Alarmed by dark money subverting Arizona’s public education system, the Progressive Democrats of America are sponsoring a special lecture, “UnKoch My Campus” on Thursday, September 28, 2017, 6:30 – 8:00 pm at the Ward 6 City Council Office at 3202 E. First Street, Tucson.
The speaker is David Gibbs, Professor of History and Government at the University of Arizona. He has cited the “extreme danger” that Trump poses in climate change and nuclear war, and has criticized US military interventions in foreign countries.
The Koch Bros’ tentacles are everywhere, including in Tucson at the University of Arizona campus. Their “Freedom Center” at the UofA is a think tank designed to turn students into future lobbyists for the right-wing, anti-education foundation. See the blog post Anti-Public School Lecture Set at Koch-Funded UofA Class in Tucson. The comments on the post are noteworthy also.
The corrosive influence of “dark money” has undermined the democratic institutions of the United States, but not just in our political system. The same wealthy donors and corporations have also been polluting our universities.
Recordings and documents from the Charles Koch Foundation and its network of professors shows how Koch’s academic programming is political rather than educational, “leveraging science and universities” for political gain.
Koch Industries and their network of wealthy donors use an “integrated strategy,” called the Structure of Social Change that uses targeted funding of universities, think tanks, and political groups for the “implementation of policy change.”
Discover this and more at this not-to-be-missed presentation.
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either the koch bros or putin is going to get you. really? it wasn’t either who made white working class voters vote for trump in michigan or wisconsin. it was obama saying to them your good paying manufacturing jobs are not coming back get over it! it wasn’t putin or koch brothers who made white working class voters in pennsylvania or ohio vote republican that was hillary say she was going to close down the coal industry. the fault dear brutus is not in our stars but in ourselves. and neither made clinton vote for iraq war sabotage bernie’s campaign or keep jill stein off of msdnc infuriating sanders supporters.
With academia overwhelmingly liberal, such a small opposition voice seems intellectually healthy to me.
Not a small opposition voice, with four decades of “Koch” “education of all the state legislators coming to fruition in Arizona.
Mr. Kavanagh, Koch Brothers “education”. How many Arizona legislators attended their ‘education” indoctrination that you follow? Read “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer. It’s not about liberal. It’s about getting a well-round education of our “real” history Arizona fails to deliver its people. There is a Constitution. Correct the unConstitutional statutes/laws you put in place — that waste years of litigation getting to the U.S. Supreme Court only to be ruled “un-Constitutional. Restore the “rights” of Arizona people, who are said to have no rights because of the Arizona legislators. Restore presumption of innocence and due process that have been taken away with “Victim’s Rights”. A must-read: “DARK MONEY’ by Jane Mayer. You all love your ignorant masses Arizona perpetuates.
“Restore presumption of innocence and due process that have been taken away with “Victim’s Rights”.”
Do you mean going back to the days when a woman who was raped was pilloried for being a “slut who was asking for it”? When the woman had every face of her personal life dragged out for ridicule and contempt? When she was shamed into silence by a system where she was blamed for it happening?
Or how about a person who was murdered being forgotten about in order to make the killer feel better and treated with all the dignity and respect he did NOT treat his victim with?
Or how about the husband/boyfriend/date/stranger who beats the hell out of the woman because he has control issues being pampered while his victim tries desperately to put back together her shattered life? All the while living in absolute fear that HE will show up without notice and beat her all over again.
What facet of protecting and nuturing the criminal while ignoring the victim(s) do you want to happen first? You obviously hold the concept of victim’s rights in contempt so what would you take away from it? While it doesn’t seem to in your case, the plight of the victim should be considered. The victim is just that…a victim. Someone who your criminal selected and damaged, sometimes beyond repair, without giving a damn what happened to them. And it is rare there is only one victim. These people are busy inflicting themselves over and over on people whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
What are your concerns – if any – about the victims? And why on earth do you have such contempt for them? Shame on you, Concerned Citizen!
The U of A just hired Noam Chomsky, a well-known left wing activist, as a professor using an endowment (dark money?) . Do you oppose his hiring also or just conservatives?
Interesting… Noam Chomsky was Jared Loughner’s philosopher. When Loughner stated “Don’t you know that grammar is mind control?” to Congresswoman Giffords at one of her neighborhood meetings, most people assumed that it was the meaningless ramblings of a madman.
But, that phrase is directly from Chomsky lectures, he gives entire lectures on grammar as mind control.
When you go through Loughner’s reading list and philosophy checkpoints, you arrive at the dark cold realization that his act was philosophically rational from the vantage point of his readings.
You all have made much of objectivism and its potential to take people astray. You ought to look yourself and your philosophers in the mirror.
The integration of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle with Christianity and then the integration of Christianity with the constitutional system of the United States resulted in a leap forward of unbelievable velocity not seen since the spurts under Alexander the Great and the Roman Republic – each of them also formed and shaped by Plato.
As FSNT would say, each morning we get up and say “What would Jesus do?” which is another way of stating Plato’s question “What is the good?”, and “What is truth?”
This very blog and the intense vitriolic debates are an absolute extension of Plato’s philosophy.
