Everyday Activist - Dark Money

Posted on Saturday, December 07, 2019 at 05:00 PM

Dark Money

Movie Review by Everyday Activist X CalgaryMovies.com

Kanopy, freely available with a Calgary Public Library Card, is wonderful! I wanted to watch this PBS documentary last year when it made the Oscar top 15 list, but life was a bit busy dealing with my insurance company. Even with The Globe and Mail article "Licensed to bill: How doctors profit from injury assessments that benefit insurers" about insurers openly paying doctors thousands of dollars for an opinion known as an Independent Medical Exam (IME), predictably my physiotherapy and psychological services were cut after the two IMEs. No secrecy needed. Politics can’t be that blatant. Dark Money is a term used when corporations or other entities such as foreign governments buy candidates through money laundering schemes via political nonprofits. These tax exempt groups can’t have politics as a main focus, which is why they have names such as Western Tradition Partnership and conveniently don’t have to disclose their funding sources.

Montana has been fighting against the Federal government to have disclosure in state run elections, a law they have had in place since 1912. In 2012, federally candidates don’t need to disclose from where campaign money comes. For anyone who watches Dark Money, please note the dates. This level of corruption happened on the federal level during the Obama years. In states such as Wisconsin all the democratic safeguards have also been bought by corporate interest groups, who find it more efficient to buy the government than to lobby.

If governments are difficult to buy then groups purchase the press as well, which is what happened to investigative journalist, John Adams. To stay true to his values, he has his own media organization and support from locals who in a small place know where he stands. Recently, in Iowa, Senator Joni Ernest is accused of using Dark Money by the Associated Press and the retort is “Fake News”. Not that any of this whistleblowing seems to matter as the IRS and the Federal Elections Committee refuse to take any meaningful action. Watchdog groups such as FollowTheMoney.org and Opensecrets.org do their best to keep the public informed. As we’ve seen in Alberta, most people vote emotionally rather than with facts, a reality the Dark Money groups use to their advantage.

I read an article about the N.A.S.C.A.R Act where politicians would have to proudly wear their political sponsors on their clothing. The bigger the sponsor, the more prominent the advertisement. The same things happen in Canada just not on as big of scale. Slick Water: One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry by Andrew Nikiforuk is a good example of Alberta government regulators partnering with fracking corporations to deny responsibility for poisoning the ground water of its citizens. Montana knows this story all too well. Outside of Butte, waterfowl die when they land on an old tailings pond from the Anaconda Copper Mine, a poignant reminder of what happens when corporations control the government.

Calgary Showtimes: Dark Money >