Revealed: Conservative think tank SPN coordinating right-wing assault on education, healthcare and

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/06/revealed-conservative-think-tank-spn-coordinating-right-wing-assault-on-education-healthcare-and-the-environment-in-34-states/

Revealed: Conservative think tank SPN coordinating right-wing assault on education, healthcare and the environment in 34 states



Conservative groups across the US are planning a co-ordinated assault against public sector rights and services in the key areas of education, healthcare, income tax, workers’ compensation and the environment, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The strategy for the state-level organisations, which describe themselves as “free-market thinktanks”, includes proposals from six different states for cuts in public sector pensions, campaigns to reduce the wages of government workers and eliminate income taxes, school voucher schemes to counter public education, opposition to Medicaid, and a campaign against regional efforts to combat greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

The policy goals are contained in a set of funding proposals obtained by the Guardian. The proposals were co-ordinated by the State Policy Network, an alliance of groups that act as incubators of conservative strategy at state level.

The documents contain 40 funding proposals from 34 states, providing a blueprint for the conservative agenda in 2014. In partnership with the Texas Observer and the Portland Press Herald in Maine, the Guardian is publishing SPN’s summary of all the proposals to give readers and news outlets full and fair access to state-by-state conservative plans that could have significant impact throughout the US, and to allow the public to reach its own conclusions about whether these activities comply with the spirit of non-profit tax-exempt charities.

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1. Conservative thinktank: turn Maine's poorest county into tax-free zone

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/05/maine-conservative-thinktank-poorest-county-tax-free-zone

***SNIP

According to a grant application acquired by the Guardian and passed on to the Press Herald as part of a reporting collaboration, Maine Heritage sees it as "a research and demonstration project" that will "release residents from extreme government dependency" and "spark an economic boom that can be easily transferred to other areas of Maine and serve as an example for all the United States."

The grant application was drafted in May for submission to the State Policy Network, a national group that funds and co-ordinates activities between Maine Heritage and 62 similar thinktanks across the country. SPN intended to seek funding for promising proposals from the Searle Freedom Trust, an important donor to conservative groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, Americans for Prosperity, and SPN itself, according to the Guardian.

Maine Heritage requested $35,000 to underwrite most of the costs of the project, which originally included an effort to adopt anti-union "right-to-work" laws in Washington County. It is not clear if funding was approved, although Maine Heritage launched its FreeME website and associated research study late last summer, as promised in the grant proposal's timeline.

In the application, the group said it was partly acting to counter the "Fair Share Now" initiative, a proposal put forward by a coalition of progressive and labor groups during this year's state budget that sought to shift more of the tax burden onto the wealthy.

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2. Media-savvy conservative think tanks take aim and fire at progressive power bases in the states.

http://www.thenation.com/article/173528/right-leans#



The mood at the beginning of the meeting matched the weather: gray and dreary. The warm-up speaker told a joke about how local Republicans could merit placement on the endangered species list, which met with polite laughter. Talk of the most recent presidential election elicited audible groans.

Days after Barack Obama took the oath of office for his second term, about 400 GOP donors gathered in a downtown San Francisco hotel to hear Jim DeMint—who had just resigned from the Senate to take a $1-million-a-year job as head of the Heritage Foundation—explain the way forward.

“This is a battle we can win, and we are winning in many places around the country,” DeMint told the assembled donors confidently. He implored them to look beyond Washington, DC, and see that conservatives were scoring victories in state after state, citing the December move by Michigan Republicans to ram through anti-union legislation, as well as similar laws passed in Wisconsin and Indiana. Some of these victories would influence the Beltway as well. After all, the GOP’s control of state governments guaranteed that congressional districts were drawn in such a way that, in the 2012 elections, Republicans retained a thirty-three-seat majority in the House despite Democrats earning 1.3 million more votes for their candidates.

“You may not have heard about it,” DeMint continued. “We’ve been cultivating bright ideas, building coalitions and working with others like the State Policy Network to make these things happen.” SPN is a nonprofit that nurtures conservative think tanks in all fifty states; its president, Tracie Sharp, was sitting near the front at the event and was warmly acknowledged by the speakers several times.

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3. MORE...

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/12/state-policy-network-assault-worker-rights-medicaid

***SNIP

Here's more from the Guardian:

Most of the "think tanks" involved in the proposals gathered by the State Policy Network are constituted as 501(c)(3) charities that are exempt from tax by the Internal Revenue Service. Though the groups are not involved in election campaigns, they are subject to strict restrictions on the amount of lobbying they are allowed to perform. Several of the grant bids contained in the Guardian documents propose the launch of "media campaigns" aimed at changing state laws and policies, or refer to "advancing model legislation" and "candidate briefings", in ways that arguably cross the line into lobbying.

The documents also cast light on the nexus of funding arrangements behind radical right-wing campaigns. The State Policy Network (SPN) has members in each of the 50 states and an annual warchest of $83 million drawn from major corporate donors that include the energy tycoons the Koch brothers, the tobacco company Philip Morris, food giant Kraft and the multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline.

SPN gathered the grant proposals from the 34 states on 29 July. Ranging in size from requests of $25,000 to $65,000, the plans were submitted for funding to the Searle Freedom Trust, a private foundation that in 2011 donated almost $15m to largely rightwing causes.

[…]

The proposals in the grant bids contained in the Guardian documents go beyond a commitment to free enterprise, however. They include:

• "reforms" to public employee pensions raised by SPN thinktanks in Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania

• tax elimination or reduction schemes in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Nebraska, and New York

• an education voucher system to promote private and home schooling in Florida

• campaigns against worker and union rights in Delaware and Nevada

• opposition to Medicaid in Georgia, North Carolina, and Utah

[librechik]

4. sigh

we don't even have anything similar to try and counter them. If we did, I would cheer them on. As it is, it feels pretty hopeless. My mom is staying with me and she has swallowed all the lies whole, right down to Iraqi weapons secretly shipped to Syria.

what can we do?

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5. it feels like progressives in individual states are left to their own devices.

conservatives can mount coordinated efforts but we remain splintered.

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6. I'm sure it's purposeful, and part of the con campaign

that progressives are discouraged, hounded, arrested, audited, fired and blacklisted for speaking out, and it's so difficult to organize. I'm very much afraid that we will have to endure a new unionization movement that is potentially as difficult deadly and protracted as the first one. Our generations are not prepared for that--I don't want to think about what has to happen to make them unite. But it must be done, and the sooner the better.

[lindysalsagal]

7. I used to believe there was no such thing as evil.

Maybe I was wrong.