Changes

This program trains hundreds of conservative activists each year and connects them to other parts of the right-wing infrastructure for changing American law and society that the Kochs have helped build. Together with its ties to ALEC, the Heritage Foundation, and major right-wing funders like the Bradley Foundation, SPN's alliances and "troublemaking" activities enable it to be a major force for privatization and pro-corporate ideology in all 50 states.

Susan Goldwater, daughter of Barry Goldwater, the namesake of Arizona’s Goldwater Institute, called the institute “a special-interest, big-business lobbying group.”<ref>Tony Ortega, [http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1999-05-13/news/think-tank-warfare/ Think Tank Warfare], ''Phoenix New Times'', May 13, 1999.</ref> As of 2013, according to a report on the institute, “Goldwater has one registered lobbyist, its Executive Vice President Starlee Rhoades, and although senior staffer Nick Dranias is not registered as a lobbyist, many of his communications would strike a layperson as lobbying, but Arizona law has loopholes for providing ‘technical’ advice about legislation defining that not as lobbying. . . . Despite a steady stream of communication with Arizona state legislators about bills, referenced by number or popular name, that it wants to become law, the Goldwater Institute told the IRS that it spent only $184 on grassroots lobbying and $17,445 on direct lobbying, for a total of $17,669 in lobbying expenses in 2011, well below the permissible ceiling for such expenses as a 501(c)(3).”<ref>Center for Media and Democracy and Arizona Working Families, [http://www.prwatch.org/files/Report_on_the_Goldwater_Institute_final.pdf A Reporter’s Guide to the Goldwater Institute: What Citizens, Policymakers, and Reporters Should Know], organizational report, March 14, 2013.</ref>