The Guardian has published an in depth report on the activities of a well funded organization that calls itself the State Policy Network.
State conservative groups plan US-wide assault on education, health and tax
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 trust, founded in 1998, draws on the family fortune of the late Dan Searle of the GD Searle & Company empire – now part of Pfizer – which created NutraSweet. The trust 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.
While none of these ideas are radically worse than what has been going on for a long time, it is very useful to have the comprehensive nature of the assault exposed in such great detail. This is part of the trend that has been underway for a generation. It doesn't come from just radical fringe groups. It is funded and supported by the people who control the levers of wealth and power in this country.
Most of the focus has been on the highly visible activities of the Tea Party and the Koch brothers funding them. The reality is much more pervasive and comprehensive. These type of neoliberal and libertarian foundations and think tanks have been in operation for a very long time. They have slowly and successfully moved their agenda forward since the 1970s. Nothing what so ever has happened to reverse its progress. The recent open activities by the Third Way foundation makes it clear that it has become a bipartisan movement.