Where is your money coming from?

The two biggest donors to the University of Kansas School of Business, as far as I can tell, represent Koch Industries and Phillip Anschutz. More on them in a minute.

I spent two years at KU earning my MBA. I studied in the Anschutz library. The lobby of the business school building is named for Koch (pronounced "Coke") and it has nice little plaques and whatnot thanking Koch Industries. Representatives from Koch came to speak with us, recruit us, and to describe their business practices.

Koch Industries is the second largest privately held company in America. They got their start in oil and natural gas and spread out to synthetic fibers made from petroleum derivatives. Lycra and Stainmaster are Koch products. From there, Koch diversified and started buying up other companies. While I was in school, Koch bought Georgia Pacific, the makers of Dixie cups and other paper products, and paid in cash. Koch has a lot of money coming in, although we don't know exatly how much because it's privately held and they don't have to disclose such numbers.

Philip Anschutz has a similarly diverse portfolio, one that started with railroads. He has a hand in petroleum. He as the CEO of Qwest, a communications company. Anschutz is a man I find particularly evil. Fortune named him "America's Greediest Billionaire." According to the bastion of truth that is Wikipedia, he:

• Helped fund Colorado's 1992 Amendment 2, a ballot initiative designed to overturn local and state laws that prohibit discrimination against individuals on the basis of sexual orientation but was invalidated by Romer v. Evans after it passed.^[20]
• Helped fund the Discovery Institute, a think tank based in Seattle, Washington that promotes intelligent design and criticizes evolution.^[21]
• Supported the Parents Television Council, a group that protests against television indecency.

 

So Anschutz uses his money to discriminate against gays, push his religious agenda in a war against science, and censor television. Nice.

I bring all this up because of an article I just read in the Huffington Post detailing Koch's spending habits. It seems that the petroleum company has spent millions of dollars propping up questionable "studies" about the effects of climate change. Of course, Koch has obvious conflict of interests here. I want their business to stay out of my debates.

There are questions that should be asked of the Al Gores of the world, but they shouldn't be asked by Koch. They should be asked by climatologists not oil barons who are paying people to call their opponents "Nazis," and "Hitler Youth" for their stances.

Good thing I had the sense not to work for Koch when their recruiters came rolling through Lawrence. I wouldn't want to be contributing to this nonsense.