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The Koch brand is regularly assailed for funding all that liberals view as repugnant. Indeed, Charles and David Koch are the left’s equivalent of George Soros – the figure that progressives love to hate. But digging deeper, one finds the Koch Foundations trying to distance themselves from Tea Partiers and modernizing to build a more governance-minded form of conservatism.
It’s a name that evokes intense emotions, which, depending on your ideological placement, alternates between violent vituperation and hallowed awe. They’re viewed as generous conservative benefactors on the one hand, and taciturn funders of hate and climate denialism on the other.
David and Charles Koch; their company, Koch Industries; and their non-profit organizations, known collectively as the Koch Foundations, together represent a polarizing brand. So which version is it? Are they gracious philanthropists or the evil founders of the tea party movement?
The first thing one is confronted with when looking at the Koch groups is the staggering magnitude of their holdings. Koch Industries had revenues of $98 billion in 2009. Combined, the Koch brothers are worth close to $40 billion. The Koch family’s foundations have given millions upon millions to right-of-center organizations like the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, and the Mercatus Center.
However, despite the public nature of their funding activities, the Koch groups have traditionally been quite secretive. As a series of private organizations, they engage with the press only on exceptionally rare occasions. As such, Koch approached the idea of an interview with a good deal of corporate apprehension – so much so that one of the Koch brothers took time away from running their firm (which makes about $186,329 a minute) to personally look over the quotes.
Koch interviews being such a rarity, FrumForum jumped at the chance to sit down for an unprecedented and exclusive interview with Dr. Richard Fink, who has the unique position of being both a Vice-President for Koch Industries and the President of the Charles G. Koch Foundation.
Most incredibly striking is Koch’s efforts to distance itself from the Tea Party movement. “We’ve been labeled tea party founders or funders – in fact, masterminds – but that’s not consistent with the facts,” said Fink. “To my knowledge, we have not been approached for support by any of the newer ‘tea party’ or other grassroots groups that have sprung up around the country in the past year or so.”
One organization that Fink help create and Koch has helped fund, Americans for Prosperity, regularly interfaces with tea party groups. Those who connect the Koch brand with the tea party movement view this as the link that allows liberal groups like the Center for American Progress to label the Koch brothers as the ‘billionaires behind the hate’.
Fink denied that Koch had anything to do with Americans for Prosperity’s tea party activities. “I don’t consider them a Tea Party institution,” Fink added. “[The group] has been active for nearly thirty years. While they participate in events with tea party groups, our support of them has included no funds specifically for tea party-related efforts.”
To press the point, Dr. Fink even had some mild criticism of the tea party movement. “Some of their worries are… more thoughtful, some of them are less thoughtful,” he told FrumForum.
While Koch has at times funded organizations that are activist, their focus remains overwhelmingly ideological, Fink argued:
Historically, we’ve spent the majority of our efforts funding research… we funded tens of thousands of students through their colleges, dozens of professors, we’ve been very heavy on the development of ideas and a deeper understanding of what makes societies prosper.
And with this vision, the Koch Foundations have enjoyed great success in creating the institutions which support the contemporary conservative movement. In fact, they have provided some of the most effective seed money in the conservative world – organizations like the Cato Institute and Mercatus Center might never have existed, absent Koch funding.
Koch spokeswoman Mary Beth Jarvis emphasizes that they focus primarily on getting organizations started, rather than continually funding organizations, using the metaphor of a ship-maker. “You help build the boat, you push it out to sea, and you hope it stays effective and in [the right] direction,” said Jarvis.
True to his conservative mindset, Fink adds that while they “help them get started, give them seed money,” they “then let [funded organizations] meet the market test of survival.”
But Koch’s efforts have hit a roadblock, even in the eyes of one of Koch’s highest-ranking executives. “If you look at where we’ve gone from the year 2000 to now, with the expansion of government spending and a debt burden that threatens to bankrupt the country, it doesn’t look very good at all… It looks like the infrastructure that was built and nurtured has not carried the day,” said Fink.
