Untold sums of cash poured into ALEC by Charles and David Koch have been an effective investment in advancing their worldview.
July 12, 2011
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This article is part of a Nation series exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council, in collaboration with the Center For Media and Democracy. John Nichols introduces the series.
Hundreds of ALEC’s model bills and resolutions bear traces of Koch DNA:
raw ideas that were once at the fringes but that have been carved into
“mainstream” policy through the wealth and will of Charles and David
Koch. Of all the Kochs’ investments in right-wing organizations, ALEC
provides some of the best returns: it gives the Kochs a way to make
their brand of free-market fundamentalism legally binding.
No one knows how much the Kochs have given ALEC in total, but the
amount likely exceeds $1 million—not including a half-million loaned to
ALEC when the group was floundering. ALEC gave the Kochs its Adam Smith
Free Enterprise Award, and Koch Industries has been one of the select
members of ALEC’s corporate board for almost twenty years. The company’s
top lobbyist was once ALEC’s chairman. As a result, the Kochs have
shaped legislation touching every state in the country. Like ideological
venture capitalists, the Kochs have used ALEC as a way to invest in
radical ideas and fertilize them with tons of cash.
Take environmental protections. The Kochs have a penchant for paying
their way out of serious violations and coming out ahead. Helped by Koch
Industries’ lobbying efforts, one of the first measures George W. Bush
signed into law as governor of Texas was an ALEC model bill giving
corporations immunity from penalties if they tell regulators about their
own violation of environmental rules. Dozens of other ALEC bills would
limit environmental regulations or litigation in ways that would benefit
Koch.
ALEC’s model legislation reflects parts of the Kochs’ agenda that
have little to do with oil profits. Long before ALEC started pushing
taxpayer-subsidized school vouchers, for example, the Koch fortune was
already underwriting attacks on public education. David Koch helped
inject the idea of privatizing public schools into the national debate
as a candidate for vice president in 1980. A cornerstone of the
Libertarian Party platform, which he bankrolled, was the call for
“educational tax credits to encourage alternatives to public education,”
a plan to the right of Ronald Reagan. Several pieces of ALEC’s model
legislation echo this plan.
The Kochs’ mistrust of public education can be traced to their
father, Fred, who ranted and raved that the National Education
Association was a communist group and public-school books were filled
with “communist propaganda,” paranoia that extended to all unions,
President Eisenhower and the “pro-communist”
Supreme Court.
Such redbaiting might be ancient history if fifty years later David
were not calling President Obama a “hard-core socialist” who is “scary.”
The Kochs have not just multiplied the wealth of their dad; they’ve
repackaged and amplified his worldview. David’s latest venture,
Americans for Prosperity, subsidizes the
Tea Party
movement, which repeats this “socialist” smear. Charles is a member of
the exclusive Mount Pelerin Society, inspired by Frederic von Hayek’s
antisocialist polemic
The Road to Serfdom. Through the Charles
G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the Institute for Humane Studies
administers the Hayek Fund for Scholars and sister programs to fund
academics and staffers for like-minded groups across the country.
“Charles G. Koch Fellows” and interns stock ALEC, and have gone on to
direct ALEC task forces.
Another David Koch project, Citizens for a Sound Economy—which
launched the effort to repeal Glass-Steagall protections keeping banks
from gambling in securities—helped fuel the fight for “free trade,” an
unpopular policy in the 1980s. The North American Free Trade Agreement
passed with help from CSE and its corporate allies. ALEC resolutions for
state legislators have long supported such trade agreements in the face
of local concerns about job losses, and today the Koch free-market
fantasy is reflected in ALEC’s support for free trade pacts with Korea,
Georgia, Colombia and other countries. On just about every issue taken
on by Koch’s CSE, ALEC has provided legislative tools to carry them
through to state legislatures, from privatizing “federal and state
services and assets,” as CSE put it, to blocking common-sense caps on
unlimited credit card interest rates.
ALEC and the Kochs often pursue parallel tracks. Just as ALEC
“educates” legislators, Koch funding has helped “tutor” hundreds of
judges with all-expenses-paid junkets at fancy resorts, where they learn
about the “free market” impact of their rulings. But ALEC also operates
like an arm of the Koch agenda, circulating bills that make their
vision of the world concrete. For a mere $25,000 a year, Koch Industries
sits as an “equal” board member with state legislators, influencing
bills that serve as a wish list for its financial or ideological
interests.
It’s a pittance for the Kochs but far out of the reach of working
Americans. Ordinary citizens rely on our elected representatives’
efforts to restore what’s left of the American Dream. But through ALEC,
billionaire industrialists are purchasing a version that seems like a
real nightmare for most Americans.
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