Wyoming uses a “dark money” organization to advocate for coal in other states | Hacker News Reader

Wyoming uses a “dark money” organization to advocate for coal in other states

npr.org

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Wyoming produces 40% of US coal. 3x the production of WV.

https://www.wsgs.wyo.gov/energy/coal-production-mining

It's low sulfur coal from the powder river basin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_River_Basin#Coal

Extracted using surface mining:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_mining

Wyoming mines:

https://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/images/coal.jpg/image

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/CFRP52/coal-mine-in-wyomings-powde...

It’s only $250k per year, they can’t possibly be accomplishing that much with that money. 1 to 4 full time salaries?

Ya at the last 15% of the article they point this out and provide some other skeptical quotes. Made me feel duped.

Highly effective and successful lobbying does not need more than one skilled and connected individual.

You might be surprised by the ridiculously small amount of money it takes to lobby legislators in the US. I've seen various reports over the years that have shown amounts well below $50k effectively buying deciding votes on important issues. To me, that would have otherwise seemed like an amount that might be effective at a city or state level, but it's shocking to see that being true at a federal level. One recent example that was heavily reported on was the lobbying over net neutrality. ISPs contributed $1.5 million to 273 members of Congress to support overturning net neutrality - that's less than $5500 each on average.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/12/money-flows-into-ne...

Wonder what the relative size of the wind/renewable/shale/nuclear lobbies are these days.

That low number is not a coincidence. A PAC is limited to $5,000 per candidate per year. (I'm not sure how the number there is over $5,000; it may include individual donor money as well.)

The main influence of a PAC is not its money but its ability to be in the room. Registered lobbyists have much greater access. That's not about paying for it; it's about the fact that they are legally allowed to do so (you have to register if you meet with legislators frequently) and the fact that the legislators will agree to meet with them (they can take only so many meetings per day and tend to the people who talk to other powerful people).

The FEC rules prevent money from being used as a bribe. It's much too low for that. The organizations do donate, because they can, but it's the access that really gives them more influence than you have.

An ex member of parliament and the secret lover of a premier(governor) of a major state in Australia was texting the premier that he got a commission of 5K AUD from some shady deal.

I just dont understand that because I would assume 5K is peanuts when you are an ex MP and close to the premier.

Not sure about Australia, but in the US public salaries remain low at all levels of the government. A city councilor in Boston makes 100k, a US congressman/Senator 174k.

Considering the additional costs of campaigning, personal travel, and housing for a family - you're looking at a recipe for corruption for dollar amounts that can look like peanuts to experienced private sector employees.

4 people working full time on anything can get quite a bit done over the course of a year.

How about $280m? https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/trump-us-christian-spe... Almost $100m of that is from Billy Graham, which is absolutely bonkers. They've already managed to turn Poland against abortion and were a big influence in the Irish constitutional referendum.

> managed to turn Poland against abortion

As a Pole, this comes off as incredibly arrogant and self-centered. People outside the US have agency as well, they're not all just puppets of US special interest groups. Not everything revolves around you.

Factually, the claim is also false. The ACLJ's brief was completely irrelevant to the decision in question.

It's still remarkable that Poland is the first European country to head in this direction, and after a series of constitutional crises. The kind of populism that's so popular that people are demonstrating in the street against it.

We essentially have a local group that thinks similarly to US anti-abortion activists, and they are part of "coalition" (hard to call it coalition when it's all factions of the same party, informally).

This comes off as wishful thinking. You don't want it to be true that outside entities could use money and propaganda to influence your country, so therefore it isn't true. Also, responding to a comprehensive report about the ACLJ's work to influence Poland by just saying basically "no it didn't" isn't a very compelling argument.

The report linked mentions the ACLJ being involved in several ECHR cases, and submitting an amicus brief in favor of the recent Constitutional Court decision. That's it. You think that's enough to push the government and judiciary of a nation of 40 million into confrontation with a large social movement, with mass ongoing protests. And it's me who's naive?

Again, it takes a serious amount of arrogance to read two paragraphs of text in a report and believe yourself to be better informed than someone who spent all of their life immersed in the historical and social context of what's going on. So, with all due respect, I have the same advice for you as for the original post I replied to: Get over yourself. Not everything in the world is about Trump.

How big an influence could they have been in Ireland, given the outcome?

There was definitely a presence; http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/10/28/foreign-inf...

As someone who fights for increased government transparency, this is all sorts of troubling. But as a former political hack? Gotta admire the strategy.

And it's replicable across other industries and geographies.

Broad example: Phoenix and Las Vegas (or, at a higher level, Arizona and Nevada) might like to see California squeeze businesses tighter -- it would encourage migration.

The end of the piece is interesting to me. It basically delineates the fact that we don't know how much impact this is having and we likely can't sort it out.

One the one hand, this organization has motive to claim responsibility for keeping things open that it may not have had a big role in keeping open. That's how it gets money from the state of Wyoming.

On the other hand, because it is dark money, it has motive to obscure exactly what it is accomplishing and to leave doubts and questions in the minds of people who would like to think they aren't really doing much. If some parties think this is all smoke and mirrors and they aren't really doing anything, then they get to keep operating as they see fit.

So, to me, this article says "This thing exists. We have no idea how much they are or are not really accomplishing. We aren't likely to get a straight answer."

Nobody really has any idea how much money it takes to influence political agendas. All the corporate money in the world couldn't stop Donald Trump from getting elected and instituting his tariff, but in other cases very small amounts of money can get policies in place that vastly enrich a few insiders.

Lot of pro-Trump money around, too.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio...

There was also the proposed "Moscow Project", which Michael Cohen was convicted of lying to Federal investigators about. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5453413/SCO-Cohen...

Probably a decent ROI when these efforts are successful

Lots of pearl clutching about lobbying here simply because it's being done by a state?

Wyoming has a population smaller than Luxembourg, of course it's going to be sockpuppeted by special interests.

Ssssssh people might catch on

> “Lots of pearl clutching...”

it’s npr, so that’s to be expected. surprised they didn’t mention who was wearing masks and who wasn’t.

but more to the point, a state is a semi-sovereign entity, so other states shouldn’t be subverting their industry, despite the potential direct benefits. those should be negotiated openly between state officials to prevent corrupting influences like this.

Is it appropriate to note that NPR is funded by special interests like the Rockefeller foundation? Does the resulting politically charged coverage constitute 'election meddling'?

Maybe just because it's lobbying by anyone in a completely non-transparent wya ?

This system isn't legal in other countries, lets call it what it is - bribery.

I'm in a facebook group, supposedly to promote climate change solutions, that I'm 99% sure is funded by the beef industry.

I feel like this belongs on /r/nottheonion

Its not dark money when a public records request can reveal it or if a bank can be subpoena’d or hacked for the information

In my opinion

Wake me up when people catch on to the fact that Monero is used

Dark money has a specific definition, it's not a matter of opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_money

I understand that, my point still stands

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