There is a petition against the "Environment Renewable Fuel Standard" showing up as a sponsored ad on the web. It is clearly astroturf, given the website has no indication of the group sponsoring it- not even a "Friends of Smog" fake front group. Someone is paying $ for the site and paying even more for the frequent ads. My guess is this is a fossil fuel company or owner (Koch bros.?), since they're trying to roll back environmental laws, would most directly benefit, and have deep pockets. The site is based out of Montenegro (according to Wikipedia's List of Top Level Domains), so our US laws on transparency do not apply, but it is trying to influence our government. The sites involved that I could track are:
energy.washington.me
s1.washington.me
s2.washington.me
s3.washington.me
s4.washington.me
That's all I know. Internic Whois can tell me who owns and runs U.S. websites, but this one is deliberately set up outside of that system. I'm a medium-level computer user, not a programmer or systems expert. I'm out of my depth. Are there any computer expert-grade politically progressive DKos people out there who can pick this up and dig a little deeper? I want to complain to my Dem Congress-critter about this astroturf but all I have now are one dead end, and some hypotheses and hunches. Thanks,
Jerry