Koch’s efforts have been focused on developing conservative ideas, and Fink seems to indicate that Koch may be changing to focus more on how conservatives should govern, rather than just theorize:
I think one of our big failings is that those of us coming from universities and think tanks are usually much better at theory than practice… Proposing solutions that aren’t realistic or implementable or haven’t been thought through fully can cause those proposals to do more harm than good.
The process is still in the works, it seems – in trying to explain the shortfalls of the Koch vision, Fink seemed to contradict himself, disavowing dogmatism while at the same time asserting the necessity of absolute adherence to conservative principles:
A dogmatic approach is very unproductive. But I’ve also seen, over the last thirty years, a lot of people taking compromise positions and incremental steps that actually take us down slippery slopes and end up creating results antithetical to what they were trying to achieve. We need a principled approach. We should not violate our principles. But we also have to be practical in our application.
But an eye towards governance is a step in the right direction. After all, as Fink says, “in terms of [the tangible] results [of our funding], it’s really not all that clear to me… [we] need to get more into the practical, day to day issues of governing to be successful.”
Of course, while practicality may be one of FrumForum’s primary concerns, the true detractors of the Koch brand say that their money is used to lay down the Astroturf sod that makes up the tea party movement; that it funds climate denialism; and that it goes towards deregulating industries in ways that personally benefit the Koch family.
Koch has funded groups that deny the existence of anthropogenic global warming, and does vigorously support deregulation in the industries which it operates (but also supports deregulation in industries where it doesn’t). But much like Koch’s reaction to the tea parties, Fink argues that their funding is one step removed – Koch doesn’t direct research outcomes, just institutions that do research.
Fink struck back at critics generally, hitting back at those who accuse Koch of using ‘dirty money’ to fuel ‘dirty projects’:
If a critic is not really interested in problem solving or trying to make the world a better place, but just character assassination and attacking us… we’re not going to react to that or spend any time on that at all.
Towards the end of the conversation, Fink struck a more somber tone when talking about the Koch brand’s mistakes. Without getting into specifics, Fink admitted that Koch Industries has been, at times, guilty of wrongdoing:
Koch Industries has got over 70,000 employees operating in sixty countries over a fifty year period… We have an incredible record in terms of safety, the environment and compliance with the law. Have we made mistakes over the fifty year period, with all those people? Absolutely yes. Do we have regrets? Yes. We’ve owned up to all of them.
Even with its mistakes, the Koch brand has generously funded cancer research, provided money for a new wing in the Smithsonian, supported dance and the arts, and most relevantly to me, provided extraordinarily beneficial seed dollars to the conservative movement.
Indeed, even conservatives who disagree with, say, Cato’s views would have to agree that they provide a meaningful contribution to the movement’s intellectual vibrancy. But the question remains: given the challenges of 2010, what’s next beyond policy papers?
Now approaching middle age, the Koch Foundations appear to be reconsidering their strategy. Governance matters – and if Koch begins funding projects with an eye towards the necessary compromises that often accompanies government decisions, then conservatives have a world of benefit to gain.
Follow Tim Mak on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/timkmak
I think one of our big failings is that those of us coming from universities and think tanks are usually much better at theory than practice… Proposing solutions that aren’t realistic or implementable or haven’t been thought through fully can cause those proposals to do more harm than good.
Thanks for coming to that conclusion AFTER the Bush Presidency.
What about Michael Johns the health care executive and one of the main founders of the Tea Party movement? Give me a break.
Tim wrote;
“Most incredibly striking is Koch’s efforts to distance itself from the Tea Party movement. “We’ve been labeled tea party founders or funders – in fact, masterminds – but that’s not consistent with the facts,” said Fink. “To my knowledge, we have not been approached for support by any of the newer ‘tea party’ or other grassroots groups that have sprung up around the country in the past year or so.””
“Not consistent with the facts”, “by any of the newer “tea party” or other groups”. Sounds like weasel words to me. The Koch’s funded Americans for Properity and they in turn funded the older “tea party” folks that showed up at last summer’s town hall meeting with their list of way to amplify their message regarding stopping Healthcare reform.
