By Thomas Ultican 2/4/2024
Propaganda Rag, The 74, continuously endorses their billionaire funders’ agendas. On January 23, they were passing on lies about Education Savings Accounts (ESA), another name for school vouchers. The hidden deep pocket behind the fraudulent article was Charles Koch.
Christopher Leonard describes Koch’s economic philosophy in his masterpiece, Kochland:
“Charles Koch became enamored with the thinking of economists and philosophers like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, two Austrian academics who did most of their formative work during the 1930s and 1940s. In later years, Charles Koch would be described as a libertarian or a conservative. But these were imperfect labels that didn’t capture his true world view. More than anything, he was an Austrian economist, or a ‘classical liberal,’ as he liked to call it. Hayek, in particular, put forward a radical concept of capitalism and the role that markets should play in society, and his thinking had an enduring effect on Charles Koch.” (Page 42)
As a “classical liberal,” Koch is opposed to Social Security, Medicare and public education. This is probably not a case of billionaire greed but his philosophical belief. He sees being taxed to pay for public schools and medical care for aging people as stealing. Hardcore libertarians believe people should pay their own way and believe children’s education, retirement and health care are individual responsibilities.
Koch is an extremely bright MIT-trained doctorate in engineering and an astute politician.
Choice Propaganda
On January 23rd, The 74 published “Three Things to Know About National Education Tax Credit Survey.” The three things are (1) most adults support education tax credits, (2) poor people show lowest support for them and (3) parents who support education tax credits also favor education savings accounts, public school open enrollment and part-time public school access.
The subtitle of the article says, “New YouGov poll found education tax credit support from 80 percent of K-12 parents — pointing to a growing interest in school choice options.”
Education tax credits and education savings accounts are new names for vouchers. How could the claims in this article be true if a voucher law has never received a positive vote from the public?
YouGov describes itself as “an international online research data and analytics technology group.” Founded in 2000 and based in the UK, it was apparently hired by Yes. Every Kid. to run a few surveys. The results are opposite from other surveys on the same subject.
A March 2023 survey by Reuters/Ipsos found that 36% of respondents showed some support for vouchers with only 15% strongly supporting them (See Page 11). One reason YouGov got such positive responses may be how the question was asked. The Reuters/Ipsos poll inquired about “Laws allowing government money to send students to private and religious schools, even if it reduces money for public schools?” It is unknown what YouGov asked.
An article posted at 538 explained,
“Complicating the picture further is the fact that several of the survey sponsors, such as EdChoice and yes. every kid., are advocacy organizations that support voucher programs, which means they may be incentivized to word their poll questions in a way that encourages respondents to indicate support for the programs. They may also be less transparent about how their polls are conducted and how their questions are worded. For example, polling from YouGov/yes. every kid. conducted in November and December of last year found a slight majority (54 percent) of Americans support ESAs, though a significant number (33 percent) were undecided on the issue. But the organization didn’t release complete toplines or question wording, so it’s not clear how much this result might have been influenced by the pollster’s framing of the issue.”
Koch Financed It
The 74 noted at the end of the article,
“Disclosure: Yes. Every Kid. operates as part of the wider Stand Together Trust network. Stand Together Trust provides financial support to The 74.
Stand Together was founded by Charles Koch in 2003 and, like all of his organizations, it is complicated and divided into six organizations today. The Stand Together about web page says:
“Stand Together was founded in 2003, but our story really started more than 50 years ago. It began with Charles Koch — a Forbes Top-25 philanthropist and the CEO of the largest private company in the country.
Today, Brian Hooks is the chairman and CEO of Stand Together. He is co-author with Charles of Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World and a 2021 TIME 100 Next honoree, featuring leaders shaping the future of their fields.
In 2013, Stand Together Trust (EIN 46-3508366) was formed. It gifted The 74 $277,000 in 2022 and provided Yes. Every Kid. with $2,010,000.
Looking through the latest non-profit tax filings by Stand Together Trust, Yes. Every Kid. Foundation (EIN 84-3535275) and Charles Koch Foundation (EIN 48-0918408), I noticed many of the board members are the same.
From Stand Together Trust: Brian Menkes Secretary, Derek Johnson Executive Director, Brian Hooks Director, Kara Hartnett Treasure, Charles Koch Director, Henrich Heuer – Keeps the records
From Yes. Every Kid. Foundation: Derek Johnson Director, Brian Menkes Secretary, Henrich Heuer Treasure
From Charles Koch Foundation: Charles Koch Chairman, Brian Menkes Secretary, Kara Hartnett Treasure, Brian Hooks Director
Kochtopus
The graphic above appeared December 13, 2013 on Progressive Collapse. The web site is no longer viable but their image is. It uses an octopus to demonstrate the vast influence Koch has created in areas of public interest. Since then, it has been shared by many. On the occasion of David Koch’s passing in 2019, the Guardian titled its article “The Kochtopus: sprawling network keeps David Koch’s legacy thriving.”
In 2010, the Koch brothers staged one of their twice-yearly programs that became known as “Freedom Partners.” A brochure, accompanying invitations, highlighted a previous event in Aspen. The Guardian’s article reported:
“The most intriguing part of the brochure was a roll-call of names of those lured to previous “Freedom Partner” gatherings. It included the current vice-president, Mike Pence; the Wisconsin politician Paul Ryan, who would go on to become speaker of the House of Representatives; super-donors such as the hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, and most intriguingly of all two conservative justices of the US supreme court, Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia.”
