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Forum Post: The SPN and the Mackinac Center

Posted 10 years ago on Nov. 14, 2013, 12:27 p.m. EST by shoozTroll (17632)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

The SPN just doesn't get enough press these days. What with ties to ALEC and the myriad Koch think tank concerns, it should, so here's what went on in Michigan's Mackinac Center.

"The Center for Media and Democracy and Progress Now have set up a new website called “StinkTanks.org” where you can follow the money to get a fuller understanding of just how powerful corporations have become in setting policy and passing laws to benefit their profit taking.

Here are some highlights:

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, the e-cigarette company NJOY, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, Facebook, the for-profit online education company K12 Inc., 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 — who are underwriting an extreme legislative agenda that undermines the traditional rights of modern Americans. Although SPN’s affiliates 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 regulations on nonprofit political and lobbying activities. 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 and many of its affiliates are some of the most active members and largest sponsors of the controversial 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."

http://www.eclectablog.com/2013/11/new-reports-show-power-of-corporatist-groups-like-mackinac-center-to-implement-statewide-policieslaws-benefiting-corporations.html

Good old ALEC.

Destroying Democracy, one State at a time.

8 Comments

8 Comments


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[-] 1 points by GirlFriday (17435) 10 years ago

It is way past time to bring that house down.

[-] 0 points by shoozTroll (17632) 10 years ago

Watch 'em squirm.

"You can always tell with the powerful corporatist groups around the country are feeling nervous about the light that’s being shone on them: they fire up the well-known conservative echo chamber to create a story out something that is basically a non-story. The most recent and, I must say, comical, example of this is an attempt by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy to discredit an entire 17-page report about their connections to corporate funding, the Koch brothers, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) because an initial version of the report lacked citations to four sentences from a piece by Andrew Kroll of Mother Jones. Progress Michigan quickly corrected their error but the right-wing blogosphere wants you to ignore the substance of the well-researched report anyway. (I first wrote about this report and another national report by Progress Now and the Center for Media and Democracy HERE.)

Mackinac Center works regularly with a variety of online “news” sites like The Daily Caller. For example, when they were trying to exploit Michigan Teacher of the Year Gary Abud, Jr. as a pawn to promote a teacher pay bill he doesn’t support, it was The Daily Caller they ran to to push the story out to the conservative blogosphere.

Although it was corrected with the correction noted on the front page of the report, the initial report lacked proper citation to Kroll’s original work. That was enough, apparently, for the Mackinac Center to hang its hat on and get their corporatist water-carriers in the conservative blogosphere to fire up the echo chamber with shouts of “PLAGIARIASM!!!”."

http://www.eclectablog.com/2013/11/unable-to-deny-koch-brothersalec-connections-mackinac-center-turns-to-laughable-plagiarism-charges.html

Don't you know?

They're a nonprofit, nonpartisan, charity, fully controlled and funded by the "right wing" and we all know how honest and forthright they are..

[-] 0 points by shoozTroll (17632) 10 years ago

Some "charity", eh?

[-] 0 points by GirlFriday (17435) 10 years ago

Yeah. Gee, we should plant a garden.

[-] 0 points by shoozTroll (17632) 10 years ago

I tried.

It froze. I guess I won't be joining the Grange.

This kind of thing gets ignored, as it just doesn't fit in the current hard push of the duopoly paradigm.

long ago, I asked that someone show anything even remotely similar on the other "side".

No one could find such a thing, but that reality never entered their thinking.

[-] 1 points by GirlFriday (17435) 10 years ago

I think it has. I think they are paid to deny.

[-] 0 points by shoozTroll (17632) 10 years ago

They've certainly ignored the FACTS of ongoing court stacking in Michigan.

Denial works best after the fact?

[-] 0 points by GirlFriday (17435) 10 years ago

It must.