Arnold Fdn ventures

SEE ARNOLD JOHN ENRON EXEC

NO MERRI

KOCHADEMIA

hedge fund libtard?

charters

enron screwed CA, GOP perry 2x

ventures incubator boy? denier delayer?

https://clearpath.org/about-us/sam-mar/

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abundance REV DR PJT AM PROSPECT

7 minutes, 10 seconds

document for a $260 million annual capital inflow.

7:18

7 minutes, 18 seconds

120 million he said came from John Arnold, a former Enron executive energy

7:24

7 minutes, 24 seconds

trader, current Meta board member. 40 million from Dustin Mosovitz who is one

7:31

7 minutes, 31 seconds

of the co-founders of Facebook or Meta and a hundred million from Steve Balmer

7:39

7 minutes, 39 seconds

former Microsoft executive current [clears throat] uh alleged NBA salary

7:44

7 minutes, 44 seconds

cap of um his team the LA Clippers and I should Rosen

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tnr

In early February, Axios reported that “Ezra Klein’s Abundance movement is getting some backup” in the form of a new group: Next American Era, headed by former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee head, Illinois congresswoman, and longtime Washington insider Cheri Bustos. Bustos’s group, per the report, would be committed to “‘pro-growth,’ deregulatory policies.” This is hardly surprising; for the past several years Bustos has been a literal corporate lobbyist at the extremely Trump-connected outfit Mercury Partners. Mercury saw its profits more than double in 2025 as it sold access to the Trump throne room.

Over the course of the three years for which we have lobbying disclosures, Bustos branched out from lobbying overwhelmingly on behalf of agriculture firms and municipal governments to work for energy firms and software behemoths, as well. In particular, Bustos registered as a lobbyist for OpenAI and Larry Ellison’s Oracle, two of the most central companies in the bubblish AI industry that is becoming increasingly omnipresent in our politics, economy, and daily lives. The two firms were also the biggest clients in Bustos’s portfolio; Oracle’s 2025 lobbying expenditures totaled over $11 million, while OpenAI’s were just under $3 million. Bustos’s next-largest clients in 2025 were Korea Zinc and battery manufacturer Gotion, both with around $2.5 million in total lobbying.

Facially, it seems odd for someone like Bustos, fresh off a stint of AI lobbying, to launch a centrist 501c(4) and immediately align with the abundance agenda, which generally represents itself as a movement focused on housing and utility transmission permitting. In reality, it’s of a kind with a deep techno-optimist, pro-AI undercurrent that has permeated abundance thought since before Derek Thompson coined the phrase “abundance agenda” in 2022.

In the spring of 2025, Thompson and Klein’s tome, Abundance, launched to a firestorm of discourse, both praise and criticism. Nearly a year later, the blaze has lessened—Trumpian destruction of the economy and democracy tends to take the wind out of the sails of cockeyed optimists, after all—but tensions in what writers on both sides (namely, Jonathan Chait and David Sirota) have called the “Democrats’ Civil War” continue to simmer.

The abundance ecosystem has tried to develop a “grass-tops” movement, which parlays an elite influence campaign into building a mass constituency. Abundance world has certainly been successful at the first part; with hundreds of millions of dollars (this figure is meant literally, not figuratively) flowing into abundance organizations and Klein playing an intellectual power-broker role within Democratic politics—to the point that it raised eyebrows internally at The New York Times, according to reporting from Axios. But with sitting mayors and governors explicitly name-checking the book and its authors, abundance has thoroughly permeated the political class. It has not, however, been as successful at building a broad-base constituency. (It is perhaps difficult to focus on a gauzy future of plenty when fascist shock troops are loose on the streets, acting with impunity.)

Despite Abundance making theNew York Times bestseller list (tech tycoon Reid Hoffman sending copies to everyone he knows probably didn’t hurt), Democratic voters have been notably leery about the abundance framework. Polling has shown that the base is far more interested in tackling corporate greed than it is in municipal red tape, and Klein’s attempts to cast himself as a bipartisan mediator in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination have undermined his status as a leading light on the left.

At the Abundance 2025 conference, prominent abundance think tanker Alex Trembath of the Breakthrough Institute stood up to forcefully decry any allegations that the movement had been organized by elites, claiming that “abundance is not this astroturfed conspiracy. In fact, just the opposite: Abundance is emergent. Abundance is bottom-up.” He followed this declaration with the romantic sentiment that it was not donors who brought this movement together but fate, saying, “We were not herded and orchestrated: We found each other. The people and ideas in this ballroom pull on strands from multiple fields—think tanks, activists, organizers, elected officials, journalists, philanthropists, technologists, and entrepreneurs and investors.”

That is, notably, not what a bottom-up movement is. Grassroots movements are built on a foundation of organizing and mobilizing a mass membership. What Trembath actually described is very clearly a grass-tops strategy. Many people within abundance circles recognize, sometimes even celebrate, this dynamic. It was this very strategy that the Niskanen Center spelled out in its June 2024 manifesto charting how to build a so-called “abundance faction.”

The push for a bipartisan grand coalition, also laid out in Niskanen’s manifesto, has not succeeded either. The right flank of the abundance ecosystem has openly embraced some of the most vile parts of Trumpism. In the lead-up to Abundance 2025, the Manhattan Institute’s Charles Lehman, one of the speakers at the conference, called for “deportation abundance.”

Even Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who headlined alongside Klein and Thompson, and has a long-standing reputation as a (relatively) compassionate moderate who wants us all to “disagree better,” has veered toward rank partisanship and entrenching the power of an ever more authoritarian Republican Party. Cox moved to pack the Utah Supreme Court in order to gerrymander Salt Lake City, in what was an awfully aggressive approach for anyone who isn’t dead set on preserving the MAGA regime. The gerrymander would have only picked up one seat. But Cox has embraced a cosmic view of politics, where Donald Trump’s survival from an assassination attempt in 2024 was “miraculous,” spinning a borderline messianic interpretation of Trump’s candidacy and saying to Trump, “You, and only you, can be [the] kind of leader” it will take to repair the country.

Meanwhile, the Trump officials who were praised by abundance advocates as sage and reasonable, particularly Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, have been anything but. Wright has raised concerns that he is using his post to advance the business interests of the nuclear energy firm Oklo, where he was previously a board member, and is taking point on the American colonial takeover of the Venezuelan oil industry. Burgum is keeping busy cheerleading threats to annex Greenland, ignoring natural disasters in the actual interior, explicitly serving the oil and gas industry, and whitewashing American history by scrubbing any discussion of climate change, colonial violence toward Native Americans, and other stains on our heritage from national parks and monuments. Oh, lest we forget, he also oversaw the removal of the word “transgender” from the Stonewall monument, where his Interior Department recently abortively removed the Pride flag itself.

