Like most all of you, I got plenty of election junk mail. Who sent it?
In my “collection” for the Tutvedt/Roberts battle (which isn’t complete – I trashed everything I got from American Tradition Partnership, those weasels), aside from a handful of letters and cards from the candidates’ campaigns, I got flyers from Montanans for Quality Health Care, Taxpayers for Liberty (2), Montana Business Advocates for Sensible Elections (2), and National Association for Gun Rights (2) – the last which I’d heard of before.
NAGR accused Bruce Tutvedt of killing a gunpowder factory in the Flathead, and therefore the Flathead’s 11 percent unemployment is all his fault. Um, not exactly.
In a nutshell, Tutvedt opposed a bill (SB 371) by Sen. Dave Lewis, R-Helena, that proposed major tax breaks for Montana ammo makers – no property taxes for education, no business equipment tax, individual or corporate income taxes – basically, payroll and local, non-school property taxes only.
NAGR is a feisty gun rights PAC run by Dudley Brown, a fellow I know from my time in fabulous Colorado when I was a member of his Rocky Mountain Gun Owners. That said, I’m ticked at Dudley and will let him know.
Taxpayers for Liberty? They’re all over the Net, as in Who the Heck Are These People, active in Colorado in 2010, and now in Montana. Not registered with the Federal Elections Commission, state Political Practices, out of a PO Box in Washington DC with a Loveland, Colo., mail permit. Tea Party? Possibly. Cretins? Oh yeah.
Montanans for Quality Health Care? No presence on the Internet. Treasurer John Flink: Vice President, MHA Ventures, and a lobbyist for the Montana Hospital Association. MHA Ventures funded every dime of MQHC. The flyer blabbed about jobs and lower taxes, not health care. Hmmm. What’s the real deal there?
Then there was the hit flyer by Montana Business Advocates for Sensible Elections (MBASE), smacking Rollan Roberts as a “carpetbagger” and “charlatan.”
Sure, that’s how I’d marked Roberts after a few hours of research, but pot? Meet kettle: MBASE exists on Google, but at only one place – meetrollanroberts.com, a now-offline webpage, anonymously registered May 24 in Pennsylvania. Their Flathead flyers list as treasurer one “Fr. Rauch,” located at a “UPS Store” address in Great Falls – kinda like Mr. Roberts’ address is the Whitefish UPS Store. We’ll call that even.
OK, so who the heck is Fr. Rauch – some priest? Naw – try FrED Rauch, who upon further digging, is Fred R. Rauch, II. Kinda like Rollan Roberts, II, so that’s still even-steven.
Fr-ed must be a “moderate” because, according to a letter in the Great Falls Tribune, he’s a “staunch supporter of the Second Amendment” yet supported NRA “D”-rated incumbent Jesse O’Hara in the GOP primary.
I went to the Commission of Political Practices website and MBASE actually posted two C-2 statements of organization, the first May 29, the second May 30. Purpose of the committee: To support Jesse O’ Hara, Bruce Tutvedt and Carmine Mowbray in the primary election. Ah, so.
There’s another “officer” of MBASE, William Knick of Great Falls. A senior executive at Pacific Steel and Recycling, he’s a past donor to O’Hara, plus has donated 500 bucks to both Max Baucus’ and Conrad Burns’ PACs. So he’s a bipartisan – sensible.
I don’t suppose we’ll hear again from MBASE – from the day they registered with the state until the election was six whole days.
As for Montana Hospital Association – they already have a PAC, and Mr. Flink is treasurer. Now, with all the yap about “corporate money,” I guess MHA’s power brokers figured a corporate PAC would be “less effective” than ginning up yet another fake “Montanans” group.
But MHA got it wrong. I put no credibility in anything I get from an outfit I’ve never heard of. What about an entity spun off specifically to yank my chain?
Bottom line is, I am more convinced than ever that the only way to cut down on the lies and deception that assault us every election is by making political money naked.
Without real-time disclosure and reporting, we’ll never have politicians with the guts to stand in their own skins.