Discussion: Koch Foundation Dramatically Increases Higher Ed Donations Amid Scrutiny

After all, the New World Order ain’t gonna pay for itself.

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Exposing a variation of “the world’s oldest profession.”

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From time to time I think to myself : “What if I had unlimited funds? What would I do?”
and even in my innermost id self, I know I wouldn’t be using it to make millions of people’s lives worse and more oppressive. What kind of human are you that wishes to destroy the Earth after you’re dead?

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How effing stupid do you have to be to think that not even letting someone take written notes is going to satisfy any demands for transparency.

And how self-unaware do you have to be to think that one big grant with “no strings attached” isn’t going to have any effect on how you behave when you know that you’ll need another fix in a couple years? The first hit is always free.

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The term “philanthropist” should not be applied to the Koch Brothers, and the many others like them, who purchase influence with these infusions of funds.

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After numerous articles questioning the deals in the student newspaper, the school and the Koch Foundation agreed this week to let an editor at the student paper, The Panther, see the donor agreement and ask questions about it, but the editor will not be allowed to take written notes about the agreement’s provisions or take any pictures or make copies of it.

Okay. So the president of Chapman University, who’s been suckling from the Koch teat for years and has seen upChuck’s donations suddenly skyrocket from $225,000 to $5 million, has adopted a glasnost policy. This newfound openness, in the interest of transparency, however, will come with serious limitations. But of course.

Here’s hoping the The Panther’s editor, Jamie Altman, has a photographic memory, a background in business, non-profit and foundation law, with a solid background in grant agreements, and is smarter than Koch’s legions of high-priced, white shoe lawyers.

Good luck with that.

I wonder if Daniele Struppa will agree to let the Los Angeles Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning business columnist Michael Hiltzik tag along? You know, in the spirit of glasnost.

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They’re now combining perversion of academic studies (amazing how large, delectable flows of dark money can take a Stephen Moore or a Jonathan Turley or a Frank Luntz and transform him into a True Believer in Charles Koch’s weird synthesis of Birchism and Ayn Randism) with the active recruitment of young reactionaries on the nation’s campuses—making it “cool” and “free speechy” to go all Milo, to reject earnest feminists and annoying people of color and affirm the all around John Galt goodness of being white and male and, by gum, unapologetic for being white and male.

Koch has bought the entire federal government. He owns the Supreme Court majority, the Congressional majority, the Vice President, and most of the current administration’s Cabinet, along with key people at the corporate news networks and the New York Times.

He’s a very, very powerful man. For all intents and purposes, he is America’s Supreme Leader. The greatest menace to his power is the next generation.

This flow of money into the nation’s campuses is designed to do the same thing it has done to the nation’s legislatures, courts, and news outlets. And unless people fight back really, really hard, it won’t be money wasted. He (and the massive apparatus that will continue even after this vicious old trust fund brat is dead and gone) will buy the young the same way he’s bought everything else.

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Doesn’t have the guts to start his own university; instead, feels the need to piggyback off the pre-existing reputations of schools that before his meddling likely had positive reputations for integrity of their work.

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Koch is smart to spread the manure around instead leaving it in one stinking heap. By getting at least one purveyor Koch Krap in each institution then it can spread more easily.

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Hearts and minds,
hearts and minds.

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Propaganda fed through the spoon of a school is the quickest and surest
route towards societal indoctrination …

Philanthropy my ass … The Cocks are businessmen ----

They want a ’ return ’ … on investment ! —

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“Saint Charles Borromeo was born on October 2, 1538 at the castle of Arona on Lake Maggiore near Milan. His father was the Count of Arona and his mother a member of the House of Medici. He was the third of six children born to the couple.”

Saint Charles of Kansas was born on Nov 01, 1935 at the Koch castle in Wichita, KS not far from the Westboro Baptist Church. His father, Fred Chase Koch,"… was an American chemical engineer and entrepreneur who founded the oil refinery firm that later became Koch Industries, a privately held company which, under the principal ownership and leadership of Koch’s sons, Charles and David, is listed by Forbes, as of 2015, as the second-largest privately held company in the United States."

Father Fred has father’s a “history about helping Soviet dictator Josef Stalin build refineries and then preaching anti-communism in the U.S. once his fortune was made.” Also, “Fred Koch, who had busied himself in Hitler‘s Germany, apparently found much to praise in the economies of the Axis powers, while denigrating the work ethic of his fellow Americans and the Democratic legislation responding to the extreme hunger and poverty millions of Americans were facing as a result of the Great Depression.”

Like all inheritor oligarchic billionaires of Trump’s ilk, Fred was a ‘killer’ when it came to business deals. And, Charles and David …like father like son(s).

Can’t buy me love, love
Can’t buy me love

I’ll buy you a diamond ring my friend
If it makes you feel all right
I’ll get you anything my friend
If it makes you feel all right
Cause I don’t care too much for money
For money can’t buy me love.

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This is just another prong in the multiprong attack on academe by the John Birchian right wing that the Kochs exemplify and lead. At the same time they use all their resources to discredit scientific findings inconvenient to their ideology, they use their wealth to drain resources away from universities so that they need to come to foundations like Koch for funding. Koch then uses their pocketbook to bias the research and the hiring. It’s despicable.

Oh, and sometimes their perfect plans backfire:

The verdict is in: Global warming is real and greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity are the main cause.

This, according to Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkely, a MacArthur fellow and co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.

…Muller is a long-standing, colorful critic of prevailing climate science, and the Berkeley project was heavily funded by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation…

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http://www.unkochmycampus.org/

Well. Got this link when Jane Mayer (the New Yorker journalist) spoke at the University of Texas business school. Not all the faculty there are happy about the new Koch-funded institute there.

Check your alma maters, everyone.

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And not surprisingly, most folks on TPM actually have alma maters, beyond Central High School…

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Friggin Kochs are so damn strategic on how they dole out their money. Even NPR regularly issues disclosures that they are recipients. Ugh.

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Basically the Koch model in many places is to fund some sort of “Enterprise center” with major strings attached, like control of the faculty and content taught. Students don’t necessarily see that they are paying for the privilege of taking classes that are bought and paid for already, designed to indoctrinate them, not teach them. The Koch name is often kept buried pretty deep, since that’s part of the scam to make it look like a normal part of the university.

It’s hard for schools to turn down free money.