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Koch Brothers

Brown University Faculty Reject Push For Koch-Funded Scholarship

February 19, 2022 Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams. , , ,
More than 60% of Brown University faculty members voted Tuesday to postpone a vote on the creation of a new academic center until next month, giving professors more time to assess whether administrators have adequately strengthened the institution's gift policy to ensure that wealthy right-wing donors are not bankrolling science-denying, corporate-friendly research. The proposed Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) would absorb and expand programs from the Political Theory Project (PTP), which has received funding from the Koch Foundation led by fossil fuel billionaire and GOP mega-donor Charles Koch, The Brown Daily Herald reported this week. Students Against Koch Influence (SAKI)—a campus group that has been organizing opposition to the proposed PPE Center—acknowledged that "more work is to come in writing and codifying the new policy" but celebrated the delay as "a huge first step."

A Stain On The George Washington University Name

November 22, 2021 Unkoch My Campus. , , ,
Our newest report, “The Regulatory Studies Center: A Stain on the George Washington University Name,” delves into the Koch and ExxonMobil funded RSC, which has repeatedly acted as a front for fossil fuel interests with a history of using GW’s name to provide credibility to climate deniers, fossil fuel cronies, and other discredited backers of pseudoscience. The report, written by UnKoch My Campus Student Organizer and GW student Jake Lowe, highlights a number of instances of climate disinformation and details how the RSC has played a role in promoting a deregulation agenda that benefits its donors. 

Report On Koch Network Infiltration Of Public Schools

August 12, 2021 Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams. , ,
A new report published Wednesday reveals how the Koch network—a shadowy group of wealthy capitalists acting to push the U.S. in a more conservative direction—is methodically working to undermine and privatize public education for financial gain. The report (pdf), entitled The Koch Network and the Capture of K-12 Education, was compiled by the advocacy groups UnKoch My Campus and Save Our Schools Arizona (SOSAZ) and examines tactics employed by the plutocrats' cabal—which is led by billionaire Charles Koch, and whose members pay at least $100,000 per year—"to destabilize and abolish public education." "In order to influence K-12 public education, the Koch network has financed local, state, and national mechanisms to create multiple crises, only to turn around and cite these same crises as reasons to adopt their free market solutions," according to UnKoch My Campus.

Don’t Open The Door Further To Dark Money

May 1, 2021 Lisa Graves, The Progressive. , , ,
On April 26, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could unmoor decades of transparency laws, even as dark money spending by special interests continues to rise.  The court’s new majority is being asked by billionaire Charles Koch’s nonprofits to expand on the notion that “money is speech” by ruling that the First Amendment bars disclosure laws that may chill large donors from giving more money to nonprofits. On the surface, the case, known as Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, is about whether a state can require a nonprofit group to reveal a list of its donors who give $5,000 or more. That data is not public, but a glitch in California’s electronic filing system inadvertently made it searchable to other filers for a short period, which Koch’s Americans for Prosperity Foundation discovered. 

Koch Academic Influence Returns To Massachusetts With New Tufts University Think Tank

August 25, 2020 By Dana Drugmand, DeSmog Blog. , , ,
When a new Massachusetts think tank housed at Tufts University launched earlier this year, Boston-based media described it as a “CBO-like center” (referring to the Congressional Budget Office) that would offer an “independent analysis” of proposed state policy and legislation. But one of the main funders of this think tank, called the Center for State Policy Analysis, is a program tied financially to the petrochemical billionaire Koch family. This apparent Koch-linked funding raises questions about just how independent the center’s policy analyses may be. Initial funding for this think tank, as CommonWealth reported, has come from one of the state’s largest private health insurance companies and from a program called Emergent Ventures, which is based at the Koch-funded Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

As Charles Koch Cultivates Anti-War Image, Koch Industries Profits From Defense Contracts

July 30, 2019 Alex Kotch, Readsludge.com   , , ,
The right-wing billionaire has teamed up with unlikely ally George Soros on “military restraint,” but Koch Industries subsidiaries make millions by supplying the Navy with circuitry. Libertarian billionaire industrialist Charles Koch has gone to great lengths to paint himself as an anti-interventionist. He has funded foreign policy-focused think tanks and university centers such as the conflict-averse Center for the Study of Statesmanship at Catholic University and the Notre Dame International Security Center, which is directed by anti-NATO professor Michael Desch.

