Who is the Texas Public Policy Foundation?

This week at the Texas A&M University Board of Regents meeting the controversial reforms proposed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) are expected to be the topic of discussion. As the Bryan-College Station Eagle reported, faculty members have clashed with the Board of Regents over the TPPF’s so-called "seven breakthrough solutions" that have been pushed by Governor Rick Perry. Last week more than 700 faculty members signed an online letter delivered to Board Chairman Richard Box asking clarification for the specific problems that are being addressed by the “solutions.” This also comes in the wake of Chancellor Mike McKinney unexpectedly announcing his retirement earlier this month, which is widely believed to be a forced retirement due to his resisting or stalling some of the "solutions."

But who is the Texas Public Policy Foundation? According to the TPPF web site it is a “501(c)3 non-profit, non-partisan research institute” who’s mission is to “promote and defend liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise in Texas and the nation by educating and affecting policymakers and the Texas public policy debate with academically sound research and outreach.” Essentially the TPPF is a conservative think tank that promotes a free market fundamentalist ideology, and is funded through corporate interests and has significant connects to Governor Perry. The President of TPPF, Brooke Rollins, served as Governor Rick Perry’s Deputy General Counsel and later as his Policy Director. Many of the Board of Directors and the staff of the TPPF are supporters of Perry and significant donors to his campaigns.

According to the TPPF 2010 Annual Summary, received $4.49 million in donations last year, which is more than double the $2.05 million in donations received in 2006. The TPPF web site states that it is “funded by thousands of individuals, foundations, and corporations,” but the majority of its funding does not come from those individuals (who it does not disclose the identities). While 38.28% of its funding comes from individuals 54.87% comes from foundations and corporations. According to SourceWatch.org, between 1998 and 2004 from a range of foundations including the Armstrong Foundation, Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, Gordon and Mary Cain Foundation, Jaquelin Hume Foundation, JM Foundation, Roe Foundation, and the Ruth and Lovett Peters Foundation.

The TPPF supports the predictable conservative line on a whole host of issues. The TPPF disputes the scientific evidence of climate changes and claims that the “scientific consensus has never been as broad as proclaimed,” and the compromised emails of climate scientists showed “data manipulation and fundamental errors now discredit a once broadly accepted body of science.” The “private sector can bring innovation and competition to the criminal justice system” is how the TPPF frames its advocacy of the private prison industry, despite that there has been no evidence to support that the privatization of the prison industry has provided any public savings. The TPPF even has an entire center dedicate to “Tenth Amendment Studies,” which is a favorite Constitutional Amendment among the Tea Party faithful.

The driving force behind these so-called “breakthrough solutions” is ideological – movement conservative free market fundamentalism. The brain trust of the TPPF looks at the current model of public universities as a bureaucratic and inefficient institution. Those behind this push want to take research universities and turn them into education systems were the goal is not the advancement of knowledge but the advancement of bottom lines. Basically the idea is to turn Texas A&M into the University of Phoenix.