Here are some of the key findings of our investigation of SPN: SPN and its affiliates push an extreme right-wing agenda that aims to privatize education, block healthcare reform, restrict workers’ rights, roll back environmental protections, and create a tax system that benefits most those at the very top level of income. SPN “think tanks” work together in coordinated efforts to push their agenda, often using the same cookie-cutter research and reports, all while claiming to be independent and creating state-focused solutions that purportedly advance the interests or traditions of the state. While it has become an $83 million dollar right-wing empire, SPN and most of its affiliates do not post their major donors on their websites. The identities of the donors we have discovered reveal that SPN is largely funded by global corporations such as Reynolds American Altria, Microsoft , AT&T, Verizon , GlaxoSmithKline ,Kraft Foods, Express Scripts, Comcast, Time Warner, and the Koch- and Tea Party-connected DCI Group lobbying and PR firm that stand to benefit from SPN’s destructive agenda, as well as out-of-state special interests like the billionaire Koch brothers, the Waltons, the Bradley Foundation, the Roe Foundation, and the Coors family that are underwriting an extreme legislative agenda that undermines the traditional rights of modern Americans. Corporations like Facebook and the for-profit online education company K12 Inc., as well as the e-cigarette company NJOY , also fund SPN, as demonstrated at its most recent annual meeting. Although SPN think tanks are registered as educational nonprofits, several appear to orchestrate extensive lobbying and political operations to peddle their legislative agenda to state legislators, despite the IRS’s degulations on nonprofit political and lobbying activities. SPN and many of its affiliates are some of the most active members and largest sponsors of the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), where special interest groups and state politicians vote behind closed doors on “model” legislation to change Americans’ rights, through ALEC’s task forces. SPN has close ties to, and works with, other national right-wing organizations like the Franklin Center and David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity. SPN’s Founding and Role in the National Right-Wing Network SPN was founded at the suggestion of President Ronald Reagan, according to the National Review and SPNs website. In a conversation with Thomas Roe, a South Carolina building supply magnate, Reagan allegedly suggested Roe create something like a Heritage Foundation in each of the states. So in 1986, Roe founded the South Carolina Policy Council. Similar groups self-denominated as state-based think tanks formed in Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, and elsewhere at around the same time. Representatives of those groups met at the Madison Hotel in Washington, D.C., and started to call themselves the Madison Group. Roe later officially founded SPN as an umbrella organization to provide advisory services bankrolled by Roe and other right-wing funders in 1992. President Reagan with Thomas Roe
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 21:22:17 +0000
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