Curtis Yarvin, whom prominent abundance intellectual Steve Teles links to in this piece as the far-right edge of abundance, is considered central to the “new right,” which James Pogue described as “a project to overthrow the thrust of progress, at least such as liberals understand the word.” Yarvin, an antidemocracy nutball who wants to replace the republican system of government with a dictatorship or monarchy, also believes white people are innately more intelligent than other races, and has minimized slavery.

Despite this movement being studded by such miscreants and autocratic enablers, abundance is poised to exert significant influence in the near term, especially through a donor class that absolutely loves it and inside organizing like Ezra Klein’s appearance at a major Senate Democratic retreat. But if abundance liberals are to avoid missing the moment and find durable standing within center-left politics, they have to confront a glaring contradiction: their relationship to the AI industry.

AI skepticism and populist anger at data centers are surging. But abundance groups are increasingly aligning with deeply unpopular tech-titan pet projects like California Forever, an attempt by Silicon Valley bigwigs to build their own city from scratch between Sacramento and San Francisco. Housing policy group California YIMBY endorsed the plan, which led to California state Senator Christopher Cabaldon expressing confusion at a recent conference. California Forever also sponsored a recent “Festival of Progressive Abundance” in Los Angeles. The Charter Cities Institute, which advocates for the creation of autonomous cities unbound by existing legal code and envisioned as techno-optimist Meccas, sent an open letter to the Trump administration in support of Freedom Cities, alongside researchers at the American Enterprise Institute, or AEI, which is considered an abundance organization in the list maintained by Inclusive Abundance, the ecosystem’s main organizing arm.

On top of AEI, there is a host of other broadly pro-tech libertarian think tanks included in the Inclusive Abundance list, such as the (Koch-aligned) Cato Institute, the Cicero Institute (chaired by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale), primary Charles Koch influence operation Americans for Prosperity, and the Federation for American Innovation. FAI alum Michael Kratsios, now the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology, has been an aggressive AI booster and was central to Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s legislation that attempted to create a mechanism to functionally exempt the AI industry from any and all federal regulation.

Don’t just take it from me that abundance sometimes is awfully close to tech-libertarians; the Cato Institute itself has said so, and it is generally expert at what libertarianism means.

Abundance has been marketed as a movement focused on solving the crisis of housing affordability, but there has always been a distinct techno-optimist bent to the movement that looks favorably on AI and Silicon Valley. In the opening utopian vignette of Abundance, Klein and Thompson identify widely distributed wealth from artificial intelligence as the internal mechanism that enables our supposedly impending sci-fi-flavored future. Klein, in particular, was quite vocal that a major driver of his side of the project was about repairing the frayed relationship between progressives and technology—both the concept itself and the tech industry centered around Silicon Valley.

The Abundance 2025 conference, judging by its schedule, had as much programming around AI as it did around housing (there was more directly focusing on energy policy than either, though energy and AI are deeply interconnected). The author of President Trump’s AI Action Plan, Dean Ball (now at FAI), was a featured speaker at the conference, as was NVIDIA’s director of infrastructure policy and multiple other champions of AI.

Moreover, much, if not most, of the funding flowing into abundance organizing is closely linked to powerful Silicon Valley figures. Following the release of Klein and Thompson’s book, Open Philanthropy (another sponsor of the abundance conferences, since rechristened Coefficient Giving), which was launched by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, unveiled a $120 million fund focused on advancing abundance ideas. Half of the fund—$60 million—came from Stripe’s Patrick Collison. Arnold Ventures is a frequent abundance funder, which launched the Abundance Academic Network and a new abundance-flavored Vox vertical, among others. John Arnold made his fortune in energy trading and more recently joined the board of Meta specifically to serve as an energy adviser for data-center buildout. When welcoming Arnold to the board, Mark Zuckerberg said that, “as we focus on building AGI,” Arnold’s “deep experience” in “energy infrastructure will help us execute our long-term vision.”

Ever wonder why AI advocates downplay the climate implications of natural gas–fueled AI data centers? Consider Renaissance Philanthropy, an early pro-abundance foundation, which was created with money from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Schmidt has publicly stated that humans will never manage to control climate change, and that our best bet is to pour near-unlimited resources into developing an AI that can solve the issue for us. And Schmidt’s views are hardly niche within the realm of our would-be AI oligarchs.

In the most on-the-nose example, Abundance 2025 also had two literal trade associations that represent major tech firms among its sponsors: Chamber of Progress and the New American Industrial Alliance. The former of these is funded by literally every prominent AI firm in the game, from Marc Andreessen’s a16z to Amazon, Apple, Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA, Midjourney, and others.

None of this is an aberration: Silicon Valley has been at the forefront of developing abundance thought since its inception. Among the earliest proto-abundance treatises was an essay in The Atlantic co-authored by Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen that called for the launch of a new science dedicated to studying how to achieve progress, which they creatively dubbed “progress studies.” In the seven years since their essay, progress studies has intermingled with other movements, such as effective altruism and rationalism, mainline Koch-style libertarianism, and supply-side progressivism, with a dash of technofascism comprising what Steve Teles has christened the “Dark Abundance” subfaction. The amalgamation of all these strands led to what we now would call the abundance movement (or ecosystem).

Cowen, in turn, runs key abundance funder Emergent Ventures, which was launched with a grant from Palantir’s Peter Thiel. Patrick Collison has marshaled part of his fortune to organize an annual retreat for abundance diehards in Sevastopol, California, where those invested in the success of the movement can gather, commiserate, and plan future efforts. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, whose a16z invests heavily in AI, fintech, and crypto, wrote his own call for abundance in 2023, titled “The Techno Optimist Manifesto,” with a whole chapter on “abundance.” Notably, one of Ezra Klein’s early proto-abundance columns built on another viral Andreessen essay.

Now, it should be noted that there are some in the abundance ecosystem who have been critical of AI in recent years. Thompson, while an enthusiastic fan of AI, who has been explicit about wanting to convince skeptics, has written about the technology’s downsides; fledgling abundance magazine The Argument (itself frequently techno-optimist and replete with Silicon Valley funding from Arnold, Collison, Open Philanthropy, and Emergent Ventures) has published several good articles that scrutinize the more boondogglish side of Silicon Valley’s latest obsession.

Even beyond the array of pro-AI interests lining up behind the abundance agenda, though, the AI industry and the data-center construction boom raise what should be uncomfortable questions for abundance advocates.

The movement’s central premise is that we can’t build and that we have created too many veto points that let parochial interests block important construction projects. But the data-center boom clearly shows that we can build. Or at least that mega corporations can when they put their minds to it. Granted, the sets of restrictions that apply to multifamily housing, energy transmission infrastructure, and industrial-scale data centers are all different, but frequently abundance proponents target the exact types of procedural bottlenecks that communities that don’t want data centers are using to block or delay tens of billions of dollars’ worth of them from popping up. In particular, community input meetings, air quality standards, and public interest lawsuits are frequent boogeymen of the abundance framework. But they are now the chief means by which communities are fighting back.

