The Koch Bros., Charles and David, singlehandedly established the Cartel of corporate reformers whose goals are to shrink government at all levels to the size that it could be “drowned in a bathtub.” In their view, government should only raise and spend enough taxes from its citizens in order to maintain laws and guarantee social order and national security. The Cartel’s stated purpose is to rely on the free market economy to address all public-sector issues and services impacting the nation’s body politic. Its affiliations include a number of billionaire industrialists, tech company leaders, financiers, and other business leaders, who operate at the national level via personal and foundation contributions to this free market agenda, and a host of millionaire and multimillionaire activists who work at regional and state levels. Many are connected by the aforementioned ideology while others attend the semi-annual forums hosted by the Koch Bros. at luxurious resorts where they get to commiserate with Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), federal judges, academics, legislators, and numerous appointed bureaucrats who influence public policy.

The privatization of K-12 public and higher education is high on the list of the Cartel’s current objective as it seeks to gain control of these entities. But the Koch Bros. have also allied with Republican officials and fellow billionaires in co-opting storied African American institutions by funding a bevy of black leaders to present their corporate perspectives. At the K-12 level, Dr. Howard Fuller has been the most prominent and articulate black proponent of their educational privatization message (see Figure 1). Fuller represents the ideal black spokesman who is connected to black militants, grassroots activists, and mainstream African American professionals: he was a keynote speaker at the 1967 Nation Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana; he founded the short-lived Malcolm X Liberation University in Durham, North Carolina in 1969; he served as superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools from 1991-1995 after the Bradley Foundation lobbied the Wisconsin legislature to change state law for the Milwaukee school district to allow Fuller to be appointed without the required educational certifications; he has testified before state legislatures in Wisconsin, Indiana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Florida, Ohio, New Jersey, and numerous other states in support of voucher and charter schools.

In 2014, while on a tour to promote his book, “No Struggle No Progress,” he campaigned with Republican North Carolina U.S. Senate candidate,” Thom Tillis, who won his race against the incumbent, Sen. Kay Hagan (D), by a margin of 1.7 percent, helping Tillis to siphon a small sliver of the African American vote which contributed to his victory.

The Koch Bros. also donated $25 million dollars to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), which represents 37 private Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to fund scholarships for students in the UNCF network (see Figure 2). The grant was given with restrictions on the majors that the students could pursue: economics, entrepreneurship, and innovation. In addition, Koch Bros.’ representatives hold two seats on the five member board which selects the student recipients. During the ensuing controversy, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) withdrew its support from UNCF because of its “…disappointing actions in lending support to the Koch brothers’ agenda have made AFSCME’s continuing partnership with UNCF untenable .…” Dr. Michael Lomax, UNCF CEO, stood his ground and publicly praised Charles Koch and defended UNCF’s receipt of the grant. Later that year, the Koch Bros. summoned Lomax to their summer retreat, where they placed him on an education panel chaired by Dr. Charles Murray, one of their funded surrogates, who co-authored the controversial 1994 bestseller, “The Bell Curve,” in which he alleged that African Americans were intellectually inferior to whites based on their genetic makeup and thus that their educational and social standing in society was preordained.

But the larger issue is that the Koch Bros. have established a huge footprint in 80 percent of the 106 private and public HBCUs while they are also sponsoring programs designed to retard African American progress (see Figure 3). The Cartel and the Koch Bros. have spent more than a billion dollars pushing Voter ID, charter and voucher schools, anti-collective bargaining, anti-union, anti-minimum wage, pro-gun National Rifle Association (NRA) efforts, and repeal Obama Care policies that will have a disproportionately negative impact on African Americans. They have also employed the same strategy in the white community where they have used George Mason University as a base camp to launch many of their libertarian plans.

Charles and David Koch have been visionary in creating a multi-pronged war on America’s public sector. Unions, teachers, and other progressives who have a stake in public education and the overall public sector appear to lack a comprehensive grasp of how far the Koch Bros.’ massive financial tentacles reach. The Kochs have a fifty state organization that backs school board members, city councilpersons, mayors, county commissioners/freeholders, county executives, state and federal legislators, U.S. presidents of both parties, professors, other appointed public officials, and majority and minority middle class and grassroots activists. They are literally everywhere with their influence.

Currently, the Koch Bros. have inserted their operatives into top-level positions in the following agencies and departments in the Trump Administration: the Environmental Protection Agency and the Departments of Education, Interior, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, the Small Business Administration, Commerce, Treasury, etc. Although the Koch Bros. did not endorse or support Donald Trump directly in the 2016 election, their numerous political action committees (PACs) supported the Trump campaign in a variety of indirect ways. To counter this Koch power, unions, teachers, and progressives must establish a comparable group of field troops to cover the same ground in opposition. The question is whether they will do that; they certainly have the numbers and enough money to get started.