A Description of How Wealthy Conservatives Promote Their Agenda

This article provides details on how super wealthy conservatives influence electoral politics. It describes how one person, who operates like the Koch brothers, managed to get republicans in control of both houses in North Carolina for the first time since 1890. Its less costly to fund state legislature elections in North Carolina, so a little bit of extra money goes a long way in each election. The campaigns were dirty and tinged with racism. Controlling the state legislature gives the GOP control of redistricting. They will gerrymander the districts so that Republican's have a better chance of winning congressional seats.

The article also describes the effort underway to reduce funding of the state university system. This makes the universities more dependent upon external funding as well as limiting access to low income students who cannot afford increased tuition. This opens the door for wealthy benefactors to provide funding for academic programs that are consistent with their political agenda. That is happening today in North Carolina. It shows how important it is to conservatives to take control over academics. Ideas matter, and control of idea production and distribution is a key part of their strategy. Not surprisingly, the Cato Institute, which is a libertarian think tank funded by the same wealthy conservatives, has come to the defense of this practice. It argues that individuals are free to spend their money as they please. Conservatives also bring up the example of George Soros to defend their tactics. He is a billionaire that has funded liberal causes. He is only one versus many that fund right wing programs, and he does not work in concert with Democratic party political operatives as his conservative counterparts do. Ken Lay, who ran Enron, operated in a similar fashion. He helped George Bush to gain the governorship of Texas and then get elected as president. He also endowed accounting chairs in universities. There is a Ken Lay endowed chair of accounting in the University of Texas. This made sense to him because Enron made extensive use of accounting "innovations" at Enron to pump up its stock price. He also got a lot of help from his auditing firm which approved the "innovations". This led eventually to the failure of the accounting firm which was the largest and most prestigious accountancy in the world.