The data-center buildout also creates acute examples of why the types of bottlenecks that abundists decry are both absolutely necessary and, sometimes, still too weak. Examples of massive data-center projects being built against the wishes of their neighbors have become commonplace, to the point that foisting nondisclosure agreements upon elected officials over the details of the terms local government is giving to AI companies to build in their communities for economic development is becoming something of an industry standard.

Abundance tells us that we struggle to build and that procedural measures like public interest lawsuits, zoning restrictions, and community input meetings are blocking essential public goods. But then, at the same time, it has so far offered no comment on the reality that we are building plenty of data centers, often even while overcoming those democratic processes.

In Memphis, when Elon Musk’s xAI started operating without going through the permitting process—potentially illegally—we got a taste of how things work without the “bottlenecks” that figures like Thompson and Klein decry. The data center spewed toxic gas over a community that already bore significant air pollution, and did it without the public even knowing about it; more than a dozen local officials signed NDAs, which led to even some City Council members being completely in the dark about xAI’s operations in the city.

Perhaps Musk’s “Colossus” data center couldn’t have been built or would have taken much longer if it hadn’t pulled the wool over the eyes of residents and their government and had actually followed the law. But the flip side is that the progress that those costs have borne is a chatbot that, while it does sometimes fact-check kooky conspiracy claims, declared itself “MechaHitler,” provided planning assistance for a home invasion, removed clothes from people’s pictures on X without their consent, and generated thousands upon thousands of images of child pornography. Thankfully, the only cost for creating such an innovative piece of technology was an entire community being bombarded with toxic emissions that cause cancer and respiratory disease. Data-center expansion is already causing tens of billions of dollars in additional public health costs annually, disproportionately in poor, minority-majority areas like South Memphis.

Moreover this type of “behind-the-meter” energy supply is extremely common and trending up. More than three-fourths of the on-site power currently being brought online at data centers is natural gas, which, while its fumes are less toxic than coal’s, still emits large amounts of carcinogenic and toxic pollutants. Even worse, many data centers have diesel backup generators, which are far more detrimental to the health of people living nearby, particularly because of higher levels of nitrogen oxide and PM2.5 particles.

Public sentiment is also clearly turning against data centers. While polling indicates that voters are largely agnostic on data-center buildout as a hypothetical, there is a large body of evidence on the underlying elements that shows deep hostility toward the AI industry.

Politico and Public First recently found that 37 percent of respondents supported data centers to 28 percent opposed, with another 28 percent neither supporting or opposing, though with a major split along party lines; Democrats narrowly opposed, 36 percent to 33 (27 percent for neither), while Republicans had fairly strong support, 45 percent to 26 (24 percent for neither). This is similar to what NBC found in the summer of 2025, with 44 percent of respondents thinking AI would improve their family’s future versus 42 percent who thought it would make it worse. News site Heatmap found that only 44 percent of respondents supported a data center being built, even less than other types of energy infrastructure, including gas-fired power plants and nuclear reactors. There is also a substantial polling literature that shows Americans are deeply apprehensive of AI generally, although with very different views along gender lines—men tend to be positive about AI, while women are skeptical.

While apathy may be the prevailing mood nationally, with most voters having heard nothing at all about data-center construction, nearly every state or county-level case study available shows massive backlash brewing. Most tellingly, in the places where people have heard about data centers, they detest them. Virginia Democrats vocally ran against data centers last year and scored impressive wins. The 30th district, which includes data-center capital of the world Loudoun County, saw the incumbent Republican ousted by John McAuliff, who worked overtime to tie his opponent to the data centers. Similarly, 2025 saw two statewide spots on the Georgia Public Service Commission flip to Democrats over anger about data-center-fueled energy price hikes, the first statewide races the party had won in decades. State-level polling has shown antipathy in the ever-crucial swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

A growing number of localities have also instituted a pause on new data-center construction, including Prince George’s County in Maryland; St. Charles, Missouri; several Atlanta-area counties; and several counties in Indiana. State-level restrictions and moratoria are being debated across the country, from New York to Georgia to California. Given all of that, it’s hardly surprising that Morning Consult has shown that support for banning data-center construction has been surging; just between October and November 2025, the policy went from down by two points to up by five. It is becoming increasingly clear that this moment calls for campaigning on AI skepticism.

Abundance proponents, however, seem determined to swim against the current of public opinion. For some, as Eric Levitz implies in Vox, it’s a matter of the muddled picture of public opinion we have. For others, though, abandoning data centers would be like surrendering their raison d’être. Particularly for the groups that emerged out of the “progress studies” movement kick-started by Collison and Cowen’s Atlantic essay, part of the point of abundance has always been to foster a sense of techno-optimism.

There is nothing inherent to abundance thought that necessitates AI boosterism. Indeed on a recent podcast, Marshall Kosloff, who emceed Abundance 2025, recalled responding to a question about what the abundance line on AI is: “We want nothing to do with that.” As Austin Ahlman of the Open Markets Institute, one of Kosloff’s guests for the episode, pointed out, such sentiment is “nowhere close to where the status quo is,” where Silicon Valley elites clearly “view this as an easy vehicle for the regulatory structures that they need to very quickly do the AI buildout without any democratic discipline or oversight.”

In fact, in its “Abundance Landscape” report, Inclusive Abundance identifies artificial intelligence as one of the five core policy areas. Notably, transit, one of the most common talking points for abundance punditry, is excluded, though IA said it would include it in its 2026 report. Even outside of AI’s own dedicated policy area, the report also includes AI as one of the “opportunities” for abundance energy policy, saying “AI industry leaders and experts agree that this technology will need a tremendous amount of energy going forward. AI and energy experts must collaborate in order to meet the need for more energy.” A similar argument was made by Trembath in an article with Josh Smith of the Abundance Institute. The Abundance Institute itself has also pushed AI very aggressively, including encouraging the White House to attempt to preempt all state-level regulation via executive order.

In a bit of profound irony, data-center construction has broken free of the choke points decried by abundance to the point that it is now bidding up land value and resulting in further constraints on the supply of housing, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal. Now the data-center buildout, as well as being deeply unpopular and undermining the intellectual case for abundance, is directly jeopardizing what is supposed to be the movement’s central animating goal.

Elements of abundance raise important questions, particularly about how to build state capacity and the importance of government efficiency to public buy-in for ambitious governance (articulated well in this podcast by Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaking to Derek Thompson). But the framing of these questions is also saddled with an association with the excesses of ambition of Silicon Valley moguls—and their dark, antidemocratic leanings. If it’s hard to get people to say yes to an apartment building in their backyard, it’s doubly so to convince them to site a giant warehouse spewing toxic emissions and spiking their electrical bills in their backyard—especially if the best non-bubblish case for the data center is that it will increase the odds they will be unemployed.

