by Jim Hoover

Want to know how money buys public policy and the media? Ask the Koch brothers.

While we struggle to make ends meet, tyrannical forces are secretly and relentlessly working to control decision-making at all levels of government that can be bought. In Republican states which no longer defend public interests, it is possible.

Only a small obscure slice of the media seems to trace the corporate takeover, including the dark and murky path of the extremist Koch brothers who, in practice, perpetrate clandestine efforts to take over that which is owned by the people.

Their role in Scott Walkers agenda of destroying unions and privatizing public property and public functions in Wisconsin, from which they plan to gain, is fairly well known on blogs and MSNBC, but not on the mainstream media. Curiously, Sarah Palin calls it “the lame-stream media.”

Based on “Privatization: The Road to Hell,” Jim Hightower reveals little-publicized purchases made by the Koch brothers.

The Koch brothers’ visions of wealth and power stretch much farther than Wisconsin, for their purchases of everything from politicians to the Tea Party have helped them push the privatization of all things public and the elimination of hated regulations and taxes that crimp their laissez-faire style.

We find that academic freedom is also for sale. For a mere $1.5 million, Charles Koch bought a big chunk of the economics department of the Florida State University a few years ago. His donation (bribe) bought control of a new “academic” program at this public institution to indoctrinate students in his self-serving political beliefs.

Charles gets to screen all applicants in the department, reject those not in his ideological image, and give final approval to all new hires. To add total censorship to his tyrannical role, Koch gets yearly reports from the economics department head about the faculty’s speeches, publications and classes. Then our $1.5 million benefactor gets to evaluate the faculty based on Koch-brother objectives.

How’s that for a public institution that is supposed to serve public interests?

But that’s not all.

Charles made similar acquisitions at two other state universities: Clemson and West Virginia. Furthermore, Alternet.org’s Lee Fang revealed that Koch paid $419,000 to buy into Brown University’s “political theory project,” $3.6 million to establish Troy University’s “center for political economy,” and $700,000 for Utah State’s School of Business and its “Charles G. Koch Professor of Political Economy” course.

The Koch brothers know more that spoon-feeding us their philosophy is a sure-fire way of controlling voters in a democratic society, though they are taking care, along with their rich brethren, to make it a plutocracy.

The effort of monolithic corporations to take over public holdings is real, though its efforts seem to border on fantasy. The satirical newsweekly, The Onion, recently printed a downsize-big-government spoof that involved an Obama plan to balance the budget by stealing the gold in Fort Knox.

Koch-funded corporate fronts, such as Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation, bereft of their own concepts, took the underlying idea of the spoof and ran with it. Billions in gold at inflated prices would do wonders in reducing our deficit, their howling spokespeople said.

The critical climate created for deficit-reduction is another facet of “The Shock Doctrine.” Take any crisis – real or manufactured – and use it to promote your extremist ideology.

Building on the crisis caused by Wall Street grifters, the Koch brothers seem to be fabricating a climate impacting the public forum, one muddied by their radical philosophy, and one friendly to takeovers of all public assets.

We’ve done privatization of the military, roads, bridges, parking and public services. Why don’t we go further?

Mount Rushmore, The Grand Canyon and perhaps the White House could be bought and managed by Koch Brother Industries, followed by indentured servitude.

Whoops, leaders of the Cato Institute, I was just kidding.