TBTimes Robyn Blumner great column...Koch Bros and Florida State University. Buying influence.

[madfloridian]

In 2011 one of my favorite columnists wrote a strongly worded column about the influence the Koch Brothers were buying at Florida State University. She spared no words about the Kochs, and she blasted the Tea Party.

Koch brothers wage a war on Americans

I imagine the tycoons Charles and David Koch must have a war room, or more precisely a “war on liberal ideas” room, where plans are laid for well-funded assaults on progressives. Their targets are easy to guess: Democrats, unions, public school teachers, trial lawyers, environmentalists, the judiciary and academia. Like some deranged game of Risk, the brothers strategically deploy their riches to destroy, marginalize, subvert or infiltrate each of these constituent groups, with the result being that poorly funded progressives are overrun as easily as Poland.

The latest bombshell is from St. Petersburg Times writer Kris Hundley, who exposed a 2008 agreement between the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and Florida State University for $1.5 million. The money was to fund faculty positions in a new program promoting “political economy and free enterprise.” It came with the unconscionable condition that the foundation’s handpicked advisory committee hold veto power during the hiring process.

Disgraceful, yes, but this is just the newest revelation in what has been a well-reported mission by the Koch brothers to use their vast wealth, estimated at $22 billion each, to alter America’s thinking and turn average people against every government program that makes their lives better and more secure.

If you’re reading “Tea Party” here, you’ve got that right — call them the Kochs’ boots on the ground. But the Koch brothers know that they can’t rely solely on America’s angry, gullible know-nothings to change the national direction. Their ultra-conservatism needs a veneer of intellectual credibility, which is why for decades the brothers have lavished resources on a host of think tanks and academic institutions that are willing to make a case for anything a billionaire without a conscience would want.

I was so glad to see that Rachel Maddow recently reminded us of how the Koch Brothers gained influence over hiring and firing in the economics department at Florida State University in Tallahassee. It's a been a couple of years since I have heard it mentioned.

Charles Koch buying sway over university hires is ‘objectively insane’

“Forget naming rights to the stadium, or whatever,” Maddow said, explaining that Koch “purchased hiring rights for the faculty at Florida State’s economics department. And yes, Florida State has the word ‘state’ in it because it is a public university, and yes, it is objectively insane that the state of Florida allowed that to happen.”

As the Tampa Bay Times reported in 2011, a foundation funded by Koch gave $1.5 million to the school’s economics department in 2008, in exchange for Koch having the power to select members of an “advisory committee” that screens prospective new hires. A year later, Koch reportedly rejected 60 percent of job candidates suggested by FSU faculty.

“You can see why Mr. Koch would want to do that sort of thing, if he could find a state crazy enough to let him do it,” Maddow said. “I mean, $1.5 million is nothing to him. He loses that into a hankerchief when he sneezes. But for that pittance, he gets to make sure his conservative billionaire economic ideas get taught and published and propagated under the brand name of something that is supposed to look like a university-level education.”

Unfortunately it is not just FSU. Many other universities are doing the same. Selling out for money. Also from 2011.

Not Just Florida State

When the terms of a 2008 grant agreement between Florida State University and the Charles G. Koch Foundation became public last month, it drew attention to the fund for what some saw as an attempt to exert undue influence over personnel matters.

The foundation has made sizable grants to a number of other colleges and universities -- including six-, seven- and eight-figure gifts to such public institutions as Clemson University, George Mason University, Utah State University and the University of West Virginia.

In at least one case besides that of Florida State, Utah State University, the grant agreements give the foundation a role in reviewing candidates for positions. While the role is less detailed than the one set out at Florida State, it still goes beyond norms of faculty hiring, which generally avoid any formal role for donors beyond designating an area of study. In other cases, the nature of the gifts has raised questions -- with critics suggesting that the subject matter is so narrowly defined that it effectively embraces a political perspective, not a subject of study.

.....“Although the Koch Foundation’s objectives are written so as to sound upbeat and cheerful, they amount to code words calling for the dismantling of the welfare state,” Nelson wrote in an e-mail. “ ‘Economic freedom,’ sounds like mom and apple pie until you realize it means the government shouldn’t collect taxes, and ‘free voluntary processes’ means buy health care on your own if you can afford it.

Last year the students at FSU spoke out against this power play by the Kochs.

The FSU Student Senate has introduced a resolution denouncing the university’s acceptance of big donations from a foundation run by the billionaire Koch brothers to fund positions in the economics department — and to have a say in who gets the appointments.

...The FSU Student Senate resolution decries the Kochs’ “undue influence on academics as established by the current agreement between the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the FSU Economics department.”

“No public institution should accept funding that is conditional upon a willingness to fulfill or conform to a private entity’s ideological goals,” the resolution states.

The campaign against the FSU-Koch agreement is organized in part by Progress Florida and Florida Watch Action.

[madfloridian]

1. Clemson University, George Mason University, Utah State University, University of West Virginia

are others whose economic teachings are influenced by the Kochs.

[Initech]

2. Why aren't these scumbags in prison yet?

[madfloridian]

3. Billionaires seldom held accountable.

I really do blame the university systems for accepting this money, for giving one family such influence over what they teach.

[madfloridian]

4. Why is the buying of public education not being covered a lot?

Why aren't the Democrats calling attention to this?