An article in The Tucson Weekly reported that the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, among other conservative foundations, have made significant donations to the University of Arizona’s FreedomCenter.  Most people would commend the Koch Foundation for their generous financial commitment to higher education.  However, there are a few left-leaning ideologues who have chosen to attack the donations on the basis of partisan distrust and personal politics, rather than placing the interests of students first.

David Gibbs, a professor of history and government in University of Arizona’s Political Science Department, is just such a person.  He makes the outlandish claim in the article that these donations are an “attempt to place the seal of academic legitimacy on their extremist libertarian views” and falsely accuses the Koch brothers of trying to influence academic opinion.

Gibbs makes these claims, despite a statement by the University of Arizona’s Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences, John Paul Jones III, who said that “there has been no donor influence over the hires we’ve made at the Freedom Center.”  As the Dean of the School, Jones’ statement offers credence in putting to rest any fears that the Koch Foundation might somehow be infringing on the University’s academic independence.

This is not the first time that Gibbs has made radical statements.  In the past, he has written about a vast conspiracy by the CIA to influence academia.  He went as far as to claim that there exists “books in the library that were secretly edited by the CIA with no indication that this has been done.”  If there was no indication that the CIA edited these books, how can Mr. Gibbs factually claim to know that the CIA did indeed “secretly” edit books?

Unsurprisingly, Gibbs says that people within the political science department were unhappy with his statements regarding the connection that he was trying to establish between the CIA and academia.  After all, the comments did resemble those of a paranoid conspiracy theorist.  As a result, Gibbs left the political science department and transferred to the history department, where he had more liberty to tell his “unique” version of the past.

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Florida State University (FSU) President Barron recently sent a letter to the Faculty Senate Committee asking the body to review the Koch Foundation agreement with the university and its implementation. The final report, which was released last week, went beyond the scope of Barron’s request and examined other donors’ agreements and decisions made by the economics department at FSU. The results of that analysis have been repeatedly confused with the details of the memorandum of understanding with the Koch Foundation as proven by an article published by Inside Higher Ed. This post serves to clarify some of the mistakes being reported by various outlets.

Inside Higher Ed claims that FSU created a new economics course as part of the agreement with the Koch Foundation called “Market Ethics: The Vices, Virtues, and Values of Capitalism” and that this course featured the work of Ayn Rand.

In fact, this course was not part of the agreement between FSU and the Koch Foundation, and the work of Ayn Rand is never referenced in the memorandum of understanding between the two parties.

Moreover, the agreement gives the program director the opportunity to design a course, but leaves it entirely up to the professor to choose which program will best help their students learn. In the event that the professor does decide to design a course, the agreement states the course must “follow current department procedures for approving and new course offering.”

This freedom of course design was even acknowledged by professors at other institutions including University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, Richard Avramenko and Beloit College professor Joshua Hall, who told The Capital Times they had “complete freedom” to design their programs and that the Koch Foundation “had no input on the substance of the programming.”

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The Left and Democrat establishment have made a cottage industry out of bashing the Koch brothers, most especially post-Wisconsin union battles. So, what to make of a letter and phone call from DSCC Chair Senator Patty Murray promising the Koch’s access and accommodation in exchange for cash?

Sure, this kind of fund raising goes on all the time, though not all get a personal phone call from the DSCC Chair herself. Would it be unfair to speculate that were a little cash to flow the right, or perhaps that’s the Left’s way, Democrat’s might call off the dogs? It is curious, to say the least. Finally, I wonder how the unions will react knowing that powerful Democrats are also currying favor with the Koch brothers, while they remain dissatisfied with some Democrat policy moves?

For many months now, your colleagues in the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee leadership have engaged in a series of disparagements and ad hominem attacks about us, apparently as part of a concerted political and fundraising strategy. Just recently, Senator Reid wrote in a DSCC fundraising letter that Republicans are trying to “force through their extreme agenda faster than you can say ‘Koch Brothers.’”

So you can imagine my chagrin when I got a letter from you on June 17 asking us to make five-figure contributions to the DSCC.

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In the year that has passed since the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. FEC, the liberal elites have waged a war against the First Amendment.  Liberal politicians including President Barack Obama and Senator Harry Reid, liberal media corporations like the New York Times, and labor unions have joined together to support restrictions on speech and liberty.

Their proposals for “reform” have fallen flat, in large part because they have been exposed as efforts to chill the Freedom of Speech.  These attacks on the First Amendment have used populist rhetoric in an attempt to silence corporate speech.  These efforts to silence corporations are difficult to reconcile when one sees that the New York Times, a media corporation, published a new proposal for “reform” authored by the founder of a non-profit corporation, aimed at silencing speakers that do not support their liberal world view.

In the April 4, 2011 edition of the New York Times, David Callahan launched an ideological attack on the boogeymen de jour, Charles and David Koch.  Callahan sets the tone of his article by attacking the Koch brothers for “conceal[ing] the recipients of their largess.”  In order to prevent this from occurring, Callahan would “require all nonprofit organizations that engage in political advocacy to reveal their donors.”

While Mr. Callahan alleges the current system can be utilized by the left and the right, he seems particularly offended by David Koch’s support of “ideologically driven organizations like the Cato Institute.”  Callahan argues that such groups should be treated differently from other not-for-profit organizations.

