Jan Resseger here links to a startling expose that appeared in the Guardian, a U.K. newspaper.
The Guardian gained access to secret documents showing the ties that bind a far-right network of public policy groups called the State Policy Network.
There is a public policy institute in almost every state, all sharing the same far-right ideology.
This group, which operates in tandem with the ALEC agenda, seeks to deregulate and privatize public services, privativepublic schools with charters and vouchers, reduce the corporate tax burden, reduce or eliminate regulation of greenhouse gases, and eliminate any public restriction on private greed.
Resseger writes:
The Guardian describes the State Policy Network as a sister organization to the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC. “SPN’s president, Tracie Sharp, told theGuardian that ‘as a pro-freedom network of thinktanks, we focus on issues like workplace freedom, education reform, and individual choice in healthcare: backbone issues of a free people and a free society.'”
Despite that the majority of the state affiliates of the State Policy Network are 501 (C) (3) organizations, according to The Guardian, the State Policy Network makes grants to its member think-tanks for projects “aimed at changing state laws and policies, or (that) refer to ‘advancing model legislation’ and ‘candidate briefings’, in ways that arguably cross the line into lobbying.”
See if your own state is represented on the list here.
The proposals submitted by specific state think-tanks for funding from the State Policy Network’s war chest include attacks on public employee pensions, campaigns to eliminate or reduce taxes, promotion of school vouchers, attacks on worker and union rights, and opposition to Medicaid.
Another post by Resseger reported the source of funding for this far-right assault on the public sector. Stinktanks.org reveals that the State Policy Network (SPN) has $83 million in funding from such sources as the Koch Brothers:
Stinktanks writes:
SPN has become an $83 million right-wing empire. SPN and its affiliates are not required to disclose their donors, and almost none of the groups publish a list of funders. Tax documents and other available records reveal that SPN is funded by large corporations, right-wing foundations, and wealthy conservative ideologues. Some of the most notable corporate funders of SPN and its web of “think tanks” include Big Tobacco companies (like Reynolds), Big Oil corporations (like the Koch family fortune), AT&T, Kraft Foods, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Facebook, and Microsoft. SPN and its “think tanks” are also largely funded by right-wing special interest groups and individuals, including the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, the Coors family (of Coors Brewing Company), the Walton Family Foundation (of Walmart), Richard Mellon Scaife, Art Pope, the Roe Foundation, and the Bradley Foundation.
Stinktanks was written and posted by the Center for Media and Democracy, which also posts about “ALEC Exposed.”
If you want to know who is funding and lobbying for the attacks on public education and on teachers, this is a good place to start.
For more on the “Guardian” exposé, read NPR’s interview of “Guardian” correspondent Edward Pilkington by Terry Gross.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It has been important all along to see that the destruction of public education is one aspect of a much bigger picture. It is this larger, overiding umbrella goal of the termination of the economic and protective gains of the twentieth century for the working class. This climate thrives by pitting public employees against workers in the private sector, choosing a presidential candidate who will polarize and blind an important segment of the population with the color of his skin, and distracting the public’s focus with tangential issues such as abortion, gay rights, mindless celebrity mania, opening stores on major holidays, etc.
Awareness, outrage, and action are the route to combat the takeover of democracy.
Diane, thank you, once again, for spotlighting the bigger picture. It is up to us to take it further.
I’m glad to see you revolutionary, rationalist, atheist Jacobins are putting the cause of international socialist Marxist progressivism ahead of loyalty to even color and Obama. He’s still your best bet to overthrow capitalism and its claimed aristocracy of money. Knit your records of the corrupt aristos until the guillotine can take from them their lives even as they have taken from the deserving working poor their proper wages and thus their lives.
Don’t know if you’ve seen this, Diane. State Senator from Wisconsin on ed reformers defunding public schools and opening privatized schools. She mentions your book:
“Data released by state education officials report almost half of public school districts will see further cuts in state money. The deepest cuts – limited to 15% by law- will go to 64 mostly rural schools. After the 15% cuts are taken out, schools then must pay their share of the independent charter schools in the Milwaukee area. Local school boards tell me this is simply not fair.
The push away from funding local public schools is part of a national effort to privatize public education. This effort is detailed in a new book by Diane Ravitch. She was appointed to public education positions by both President George H.W. Bush and President Clinton and is critical of both President George W. Bush and President Obama.”
