Last night I received several hair-on-fire emails from arts advocates in Arizona. Seems the dunderheads at the legislature have zeroed out the Arts Commission’s modest $2 million state appropriation. Even though their little grants keep dozens of cultural centers open, provide hundreds of school programs, help underwrite many jobs and contribute to our overall quality of life, the GOP majority says we just don’t have money for that cultural stuff.
Instead, they added $5 million to the education budget for three university think tanks that were seeded with Koch Brothers money. Don’t get me wrong, the universities desperately need money.
Arizona’s universities have endured the deepest cuts in the nation since the Great Recession, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Last year alone, the Legislature and Gov. Doug Ducey cut $99 million from universities—a 13 percent cut in state funding. This, on top of $400 million in previous recession-era cuts.
The universities asked for $32 million more this year, and they may get most of it. But they did not request funding for three conservative think tanks that operate on two of the campuses: The Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona in Tucson; the Center for Political Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University in Tempe; and the Center for the Study of Economic Liberty also at ASU.
They all have Koch ties. That last think tank, for instance, ASU’s Center for the Study of Economic Liberty, was founded in 2014 with $3.5 million in Koch cash. None of the centers teach and they don’t offer degree programs. Their names provide a clue as to their real purpose: develop talking points for free-marketers—like Gov. Doug Ducey and his legislative toadies.
And get this, reports Laurie Roberts: The ASU center is headed by a guy who wants to abolish public education.
Turns out William Boyes, founder and director of the Center for the Study of Economic Liberty, supports the elimination of public schools...
“We have to change education from K-12 to universities to be more open to … a free market approach … I also think that if we can do the same thing in K through 12, get rid of public education, create private education as a replacement and have a market for education, then I think we really have an impact.”
It’s no secret that Doug Ducey has benefitted from his Koch connections. In 2012 the brothers’ Americans for Responsible Leadership provided $500,000 to Ducey, who was leading the charge to defeat an education measure. He won and the schools lost. Then during the 2014 governor’s race Ducey was helped by the Koch-financed American Encore:
During the campaign, American Encore put more than $750,000 into ads targeting Democrat candidate Fred DuVal and spent another $650,000 promoting Ducey.
After the election Gov. Ducey hired Koch network staffers and he continued to attend Koch retreats. Now we’re starting to see the “quo” part of quid pro quo.
In October, ASU’s new Koch-funded Center for the Study of Economic Liberty endorsed Ducey’s Prop. 123 plan to temporarily boost school funding by siphoning more money from the state land trust.
Now, suddenly, someone has plugged $5 million into next year's proposed budget for universities for “economic freedom schools.”
First the Koch boys helped Ducey defeat an education tax, then their money aided his gubernatorial election, and once in office Koch operations continued to fund Gov. Ducey’s attacks on public education. Now the conservative think tanks have come out in support of Ducey’s controversial Prop. 123, which increases dividends from the state land trust so the Republicans can avoid paying schools the $317 million that a court said they are owed—and avoid a lawsuit in the process.
Suddenly $5 million appears for conservative think tanks that don’t support public education but who do support Prop. 123, which Ducey says will help public education. Okaaaay.
No one knows how the $5 million ended up in the budget, and it would be hard to find a legislator who can even explain what the think tanks do or why Arizona taxpayers should fund their operations. One Scottsdale bonehead said the think tanks will offset all that liberal teaching:
Rep. Jay Lawrence, R-Scottsdale, said the spending plan represents “a wonderful opportunity” to fund conservative viewpoints, which he says are lacking at the schools.
Yeah, those conservative viewpoints are lacking all right. The dismantling of higher ed funding has caused the universities to not only raise tuition substantially, but they’re more and more dependent on corporate donations, which, believe me, are not underwriting Marxist economics! Those “conservative viewpoints” are lacking so much they control every political and educational decision in the state.
Hey, how about $5 million for the Cesar Chavez Center for Workers Rights? Let’s at least honor an Arizonan’s legacy!