This article in the Boston Globe, Koch effort at Wellesley will be overhauled after public attention (March 27, 2018), shows a rare example where public scrutiny caused an academic reversal in a Koch-funded program. Apparently the sociology professor in question, Thomas Cushman, will take a sabbatical for a year while the college reviews the program.

But what it also shows is how the Koch network is increasing its funding for amping up programs to advance the conservative cause across the country: funding in 2017 was $100 million, up from about $35 million in 2014. This affects around 350 colleges and  universities. That is a lot of affected academic communities.

So this simply confirms what other investigative journalists have been proving, in article after article, book after book, and post after post on this blog: that Charles Koch and his gang of extremist billionaires and millionaires are simply trying to buy their way into forcing their morals on the rest of the country — whether we want them or not. Those morals are based on their own close-minded view of the world, root in racism, sexism, violent repression of labor unions, a dangerous disregard for climate science and an irrational, unbounded hatred of any government programs that attempt to actually help people. Their view of government has the primary purpose of simply protecting their private property, and allowing their business enterprises to act unhindered by any regulations that would protect the environment, promote a fair, living wage, protect women or worker safety on the job.

In short, Koch and his cohorts wish to pave the way for a fascist government that would protect big business while crushing any political dissent by force. They are a threat to our country and any democratic form of government, and deserve to be called out, and tossed out, at Wellesley College and every other college campus where they have invaded with their dark money and archaic ideas.

Received this from Bernie’s campaign today (April 9, 2018), and thought it worthy enough to print in full. It fully supports my own campaign to raise awareness on how the Koch network of oligarchs is behind the “stealth fascism” that has taken over American politics:

Rick –

What is the most important issue that the corporate media refuses to seriously discuss? Well, take your pick.

It could be climate change, and the fact that the fossil fuel industry believes that their short-term profits are more important than the future of our planet.

It could be health care, and why it is that the United States is the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all as a right.

It could be the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality that we experience, and the rather remarkable reality that three people in our country now own more wealth than the bottom 160,000,000 people.

It could be _ _ _ _. Well, your guess is as good as mine.

But let me tell you what I think. I believe the major issue not being discussed by the corporate media is the power of the Koch brothers and the movement in this country toward oligarchy – a nation where our economic and political life is increasingly controlled by a handful of billionaires. Seen any good programs about that lately on CBS, NBC, ABC or anywhere else? I haven’t.

In case you didn’t know, the Koch brothers, Charles and David, are the second-wealthiest family in the country, worth over $120 billion. This year, according to various media sources, the Koch brothers network plans to spend some $400 million in the midterm elections. Yes. $400 million. That is on top of the $750 million they pledged to spend in 2016, $290 million in 2014 and over $400 million in 2012.

That’s a lot of money, but that’s probably only part of the story. Given the existence of super PACs and the opaque nature of campaign funding, it is quite possible that they spend much more. Further, and importantly, their political spending goes far beyond election campaigns. They make enormous investments in right-wing think tanks and in universities – pushing students and the general population toward their extreme right-wing ideology.

They also fund numerous organizations such as Americans for Prosperity, theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), FreedomWorks, Generation Opportunity, 60 Plus Association, Institute for Energy Research, Concerned Veterans of America and many more.

What do the Koch brothers want? What is their ideology? What is their legislative agenda?

Simply stated, they want to repeal virtually every major piece of legislation passed since the 1930s that protects working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor. They believe that government should play virtually no role in protecting those in need, and that almost all services now provided by government should be privatized and handed over to large corporations.

Before the Koch brothers began their takeover of the Republican Party, David Koch was active in the Libertarian Party. In fact, in 1980, he ran as the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential candidate.

