01 March 2009

Who got ABC cash?

The blood feud between Danny Williams and Stephen Harper may have netted Danny Williams something for the $81,000 his ABC campaign reportedly spent, but there’s no way of knowing at this point who really got all that cash.

Based on information contained  on the Elections Canada website, the companies listed as receiving disbursements from Williams’ ABC campaign don’t appear to exist.

On September 1, the Provincial Conservatives paid a company listed as “intonic.ca” $244 for something labelled as “website.”

intonic.ca gets a 404 page in response if you try to find its website using the logical domain.  An Internet search likewise netted zip-olla for a company called “intonic” let alone one that did anything related to web sites.

Another company – listed as The Inbox Factory – received over $24,000 for something called “TV/Newspaper”.

Try and find a company called Inbox Factory through a simple Internet search. A company that can co-ordinate national print and television advertising would likely be established enough to have garnered even a mention on the Internet.

Inbox Factory?

Nada.

Promoworks is a little different.

There is a Canadian company called Promoworks Inc.  It does custom geegaws for companies in the Vancouver area. There’s a similarly named company in Maryland that does the same sort of thing.

But a company that does  - apparently – media planning, superboard design and the media buy to go with it?

Not a sign.

More than $56,000 spent by ABC went to “Promoworks Inc.”.

Try and find any trace of that company on line.

This one is going to take some digging, evidently.

Yep.

None of this should come as a surprise though.  The Family Feud got off to a bad start, not realising they even had to register as a third party player and report their expenses.  Not realising that is until someone pointed it out to them.

Maybe people could ask John Babb, the registered agent for the Feud. He’s the guy who said:

“This is the election that could make and break relations between Newfoundland and Canada forever.”

There might be a bunch of good reasons to ask Babb a few questions about that whole campaign starting with that statement he made right at the start.

-srbp-