Dylan Gyauch-Lewis

Dylan Gyauch-Lewis is a researcher at the Revolving Door Project.

Politics, Abundance, Ai, Data Centers, Economy, Technology, Silicon Valley, Artificial Intelligence

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ref1 am prosp

The Revolving Door Project, aProspect*partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at therevolvingdoorproject.org.

The past few years have seen a widespread move away from free-market dogma, as policymakers search for new economic perspectives. The election of Joe Biden in 2020 proved to be a crossroads for economic orthodoxy. For the first time in more than a quarter-century, a Democratic administration did not entrust its economic policy exclusively to adherents of Robert Rubin’s philosophy, for whom the solution to any economic issue was usually “Be less of a Democrat.”

Instead, the Biden-Harris administration trusted progressives as a coalition partner, rather than an electoral faction that had to be dealt with, not worked with. The Biden administration attempted true industrial policy for the first time in over a generation, rekindled enforcement of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and didn’t shy away from stimulating the economy when it was foundering. And while Biden’s term has been a rousing success on most macroeconomic measures—the electoral loss turned in part on global inflation and the rollback of the temporary pandemic safety net—progressives’ increasing power within Democratic politics has caused some moderates to become enraged that they’re now expected to settle for the position of senior partner, and denied near-total control.

Enter the “abundance agenda,” an attempt to generate new messaging for a new political era in which neoliberalism has fallen rapidly out of favor. The term has been floating around for years, but has more recently become a rallying cry for a whole array of deregulatory causes. The abundance agenda has also offered shelter to effective altruists, who have been searching for a flag to rally around that isn’t associated with one of the largest frauds in world history. The Biden administration has started to usher in a post-neoliberalism, with more heterodox ideas competing for acceptance. Abundance is neoliberalism repackaged for a post-neoliberal world.

What exactly abundance adherents believe varies, of course, but there are a number of broad precepts: building more housing, producing more energy, and fostering more technological innovation. None of these are objectionable goals; the differences with progressives arise, largely, in how to get there. Abundance starts from a “growth above all” mindset. The agenda’s advocates hate residential zoning laws—which, contrary to what they frequently imply, is something they have in common with us and most progressives—but also detest the National Environmental Policy Act, support fracking, oppose tenant protections, and are often deferential to the policy preferences of Big Tech.

While there are efforts to create abundance-oriented factions within both parties—in effect recreating the Republican and Democratic establishments that dominated politics throughout the 1990s and 2000s—the near-term focus is the Democratic Party. And, in their move to stake out partisan influence, abundance is explicitly seeking to weaken progressives. With that in mind, it’s worth understanding who exactly makes up the abundance movement.

The coalition includes many prominent centrist organizations, but also corporate interests and conservatives that MAGA pushed out of power within the Republican Party. Many components of this faction have financial ties to crypto, AI, Big Tech, and oil.

In October 2024, a number of organizations held the Abundance 2024 conference. The event was sponsored by Arnold Ventures, Open Philanthropy, Renaissance Philanthropy, and Stand Together.

While at times heterodox, Arnold Ventures funds a sizable network of neoliberal think tanks, including $3 million to the libertarian Reason Foundation and at least $1 million to the pro–pension privatization Retirement Security Initiative, which has led to founder John Arnold (a former Enron executive) comparing himself to the Kochs. Arnold serves on the board of Meta. The Arnold Foundation has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars pushing for school privatization.

Open Philanthropy was co-created by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. It has close ties to AI firm Anthropic, which was founded by Daniela Amodei, the wife of Open Philanthropy co-founder Holden Karnofsky. Open Philanthropy is also closely associated with effective altruism, donating millions to Sam Bankman-Fried’s favorite philosopher Will MacAskill.

Renaissance Philanthropy was founded by Tom Kalil with money from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. It was started with an explicit focus on AI, and Kalil himself is on the board of Sherpa.ai. Schmidt is also on the board of multiple AI companies and has invested in crypto. He believes that, rather than try to mitigate the damage of climate change, policy should double down on AI in the hopes that it will come up with a solution. Renaissance is extremely close with Schmidt Futures, Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s own foundation. Many Renaissance staff come from Schmidt Futures, including Kalil and their Economic Mobility Fund program director, partnerships manager, chief of staff, operations manager, and head of strategy and partnerships.

Stand Together is one of the primary institutions within the Koch network, and was created by Charles Koch. Like Arnold Ventures, Stand Together funds the Reason Foundation. It funds a wide range of conservative nonprofits, including the anti-LGBTQ Alliance Defending Freedom, which the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group. Its current CEO, Brian Hooks, is concurrently the president of the Charles Koch Foundation and previously was the executive director of the libertarian Mercatus Center.

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How Vox’s new Silicon Valley-funded ‘Abundance’ vertical aligns with Silicon Valley’s political priorities

John Arnold and other AI boosters have plenty of reasons to “streamline” energy capacity—some less noble than others.

byAdam JohnsonDecember 17, 2025

ref 5

:{:{earlier this month, Vox announced a new vertical dedicated to “growth” that’s funded entirely by the Arnold Foundation, the influence arm of billionaire former Enron energy trader and founder of energy commodity hedge fund Centaurus Energy John Arnold. Arnold has long-donated to center-liberal causes, some seemingly benign (investigative journalism) and others that are, to say the least, controversial (spy planes in poor majority-Black cities, for example). Arnold’s latest ideological—and economic—agenda is to promote so-called Abundance, a vague political movement currently fashionable among wealthy liberals that’s a constellation of conferences, think tanks, political action group, billionaire donors, and best-selling books by *New York Times* and *Atlantic* authors. }:

Their primary ethos is “growth” through deregulation of industry. Some of the proposals are sensible (obviously not all regulations make sense and regulations can, and often are, manipulated by other capital actors). But this seed of a decent, if entirely banal, idea has predictably morphed into an all-encompassing politics of deregulation and anti-Left populism that dovetails with the political needs of Silicon Valley, and the ultrawealthy in general.}:

Aside from the broader ideological aims it’s worth noting that, in a direct and urgent way, the primary focus on “growth” through rapid and broad deregulation aligns neatly with the most direct and urgent needs of Silicon Valley billionaires—including Arnold, and the company whose board of directors he joined in February 2024, Meta (formerly Facebook). Arnold has discussed publicly how he was brought onto Meta’s board specifically to handle the energy crisis facing AI companies, Bloomberg’s David Rubenstein in August of last year:

“I think [Meta was] looking for somebody who had some energy expertise. The amount of infrastructure that’s required to run the data centers for AI is immense, and the industry is under a real challenge. It is putting tremendous challenges upon the utility industry and the electric industry, in general. But the tech platform companies that are involved in AI are really struggling with this, I think, and my background in public policy is an asset to them.”

