The program, “Capital Campus California,” is sponsored by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. (The Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy as named as a co-sponsor, but the program isn’t mentioned on the UC website). Mercatus, which runs similar anti-regulatory sessions for Washington DC chiefs of staff, promises the weekend will provide “an academic perspective on today's pressing policy issues.”
Oil and gas giant Koch Industries gave Mercatus approximately $7 million between 1998 and 2004, according to the Wall Street Journal. ExxonMobil is also a Mercatus donor ($80,000 in 2003 and 2004), and other corporations with an interest in limiting regulatory protections, including General Motors, Pfizer, and even Enron, pre-collapse, are reported supporters.
I got a taste of Mercatus through The Capital Semester Program--they've hired at least 4 Mercatus scholars over the years to inculcate students with their own radical corporatist ideologies. I never did figure out how the Fund was able to convince Georgetown to give university credit for their courses. Perhaps their money had something to do with it.
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