Update. A source that I consider reliable advised me this evening that the Montana Hospital Association is behind www.modernizemontanamedicaid.com. Why the MHA — not a liberal organization — thinks it’s necessary to hide its involvement in the website is beyond my ken.
I’m weary of dark money, whether spent by liberals or wingnuts on the right, and of websites of unknown parentage that attempt to influence public policy.
That’s why I’m calling attention to www.modernizemontanamedicaid.com, which appears to support medicaid expansion in Montana. I’m all for expanding Medicaid in Montana (and even more for a zero dollar, everyone covered for everything federal single-payer health care system) — but I’m also all against people, like the people behind www.modernizemontanamedicaid, who lack the courage and decency to stand up in the public square at high noon and say, “Here’s who I am, and here’s why I support expanding Medicaid in Montana.”
Here’s what I know about www.modernizemontanamedicaid.com:
The domain name was registered at Godaddy on 7 February 2013. The administrative contact is Melisa McPherren at the Seattle office (and firm headquarters) of Strategies 360, an advertising agency (in Strategies 360 argot, a “strategic positioning firm”) with offices in several states, including Montana. It appears to me that most of its money comes from corporate clients, but it also works for Democratic political candidates such as Pam Bucy, the Montana Democrat who lost to Tim Fox in the 2012 election for attorney general.
My best guess is that the money — and there’s undoubtedly lots of it; Strategies 360 doesn’t work for tin cup change — for www.modernizemontanamedicaid.com comes from hospitals and hospital associations in Montana. But that’s just a guess because I just don’t know for sure.
But I do know for sure that dark money is funding www.modernizemontanamedicaid.com, and that the people — or corporations — behind the website prefer shadow to sunlight, and thus are no friends of democracy, a just society, or bona fide improvements in health care.