I like it because she focuses on the damage ed reformers are doing to existing public schools, because of course ed reform works both ways: they promote charters and private schools, but they also (deliberately) defund and damage existing public schools, even strong schools. I think people in Wisconsin will defend their public schools.
http://legis.wisconsin.gov/senate/vinehout/PressReleases/Pages/Is-Wisconsin-Ready-for-the-Corporate-Reformers-of-Education.aspx
State senator for Wisconsin, and also probable gubernatorial candidate! There’s a fantastic new interview with Sen. Vinehout here:
http://monologuesofdissent.blogspot.com/2013/12/kathleen-vinehout-mod-interview.html
One snippet:
Kathleen Vinehout: So to say, “the schools are broken, we need to privatize them” is to repeat the myth of the other side. To say that “poverty is no excuse” is to repeat the myth of the other side. What we need to do is look at what’s actually happening. There’s no evidence that shows us that these schools do any better at educating the same kid when we control for factors like poverty and special education and other factors. And the research is clear: achievement is related to poverty. And how do we solve the problem of achievement in high impoverished areas? We increase the resources. We lower the student/teacher ratio. We use innovative means in a very hands-on, one-on-one if we have to, to help those children. We know the answers to how to deal with these problems, but we can’t seem to get the will of the legislature in this building to pass the changes to the funding formula that recognize that children in poverty cost more to educate.
Vinehout thinks she has the answer. I don’t presume to know. But she can’t actually “know” that her proposed remedy will have the effect she wants because it has never happened. Has it? Maybe in Geoffrey Canada’s schools. Do his schools vindicate an increased spending model for the most needy in public education? Does someone here, Mercedes perhaps, have a command of the statistics of success of Canada’s schools? The Superman will be Superman after all.
Diane, I would love to get your thoughts on the educational leadership MBA’s with roots at Columbia U.
http://m.jsonline.com/235346581.htm
Best.
Jake Konrath Sheboygan Area School District Coordinator of Assessment 920.207.5307
Thank you Jan Resseger! This really is important because it helps freedom-loving parents, school folk and everyday citizens better understand what we are up against. John King, and his kind across the USA, believe they answer to a higher power. SPN and ALEC are just the tip of the iceberg as public schools are just a small part of their evil agenda.
“evil”? My, my, what an old-fashioned term. What DO “freedom-loving parents” really want? Wouldn’t a completely privatized educational system by definition offer more freedom?
More information on NPR’s Fresh Air and Democracy Now:
How ALEC Serves As A ‘Dating Service’ For Politicians And Corporations
http://tinyurl.com/newtll8
ALEC’s “Institutional Corruption,” From Backing Apartheid to Assault on Clean Energy, Public Sector
http://tinyurl.com/k62kotf
This is a disturbing ” Trigger” for the pups nursed on the Dem/Rep elixar of Democracy.
It has been used often to trigger the default option of the divided, the Left/Right Paradigm.
Dressing Emperor Capital as a Democracy, with two “Choices” of destiny, D or R,
continues to function as intended. Decisions disguised as “Democracy” have provided
“Historic” results in income distribution.
This whole conflict seems to exist because of a MISUNDERSTANDING of FUNCTION,
Social ORDER, NOT Education, is the function.
Robert D. Shepherd
December 10, 2013 at 4:40 pm (North Carolina: Teacher Attrition)
“I am very interested in the question of the impact of education deform on teacher characteristics. This would be a fascinating area of study. In the past, going back forty years or so, in many schools, teachers had a great deal of autonomy with regard to such matters as curricula and pedagogical approaches. Then, regulatory creep set in…”
Going back forty years or so, the Powell Manifesto came into play.
” In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court…
Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.
Most notable about these institutions was their focus on EDUCATION, shifting values, and movement-building.”
Is it possible to be employed by the “State”,
(Ask not what the State can do for you, but what you can do for the State)
WITHOUT serving the “State”, as it has evolved?
The division continued by the L/R Paradigm compliments the notion of Democracy.
That last sentence is intriguing. I’m a little confused by what you mean, even correcting your spelling of the com– word to “complements.” Are you saying that the L/R division in politics is hand in hand with another fiction, namely democracy, but that the whole system is ruled by one corporatist agenda? It seems to me that the other extreme would be phony elections in support of a one party government, as in Leninist USSR. Or are you saying that the same sort of tyranny exists here and now, only the capitalists are all of one party and in control and the working man is on the bottom, whereas in Leninist USSR the capitalist was on the bottom and the government of the working man was on top? Is that the choice you offer? Two tyrannies, differing only in which segment of society is in control, tyranny of the rich (here) vs. tyranny of the worker (USSR)?
If anyone is unfamiliar with the program, may I suggest Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now” program on Linktv and on freespeechtv. She had a segment on ALEC and its kind of connection spoken of here. I find her insight enlightening even though not always agreeing with her views. She as with Diane Ravitch fights the good fight for which we must ALL be grateful. Both bring to light insights and views rarely if ever found in the corporate controlled media.
