The photo adorning the lead article in the Guardian today (US edition) shows David Koch, of course. The report details "a co-ordinated assault against public sector rights and services in the key areas of education, healthcare, income tax, workers' compensation and the environment." The Guardian has been given documents revealing the funding the far right and the State Policy Network (SPN) will use to pull off major cutbacks in and elimination of public services of all kinds.
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.
Details of the co-ordinated approach come amid growing federal scrutiny of the political activities of tax-exempt charities. Last week the Obama administration announced a new clampdown on those groups that violate tax rules by engaging in direct political campaigning.
Most of the "thinktanks" 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. ...Guardian
In other words, this assault on our self-government cannot be seen as a legitimate political effort but rather a radical, state-by-state strategy, using the dodge of a commitment to "free enterprise" but relying on the illegal use of non-profit tax exemptions for funding their attacks on public pensions, public schools, workers' rights, and Medicaid.
The State Policy Network (SPN) has members in each of the 50 states and an annual warchest of $83m 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. ...Guardian
Searle, the Guardian reminds us, is a "major donor to such mainstays of the American right and the Tea Parties as Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), the Heartland Institute and the State Policy Network itself."
We need to remind ourselves that the Republicans, a minority party, gained sufficient political power to make Washington insufferable by mounting a state-by-state effort to control everything from school boards to state legislatures to media. It worked before. Why shouldn't it work for the State Policy Network once again?
