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Even if you live in the most liberal blue state, you should be aware you have a Heritage Foundation affiliate pushing their policies at your state level. (toad.social)

submitted 1 week ago by AcidicBasicGlitch@lemm.ee to c/usauthoritarianism@lemmy.world

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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/59677728

The State Policy Network (SPN) is a network of conservative and "libertarian" think tanks hiding behind claims of transparency and small government while all promoting the same White House policies across all 50 states.

I won't link it here, but they are very easy to find. To find out who is pushing these policies in your state, you can go to their homepage and scroll down to their convenient drop down list to search for members by each state.

If you want to avoid going to their website, there's a good chance you can just find one near you by typing the name of your state + "policy institute" in a search engine.

These people are really not the most creative and the names and logos used by these network affiliates are nearly identical across several states.

As of March 2025, most are pushing the same copy paste messages, praising Musk and DOGE for doing such a great job cutting through ::insert:: "red tape" "bureaucracy" and/or "government bloat."

While SPN has tried to downplay their connection to the Heritage Foundation in recent years, an archived copy of their 2015 history page provides a much more transparent and direct account.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150626172710/http://www.spn.org/about/

SPN's founder, South Carolina businessman Thomas Roe, was an early funder of the Heritage Foundation and served on the board of trustees for two decades.

Here is a 2011 article discussing Roe, SPN's "freedom centers" across all 50 states, and the Union busting tactics they were pushing at a state level even back then.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/state-policy-network-union-bargaining/

Although for some reason SPN's website does not mention this information in the dedicated section to their late founder, you can read more about the insane number of controversies tied to Roe and his shadowy money here: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roe_Foundation

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[–] verdantbanana@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Democrats are not saving us and time to bury the dead horse

Both parties have been bought and paid for but not by the citizens

[–] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Worse, most of the democrats pretending to be against it actually support most of the policies.

It’s not incompetence. It’s complicity.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council

[–] AcidicBasicGlitch@lemm.ee 7 points 1 week ago

Yep, that is their schtick. The level of shadowy corporate money involved in this giant network hiding behind a facade of small government is insane. These are the people buying America and funding a war against democracy.

They have infiltrated at every state to push policy that promotes their own self interest, and to create their own corporate government all while screaming "I <3 transparency and small government!" at the top of their lungs.

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=State_Policy_Network

SPN groups operate as the policy, communications, and litigation arm of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), giving the cookie-cutter ALEC agenda a sheen of academic legitimacy and state-based support.

Many SPN groups are and often write ALEC "model bills."

In the states, SPN groups increasingly peddle cookie-cutter "studies" to back the cookie-cutter ALEC agenda, spinning that agenda as indigenous to the state and giving it the aura of academic legitimacy. Many SPN groups, such as the Mackinac Center in Michigan, have been accused of lobbying in their states, in violation of IRS rules for non-profit "charitable" organizations.

Some SPN groups, like the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, also contain litigation centers funded by national foundations to defend or pursue the SPN/ALEC agenda.

SPN shares many of same sources of funding as ALEC, including Koch institutions.

The Kochs' Americans for Prosperity provides the "grassroots" boots on the ground for this agenda.

Although many SPN groups claim to be independent and non-partisan, they promote a policy agenda -- including union-busting, attacks on the tort bar, and voter suppression -- that is highly-partisan and electoral in nature. SPN President Tracie Sharp told the Wall Street Journal that she had always felt Wisconsin and Michigan were only "thinly blue," and that the GOP has been put on better footing by the unions' slide. "When you chip away at one of the power sources that also does a lot of get-out-the-vote," she says, "I think that helps -- for sure."[4]