I saw someone on Mastodon mentioning Musk and the Wisconsin election and decided to do a quick dive into Wisconsin government to get things started.
Anyone from Wisconsin (or anywhere) that sees this please feel free to take the wheel and pick up where I leave off, or go somewhere else completely. The point of this is just to give you an example of how easy it is to find the corruption links in the massive SPN network.
So starting from scratch and knowing nothing about Wisconsin politics:
Wisconsin here's your SPN (and totally not the Heritage Foundation 😉) small government loving affiliate:
I have to admit they seem to have their shit much more together than the majority of these places:
https://will-law.org/will-unveils-open-records-guide-to-promote-transparent-government/
Transparency is apparently very important to them, but not a whole lot of DOGE talk like most affiliates.
Oh wait, nvm, apparently Wisconsin's DOGE goes by GOAT, Government Operations, Accountability and Transparency, how cute goat 🐐
https://www.wpr.org/news/wisconsins-version-of-doge-called-goat-getting-started
From these two articles I learned:
Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos created GOAT.
The committee chair is Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie. The co-char is Rep. Shae Sortwell, R-Two Rivers.
Also on the committee: Rep. Tyler August, R-Walworth; Rep. Nate Gustafson, R-Fox Crossing; Rep. David Steffen, R-Howard; Rep. Dan Knodl, R-Germantown; Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, and Rep. Angelina Cruz, D-Racine.
I started searching around for any of those member's names on WILLs website and on the first try, I found Amanda Nedweski mentioned in an article talking about how much she liked some education research WILL did in 2021.
The "research" these institutes do is usually how they justify the money SPN throws at them, so this is also usually a good place to find corruption if you're wondering where you should start.
(Side note:I included this information in another post, but this is a really great resource to get a quick overview of SPN shady nonsense. From the SPN source watch page: 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.
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.)
So anyway, back to Wisconsin, WILL's research director is William Flanders. Looking at his LinkedIn it looks like 4 weeks ago he helped present some data about why Medicaid expansion is wrong for the state. Not surprising, this is sounding very typical for an SPN affiliate.
Presenting that data with Flanders was Robin Vos, creator of GOAT as well as Senate President Mary Felzkowski.
A quick search of Mary Felzkowski shows she's a member of Alec 🚨🚨🚨
Specifically, she's an Alec Health and Human Services Taskforce chair, so her involvement with this SPN affiliate peddling "research" about why Medicaid expansion is bad for everyone in Wisconsin checks out 100%
https://alec.org/person/mary-felzkowski/
If I were any Wisconsin citizen looking for low hanging fruit in order to expose some corruption and point out hypocrisy (and probably more direct ties to the Heritage Foundation and big corporations) in government officials promoting "accountability and transparency" I would say this is a great place to start. And that's coming from somebody who has never been to Wisconsin or heard of any of these people before making this post.
Imagine what Wisconsin citizens with insider knowledge can dig up in no time.