Translation: companies that have dumped trillions of dollars betting on LLMs understand that their energy demands are far outstripping capacity, and over the next years and decades getting ahead of these demands will be central to their need for infinite growth. Enter: “Abundance” as an ideological and public policy catch-all for these needs.

Vox’s Case for Growthvertical—while also focusing on related topics like housing and transportation projects—very much prioritizes energy and the building up of energy capacity, name checking it three times in their launch announcement. In Case for Growth’s subsequent articles, the role this supposed “cheap, clean energy” would play in allowing us to scale up AI is simply taken for granted, often spoken about in mystical and providential terms. In his article, “Breaking free of zero-sum thinking will make America a wealthier country,” Vox Senior Editorial Director Bryan Walsh made somewhat fantastical claims about “clean energy’s” immediate impact on “growing the pie.” While railing against the supposed myopia of “zero sum” leftists, Walsh insisted that

If you’re convinced the pie is fixed, you’ll resist immigration, block new housing, and treat technological progress as a threat rather than a source of abundance — even when those are exactly the changes that would create more opportunity for everyone.

In a genuinely stagnant, low-growth world, this might be rational. But we are on the cusp of technologies — from AI to cheap clean energy— that could dramatically increase the size of the pie.

This is a fairly lofty assertion. What is its source substantiating this assertion? Walsh links to another Case for Growtharticle entitled “The long, fun list of things we could do with unlimited clean energy” which reads like a press release for Silicon Valley. It never, needless to say, establishes the premise that we are “on the cusp” of “cheap clean energy” with any journalistic rigor. Progress is certainly being made in renewables, but even this has other environmental trade-offs and will certainly not, any time soon, usher in a post-scarcity future. This glossy puffery is not serious reporting on a complex and politically fraught topic. It’s Silicon Valley boosterism posing as policy reporting.

In addition to more overt advocacy for Arnold and Meta’s political interests around energy and AI, Case for Growth has thus far produced more abstract ideological defenses of neoliberalism that align with Arnold’s broader worldview, such as:

Why America gave up on economists

The only number that really matters: *If you care about happiness, well-being, or growth, you should care about GDP

We can have growth while fighting climate change

(The aforementioned) Breaking free of zero-sum thinking will make America a wealthier country

The final example is, indeed, fairly on-the-nose ideological propaganda making the traditional neoliberal argument that what’s most important is “growing the pie.” The substance of the articles vary but in general they lament an alleged rise of “populism,” attack the supposedly overly regulatory and zero-sum “Left” and the political forces against “growth”—a rather vague political goal that we are led to believe is, per se, unobjectionable.

Case for Growth is also running outright puffery for the AI industry more broadly. Their podcast, Explain It to Me, published an episode on “How AI could create ‘a world without work’” where they painted a rosy picture of a post-scarcity society where AI does most of our labor. “AI abundance,” host Jonquilyn Hill tells listeners, “essentially carries the notion that we could all be so much wealthier than we can even imagine today.”

In his article defending the AI industry from its doubters, “We’re running out of good ideas. AI might be how we find new ones,” Walsh insists—after box-checking worries around slop—that we should focus on the “pro-social uses of AI that could actually help address major problems.”

“If I wanted to change people’s minds about AI, to give them the good news that this technology would bring,” Walsh says, volunteering to promote the AI industry, “I would start with what it could do for the foundation of human prosperity: scientific research.”

The day before Vox announced their Case for Growth vertical, with an ostensible focus on promoting AI-oriented growth and “cheaper and cleaner energy,” the $1.6 trillion company Arnold is on the board of directors of, Meta, kicked off their PR campaign to frame their AI investments as environmentally sustainable. “Meta is seeing an increase in emissions related to AI and looking towards an array of clean energy and low-carbon solutions to manage AI’s needs and related emissions,” a Dec. 1 press release read.

Arnold, who was a special guest speaker for the top oil and gas industry lobbying group American Exploration & Production Council (AXPC) last year, promotes other neoliberal PR efforts. In 2024 he donated $175,000 to the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), an ostensibly liberal think tank funded by Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Amazon and Walmart, that I profiled in 2023. PPI operates the @CNLiberalism Twitter account (formerly @Ne0liberal) that attempts to make neoliberalism fun, cool, and novel while promoting bog-standard free market and anti-regulatory dogma for zoomers. Arnold has also lavished money on Bari Weiss’ “anti-woke” university, the free market think tank Niskanen Center, the rightwing American Enterprise Institute, and a similar Abundance publication launched earlier this year called The Argument.

This rah-rah posture for wealthy Americans is not new for Vox; it’s baked into their DNA as a media company co-founded by arch free-marketers Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias over 10 years ago. And they have long run sycophantic write-ups for billionaires—Bill Gates, MacKenzie Scott, Dustin Moskovitz, Sam Bankman-Fried(who funded Vox until he didn’t) and, of course, John Arnold. But this latest project is murky with its conflicts of interest, and ought to be more transparent about where Arnold’s and Meta’s financial interests come into direct contact with Vox’s deregulatory ideological output and seemingly benign-sounding “case for growth.” It’s not enough to disclose the funding source (which they, to their credit, do at the end of every article). They need to disclose what direct interests John Arnold and Meta have in promoting “streamlined” regulation and scaling up the electrical grid. It’s not solely about “smart policy” or “lowering costs” for the average person, but very much about promoting an urgent political priority for the industry and person funding the vertical.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC

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Type	Limited liability corporation
Key people	John D. Arnold Laura Arnold
Website	https://www.arnoldventures.org

Arnold Ventures (formerly known as The Laura and John Arnold Foundation) brings "philanthropy and political giving together in a new limited-liability corporation"^[1] run by John D. Arnold, a former Enron trader and American hedge fund manager, and his wife Laura Arnold.^[2] The organization was founded in 2008, the same year that the Arnolds signed the Giving Pledge, a pledge by some high-net-worth individuals to donate a large fraction of their income to philanthropic causes during their lifetimes.^[3]

The foundation has funded a wide range of interventions, including Oregon's open primary ballot, health (opioids, contraceptive choice and access, drug prices, commercial sector prices, complex care), education reform, efforts to end public pensions, a data-first approach to criminal justice, and improving reproducibility and transparency in science through the funding of open science and metascience.^[2] The organization has also been described as "another example of billionaire donors becoming ever more sophisticated about using private wealth to influence public policy—wielding exponentially more power in American life than ordinary citizens of more modest means."^[1]

History and controversy

Arnold started donating to the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) in 2004 with a gift of $30,000 which was then based in Houston, and two years later he and his wife pledged $10 million to help KIPP expand to other cities.^[3] Other multi-million gifts followed to other education programs, for example to Washington, D.C. city schools for merit pay, to Teach for America, and to StudentsFirst.^[3]

Since 2008, the foundation has invested more than $1 billion in a variety of political initiatives, focusing on pensions, pretrial and criminal justice, prescription drug prices,the quality of academic research, combating predatory higher education practices, the evaluation of social programs, school system governance, and electoral reform.

