An op-ed in Michigan's Midland Daily News praising the billionaire Koch brothers and defending their relentless spending intended to influence elections failed to disclose the author's significant connections to the Koch brothers.

In his October 26 op-ed in the Midland Daily News, Timothy Nash, identified as “vice president and economics professor at Northwood University,” praised the economic success of Koch Industries and of the philanthropy of the company's leaders, Charles and David Koch. Nash rejected those who criticize the Kochs for their political action, attributing their political spending, which reached over $400 million in 2012 and is setting records in 2014, to “a belief in, passion for, and support of the traditional values that have made America great.”

However, the Midland Daily News failed to reveal Nash's own significant and beneficial relationship to the Koch brothers. In February 2011, Nash was announced as the director of the Koch Scholars program at Northwood University, which is funded by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. In addition, Nash is listed as an adjunct professor with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Koch-funded think tank. According to the Center for Media and Democracy's Source Watch database:

The Mackinac Center has received significant funding from the Koch family foundations as well as other funding organizations with ties to the Koch brothers. The Charles G. Koch Foundation donated $79,151 between 2005 and 2009, and the Claude R. Lambe Foundation gave Mackinac a donation of $5,000 in 2001. Between 2010 and 2012, the Mackinac Center received $1,494,000 from the Koch conduits DonorTrust and Donors Capital Fund.

As “the largest conservative state-level policy think tank in the nation," the Mackinac Center is part of the State Policy Network (SPN). SPN members work to produce research to lend legitimacy for the right-wing agenda “that aims to privatize education, block healthcare reform, restrict workers' rights, roll back environmental protections.” An evaluation of the Mackinac Center's publications by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice found:

Mackinac Center research is often of low quality and because of this it should be treated with considerable skepticism by the public, policy makers and political leaders. Indeed, much of the work of the Mackinac Center may have caused more confusion than clarity in the public discussion of the issues that it has addressed by systematically ignoring evidence that does not agree with its proposed solutions.

The Mackinac Center is also affiliated with the Franklin Center, which attempts to infiltrate state news coverage and seeks to fill a void in statehouse news reporting while promoting conservative misinformation. The Koch brothers fund the Franklin Center indirectly through Donors Trust, a foundation that has been dubbed “the dark money ATM of the conservative movement” due to the lack of transparency of its donors and the numerous conservative organizations the foundation funds.