They never ask that question in Islamic countries. They fell under the spell of Achem’s nominalism in the during the dark ages and never emerged, never experienced the enlightenment.
We have very uncomfortable debates. We don’t just get up and salute the flag, we ask, “Is such a salute good?’ And, this is a very valid question when you look at the total wreckage that is African American culture in the United States. Even if the people asking the question are the ones who caused that wreckage.
How many ALEC summits have you been to on “scholarships”? Data driven research is not needed in the Koch academic world, so they have to “buy” ideology, and “buy” pseudo research,
Just because you disagree with the conservative point of view is not justification to banish it. That is what happens in totalitarian countries and based upon the opinions many on the left now share about this and the 1st amendment, God help us if “progressives” ever get absolute power.
The Koch’s do not pay for an opposition voice, they pay for pro-Koch propaganda.
They also live in Kansas, yet spend a lot of money in Arizona.
I would prefer my representatives represent me, and not some out of state billionaires.
It seems the rest of this thread is mostly climate deniers spreading lies and accusing scientists of crimes, without any evidence to back up those accusations.
I’m tired of fake conservatives getting away with this BS, please show your evidence of the massive hoax to the FBI.
You won’t, though, because you’re cowards and liars.
Excellent article! Thank you Professor Gibbs. The whole nation needs to see this. Sad to see U. of AZ contaminated. “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer is also a must-read.
Climate Change is a complete hoax consisting of three major intellectual frauds and a plethora of minor ones.
First, they have falsified the measurement of total ice volumes of the earth by loading measurements with obscure gravitational models masquerading as ice measurement.
Laser models, by far the most reliable and accurate method of measuring these massive ice quantities show total ice volumes of the planet’s ice shelves at or close to all-time records.
If the ice shelves are at or close to all-time records, the measurement of the oceans also has to be fraudulent. How was this fraud done? Again, they use obscure modeling to show the ocean floors sinking at a rapid pace. Since the ocean’s surface isn’t rising in a significant way, that is where they hide the non-existent melted glacier water – in the volume created by a falling ocean floor.
The final fraud is in the temperature measurement. The temperature modeling of the First International Panel on Climate Change ended up at the fifth percentile of the model’s projection. Meaning, of course, the model lacked validity. A model and hypothesis that can’t predict or explain the past is worthless at predicting the future. They were able to solve this problem by changing the past weather temperature records. They went back, reduced and manipulated (to reduce the standard deviation) historically recorded temperatures sufficiently to be able to declare current records “all-time highs.”
Our current planet temperatures are not statistically different than the originally recorded temperatures.
I am sure that most readers find it inconceivable that a fraud this elaborate, sustained and outrageous could be conducted by our prestigious scientists. However, intellectual frauds in which masses of scientists participate are actually par for the course since research journals began in 1665. Some of these have run for over a hundred years. Others have run until the horrific consequences became too glaring to cover up.
It’s a philosophy thing. Our western civilization is built around Socrates, Plato and Aristotle formulations for pursuing the truth and pursuing good. Over the last two millennia, that has, among intellectual elites, been completely replaced with the pursuit of power.
Anthropomorphic climate change theory gives scientist an enormous amount of power over their fellow citizens.
Sounds like Huppenthal writing here?
Forgive me if I’m wrong.
“Sounds like Huppenthal writing here?”
I doubt it seriously. It doesn’t sound like him.
That would be me. I was blocked from posting.
Do you have an sources for this, John Huppenthal? Would you care to share with the class?
Or shall we just assume you’re posting fossil fuel propaganda?
“Do you have an sources for this, John Huppenthal? Or shall we just assume you’re posting fossil fuel propaganda?”
I am sure you are aware that you hold two different perspectives on what constitutes “evidence” for anything discussed here. If you like and agree with whatever is being discussed, you will accept anything found on the net as adequate. I you dislike and disagree with whatever is being posted, you will accept nothing found on the net as adequate. Plus, you have a tantrum that anyone would dare disagree with you.
That is hardly a fair system you live by, Tom.
[Note to Readers: Thucydidees appears to be John Huppenthal, again posting under a pseudonym]
The primary source is a UN sponsored and paid for laser measurement of total ice volumes.
All the other data falls out from that measurement.
The scientist was brutalized for his findings – another common denominator of scientific frauds. Heretic scientists are burned at the stake, figuratively speaking now. Not so with Giordano Bruno who was actually burned at the stake.
I see that you are pulling your Saul Alinsky, Climate Denier, demonizing stunt.
Falling ocean floor – you can pull that up in a few minutes. That is where climate science is now. They don’t try to hide it. Almost all the “melted ice” is stored in the volume created by a falling ocean floor. Look it up, only take a few minutes.
Adjustment of historical temperature records in a way to both reduce the standard deviation, correlate the temperatures more strongly with carbon and reduce overall historical temperatures? They don’t even try to hide it. Look it up.
These are just some of the major fraud elements.
Here is another one.
