Pioneer Institute Throws Out Welcome Mat for Koch Funded Institute for Justice

It’s getting harder to keep track of the right wing groups operating in Massachusetts but when one interferes in the Green Line extension, dives into cosmetology, and pumps up school privatization, take notice.  That’s the Institute for Justice, and when you’re an out of state libertarian law firm you need a friend; that would be the Pioneer Institute.

A couple of weeks ago Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone tweeted that “Institute for Justice tried to throw a wrench into the Green Line extension back in 2015.” Institute for Justice is back, with in-state advocacy operation the Pioneer Institute pushing an Institute for Justice paper on business deregulation. Jeff Jacoby bit on this and wrote about it in The Boston Globe. Very productive advocacy by Pioneer and IJ. Pioneer is also doing an event at the Harvard Kennedy School about a Supreme Court school privatization case with the IJ attorney involved in the litigation.

So here’s a bit more on the Institute of Justice from the indispensable Sourcewatch.org which in turn quotes from my Bible, Jane Mayer’s Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right:

“By 1990, enterprising conservative and libertarian activists were wearing a path to Wichita, where they, like (Rich) Fink before them, would pitch their proposals to Charles Koch in hopes of patronage. Typical was the experience in 1991 of two former Reagon administrations lawyers, Clint Bolick, a former aide to Clarence Thomas, and William “Chip” Mellor III, in search of seed money for a new kind of aggressive, right-wing public interest law firm that would litigate against government regulations in favor of “economic liberty.” Mellor recalled thinking, “Who else would give us enough money to be serious?” According to Mellor, after lower-level aides initially turned down the proposal, Charles Koch himself committed $1.5 million on the spot, but with strings attached, keeping him in control. As Mellor recalled, “He said, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll give you up to $500,000 a year for three years, each year, but you have to come back each year and demonstrate that you’ve met these milestones that you’ve set out to accomplish and I will evaluate it on a yearly basis, and there’s no guarantees.'” The legal group, the Institute for Justice, went on to bring numerous successful cases against government regulations, including campaign-finance laws, several of which reached the Supreme Court.”

A big part of what IJ does is to bring litigation, often involving sympathetic plaintiffs such as women or minority small business persons, but the real goal is radical deregulation of business. IJ has a legislative arm at work in some states as well.

So important were the Kochs to IJ that the organization awarded them its Cornerstone Award: “Charles Koch provided the initial seed funding that made it possible for us to launch the Institute in 1991. David Koch has been a generous benefactor each year of IJ’s first decade. We are deeply grateful for their support and the commitment to liberty it represents. Thank you, Charles and David!”

Other donors include the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation, the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation. WFF also funds Massachusetts education privatizer fronts Democrats for Education Reform and Massachusetts Parents United. Koch Industries funded the Globe’s Bold Types corporate puffery (see UnKoch* My Globe) and advertised at Fenway Park. Both the Red Sox and Globe are owned by John Henry. David Koch was a regular donor (he just died, but his foundation could continue to give) to Pioneer, in excess of $100,000 most years.

When you consider the out-of-state right wing legal shops that represent the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance (more on their latest legal flop soon), it is worth paying some attention to the spreading influence of conservative legal operations in the state. And of course, who funds them.

The Washington Post recently adopted a new slogan: “Democracy dies in darkness.” I agree.

[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money (and other things). I don’t write about education or cosmetology.]