Ah, the Ethan Allen Institute: stout defender against the onslaught of statist secular Satanic Soviet-style scams, scemes, subterfuges, and swindles. (I got a Thesaurus, yes I do.) Named in honor of the homegrown Vermont patriot, who rallied the Green Mountain Boys to drive New York carpetbaggers from our land. And, er, protect his own extensive land holdings, but let us not quibble.

The Institute that bears his name, and proudly carries the banner of Vermont independence and self-reliance, is a true homegrown success story.

Well, maybe not so much.

The Ethan Allen Institute, you see, is an affiliate of the State Policy Network, a web of state “think tanks” pushing identical far-right legislative agendas. All the SPN affiliates, including EAI, draw substantial funding from wealthy free-marketeers like the Koch Brothers. Given those facts, it’s fair to question whether EAI is pursuing a Vermont-centered agenda, or echoing the favored policies of its out-of-state paymasters. The New Yorker:

According to a new investigative report by the Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal watchdog group, the think tanks are less free actors than a coördinated collection of corporate front groups-branch stores, so to speak-funded and steered by cash from undisclosed conservative and corporate players.

SPN President Tracie Sharp insists that its member nonprofits are “fiercely independent,” but The New Yorker reports otherwise, based on notes from Sharp’s presentation to the SPN annual meeting in September:

Sharp explained what she called The IKEA Model. She said that it starts with what she described as a “catalogue” showing “what success would look like.” Instead of pictures of furniture arranged in rooms, she said, S.P.N.’s catalogue displays visions of state policy projects that align with the group’s agenda. That agenda includes opposing President Obama’s health-care program and climate-change regulations, reducing union protections and minimum wages, cutting taxes and business regulations, tightening voting restrictions, and privatizing education. “The success we show is you guys,” she told the assembled state members. “Here’s how we win in your state.”

She continued that, as with IKEA, the SPN would provide “the raw materials” and “services,” and each state institution would choose the items it wants. Which doesn’t seem to leave much room for deviation from the SPN platform.

She also acknowledged that SPN’s agenda is shaped by its (often anonymous) donors:

“The grants are driven by donor intent,” she told the gathered think-tank heads. She added that, often, “the donors have a very specific idea of what they want to happen.”

Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy on Sharp’s claims of independence:

“…in practical terms, the Center for Media and Democracy has documented how these groups have promoted … carbon-copy claims, identical language, and distorted statistics, differing only through the state label placed at the top of a particular report.” Far from being independent, “they are intensely subservient to the wishes of the most powerful few.”

And when you look at EAI’s agenda, as described by CMD, its cookie-cutter nature is abundantly clear: Privatization of public schools, climate change denialism, cutting corporate taxes and regulations, cutting public spending, opposing minimum wage laws, opposing health care reform. These are the issues, as CMD reports, that SPN affiliates are trumpeting nationwide.

Now, that might just be coincidence, or the confluence of like-minded people. But when you look at the money trail, the truth becomes clear: the Ethan Allen Institute gets a whole lot of money from the people and foundations behind SPN. If it depended solely on the charity of Vermonters, it would be a much smaller organization — if it existed at all.

The money trail isn’t easy to follow, and the figures are incomplete because nonprofits have very lax reporting requirements. But CMD has uncovered some telling numbers:

EAI’s total budget varies quite a bit, but it’s usually in the range of $170,000 to $250,000 a year. So when Donors Capital Fund kicks in $50,000 (as it did in 2010) or $63,400 (as it did in 2009) or when the South Carolina-based Roe Foundation  (founded by Thomas Roe, who was the founding chairman of SPN) kicks in 10 grand each and every year, it’s obvious that they have a lot of pull with EAI.

Donors Capital Fund, by the way, is basically a money-laundering outfit for wealthy conservative donors who don’t want to be publicly associated with their causes. According to the Bridge Project, a watchdog group that reports on right-wing political activity, Donors Capital Fund “is a philanthropic organization whose primary purpose is to protect the anonymity of its members.” Among DCF’s chief beneficiaries: the climate-denialist Heartland Institute, the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity Foundation, and the Federalist Society, a far-right law organization. And DCF provides the lion’s share of the State Policy Network’s funding.

This is the company that the Ethan Allen Institute is choosing to keep. Well, considering its bottom line, perhaps it has no real choice. But don’t think for a minute that EAI really has anything to do with, or any interest in, Vermont-specific issues or policies.

If so, then why would EAI draw such huge donations from all over America? Why would nonprofits based in Virginia, South Carolina, and California (The Jaquelin Hume Foundation) write four-, five- and even six-figure checks to a Vermont nonprofit?  

We don’t know exactly how much money EAI gets from out-of-state groups, because it doesn’t have to report donations in any detail. (It could, in the spirit of transparency, release the information on its own. I’m not holding my breath.) But from what we do know, EAI is pretty much a puppet organization, beholden to wealthy donors in other states. “He who pays the piper,” you know.

Which, it seems to me, is kinda-sorta exactly the opposite of Ethan Allen’s legacy, isn’t it?