If I were to start a ND District 30 PAC it would be called something like "Stop Jerking Our Chains, LLC" or "I Support Fossil Fuels But Stop Gaslighting Us For The Love Of God" or maybe "Fool Us Once, Shame On Us, Fool Us Several Election Cycles In A Row Whoopsies."
It would be a very small PAC with incredibly limited donor power (me), unlike the political action committees that pop up in the donor lists for ND District 30 incumbent candidates Diane Larson, Mike Nathe, and Glenn Bosch.
Am I up for sale? Am I someone's hired pen?
If you were to follow the money on any of the writing I do about what's happening in my district, North Dakota District 30, in an attempt to find out who is behind it all, you'd follow the very short money trail to a small bank account with lots of echo and be very disappointed in general (I often am), though perhaps impressed by the number of book purchases I've made if you viewed transactions in detail.
So sure. You can follow the money in my writing but you won't find it leads to:
Any PACs
Energy Transfer Partners (actual accusation levied in 2016)
Anything else super exciting or nefarious
I write what I write because it's what I want to write.
Full disclosure: I bought several domains, including nddistrict30.com and district30republican.com (just one "s" away from the real site) for several reasons, including I'm a domain hoarder and also a bit of a stinker. That's about as sneaky as I get, and I was snickering to myself like a fifth grader the whole time.
But speaking of interesting money trails...remember how Nathe and Bosch had a tendency to vote left instead of as a right/conservative Republican, despite the R after their name?
About the only elephant in those two fellows' rooms are where they get donations from.
Check out Glenn Bosch's donations.
Here is Mike Nathe's listing of donations.
Diane Larson's listing of contributors doesn't seem to have any actual constituents from District 30, just PACs (my understanding is that Geoff Simon is a lobbyist; if I'm wrong, I'll update this post). To be fair, I don't like taking money from people I don't know and have never met, either, so I guess I get it.
Perhaps other cash monies come in to further election hopes in lesser amounts that don't make these listings. Trump is sort of known for having huuuuge amounts of individual donors giving small amounts.
It could happen. I guess.
Clicking around at those links is interesting. So interesting that I clicked the wrong thing initially and asked permission from some PAC to do who knows what so that could be another blog post, or an arrest warrant.
But anyway, let's take a look.
NDHA PAC. What is that, the North Dakota Hospital Association? That one did us a real solid during the pandemic, so thanks.
Perhaps there are several NDHA PACs.
But if not, don't you just get tired of everyone giving money to maintain the status quo while pretending they're "fighting for you" against the "other side" when they all drink from the same well? I know I do.
As Woody from "Toy Story" said, someone's poisoned the well.
It sure feels like everyone is bought by the same money, and while I'm sure that's just donors hedging their bets, that's not what those big old postcards tell us, is it? Those giant seen-from-space postcards promise they're different and special and are going to fight for us (but we're all paid by the same peeps anyway, j/k).
"Well, Julie, that's just how the game is played!"
(See also: Death Race 2000, The Running Man, and The Hunger Games.)
It sort of feels like the PACs are watching a sportsball game and have given all of the players steroids for "competitive edge" and are then laughing their backside off as everyone explodes into 'roid rage making points for the other side, all while cashing their legislative wins at the bank.
You could waste a lot of time clicking around and shaking your head in disappointment. I mean, you won't be surprised, because surely I wasn't, but you could still feel twinges of disappointment if your heart has any last vestiges of hope left in it. The colors of the flag might not run off the flag, but they do get to a sickly lavender color when the people waving it become a squish.
Like I said, those big huge incumbent political signs and postcards didn't print themselves.
They had a PAC to help them out.
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