Movie Review / “DARK MONEY”, the documentary film
Roger C. Kostmayer
If you’re interested in politics, thriller detective stories or movies about heroic journalists, you’ll enjoy Dark Money, a shocking documentary film. This is a true but hard to believe, David and Goliath tale with the bad guys played by big, corrupt special interests and the good guys are the state of Montana and a few courageous individuals.
After struggling to get reforms & free itself from the corrupt grasp of Copper Mine owners 100 or so years ago, Montana found itself a victim of the Supreme Court’s Citizen United case & other decisions (wherein corporations were deemed persons, and money was held to be speech). That decision reopened the bag of unlimited special interest money and zero transparency. Rigid partisanship by the Republican members of the Federal Election Commission meant there was no regulatory help for Montana.
John Adams, a young Montana investigative journalist (with the help of a few whistle blowers, honest Republican politicians, and a volunteer retired lawyer) was able to see that the truth came out and that someone was held accountable.
One of the dark money tactics involves early “buying” of candidates and judges for (Republican) primaries whom the special interest then controls, and destroying the less conservative primary opponent of their stooge by use of huge mail drops full of lies just before election day.
Our democracy is under attack- against Republicans, Democrats and Independents – from voter suppression tactics, the Russians and perhaps even our own President. This film documents the Orwellian lengths to which American special interests and dark money are also poisoning the well by illegally controlling politicians and judges.
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“This film documents the Orwellian lengths to which American special interests and dark money are also poisoning the well by illegally controlling politicians and judges.”
When is the film about ‘pay for play’ Clinton Foundation coming out?
USAToday Jan 2018 WASHINGTON – The FBI has been investigating for months the Clinton Foundation and whether the former U.S. secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered any policy favors for charitable contributions, according to a new report.
Agents in the FBI’s field office in Little Rock, Ark., are trying to determine if there is any relationship between donations to the charity and official acts when Clinton was the nation’s top diplomat from 2009 to 2013, the Hill newspaper first reported, citing law enforcement officials and a witness.
“Dark Money, a political thriller, examines one of the greatest present threats to American democracy: the influence of untraceable corporate money ”
re Clinton Foundation untraceable or not reported funds…
As a result, the Foundation’s disclosure records showed $50,000 in cash donations from the lobbying firm APCO Worldwide but none of the hundreds of thousands of dollars the firm donated in pro-bono services.
Here are other examples where disclosure wasn’t complete:
• The Foundation didn’t disclose $2.35 million of donations from a family foundation linked to the mining company Uranium One, taken over in 2010 by Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom, until The New York Times found the donation in Canadian tax records in April 2015.
• The Foundation set up a fundraising arm in Sweden that collected $26 million in donations at the same time that country was lobbying Secretary Clinton’s State Department to forgo sanctions that threatened its thriving business with Iran. The Swedish entity, called the William J. Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse, was never disclosed to or cleared by State Department ethics officials, Foundation officials told The Washington Times, even though one of its largest sources of donations was a Swedish government-sanctioned lottery.
• The Clinton Health Access Initiative, an HIV/AIDs-focused nonprofit that fell under the Foundation’s umbrella, didn’t disclose its donors annually while Secretary Clinton served in office. “Not doing so was an oversight which we made up for this year,” spokeswoman Maura Daley told Reuters in 2015.
The Clinton Health Access Initiative didn’t submit foreign government donations to State Department ethics officials for review as promised under the 2008 agreement. In April 2015, Daley told the Boston Globe that the organization never submitted information on any foreign donations for State Department review during Clinton’s tenure from 2009 to 2013. Among the foreign donors were Rwanda, Sweden, Papua New Guinea and Flanders.
• The Foundation failed to disclose support from the Algerian government. Officials told The Washington Post in 2015 that they didn’t disclose a $500,000 donation from the Algerian government in 2010 for Haiti earthquake relief.
• The Clinton Foundation belatedly disclosed in 2015 millions of dollars in speaking fees collected by former President Clinton, Secretary Clinton and their daughter Chelsea Clinton. Among those paying the fees were companies or entities from China, Qatar, South Korea and Thailand.
Roger, thank you for your concerns about “Dark Money”
Aren’t you glad that the voters saw the association between Ms. Clinton and ‘Dark Money’; whether it was the Clinton Foundation or that $1 Billion dollars in campaign contributions.
Aren’t you glad that former SOS Clinton didn’t become President. Specifically as it relates to the Clinton Foundation not fully disclosing money (bringing influence and possible collusion) from Saudi Arabia, Russia, China etal.
Thanks again for pointing out that unethical people such as Ms. Clinton don’t deserve public office.
Your post is so appropriate! Good one. Glad you are seeing the light!