In the period 2011–2016, LJAF made $684 million in grants, distributed as follows: $75 million for criminal justice, $206 million for education, $147 million for evidence-based policy and innovation, $1.5 million for planning, $81 million for research integrity, $5 million for science and technology, $56 million for sustainable public finance, and $112 million for new initiatives.^[4] In August 2012, the foundation launched the Giving Library to help other philanthropists make their gifts more efficient and effective.^[5]

This data-driven approach has caused major controversies:

In 2013, LJAF starting making a web-based tool available to assist courts in better assessing whether to release people on bailor keep them imprisoned after they are arrested but before the trial begins.^[6] The foundation was sued by the families of two victims, the perpetrators of which were released due to this "public safety assessment tool.^[7][8] One released murderer had "violated two probations. He was a convicted felon. And he had a gun charge just five days before the murder."^[9] Despite this, the foundation "plans to make the tool available nationwide via an undisclosed national technical systems provider."^[10]
In 2016, the foundation funded continuous aerial surveillance of Baltimore, Maryland.^[11][12] The Baltimore Sun reported that the foundation donated $360,000 to fund a controversial surveillance program in Baltimore that conducted secret, warrantless aerial surveillance of Baltimoreans on behalf of the Baltimore Police Department. The BPD conducted the surveillance without informing elected officials or the general public, suspending the program after public revelation.^[13][14]
In 2019, the Metropolitan Crime Commission released a report [1] calling the "public safety assessment tool" a "waste of money" and concluded that the tool "underrates the risk offenders pose to public safety."^[15]

In August 2019, Arnold Ventures recruited GOP operative Kevin Madden as head of advocacy. Madden is a former press secretary to disgraced House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and national spokesperson for both of Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns

Areas of focus

The Arnolds have used an investment management approach to giving, and as of 2013, the foundation targeted some of its giving to low risk, well-established institutions to help maintain their efforts and most of its giving to higher risk efforts that the Arnolds view as having a higher potential to drive change over the long term.^[16]

Criminal justice

In the period 2011–2016, LJAF allocated $75 million in grants for its criminal justice initiative.^[4] An overview of criminal justice reform in the United States by GiveWell listed the Arnold Foundation as one of the top foundations in the United States working in the area, along with the Open Society Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts' Public Safety Performance Project, the Ford Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, the Public Welfare Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.^[17]

Anne Milgram worked as the Attorney General for the state of New Jersey where she worked to bring data to bear on the New Jersey state justice system and became a professor at New York University; she was recruited by the foundation to become its vice president for criminal justice.^[6] In a 2013 TED talk, she explained her work at LJAF creating tools to capture and use data to make the justice system more effective and efficient, which she called "Moneyballing crime".^[18] This was not well received. The Leadership Conference Education Fund had 120 criminal justice organizations sign a statement pushing for the halt of pretrial risk assessment instruments, stating "although they may seem objective or neutral – threaten to further intensify unwarranted discrepancies in the justice system and to provide a misleading and undeserved imprimatur of impartiality for an institution that desperately needs fundamental change."^[19]

Despite this uncertainty, the foundation also funds the Data Collaborative for Justice.^[20]

K-12 education

According to their list of grants, they have spent $206 million on grants related to education,^[4] including supporting^[21] donating to a new fund led by the disgraced Mike Feinberg,^[22] founder of KIPP, after allegations of sexual abuse.

In May 2012, Reuters reported that the Laura and John Arnold Foundation had committed $20 million over a five-year period to an initiative called StudentsFirst, led by Michelle Rhee, who used to head the Washington D.C. public school system.^[23] StudentsFirst reported its spending shortly thereafter.^[24]

On June 26, 2012, the foundation launched the ERIN Project, a tool to help analyze the national K-12 education landscape.^[25]

During the United States federal government shutdown of 2013, the foundation announced that it would be donating $10 million in emergency funds to the Head Start program so that some 7,000 kids from low-income families could continue to receive educational services.^[26][27][28] The programs were at risk because their Federal grants were up for renewal after October 1.^[26] The federal government reinstated Head Start funding in a deal approved by Congress on January 13, 2014.^[29]

Laura and John Arnold are listed as one of the biggest benefactors to the Wikimedia Foundation.^[30]

Public accountability

The foundation has funded various politically-oriented 501(c)4 organizations, including Engage Rhode Island.^[31] Many of these organizations advocate pension fund reform, encourage state and local governments to reduce benefits to workers and to invest assets in riskier investments such as hedge funds.^[32] Some have criticized the foundation's efforts, saying that hedge fund managers (like John Arnold) collect generous sums in fees for managing the funds, while the workers are left with reduced pensions.^[3][33][34]

LJAF's attempts at pension reform have been met with hostility, and critics have argued that they have bought out groups such as the Pew Charitable Trust, the Public Broadcasting Service, and the Brookings Institution.^{[35][36][37][38]} LJAF has, in particular, generated controversial media coverage in connection with its funding of initiatives favoring pension reform.^{[35][36][37][38][39]}

In March 2014, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that Pensions and Investments had asked the Pew Charitable Trust to stop taking money from LJAF because of LJAF's support for pension reform.^[39] In July 2014, the Arnold Foundation donated $2.8 million to the Center for Public Integrity to launch a new project focused on state campaign finance. According to the International Business Times, "as CPI was negotiating the Arnold grant, Arnold’s name was absent from a CPI report on pension politics." Arnold has spent at least $28 million on a campaign to roll back pension benefits for public workers.^[40][41] Despite this spend,“When people hear of an effort to get rid of pensions,” says Bailey Childers of the National Public Pension Coalition (NPPC), which is supported by unions, “the source is almost always John Arnold.”