Agree.
Also available as podcasts on iTunes and on the web : http://www.democracynow.org
Love it….=]
Click on the ‘see if your state is on the list’ link. The grant amounts are paltry and the proposal topics mostly benign. Some down to earth people with no personal agenda need to get control of this country. Unlions, Republicans, Democrats, Bureaucrats, Progressives, Reformers, Lobbyists have all proven useless and greedy. Any right-minded, rational person understands unionizing government employees will lead to nothing but totalitarian one party control just as permitting big business to avoid paying taxes will create a nation of needy–or, has created a nation of needy. Not only do our public schools need some adjusting–as they ARE failing, our medical system is a complete sham with doctors on the back burner subserviant to big insurance companies and bigger pharmaceutical companies, and wages absolutely out of line with increasing costs of necessities like FOOD. Punishing the needy will not bring our nation back to prosperity. Whoever above noted poverty as the problem has pinpointed the cause of the cancer.
What if, Diane, just what if, there are no people without a “personal agenda”? It’s possibly a myth, the disinterested voter. Very Marxist of me, isn’t it? That the very soul of every person IS his social class. I think you are right about unionizing government employees, but that you are not right about undertaking business. Wealth is created by business activity. The more you tax business activity the less of it you will get. The worst kind of taxation is that which occurs in Russia, where companies are simply bought out by the Kremlin oligarchs. In a low tax nation, wealth will be created, and the needy will get more of it by working than by welfare. I’m not sure about the medical system, but I’d love to see us move to medical savings accounts. The only way out of poverty is more jobs. Redistribution won’t do it. Or, at least, that’s my take on it all.
Harlan, I appreciate your point of view and totally agree that ONCE UPON A TIME there existed ‘titans’ in this country who did indeed create wealth for millions upon millions. That day has sadly come to an end. I, like you believed, nearly without reservation in the notion of big business being creators of wealth, but when big business (think GE) pays no taxes at all for years and years, while the iron worker or hotel maid is doing back-breaking work and paying his/her fair share of taxes, lots of questions arise. Around 25 percent of all millionaires pay a lower tax rate than 10.4 million moderate income tax payers (2012 report by the Congressional Research Service).
I’ve read Adam Smith and Toqueville and John Locke and for the most part, sympathize with their points of view. Toqueville, a proponent for liberty was (rightfully) skeptical of democracy (makes me think of the caveat Darius, future King of the Persians offered his fellow generals, according to Herodotus “…Let the enemies of the Persians be ruled by democracies.”. Toqueville goes on to explain how a depraved taste for equality impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level thus reducing men to prefering equality in servitude to inequality in freedom. Now that perfectly explains LBJ’s Great Society. What has happened to America since the mid 1960s is that, instead of bringing those in poverty up, we have brought those upward bound–both financially and socially–down and now experience a quickly disappearing middle class.
Education has not been exempt from this declining trend as we can verify through drop out rates, teen pregnancy, abandonment of morals, and, even yes, national test scores.
Those who have come up with all the cliches (‘1000 points of light’, etc.) as a remedy to improve public education have realistically done nothing but frustrate teachers the nation over and provide no real remedy nor even improvement for increasing student retention, graduation rates, or student achievement.
I agree that corporations should pay their fair share. That they don’t is LEGAL via loopholes lobbied into legislation by their Democrat cronies in the White House. What is necessary is a lower corporate tax rate that is dependable over time so corporations will invest in production and hire.
Oh, wonderful. “Right wing!” As if right wing groups were advocating an obviously wrong social polity. Well, they do challenge the control of progressives over government, although not very effectively recently. More power to the right wing I say, rather than to the left. Let’s not just assume progressivism is valuable and worthwhile for a society. Let’s say WHY.
Absolutely, Harlan. Progressives have been in charge since the mid 1960s –history and language arts texts have been rewritten largely praising those left-leaning leaders and demonizing conservatives. Those of us who have been in the field long enough to observe the changes first hand suspect a deliberate dumbing down for reasons too sinsiter to even consider…
Well, I don’t know about sinister reasons, just completely ignorant and misguided. But I do think that mindlessness in teachers is what is behind the back lash against union teachers. Why the current administration is knifing its own constituents in the back does remain a mystery to me. Of course, it may be that Democrats like money as much as then next fellow, but instead have chosen the government as their way to get it as opposed to the Republican who at least tries to produce something to make their money. What fundamentally galls one is that Democrats and liberals are making their money by lying, as for instance about global warming. I don’t think the left is any less venal than the right in fact, just more hypocritical about it, like the Renaissance Popes.