When Howie Rich, the New York City billionaire, helped bankroll the trio of fraudulent ballot initiatives in 2006, the uprising of anti-government arch-conservatives helped block democrats from gaining more ground in the Montana legislature with a groundswell of tea-bagger types-- even though the initiatives were declared invalid in the closing months of the race.
Enter in 2009 the Montana Policy Institute: a group that keeps its backer veiled in secrecy. Organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the group is a thinly regulated entity that can engage in limited amounts of public organizing, but cannot advocate for or against candidates and is supposed to remain non-partisan.
It guards its secrecy as closely as possible and the group refuses to identify any of its donors or its out-of-state bankroller. The group refuses to say, in fact, much about itself at all. Its website says it is a
"free market think tank focused on Montana issues and Montana solutions"
(it just refuses to prove it is funded by actual Montanans) and wants to
"make state and local government more transparent."
As long as you don't try to shine a light on their own financial backers: the group flatly refuses to disclose them. There's something highly suspect about a group that refuses to hold themselves to the very standards of openness, sunshine, and transparency they claim to champion.