Research integrity

References

^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-insidephilanthropy.com_1-1) "When Philanthropy Is Not Enough: A Top Donor Couple Takes a Broader Approach to Impact". Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved 2019-06-10.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-Wired2017_2-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-Wired2017_2-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-Wired2017_2-3) ^e(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-Wired2017_2-4) ^f(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-Wired2017_2-5) ^g(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-Wired2017_2-6) ^h(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-Wired2017_2-7) Apple, Sam (January 22, 2017). "The Young Billionaire Behind the War on Bad Science". Wired.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-Philan2011_3-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-Philan2011_3-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-Philan2011_3-3) Preston, Caroline (October 16, 2011). "A Thirtysomething Billionaire Couple Take on Tough Issues Via Giving". Chronicle of Philanthropy.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-grants_4-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-grants_4-2) "Grants". Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Retrieved March 25, 2014.
^ Kroll, Luisa (August 14, 2012). "Billionaire John Arnold And His Wife Launch Giving Library". Forbes.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-ABA2013_6-1) Davis, Jenny B (November 1, 2013). "Ex-NJ attorney general works to reform the pretrial process with a Texas foundation's backing". ABA Journal.
^ Wing, Nick (2017-07-31). "Dog The Bounty Hunter Joins Lawsuit Against Chris Christie Over Bail Reform". HuffPost. Retrieved 2019-06-10.
^ "Who stays in jail before trial? Who goes free? Sometimes, an algorithm helps decide". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved 2019-06-10.
^ "Did A Bail Reform Algorithm Contribute To This San Francisco Man's Murder?". NPR.org. Retrieved 2019-06-10.
^ "Arnold Foundation to Roll Out Pretrial Risk Assessment Tool Nationwide". InsideSources. 2018-09-04. Retrieved 2019-06-10.
^ "Baltimore Will Continue Aerial Surveillance Program". Bloomberg.com. 2016-08-25.
^ "Radiolab Podcast". 2016-09-12.
^ Prudente, Tim. "A look at recent Baltimore Police scandals, from De Sousa's resignation to Gun Trace Task Force". The Baltimore Sun. The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 3 July 2018.
^ Donovan, Doug. "Donor to Baltimore police surveillance program says privacy debate 'healthy:{':(style="padding-right:0.2em"):}:". The Baltimore Sun. The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 3 July 2018.
^ Masson, Rob. "Crime Watchdog: New Orleans risk assessment program waste of money". www.fox8live.com. Retrieved 2019-07-08.
^ "The Bold Philanthropy of Laura and John Arnold Embraces Risks and Bets Big". The Bridgespan Group. February 7, 2013.
^ "Criminal Justice Reform". GiveWell. Retrieved May 14, 2014.
^ Milgram, Anne (October 2013). "Why smart statistics are the key to fighting crime". TED.
^ "Pretrial Risk Assessments". The Leadership Conference Education Fund. Retrieved 2019-06-10.
^ "Funding Agencies". Data Collaborative for Justice. Retrieved 2019-06-10.
^ Arnold, John (2018-02-22). "I don't know the details of Mike Feinberg's departure from KIPP, but I do know that for the past 25 years there hasn't been a bigger champion or harder worker for education equality in America's underprivileged neighborhoods". @johnarnoldfndtn. Retrieved 2019-06-10.
^ "Controversy Follows the Funding Behind KIPP Co-Founder's Charter School Venture". InsideSources. 2018-07-29. Retrieved 2019-06-10.
^ Simon, Stephanie (May 15, 2012). "Michelle Rhee, Education Activists Targeting U.S. Schools, Backed By Big Bucks". Huffington Post (originally from Reuters).
^ Simon, Stephanie (June 25, 2012). "StudentsFirst Spending: National Education Reform Group's Partial Tax Records Released". Huffington Post (originally from Reuters).
^ "Laura and John Arnold Foundation Launches Powerful K-12 Education Tool". Dallas Business Journal. 2012-06-26.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-Politico2013_26-1) Emma, Caitlin (October 7, 2013). "Philanthropists pledge $10 million to restore 7,000 Head Start seats". Politico.
^ "Laura and John Arnold donate $10 million to help Head Start amid government shutdown". CBS News. 2013-08-23.
^ Cherkis, Jason (2013-10-07). "Head Start Back In Business Thanks To Private Donation In Wake Of Government Shutdown". Huffingtonpost.com.
^ Frias, Jordan (February 3, 2014). "Head Start Funding to Be Reinstated in Boston, Nationally". Boston Urban News. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
^ Wikipedia 15 Contributors Retrieved January 15, 2016.
^ Juan, Gonzalez; Amy, Goodman (September 26, 2013). "Matt Taibbi on How Wall Street Hedge Funds Are Looting the Pension Funds of Public Workers". Democracy Now!.
^ "Looting the Pension Funds: How Wall Street Robs Public Workers | Politics News". Rolling Stone. 2013-09-26.
^ Reid, Tim (2013-06-25). "Texas hedge fund billionaire seeks California pension reform". Reuters.
^ "A closer look at the Texas billionaire who backed EngageRI | WPRI.com Blogs". Blogs.wpri.com. 2013-05-20. Archived from the original on 2014-07-13. Retrieved 2017-02-03.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-huffpo-pew_35-1) Cohn, Gary (September 24, 2013). "Promise Breakers: How Pew Trusts Is Helping to Gut Public Employee Pensions". Huffington Post (originally from Frying Pan News).
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-sirota-1_36-1) Sirota, David (February 13, 2014). "How PBS is becoming the Plutocratic Broadcasting Service". PandoDaily.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-sirota-2_37-1) Sirota, David (February 12, 2014). "The Wolf of Sesame Street: Revealing the secret corruption inside PBS's news division". PandoDaily.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-latimes-brookings_38-1) Hiltzik, Michael (February 28, 2014). "First PBS, now Brookings: Has another institution sold its soul?". Los Angeles Times.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-pension-pew_39-1) "Pension Funds Press Pew to Cut Arnold Foundation Ties". Chronicle of Philanthropy. March 4, 2014.
^ Sirota, David (August 6, 2014). "Enron Mogul John Arnold Funds State Politics... And Now Journalism About Money in State Politics". International Business Times.
^ Reid, Tim (2014-06-25). "Texas hedge fund billionaire seeks California pension reform". Reuters.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-PurdyEvich_42-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-PurdyEvich_42-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ventures_LLC#cite_ref-PurdyEvich_42-3) Purdy, Chase; Bottemiller Evich, Helena (October 7, 2015). "The money behind the fight over healthy eating". Politico.
^ "About Us". The Nutrition Coalition. Retrieved October 10, 2015.
^ "Guidelines for Investments in Research" (PDF). Laura and John Arnold Foundation. July 29, 2013. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 26, 2014. Retrieved March 25, 2014.

External links

Official website The two men live in very different worlds. Gamboa is a research analyst at Crafton Hills College in Yucaipa, California. Arnold is a hedge-fund billionaire from Houston, Texas.

There’s another difference between them: Arnold recently had a representative present at a secret “pension summit” held at a Sacramento hotel, where strategies to limit public employee retirement benefits were discussed; Gamboa, a union member, did not – representatives of labor were specifically not invited.

“Pension reform” has become the latest battle cry in a seemingly endless war that has ostensibly been declared against tax-dollar waste, but whose single-minded purpose has been to slash the job protections and benefits enjoyed by California’s working middle class. Pension-cutting advocates have filled airwaves, websites and op-ed pages with stories about employees retiring in early middle age on six-figure pensions. The reality is that the average state and municipal worker retires on about $26,000 a year.

