with an admitted personal interest in protecting Google. CNET should know better.

[as901]

So the biggest companies, who have never had to compete before, now want special laws passed so they do not have to compete with google? Aaaaaaa Poor AT&T!

Mark Heinemann