What’s Wrong With Secret Donor Agreements…

May 27, 2018 Alexa Capeloto, The Conversation. , ,
Arlington, VA - George Mason University President Ángel Cabrera acknowledged this month that his school gave the Charles Koch Foundation “some influence” over hiring and evaluating faculty as it accepted millions of dollars for its free-market research center, the Mercatus Center. This news rankled the academic world, but it perhaps didn’t come as a surprise. Many scholars saw this as just the latest revelation of strings-attached giving with an ideological slant – another encroachment on the sacrosanct idea that teaching and research at universities, especially public ones like George Mason, must be immune from outside influence.

Kochs Bankroll Move To Rewrite The Constitution

March 27, 2017 Staff, www.exposedbycmd.org , ,
By Staff of Exposed for CMD - A constitutional convention, something thought impossible not long ago, is looking increasingly likely. Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, if 34 state legislatures “issue a call” for a constitutional convention, Congress must convene one. By some counts, the right-wing only needs six more states. Once called, delegates can propose and vote on changes and new amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which, if approved, are currently required to be ratified by 38 states. There are two major legislative pushes for a convention at the state level. One would attempt to engineer a convention for a balanced budget amendment only...

Trump Pushing Koch Industries’ Bill To Hobble Regulatory Agencies

January 6, 2017 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com , , ,
By Steve Horn for Desmog Blog - The OMB pointed toward the myriad existing safeguards that already ensure regulatory agency accountability, including the federal court system, the fact that many regulatory proposals actually stem from laws passed by Congress, and the requirement for robust public commenting periods. “This radical departure from the longstanding separation of powers between the Executive and Legislative branches would delay and, in many cases, thwart implementation of statutory mandates and execution of duly-enacted laws, create business uncertainty, undermine much-needed protections of the American public, and cause unnecessary confusion,” OMB wrote in July 2015.

Trump Team From An Opaque Corporate Misinformation Network

December 4, 2016 George Monbiot,, www.theguardian.com , , , ,
By George Monbiot for the Guardian. I could fill this newspaper with the names of Trump staffers who have emerged from such groups: people such as Doug Domenech, from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, funded among others by the Koch brothers, Exxon and the Donors Trust; Barry Bennett, whose Alliance for America’s Future (now called One Nation) refused to disclose its donors when challenged; and Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, funded by Exxon and others. This is to say nothing of Trump’s own crashing conflicts of interest. Trump promised to “drain the swamp” of the lobbyists and corporate stooges working in Washington. But it looks as if the only swamps he’ll drain will be real ones, as his team launches its war on the natural world.

Understanding Self-Hatred In World Affairs

March 19, 2016 Robert J. Burrowes, www.PopularResistance.org , ,
By Robert J. Burrowes for Popular Resistance. If you have ever wondered why the global elite hoards their wealth instead of using it to help break down the violence and injustice in our world, I would like to suggest an answer to your question: self-hatred. The explanation for violent and exploitative behaviors always includes self-hatred. Let me explain why. Conscious self-hatred is an intensely unpleasant feeling to experience and, consequently, people who feel self-hatred learn to fearfully and deeply suppress their awareness of it when they are very young. Having learned to do this, subsequent opportunities for this self-hatred to be felt are progressively more easily suppressed. No feeling can be suppressed out of existence: instead, it is unconsciously projected elsewhere and generates destructive behavior. So the unconscious terror and self-hatred of the Koch brothers are projected as fear of and hatred for other living beings as well as the Earth, and manifests as behavior that is destructive (of themselves, others and the planet).

Climate Activist Gets Scott Walker To Pose With Koch Bros Check

August 4, 2015 Sophia Tesfaye, www.salon.com , ,
By Sophia Tesfaye for Salon - It was supposed to be a routine meet-and-greet at a local New Hampshire pizza parlor, but today’s campaign stop turned into a “Punk’d” episode for Republican presidential candidate, Scott Walker, after he was tricked into posing with a phony check from the Koch Brothers made out to him in the amount of $900,000. According to The Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui, who shared an image of Walker posing with the prop check, Walker appeared to believe he was posting with a sign that read “Walker 4 President” before the sign was turned to the cameras to expose its true sentimentsAccording to The Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui, who shared an image of Walker posing with the prop check, Walker appeared to believe he was posting with a sign that read “Walker 4 President” before the sign was turned to the cameras to expose its true sentiments

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