Koch is known to be a shrewd businessman who supports voucher plans with as little oversight as possible. Education savings accounts are fraught with malfeasance. Peter Greene, reporting at Forbes noted:
“In Arizona, an audit found that parents had spent $700K of ESA money on beauty supplies and clothing. In Florida, where voucher-receiving schools openly discriminate against LGBTQ students, a new bill proposes that audits be performed only every three years. Kentucky’s new ESA bill proposes audits after the state has found evidence of misuse of funds, which seems like a rather late shutting of the barn doors. And the bill that the Iowa senate just fast-tracked in order to establish ESAs includes no call for any audits or oversight at all. (That may be in part why the Iowa Satanic Temple has announced their intention to establish the Iowa Satanic School.)”
For Charles Koch to support this kind of financial chicanery, there must be an ulterior motive. Most likely, the purpose is destroying America’s public school system and ending the voucher mess. His classical liberal ideology would be realized and universal free public education would be ended.
Koch once again extended his octopus-like tentacles when he joined the Walton Family to form the Vela Education Fund. Vela received their 501 C3 determination (EIN 84-4185046) from the IRS December 10, 2020. Stand Together’s latest form 990 filing listed $6,340,018 to Vela and the Walton Families Foundations (EIN-13-3441466) latest form 990 filing showed $5,000,000 to Vela.
It is clear that Vela is a Koch operation. Derek Johnson and Brian Menkes are on the board and Kara Hartnett is listed as Treasurer. These three people are on several Koch organization boards. This is one more weapon in Charles Koch’s quiver for ending public education.
Billionaires like Koch, the Walton family and former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos are intent on using their wealth to defeat democratic support for public schools and end “Democracy’s Schools.” America can no longer afford to put up with billionaires and their non-democratic ways.
Time that voters tax billionaires out of existence.
tultican 
Thanks for the Koch reporting. I have followed their money and positions for years. It should be making every supporter of public education and democracy angry–but that doesn’t seem to happen. Neither democracy nor public ed will survive long without some redistribution of that kind of wealth.
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Hi David,
I am all in on redistribution of wealth. With a few people having such great wealth, democracy cannot survive.
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Are demands to redistribute wealth informed by one’s politics, or is one’s politics informed by the desire to redistribute wealth?
I suspect that many who wish to see wealth distributed are sincere.
But the wealth and power accumulated by those who do the “distributing” needs to be noted.
And to remain in that position, such people routinely pit people against one another with demands for synthetic unity.
The Maoist practice of “Unity, Criticism, Unity” is a form of this, stirring up ressentiment in order to encourage criticism and attacks on one’s neighbors, conflicts that allow the elite to use dialetical techniques to amplifying their own power.
As Foucault wrote, [i]In thought and political analysis, we have to cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.”
That power, disconnected from responsibility, through political warfare, drives destructive and dangerous policies.
A lot of working people have their children privately educated, essentially paying for school twice – once with tax dollars, and again with money earned working.
People like that don’t spend money without good reason. They’re trying to escape from something.
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In which states where ESAs are flourishing is funding for public schools going down? You people are depraved lying lunatics
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I have heard similar comments from my wife.
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No answer to the question, shocking.
The answer is there isn’t one. Which you know. Yet please continue to have depraved fantasies about forcible redistribution and taking people “out of existence.” Hopefully you can find a different romantic partner into that sort of treatment too.
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The purpose of “democracy,” as “gnostic,” for lack of a better term, thinkers understand it, isn’t to hold power accountable to people.
It’s to hold people accountable to power.
The purpose of public schools isn’t to use power to serve the public, it’s to make the public serve power.
This is why they view ESAs as a threat to “democracy,” and the “public education,” because by “democracy” and “public education,” they mean something very different than you do.
Power always and everywhere works to create synthetic realities and rituals to uphold those simulcra, shunning benchmarks that could provide accountability against an external reality.
The snake eating it’s own tail, the ouroboros, is one of its signs and symbols. It’s self-referencing and self-reinforcing. Once you accept this fake reality, once you enter the wizard’s circle, anything can mean anything.
By taking resources from public schools, they mean that you are removing resources from this system, this sythetic reality that strips parents and children of authority and agency, and any money that escapes that system is “lost.”
This is what they mean when they gaslight, belittle, demean and launch personal attacks. Which tells us that ESAs aren’t a bad idea. If it didn’t make cause a reaction, it could hardly be otherwise.
My concern is that ESAs provide a safety valve for public school systems that are increasingly unaccountable and undemocratic, increasingly illiberal, giving those it cannot digest an easy out.
If you’re a parent you have to take any out you can get. But the attack on Democracy – government accountable to the governed – continues.
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While the article raises important concerns about the influence of wealth on education policy, its reliance on several logical fallacies weakens the argument. Key issues include:
Ad Hominem Attacks: Criticizing Charles Koch’s character or philosophical beliefs does not address the validity of ESAs and vouchers.
Guilt by Association: Suggesting policies must be flawed because of their proponents ignores the substance of the arguments for school choice.
Straw Man Fallacy: Misrepresenting proponents’ arguments as solely aimed at undermining public education overlooks the complexity of their actual positions.
False Dichotomy: Presenting the choice as either supporting public education in its current form or destroying it through privatization fails to acknowledge the potential for nuanced approaches.
Appeal to Fear: Warning of catastrophic outcomes without a balanced examination of evidence discourages a constructive debate.
Oversimplification: Reducing the debate to a narrative of billionaire interference overlooks the diversity of opinion among school choice supporters.
A more effective critique would:
Directly address the arguments for school choice.
Consider evidence from multiple perspectives.
Acknowledge the potential for ESAs and vouchers to coexist with a robust public education system.
By focusing on these aspects, the discussion can move towards a more informed and balanced debate on education policy.
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