CO2 is not even slightly a poisonous element. The air in our lungs is 40,000 ppm CO2, the air in submarines is 8,000 ppm CO2. The air in a high-performance greenhouse is 2,000 ppm. They can scare us because CO2’s cousin Carbon Monoxide is so toxic. If their projections are correct for CO2 expansion, crop growth rates will increase by over 20% and so will forest growth rates – this is simple greenhouse science that every agronomist is familiar with.
Not a single one of the major models incorporates the CO2 absorption that will take place with this enormous increase in plant growth around the world. And, its not just the existing farm fields and world forests that will grow at stunning speeds, high CO2 levels open up vast new currently non-arable lands to cultivation because higher levels of CO2 enable plants to grow with much less water.
Completely untold story.
That Cassini thing they said went around Saturn was all a hoax, because planetary science is a liberal conspiracy.
“That Cassini thing they said went around Saturn was all a hoax, because planetary science is a liberal conspiracy.”
Wow! That is weakest comparison of apples to oranges I have read on these pages, Frances. Even the scale of the comparison is weak. Global climate change is a massive issue encompassing almost a limitless number of factors. Casini is a tiny little project that, while amazing, is just a little bitty thing encompassing very few factors…in fact, if it weren’t being discussed right now no one would know anything about it.
Wrong as usual. Global warming is planetary science, not a liberal conspiracy. The denial of global warming IS a conservative conspiracy, funded by hydrocarbon interests, like the Kochs.
“Global warming is planetary science, not a liberal conspiracy.”
Frances, where have you ever read me say that global climate change is a hoax? I happen to think that the global climate is changing, BUT I do not believe it is the result of man. There are two things that are ignored by the global climate change scientists that provide more credible explanations as to WHY the climate is changing.
(1) They inore the long history of warming and cooling that has occurred just in the last 20,000 years. We had a world wide freeze approximately 20,000 years ago that covered large swathes of the surface with glaciers. It warmed up and the ice went away…all without ANY action from man. In the ensuing peiod, there have been numerous change in the climate that occurred without the input of man. We may well be going through another period of change right now, but we really don’t know how or why it is happening. Just as it has done for centuries the earth has it’s own cycle.
(2} The current discussions ignore the changes in temperature that are also occurring simultaneously on many of the other planets in our solar system, indicating the sun may be warming slightly and the planets feel its effect.
The conspiracy (which is neither from the left nor the right) comes from scientists who make their living decrying man’s effect on the planet. It is the story that sells because (and this is where the left does come in) it is anti-humanity and big on environmentalism. Pushing the global climate change model is where the current sientific power is. Yes, some of the scientists played around with the measurements and figures in order to fit their theories, but it really doesn’t matter. To be a scientist and speak out that man is killing the planet is the way to be applauded in the press and to get big fat grants to study it.
Yup. Those hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted every year have no effect, and all that data collected all over the globe is all incorrect.
Sadly, the people who need to know this stuff, the fake conservatives of Arizona’s GOP and their base, will not attend.
But they should, because the Koch’s are against everything they’re for.
FSNT, you have to remember that (to paraphrase The Rude Pundit): Clowns like Good State Senator, Thuckenthal and Steve would rather believe the lies that support their beliefs than the truth which challenges them.
It’s a known issue.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128490874
Birthers are a good example.
True. I just prefer the way The Rude One eloquently put it.
Oh, absolutely.
Your problem is that I am willing to go where the evidence and facts take me and unwilling to go where the evidence and logic don’t take me.
Republican and conservative beliefs about the economics of immigration are totally wrong. Texas is exhibit one, California is exhibit two. Arizona before and after E Verify is exhibit three. Regression analysis of illegal immigrants versus employment of legal citizens across all 50 states is the closing argument. Illegal immigration drives employment of natives, doesn’t damage it.
Democrat beliefs on immigrant effect on crime are totally wrong. The research is a complete fraud. And, you, FSNT produced a cornucopia of the best of it – thank you for the list. Immigration caused crime to spin out of control in Arizona. Go talk to the extra 150 families whose loved ones were murdered in 2006.
Conservative beliefs on Common Core were a twisted mess of nothing. Common Core was a collection of standards conservatives supported for decades. It came down to Obama did it, I hate it. And, the standards were catastrophic, not because they weren’t the right set of standards but because standards for children, standards that bite, are toxic. We took the bite out of the standards in Arizona and watched the nation collapse around us. We walked out with the highest academic gains in the nation because of astute leadership.
So, let me restate:
Climate Change is an intellectual fraud.
“…Steve would rather believe the lies that support their beliefs than the truth which challenges them.”
I find it funny that I was just thinking the same thing about you and Tom. I will guarantee is that you have never questioned anything you have heard or read stating man caused global climate change is real. You have never asked yourself if there was the possibility that there factors having an effect that are being ignored. You accepted the climate change mantra and seek to avoid reading or hearing anything that doesn’t dovetail with what you already know.
” Those hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted every year have no effect…”
Are you aware that a single small volcanic “belch” emits more greenhouse gases than all of what mankind can produce in a year. And do you know how many active volcanoes there are in the world? Hundreds, at any given time. Mankind and what we do are barely a blip on the radar screen.