Last Monday in CommonwealthMagazine the Pioneer Institute proposed Massachusetts Tie state funding to school committee seats, partially disenfranchising poor and minority communities. I critiqued the proposal as The Beamer vs. Beater Theory of Democracy. If you’re driving a Beamer you get full voting rights. If you’re driving a beater the state takes away your right to vote for school committee.
That didn’t seem to bother Pioneer much but the fact that I brought up the $100,000 they take in almost every year from David Koch seemed to hit a nerve as did my citation to historian Nancy MacLean, who shows in Democracy in Chains that the Kochs and other wealthy oligarchs spend to curtail democratic rights entirely. Here’s one Twitter response from Pioneer:
Hmmm, I wondered, is there Koch funding in those places too? If so, what form might it take?
What form mightn’t it take! The Kochs are that ubiquitous. But I settled on this. Pioneer Institute is an affiliate of the State Policy Network, described by the Center for Media and Democracy as a “web of right-wing ‘think tanks’ and tax-exempt organizations in 49 states, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., Canada, and the United Kingdom.” The Koch Brothers are major funders of the organization. SPN is a part of the right-wing “troika” along with the Koch funded American Legislative Exchange Council and their Americans for Prosperity political organization that has been so effective in pushing corporate policies in many states. (See Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States—and Nation).
OK, SPN is in 49 states, Kochs fund SPN, pretty easy. But I thought I’d look up the SPN affiliates for each of the states where Pioneer named a city in their Tweet to me. But first, remember the table I put in my post last week of the municipalities Pioneer explicitly targeted to disenfranchise?:
| Municipality | Population | White alone | Black % | Asian % | Hispanic % |
| Lawrence | 76,377 | 20.50% | 2.30% | 2.30% | 73.80% |
| Holyoke | 39,880 | 46.80% | 2.3 | 1.00% | 48.40% |
| Springfield | 153,060 | 36.70% | 19.60% | 2.40% | 38.80% |
| Soutbridge | 16,719 | 68.60% | 1.40% | 1.80% | 26.60% |
Let’s do something similar for the cities mentioned in the Tweet, and add information on SPN affiliate and Koch funding, from Center for Media and Democracy:
| Municipality | Population | White alone % | Black % | Asian % | Hispanic % | SPN Affiliate | Koch $ |
| Oakland | 390,724 | 25.9 | 27.3 | 16.7 | 25.4 | California Policy Center, Freedom Foundation (CA), Pacific Research Institute | Y |
| Chicago | 2,695,598 | 31.7 | 32.4 | 5.4 | 28.9 | Illinois Policy Institute | Y |
| Baltimore | 620,961 | 28 | 63.3 | 2.3 | 4.2 | Calvert Institute for Policy Research, Maryland Public Policy Institute | Y |
| Boston | 617,594 | 47 | 22.4 | 8.9 | 17.5 | Pioneer Institute for Public Policy | Y |
| NYC | 8,175,133 | 33.3 | 22.8 | 12.6 | 28.6 | Empire Center for Public Policy | Y* |
| Yonkers | 195,976 | 41.4 | 16 | 5.8 | 34.7 | Empire Center for Public Policy | Y* |
| Cleveland | 396,815 | 33.4 | 52.5 | 1.8 | 10 | Buckeye Institute | Y |
| Philadelphia | 1,526,006 | 36.9 | 42.2 | 6.3 | 12.3 | Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Institute | Y |
| Providence | 178,042 | 37.6 | 2.9 | 0.01 | 38.1 | Rhode Island Institute for Freedom and Prosperity | Unk |
(* means CDM doesn’t attribute the funding to a Koch outlet directly, but usually to Donors Trust, a pass-through partially funded by the Kochs. Unk is Unknown, no information at this time).
Now this doesn’t mean that the decisions in any of those locations was “Koch-funded” as Pioneer Institute puts it (whatever that means). But it does mean that the Kochs fund advocacy organizations in each of those locations; and we do know that the Kochs would prefer less democracy, not more. The Kochs believe that they need to influence the intellectual environment in the states and they do this in part through backing state-level think tanks (and lots of universities too, see UnKochMyCampus.org).
More Koch, less democracy – for the people who need it most.
Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money (and other things)].
Image source: Flickr.