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Mark Histed
@markhisted.org

The Powell memo, from 1971, contains advice to establish rightwing thinktanks, staffed by scholars friendly to the billionaire class. It also has a blueprint for the “Scientific Freedom” lecture series that Trump’s NIH head Jay Bhattacharya set up this year. These are longtime strategies. 1/

Team Talarico@teamtalaricohq.bsky.social

James Talarico: 50 years ago, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell circulated a memo around DC — a blueprint for how corporations could amass political power, reverse the gains of the Great Society and the New Deal, and rig the system for themselves. And it worked.

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Mark Histed
@markhisted.org

The Koch & Heritage/Project 2025 billionaire class is fully aware they can tie normal good-faith people up into knots by bear hugging “academic freedom” while quietly using their power and money to select speakers and academics that have pro-billionaire views. Check this text!

Mark Histed@markhisted.org

From the Powell memo. He says to lean into academic freedom, but tilt the marketplace of ideas by paying a “staff of scholars” and speakers, and to insist on equal time. It’s the same strategy we see being deployed today. And this from the 1970s! We shouldn’t be surprised today when this happens

Mark Histed
@markhisted.org

And this is right. What’s happening to science, like what’s happening to democracy, is corruption. Money and politicized government is being used to twist the pillars of our civic society. The COVID deniers who attacked Fauci were elevated by billionaires. Regular ppl see that as corruption.

garyg@gjgold.bsky.social

Talarico: “We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis.”

Mark Histed
@markhisted.org

We have a science crisis because we have a corruption crisis. Cancer and Alzheimer’s cures in America are being exploded why? To allow the Trump admin and their donors to increase their power and direct money to their cronies. The fall of NIH and NSF this year at root comes from corruption.

Mark Histed
@markhisted.org

(NIH and NSF seem small relative to the fall of the whole American republic and our freedoms, and concentration camps. Which they are. But they are collateral damage from a rampaging corrupt rightwing elite donor class.)

Zen Faulkes
@doctorzen.net

A tree can have many roots. I think there is much more going on than just greed, and I don’t think those motivations should be downplayed.