The Sacramento summit took place May 22 at the Citizen Hotel, a luxury boutique inn two blocks from the state capitol. It was hosted by the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based conservative and libertarian public policy group that embraces privatizing government functions and cutting public employee pensions. The foundation’s most prominent trustee is billionaire businessman David Koch, a longtime advocate of reducing public sector retirement benefits.

The meeting’s agenda – a copy of which was obtained by Frying Pan News — was written in the terse, opaque prose of event planners, but still offers a glimpse into the group’s plans. Among other items, it lists an hour-long session on “Overcoming Opposition: Anticipating and Addressing Government and Union Opposition.” Perhaps the agenda was even more important for what it did not say: That the attack on public sector pensions may soon be transformed into a state ballot initiative that would change California’s constitution.

The participants in the closed-door meeting were Republicans and Democrats, and included public officials and representatives of numerous foundations and think tanks intent on reducing pensions for public employees.

Among those attending were San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed; former San Diego city councilman Carl DeMaio; Josh McGee, a vice president at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation; Marcia Fritz, president of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility; Dan Pellissier, president of California Pension Reform;Ed Ring, executive director of the California Public Policy Center (CPPC) and editor of UnionWatch.org; Jack Dean, executive director at the Reason Foundation and editor of PensionTsunami.com, and Steven Greenhut, a journalist and author of the book Plunder! How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation.

Their gathering received no media coverage,with the exception of a brief mention in a column Greenhut wrote for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Despite the pension-cutting movement’s talk of the cause’s bipartisan pedigree, it seems to rely upon transfusions of money from wealthy rightwing personalities and nonprofits. Apart from the Reason Foundation’s close ties to David Koch,Greenhut’s own online hobby, CalWatchdog, is the creation of the Pacific Research Institute, a libertarian think tank with deep pockets.

Both the Reason Foundation and Pacific Research Institute are allied with the Koch-fundedAmerican Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has been writing corporatist model legislation for about 30 years. More locally, however, the nexus for pension-cutting is the Tustin-headquartered California Public Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit led by Ed Ring, who worked to promote the anti-union Proposition 32 last year. CPPC’s advisors include Marcia Fritz and Jack Dean; its president is Mark W. Bucher who helped qualify and pass 2000’s Proposition 22, which effectively banned same-sex marriage in California. (Bucher is also a board member of Family Action, a rightwing Orange County political action committee.) Another CPPC board member, Robert Loewen, also serves as president of the ultraconservative Lincoln Club of Orange County.)

The Sacramento meeting apparently helped set the stage for moves that are now occurring largely behind the scenes.

In an interview, Reed confirmed that he attended the pension summit and that he has been working on a statewide ballot initiative that would allow the state and local governments to reduce retirement benefits for current employees for the years of work they performed after his proposed reforms would go into effect. He says that such statewide reform is necessary for California’s fiscal health, to ensure that the state and local governments can provide a reasonable level of services to the public and to protect public employees.“What we need to do statewide is make it possible for local governments to change future accruals for work not performed,” he says. He adds that his proposed ballot measure could be voted on as early as November, 2014.

Reed, a Democrat who has opposed same-sex marriage and the raising of the minimum wage of his city’s workers, seems to be what pension-cutters have in mind when they speak of their movement’s bipartisan makeup. (The gathering’s other politician,Carl DeMaio, is a Republican — and Reason Foundation senior fellow — who has advocated replacing San Diego city employees’ pensions with a 401(k)-type substitute.) Last year Reed pushed a ballot measure in San Jose to reduce that city’s retirement costs for its public employees. The measure passed, but is now tied up in the courts. He acknowledges that any such measure is likely to provoke an all-out fight with the state’s public-employee unions. Interviews with labor officials and their representatives seem to bear him out.

A ballot initiative to cut back pensions for existing employees would “change the constitution and would be a horrible thing,” says Steven Maviglio, a publisher of the California Majority Report and a Sacramento-based political consultant whose clients include Californians for Retirement Security, a labor coalition representing 1.5 million public employees and retirees.

Maviglio says that many employees have worked for years at jobs where they were promised certain benefits and that it would be a breach of faith to “throw out that understanding and break that trust. That’s the whole foundation of pension benefits.”

He adds, “If someone is teaching for 25 years and somebody changes the rules of the game, that’s hardly fair.”

Any statewide ballot measure campaign aimed at cutting back public employee benefits would provoke an expensive fight with unions. “It would cost tens of millions of dollars — $30 or $40 million,” Reed says. Fritz, president of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility (whose vice president is the CPPC’s Jack Dean), says that the backers would likely look for funding from the Arnold Foundation, among other sources.

The Arnold Foundation has funded similar efforts in the past. Two years ago, for example, the Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that the Arnold Foundation had given a $150,000 grant to Fritz’s group for a series of reports seeking to limit public employee pensions. Last year, another of the foundation’s checks made headlines when it was revealed that the Arnold Foundation was a major backer of Engage Rhode Island, the group that pushed through that state’s pension overhaul law.

The Arnold Foundation is clearly in the forefront of nationwide efforts to scale back pensions for state and municipal workers. On its website, the foundation identifies pension reform as one of its key initiatives, and it provides position papers supporting its stances.

“The current system has allowed politicians to promise one level of benefits without fully funding them,” the Arnold Foundation’s McGee told Frying Pan News in an email last week. “Across the U.S., state and local governments have underfunded workers’ benefits by at least $1 trillion.”

The Arnold Foundation, McGee wrote, works with state and local communities to provide policy information and technical assistance to help them develop pension reforms. He said that a ballot initiative is just one tool to improve the retirement system, and added that the foundation “does not promote or fund ballot initiatives.” He also acknowledged that he attended the pension summit in Sacramento.

“We discussed the need to deal responsibly with accumulated pension debt, secure benefits that have already been earned, and create a system that is affordable, sustainable, and secure,” McGee stated.

Others believe the Arnold Foundation has its eye on California in order to promote public employee pension cutbacks across the nation. The foundation’s thinking, Maviglio says, is that “if liberal California can do it, it can happen anywhere.”

In many ways, Benjamin Gamboa, the 30-year-old research analyst at Crafton Hills College, is typical of those employees who find themselves in the pension-cutters’ crosshairs. Working at a community college, he believes, is serving the public good by helping students to reach their goals.

“I love what I do, and I love the security of my job,” he says. “My plan is to retire with a pension just large enough to spoil my grandkids.” He says that his hope and expectation will be for a pension of about $30,000 a year. “I want to enjoy the simple things,” he says. “There are no European vacations in my future.”

He adds that he is concerned to hear about the continuing efforts to limit his and other workers’ pensions.

“To attack the work I do and the security I treasure . . .” he says, then pauses. “It’s heart-wrenching. It’s demoralizing.”

Gary Cohn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has worked for theLos Angeles Times,Baltimore SunandWall Street Journal. This story was reported by Frying Pan News as part of its California Exposé investigative series, and published here in collaboration with Firedoglake.