Now I know that the Koch’s would like to keep a firewall between themselves and what they have been doing to OUR body politic, but the fact of the matter is that the whole Tea Party movement was a astro-turf organization funded to carry out the agenda of the Koch’s.
……..The Koch’s had nothing whatever to do with funding Armey or the tea party movement…..yeah right.
How incredibly one-sided. The Koch organization has also tried to distance itself from American’s For Prosperity, an organization it founded to lobby against taxation in Kansas. The organization advocated cutting prison and school budgets even as the State’s schools are taking hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts and prisons are having to cut back on their post-release supervision, meaning more and more parolees go without supervision.
The organization is also costs the states where it operates millions of dollars if not more in environmental clean-up. It works out huge tax incentives for itself, then fails to clean up the mess it causes in the states. When fined by the EPA, it spends years taking the cases through court, not because it has a legitimate claim, but only to cost the government as much money as possible in hopes that it will stop prosecuting valid claims. To act like this group is interested in responsible, limited government is disingenuous at best. It’s fine with the government handling the costs of running its outputs and clean-up. It’s also fine with tax-payer subsidies for itself and the organizations it uses to advance its political causes. But when it comes to the government enforcing its law, or educating its citizens (even on a state level), or protecting its citizens from crime, suddenly Koch thinks the government is overstepping its bounds.
And about giving money to kids for college. Yes it does, but it also gets a large amount of access to those schools to skim talent, and it is able to lobby in the schools in hopes that future legislatures don’t come down on it. So, I’d hardly call it a philanthropic effort.
You’ve got to be kidding!
The Koch family is probably the best know funding source for what can be best described as the “Far Right”, too damn bad that they are now embarrassed by their progeny. That’s what happens when you plant seeds, something a monster emerges, but to say that they bear no responsibility for the Tea Party movement is disingenuous.
Finally sending their family lawyer minion, and I use that term with intent, makes them look cheap and sleazy. You know that what is says is absolutely legally correct, they can state that they’ve never supported the Tea party movement — and yet you know that funding the guy that funds the Tea Party amounts more or less to the same thing!
You bought it, you wear it!
What a puff piece! Tim, why do you allow yourself to be used as a stenographer for these guys? They’ve been trying to distance themselves from the Tea Party movement for weeks now, see this story from TPM Muckraker:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/right-wing_backers_koch_industries_we_dont_specifi.php
God forbid that citizens, individually or as a voluntary group, be able to defend themselves via peaceful speech and advocacy from the state seeking to expand its power and wealth at our expense.
balconesfault beat me to it. I am in favor of the right being well funded, unfortunately they have been producing dreck lately. The Heritage foundation hid away all of their well reasoned articles on the importance of an insurance mandate not because they changed their minds but because it went counter to the Republican talking points of the moment. This was simply shameful. And the Heritage foundation was right the first time, they presented the arguments, they convinced Democrats and Republicans in Mass. and, by extension, Democrats in Congress.
And what could be more conservative than taking responsibility for the capability to provide for your own health? people without insurance cost people who have it, and society at large, every time they go to the ER for incredibly costly treatments they have no chance to pay. The mandate takes away free riders. The Conservatives had won the argument, but now they are acting like a 13 year old that had a playboy found under his mattress. “Its not mine, I never saw it.” To not be aware it is the tea baggers that are causing this retreat from intellectual honesty is willful blindness.
by the way, Tim Mak is a very cool name, deadly. Look, not to be too immature, wouldn’t it be better to go by Timothy Mak (unless your name is really only Tim, in which case you can go by the pen name Timothy) because the name Tim Mak just causes me to giggle like a school girl.
Capital Research Center: // May 11, 2010 at 4:03 pm
[...] Mak of FrumForum has put together an interesting piece that touches upon the philanthropic goals of the Koch [...]
