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You wanna come at me you learn to find your fucking balls. They'll be near your mother.
I'm Colin Mortimer, Director of the Neoliberal project at the Progressive Policy Insititute, a co-founder of the Neoliberal Project and one of the original mods of this subreddit…AMA!
Washington, D.C., for career development and to explore the marketing of neoliberal ideas through social media.
Marginal Revolution is libertarian economist Tyler Cowen out of Koch directed and libertarian George Mason University (also the creators of the CATO institute, he disburses funds from “Emergent Ventures”, which is really the Mercatus Center, which is really Peter Thiel. The Kochs have had controversy for their undue influence on the economic department at GMU::
The documents reveal in surprising detail that for years, as George Mason grew from a little-known commuter school to a major public university and a center of libertarian scholarship, millions of dollars in donations from conservative-leaning donors like the Charles Koch Foundation had come with strings attached.
As early as 1990, entities controlled by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch were given a seat on a committee to pick candidates for a professorship that they funded, the records show. Similar arrangements that continued through 2009 gave donors decision-making roles in selecting candidates for key economics appointments at the Mercatus Center, a Koch-funded think tank on campus that studies markets and regulation. The appointments, which also created faculty lines at George Mason, were steered to professors who, like the Kochs, embraced unconstrained free markets.
More recently, in 2016, executives of the Federalist Society, a conservative national organization of lawyers, served as agents for a $20 million gift from an anonymous donor, and were given the right to terminate installments of the gift at their discretion. Emails disclosed by the university show that Federalist Society officials were also involved in hiring discussions and had suggested a student for admission. In turn, a professor at the law school wrote the society asking for help securing recommendations for prestigious federal judicial clerkships for students active in the society.
Following a period of deep cuts in public funding, the documents and related emails raised broad questions about whether universities that rely heavily on private donors can remain free from the influences of contributors who may be pursuing commercial, political or philosophical agendas.
In academia, such influence is viewed as inappropriate, partly because it may pressure professors to produce biased research, undermining the credibility of their work and spreading incorrect information to students. That may be particularly problematic in the interpretation of data and construction of models in areas of economics that affect federal tax policy or regulation.
Bethany Letiecq, an associate professor in the Human Development and Family Science program at George Mason and president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said the documents demonstrated that the school had “ceded our authority and autonomy to one of the wealthiest industrialists in the world.”
“The question now is: How are we going to move forward and rebuild our reputation as a reputable institution in the Commonwealth?” Professor Letiecq said. “How are we going to undo this mess?”
News of the donor agreements prompted a university inquiry and other measures intended to rebuild trust in the institution’s academic mission and independence. The faculty senate voted on Wednesday to ask the administration that it publish an online database of all donors, appoint two tenured faculty members to the university’s gift acceptance committee, and extend an ad hoc faculty committee created in 2016 that is charged with examining potential conflicts of interest with outside gifts and grants.
This is not the entire article, the rot goes deeper. Here is Tyler Cowen shilling for Charles Koch's book. The DLC, itself which founded the PPI is a Koch offshoot:
In the late '70s, Richard Fink met Charles Koch to discuss founding a research center devoted to teaching Austrian economics thought at Rutgers. Fink met with Koch in Wichita and planned what became the Mercatus Center in 1999.[6]
And
Fink served on the board of trustees of the Democratic Leadership Council.[8]
The DLC founded a think tank, the PPI:
The DLC's affiliated think tank was the Progressive Policy Institute. Democrats who adhered to the DLC's philosophy often called themselves “New Democrats.” This term is also used by other groups who hold similar views, including the New Democrat Network[5] and Third Way.[6]
The progressive policy institute helped bring us the Iraq war and Clinton's third way. They're rebranding as a progress studies adjacent under the “Center for New Liberalism” banner because the neoliberal brand is too radioactive. What are some of Collin's achievements? Aside from being a consultant at Bates White Economic Consulting his big claim to fame is having one of the saddest “debates” ever at The Federalist Society which just overturned Roe v. Wade, where he basically just agreed with them on licensing reform. That's the transcript, audio as well.
PPI is weird enough, this man is not qualified to run a think tank. This is not exhaustive, this is just a start down the rabbit hole and these are all original or reputable sources.