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Faculty and Alumni Demand that University of Arizona Kick Koch Money Off Campus

This week, Kochs Off Campus!, a grassroots organization of faculty members and alumni at the University of Arizona and local Tucson residents, staged aday of action to highlight the encroachment of corporate influences on public institutions and public educational facilities in Arizona.

The event, co-hosted by Unkoch My Campus and held on Tuesday, October 28, focused on “state capture” through education, highlighting how billionaires and corporations attempt to use their donations to academic institutions to advance their private interests.

How the Koch Network Influences Minnesota’s Transportation Policy

In 1996, an executive vice president of Koch Industries named Richard Fink laid out a three-tiered integrated strategy for promoting libertarian ideals and free-market principles, and, in doing so, protecting the Kochs’ sprawling petrochemical refining and shipping businesses. Called “The Structure of Social Change,” Fink, who also led the Charles Koch Foundation, described the strategy for investing the Kochs’ fortunes through grants and financial support to organizations and individuals at different stages of policy development and implementation, from universities to think tanks to advocacy groups.

As the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency takes on clean car standards through rulemaking processes, the Koch network’s “structure of social change” is in place to push back against the policy. Below is a network map showing how Koch influence reaches through think tanks and advocacy groups to reach the public and policymakers on the ground in Minnesota.

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

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.

Fossil Fuel Industry and Koch Network Fighting Pennsylvania’s Move to Join Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

As Pennsylvania took a significant step this week towards joining a regional climate initiative to curb carbon pollution from power plants, newly revealed email records show how fossil fuel interests campaigned to oppose this initiative in a state that has the fifth most polluting electric power sector in the nation.

The Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board, part of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), voted on September 15 to adopt draft regulations limiting carbon emissions from power plants as part of the state’s process of joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cap-and-invest program designed to slash emissions from the electric power sector. An ongoing battle has been brewing over Pennsylvania joining this program. Its Republican-controlled legislature is opposed to the state participating, while Democratic Governor Tom Wolf has taken executive action to start the process of joining.