As Tim’s post reinforces, Koch has a decades-long history of supporting individuals and organizations working to advance economic freedom and fiscal responsibility.
We see it as very positive that tea party participants and so many other citizens are expressing concerns about runaway government spending — concerns we believe are right on track. History contains too many examples of societies whose government spending burden dragged down standards of living, especially for their poorest citizens. After decades of U.S. government growth, we’re at a point when more Americans must become engaged in efforts to prevent similar mistakes here.
To that end, the authenticity of individuals engaged in the tea party movement has been misreported and mischaracterized. Koch strongly supports the principles of economic freedom and fiscal responsibility that are energizing the tea parties and other citizen efforts, but the truth is that the tea party movement is, to a large extent, a spontaneous outcry of individual citizens from around the country.
We believe that more citizens defending our Constitutional principles in an effective and civil manner is a great thing. Free societies depend on such dedicated efforts. Koch will continue to advocate for economic freedom and market-based policy solutions because history demonstrates they are the proven pathways to creating the most opportunity and best quality of life for society as a whole.
Rich Fink
the truth is that the tea party movement is, to a large extent, a spontaneous outcry of individual citizens from around the country.
Let’s see … a CNBC Commentator calls for Tea Parties
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29471026
Then the field coordinator for Freedom Works (which has Republican politicians Dick Armey and Steven Forbes on its Foundation board) contacts Tampa-based consultant John Hendrix to organize Tea Party protests.
Fox News not only promotes Tea Party rallies, but sets up their own Tea Party webpage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jzjKNdz3B8&feature=player_embedded
RNC posts a page where visitors can send a “virtual tea-bag” to the White House.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/14/tax-day-tea-parties-offic_n_186788.html
Perhaps Mr. Fink is concerned that Tim’s PR ditty isn’t playing so well after all.
As Danny K pointed out, this is already old discredited news.
And indeed, it’s a little late for Koch to equivocate their connection to TeaP activities via AFP; the org/money trails are already well documented. But this does strongly suggest that TeaP cred, as an efficacious movement, is now shredded at the highest levels on the Right. This can only serve to further marginalize TeaP. Sorry, Carney.
Tim: [T]he Koch groups have traditionally been quite secretive. As a series of private organizations, they engage with the press only on exceptionally rare occasions.
David Koch is not at all shy about being interviewed. He evidently likes Suzan Mazur, which immediately casts a skeptical cloud over his philanthropic motivations: it suggests he finds no value in being taken seriously within the scientific community he claims to support. Mazur is the very definition of a journo hack:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/suzan-mazur-hearts-fodor-and-piattelli-palmarini/
Museums and hospitals–and especially under-funded Arts orgs–understandably don’t care all that much where legal donations come from; take the money and run while spinning any requisite PR. But I’ve no illusions: David Koch’s philanthropy is a strategic campaign to both further his own agenda while buying his way into liberal Manhattan society:
http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2008/10/15/Profile-of-Billionaire-David-Koch/index.html
It’ll take a lot more substantive persuasion than this altogether weak piece to convince me that the Koch’s are now interested in ‘good governance’; they have, for too long, been infamously and ultimately interested in only their industry-driven profits.
Great Article –
The GOP needs to turn its attention and funding back to urban America this is where the votes are. A friend from the UK sent http://hiphoprepublican.com/ a link to the Center for Social Justice. CSJ is a centre-right British political thinktank set up by Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of the Conservative Party, to concentrate on finding and supporting new and innovative grass-roots approaches to fighting poverty. I believe that this could provide a great module for an urban conservative think tank here in the United States. http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/
How stupid does Tim Mak (and Glenn Reynolds, who linked to this tripe) think you are?
The Koch family has funded a wide range of libertarian-oriented groups. Those groups have then promoted or helped organize the tea partiers: Reason Magazine, AFP, FreedomWorks*, and on and on and on. It’s hard not to trace anything the partiers do on a national scale back to some Koch-linked group in one way or another.
