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Taking the Initiative - #14

Posted by Clark Williams-Derry

06/28/2006 01:00 PM

Columnist exposes a phony grassroots movement.

Note: This is part of a series.

Nice column today by the Seattle P-I's Joel Connelly on the astroturfing of the Washington state initiative process -- with a special look at I-933, a stealth attack designed to undermine, oh, pretty much any action taken by state or local government:

The Washington State Farm Bureau is the official sponsor of I-933. But money to pay signature gatherers, $200,000 at last count, has come from an outfit called Americans for Limited Government.
Who are Americans for Limited Government? Where does Americans for Limited Government get its money? We have no way of knowing.
Sponsors would have you believe that this is a land-use rebellion by poor widows and orphans prohibited from subdividing the wetland that is their chief asset in the world.
Bullpucky! It's a top-down initiative paid for by a powerful out-of-state interest.

Anybody out there know who Americans for Limited Government really are? (Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)

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Comments

Posted by Matt 07/05/2006 12:51 PM

I don't know who the ALG are. But I do have a case against petitions as an effective democratic tool.

Posted by Hank 07/19/2006 04:00 PM

Their website host seems to be 'getliberty.org' which is hosted by Verio. Use Whois, here:

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/

Try doing lookups on the registrant's address and phone number, see who else is using that IP. Google.
And see who owns the .com and .edu etc. addresses; try sourcewatch.com for searches on likely terms.