Here are just a few excerpts of the Libertarian Party platform that David Koch ran on in 1980:

• “We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.”
• “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
• “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.”
• “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.”
• “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.”
• “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.”
• “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.”
• “We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.”
• “As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.”
• “We support repeal of all laws which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.”
• “We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”
• “We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.”
• “We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.”
• “We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
• “We support abolition of the Department of Energy.”
• “We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.”
• “We demand the return of America’s railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.”
• “We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called “self-protection” equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.”
• “We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.”
• “We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.”
• “We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.”
• “We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.”
• “We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.”
• “We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.”
• “We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.”
• “We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”

That was 1980, and the Libertarian Party national ticket received 1 percent of the vote for what most Americans considered a crazy and extremist agenda. Today, in 2018, because of the Koch brothers’ power and influence, many of these ideas have now become mainstream within the increasingly right-wing Republican Party.

In that regard, let me give you an example of what is happening right now with President Trump and the Koch brothers’ plan to privatize health care for millions of our nation’s veterans, and then I am going to ask you to make your voice heard to stop them.

Let’s start with something that we should all be able to agree on:

While serious people can have legitimate differences of opinion about when our country should go to war, there should never be a debate as to whether we fulfill the promises made to the men and women who served this country in the military. Planes and tanks and guns are a cost of war, but so is taking care of the men and women we send to fight them.

Now, last week President Trump made the decision to fire the former Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Dr. David Shulkin. And what I would strongly suspect is that he made that decision because Dr. Shulkin was not moving fast enough toward privatizing veterans’ health care in this country.

Here is the truth: the VA is the largest integrated health care system in this country. And if you actually listen to the veterans of this country who rely on the VA, what most of them will tell you is that they are quite pleased with the care they receive.

Now, of course we must continually work to improve the VA, but what almost every single major veterans organization in this country says is that we must strengthen the VA, not privatize it.

That is because privatizing the VA would severely underfund the department and leave many veterans without easy access to quality care — oftentimes specialized care required for service-connected injuries that VA centers are better equipped to handle than a local doctor or hospital.

On the other side, you have the Koch brothers, the second-wealthiest family in the United States, who are going to spend $400 million in the coming elections. They have enormous power because of that and what they believe is that we must privatize not just the VA, but Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Not coincidentally, privatizing the VA would also significantly enrich some of the nation’s wealthiest health care executives.

So here is where I ask you to act:

President Trump has nominated his personal physician Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson to replace former Secretary Shulkin. And while he has not said as much, I would strongly suspect that Rear Admiral Jackson’s mission is to carry out the wishes of the Koch brothers, and to oversee the privatization of the VA.

So today, I want to send a message to my colleagues who must give their consent to this nomination, and I need your help to do it:

Sign My Petition: Tell the U.S. Senate to reject the nomination of Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs unless he pledges to support strengthening the VA and opposes privatization. The Senate cannot approve any nominee who prioritizes the profits of a handful of health care executives over the health of our veterans.

The drive to privatize veterans’ health care is part of a broader approach by the Trump administration, fulfilling the agenda of the Koch brothers.

We have a Secretary of Education who doesn’t support public education.

We have an EPA Administrator who doesn’t believe in environmental protection and is pursuing a massive deregulation effort.

We have a Treasury Secretary from Goldman Sachs who worked overtime to pass a massive redistribution of wealth and income from the working class to some of the richest and most powerful people in this country.

We have a Secretary of Health and Human Services who President Trump pulled from the pharmaceutical industry at a time when the United States pays the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, by far.

Now it is likely the president is nominating someone to head the Department of Veterans Affairs whose mission will be to privatize veterans’ health care.

Right now, our job is to improve and strengthen VA health care on what already works reasonably well, and not to dismember it. That is a fear that many veterans service organizations have, and it is one that I share.

If you do as well, I hope that you will make your voice heard:

Sign My Petition: Tell the U.S. Senate to reject the nomination of Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs unless he pledges to support strengthening the VA and opposes privatization. The Senate cannot approve any nominee who prioritizes the profits of a handful of health care executives over the health of our veterans.

How can it be that we have enough money to give tax breaks to billionaires and spend more on defense than the next twelve countries combined, but we don’t have enough to make sure that every veteran who went to war and served this country has the quality health care they need here at home?