And, those Koch-linked groups have played an extremely central role: without those promoters and organizers, the tea partiers would still be standing on street corners waving their loopy signs in small groups.
For the actual facts of this matter, see my tea parties coverage. Note also that I’m not exactly a progressive, even if some partiers revive an old Koch habit and engage in red-baiting.
No one with any sense of patriotism or support for what’s in the best interests of the U.S. should assist Koch Industries or the tea partiers in any way.
* FreedomWorks is the successor to “Citizens for a Sound Economy” which was founded by, you guessed it, the Kochs.
I still don’t get it – what exactly if the Left’s Billion Dollar Tea Party Lie?
JMJ
David Koch’s philanthropy is a strategic campaign to both further his own agenda while buying his way into liberal Manhattan society:
I have a picture still on my cellphone of the sign in the American Museum of Natural History:
The David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing
Perfect on so many levels – from the dinosaur juice that made the Koch family rich, to the dinosaur mentality represented by their politics.
@ fromks: What exactly is wrong with cutting prison budgets? Maybe if government stopped incarcerating people for non-violent drug crimes they would be able to supervise parolees upon release with the lower budget. Prison spending is the first place I would start cutting.
@ 24AheadDotCom: Have you ever actually read Reason magazine? They are as skeptical of the Tea Parties as anyone. In fact Reason magazine and many other libertarian groups like CATO are some of the biggest defenders of civil liberties. They fight valiantly against the injustices of the drug war, incarceration rates, over-zealous prosecution, wrongful convictions and police brutality just to name a few. Im sorry it offends you authoritarian tendencies, but there are some of us who dont want to live in a police state. So good on the Koch Foundation if thats what they are doing.
This statement “I don’t consider them a Tea Party institution,” Fink added. “[The group] has been active for nearly thirty years. While they participate in events with tea party groups, our support of them has included no funds specifically for tea party-related efforts.” is exactly true. For example, in NH, the AFP-NH is run by one of our local activists and he supports the tea party coalition there. However, we are not being run by AFP nor do they provide us with any funding. This is also true of the charge that FW has anything to do with tea parties. They don’t, but are jumping on the grassroots bandwagon. Our tea party started in 2007 with the Ron Paul supporters.
The left should look at itself for funding of astroturf — OFA, Change.org, SEIU, MoveOn, all funded by that evil nazi criminal George Soros. THE SHAME OF IT.
evil nazi criminal George Soros.
Damn – I knew that Soros was a brilliant and talented man, but I had no idea that he was that precocious … given that he was all of 13 years old when the Nazi regime collapsed.
Annikan:
Thanks for this literature… It certainly looks interesting and I’ll read it later… No, really, I’ll take a look at it later… I really have to go, but your ideas are worth thinking about… No, really, I have some frozen food here… gotta go… I’ll read it later… Plus, I have to go edit my easily-found dozens of posts about Reason Magazine stretching back to 2003… gotta go… frozen food… mind your hand…
Koch Brothers Deny Tea Party Paternity - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine // May 12, 2010 at 2:30 pm
[...] as the corporate paymasters ginning up a phony "grass roots" Tea Party movement, Frum Forum gets a rare interview with president of their charitable Charles G. Koch Foundation, Richard Fink, who denies paternity [...]
Tim Mak - The Left’s Billion Dollar Tea Party Lie - Hip Hop Republican // May 15, 2010 at 11:05 am
[...] entire interview here – http://www.frumforum.com/the-lefts-billion-dollar-tea-party-lie Share [...]
Further exposing the tea party as an astroturf movement | Recurial // Oct 30, 2010 at 5:11 pm
[...] exposed how the billionaire Koch brothers were financing far-right politics, but the brothers denied any involvement in the tea party [...]
Koch conference under scrutiny – Kenneth P. Vogel and Simmi Aujla – POLITICO.com | Slinking Toward Retirement // Jan 27, 2011 at 11:10 pm
[...] a May interview with FrumForum, Koch’s top executive, Richard Fink, said of Americans for Prosperity: “I don’t consider them [...]