The Money Behind Free-Market Policies for Pension Reform Bills, Privatization, Charter Schools…

Following the Donors Trust Money Trail

Money Flowing In: Foundations

Donors Trust has injected nearly $400 million into free-market causes, thanks in large part to contributions by dozens of private foundations run by wealthy executives or their families. These foundations have often sought anonymity by passing their grants through Donors Trust, but a Center for Public Integrity review of IRS records reveals some of the largest backers of Donors Trust in recent years:

Charles G. Koch Foundation, Empower Texans Foundation, Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, Farmer Family Foundation, Donald and Paula Smith Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, Randolph Foundation, The GFC Foundation, Jaquelin Hume Foundation, William E. Simon Foundation, Ruth and Lovett Peters Foundation, William Donner Foundation, Castle Rock / Adolph Coors Foundation, Rose Marie and Jack R. Anderson Foundation, Earhart Foundation, Joe and Mary Moeller Foundation, John William Pope Foundation, Anschutz Foundation, Paul Singer Family Foundation…

Money Flowing Out: Think Tanks

Donors Trust has given grants to three national organizations that coordinate free-market policy and media efforts in the states: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the State Policy Network (SPN), and the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity (FCGPI). In addition to these umbrella organizations, Donors Trust has directly funded at least 51 state-based think tanks in nearly every state since 2007:

Illinois Policy Institute, Heartland Institute, Manhattan Institute, Knowledge and Progress Fund, Lucy Burns Institute, Independence Institute, Cascade Policy Institute, Searle Freedom Trust, Mackinac Center, South Carolina Policy Council, Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, JM Kaplan Fund, Philanthropy Roundtable…

The above information is from Donors use charity to push free-market policies in states.

The free-market theory caters to self-interested desires and profit to the detriment of other peoples’ lives, all the while promising “freedom and prosperity.” Free market principles advocate that the rich and poor should be taxed at the same flat rate, despite creating a vast inequity; that, for example, education, health care, retirement pensions, national parks (and most any function intrinsic to essential governing) become privatized; that publicly-owned companies, services and their assets be auctioned off to private investors; and that besides allocating vast amounts of wealth and resources from public to private ownership, in the free market the transfer of private debts to the public sector while public ownership is systematically dismantled ironically continue…

from Global Free Market: A Perspective and Admonition

The history of our State has been one of excessive greed and shameless hypocrisy, of corruption and oppression, of extortion and domination, of exploitation and deception, of selfishness and subjugation, of poverty and unemployment and inequitable taxation, of protection for the wealthy and their powerful interests, of exorbitant wealth for the few and scarcity of wealth for the many...

from Illinois May Be Broken but Not the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago

What are we going to do about a “rigged system” where the Civic Committee's “We Mean Business” signifies destroying public pension systems, where “shared sacrifice” exempts the wealthy from their so-called proposed “reforms” and eliminates taxation of their corporations, where their money precludes changes to a corrupt political system, where the rising inequalities that continue to exist in Illinois are funded by these powerful and wealthy interests’ groups, where the legislators’ self-serving flat-tax rate that they refuse to transform proffers unequal opportunities and quantifiable payoffs for our state’s largest corporations and their executives, and ensures benefaction for the re-election campaigns of Illinois politicians…?

from Illinois or Should It Be Called Plutocraticstan?