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Fascinating profile of Charles and David Koch in The Weekly Standard:

A few years ago Richard Fink told Charles and David [Koch] to prepare for the worst. The brothers were raising their political profile, Fink said, and that would come at a cost. There would be a lot of name-calling. Their opponents would impugn their beliefs, characters, and business. Charles understood what Fink was talking about. “I believed that when we were considered effective we would be attacked,” he said. Before Obama’s election, those who were aware of the Kochs’ political activities tended to assume they were tilting at Austrian windmills. The Kochs had an exotic philosophy, but few took them very seriously.

Not anymore. During the fight over health care and cap and trade in 2009 and 2010, liberals went looking for baddies against whom to mobilize public opinion. The Kochs’ wealth and political involvement made them an obvious choice. Reflecting on the ferocity of the onslaught that ensued, Charles told me, “I didn’t anticipate the hatred, the advocacy of violence.” He must not have been paying attention.

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From Politico:

Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert wants Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate whether the liberal group Common Cause should lose its nonprofit status, after a conservative website published footage of protesters calling for the lynching of conservative Supreme Court justices.

The footage shows enraged protesters making inflammatory and threatening comments about Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as well as Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas.

Gohmert said that the inflammatory remarks are more troubling given the attack on Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords earlier this year.

“We shouldn’t have any organization, especially one that says it’s nonpartisan, out there stirring up hatred and animosity to the point that people would say, “Let’s string up a justice of the Supreme Court as well as his wife,” Gohmert said.

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While falsely portraying it as a David versus Goliath event, the Institutional Left has been caught in an orchestrated effort to attack Charles Koch, while creating a public relations event around California’s ballot initiaitve, Prop 23. Koch openly supports the cause of Liberty and we know how much today’s left hates that. Not only that, sources have now confirmed that, while portraying itself as covering this story, a writer at the Huffington Post has actually conspired in the making of it. There is no room for credible journalism for such a practice.

Look for more on that at Big Journalism.

Charles Koch Challenged to Debate Prop. 23 by California Student Leader Joel Francis

Joel Francis, a Marine Corps veteran and senior at Cal State Los Angeles, has issued a debate challenge to Koch Industries’ billionaire CEO Charles Koch on his support for the disastrous Prop 23 attack on California’s climate and clean-energy progress.

This didn’t just happen because Francis is, allegedly, merely a student leader with a veteran’s cred. Francis and his effort are part of an effort by the so called California Student Sustainability Coalition. If you scroll to the bottom of their site and read the fine print, you’ll find this: “The California Student Sustainability Coalition is a project the Earth Island Institute.

To understand the actual viewpoint the Earth Island Institute represents, take a look at this press release from them after 9/11. These are the same people propping up Joel Francis today and paying the freight to push the effort. The record below demonstrates that.

U.S. Responds to Terrorist Attacks with Self-Righteous Arrogance

We need to correct the rightist spin of the Bush administration and media. This was not an “act of war.” This was an act of anger, desperation and indignation.

This was not an “attack on Freedom.” It was a politically targeted attack on the core structures of the U.S. military and the U.S.-dominated global financial structure.

This was not an “attack on all American people.” This was not the sort of flat-out terrorism that targets random innocents at a disco or a beach. The majority of the victims were, unfortunately, working for the Pentagon and various elements of multinational financial empires.

Below is just one press release from PR firm, Tiger Comm, being used to push the story out to the media and here is Serena Conner, of Tiger Comm.

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Frank Rich’s column in the New York Times opinion section this weekend was at the very least two things: Lies and the rehashed work of another writer. But it was also a third thing and that third thing was cover for his buddy in the Oval office and for the hard-core left-wing agenda he’s trying to force down our throats. Rich lent that cover by desperately trying to discredit “the Tea Party “as a funded-from-the-top, sham of a movement. The truth is, though, that “the Tea Party” is not funded by shadowy, rich right-wingers. It isn’t funded at all in most cases.

First of all most of what Rich wrote was but rehashed words from Jane Mayer’s slam against the Koch Brothers of New York. Three quarters of what Rich penned really came from Mayer’s New Yorker piece on the philanthropists. So, big demerits for Frank Rich for simply appropriating Mayer’s piece.

But the real point of Rich’s piece was to pile onto Mayer’s slanted attack piece with some echoed slams against the Tea Party movement in order to discredit it all. Rich is desperate to make the movement seem like a marionette show with rich “sugar daddies” funding it and controlling it from the top.

“There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising,” Rich says of the Tea Party events, “the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the ‘death panel’ warm-up acts of last summer.”

Rich then rehashes Mayer’s examples of where the Koch brothers put their money in the form of Americans For Prosperity and Freedom Works, two nationwide, very active, and successful conservative advocacy groups.

Now, it is absolutely true that both AFP and Freedom Works have had the cash to put on large events in Washington D.C. and other cities. But it is not true that either of these groups controls and runs “the Tea Party” movement from above.

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For years we’ve repeatedly heard the falsehood that most Americans want government to regulate the Internet.  We’ve also heard that the Left is supposedly miles ahead of the Right when it comes to online organizing and technological expertise.  Well, late last week, both of those myths have been exposed.

The Federal Communications Commission asked the public to submit comments on its plan to implement so-called net neutrality regulations that would allow government bureaucrats to tinker with the Internet.  The vaunted NetRoots expected to carry the day so much that they simply ignored the facts, claimed victory, and showed themselves to be fools.

It is still hard to understand why we need to regulate something that has been the most successful economic, informational and organizational tool of the past two decades.  But no matter.  On Thursday, the FCC’s comment period closed and the verdict is in. Limited government and free market activists crushed big government fans on the Left.

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