Privatizing the VA would be a moral abomination, and one that I will fight to stop. Thanks for lending your name to the fight.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

In reference to this online article,  “Montana Becomes First State To Set Its Own Net Neutrality Rules” it states that “An unidentified spokeswoman for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and USTelecom, which represents the broadband industry, complained about the executive order…”

Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age (click the link for a reference to the book) is my latest discovery on the frontier of research into how we are going to fix our environmental problems. 

What this book shows with authority is how environmental law has failed us, and has no illusions that correcting this will be a tough political battle against the One Percent and the Dark Money network.

But what this book does do with scholarly precision and overwhelming documented research is what an absolute fraud the current pretense is that our regulatory framework is protecting us and the environment.

If I find the time, I would like to examine this book as I am currently doing in my blog Examining Dark Money, because this book is that good…but until then I wanted to share this one description that I found so remarkably accurate about the “Remote Public”, which is one of components of the regulatory framework that is supposedly working.

Some background: the author summarizes the legal basis for how the public is supposed to have input to environmental policy, then describes with uncanny accuracy why this is so unworkable in current times: quoting from pages 113-115:

Ultimately, the voting public represents a last bastion against a tyrannical power grab by one branch of government…But daunting logistical hurdles now stand in the way of meaningful citizen involvement. 


Two federal statutes provide processes for public information and citizen input into regulatory decision making. The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires all federal agencies to publicize their proposed rules. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) allows the public to comment on federal actions affecting the environment. … One problem involves the tendency of citizens to ignore the prospect of environmental harm until too late in the legal process….


Time presents another significant barrier to citizen participation. Making use of a public process, or lobbying the legislature, or even understanding the issue can devour an enormous amount of personal time….The sheer complexity generated by the agencies through the morass of acronyms and technical jargon…makes this difficult and tedious reading. … 


…As many studies show, personal time in the United States has plummeted since the 1970s (when NEPA was enacted), and economic distress factors force many to work overtime or take on more than one job. This time scarcity sets entirely new game rules in civic involvement….


…On this playing field of [legal] process, industry easily outmatches the public…because the industries have “concentrated” interests in regulation, they devote the resources necessary to gaining favorable permit approvals. They pay lobbyists, consultants, and lawyers to game the process at every turn. Citizens who struggle to squeeze in time from a busy workday to show up at a meeting will often find paid industry representatives already sitting there. 


To imagine that such a system could work well in the face of modern circumstances is little more than a fantasy. Yet [the regulatory] agencies routinely indulge this chimera in a way that prejudices the public. If people fail to show up en masse at a hearing or fail to comment on a proposal, decision makers deem the public silence as an indication of noninterest or general acquiescence on the issue. For all practical purposes, then, the public faces an unspoken default penalty — somewhat like a party to litigation who does not show up at a trial. While public processes remain a vital component of democracy, they scream out for practical reform to reflect these modern pitfalls. 
…
The fact remains that, despite all of these existing public comment processes, nothing forces agencies to heed public opinion. … quite often, agencies pursue their proposed action even in face of substantial public opposition. Fully captured agencies use the public processes set up by environmental statutes as faux-processes to maintain the facade that they care to hear about citizen concerns. 

Re: A community rights legal strategy

Dear Councilors:

The last compelling reason is global climate change. If we wish to begin to turn our civilization around, and begin the hard work of mitigating and adapting to the changes in our global climate, which are already upon us, then we must start fighting this legal and political fight…here…now. If you would but realize this…that Lafayette has the opportunity to be a real spark of hope in fighting the corporate dominance of our legal system, our regulatory agencies, and indeed of our own communities, forcing their deeds upon us against the will of the people, then take this step: invite CELDF to help us, make this meeting as public as public can be. You will not regret it, and it will make the vast majority of Lafayette citizens, and all US citizens fighting to protect their environment, proud that you did so.