Monday, May 12, 2008
Project 21's Borelli Chides California Lawmakers for Coerced Giving Proposal
By David Almasi: People already hate it when the government tells them what they can buy. Now, California lawmakers are mulling over a proposal that would tell people how they can give to charity.
In a commentary published in the May 11 Washington Times, Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli has criticized alifornia's "The Foundation Diversity and Transparency Act" (AB 624), which would, she points out, "require charitable foundations with assets of $250 million or more to report the race, sex and sexual preferences of its staff, board of directors and grant recipients in the foundation's annual report and on its website."
Deneen further noted: One group supporting AB 624 is The Greenlining Institute, a left-wing public policy organization headquartered in the radical enclave of Berkeley. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the group alleges that minorities are not sufficiently represented in California policy debates. Operating on the notion that this is because minority groups don't have enough money, AB 624 being sought as a tactic to "shame" foundations into donating more money to minority-led entities.
Why rely on merit when charitable giving can be mandated through the force of law?
The Greenling Institute agenda is clear: use the race card to hijack the power of the state and force charities to fund liberal organizations under the guise of helping minorities.
Besides the bureaucratic costs and hassles involved and the ability for it to become a model for other state and federal lawmakers, Deneen notes the chilling effect AB 624 could have on charitable giving:Implementation of AB 624 may also deter individuals and companies from establishing philanthropic foundations in the first place. The Greenlining goal is to "shame" foundations. Why establish a foundation with advance knowledge that it will be harassed if it doesn't give away its money in the prescribed, politically-correct manner?
Ironically, by seeking to increase donations to certain groups, this legislation may actually result in a chilling effect on overall philanthropy and harm all deserving grant recipients.
Deneen's complete commentary can be found here.
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Labels: Liberals, Political Correctness, Project 21, Race, Social Welfare
Posted by Amy Ridenour at 1:20 AM
Friday, April 18, 2008
True Emancipation Would Be Something New to Celebrate
From David Almasi: April 16 is a public holiday unique to the District of Columbia. It's "Emancipation Day" - the commemoration of President Abraham Lincoln's signing of the Compensation Emancipation Act in 1862. The Act freed the approximately 3,100 slaves in the nation's capital months before the Emancipation Proclamation freed them in Confederate states.
Along with the closure of public offices and the government-run schools, parades and performances mix are sometimes mixed with political action. Most notably, the day is often used as a rallying point for efforts to make the federal district a full-fledged state with two senators and a representative.
But how about using Emancipation Day to call for an emancipation from burdensome government, rather than demanding more of it?
As pointed out in a Washington Times commentary by Project 21 member and new National Center Policy Analyst Casey Lartigue, Jr. on April 16: The focus was - as it is usually is in D.C. - on political power rather than policies to make citizens freer. Not to take away from the oppression of slavery, but Emancipation Day is more than an opportunity to celebrate the end of the oppression of slavery. It also is a good time to note that lawmakers typically look backward at liberty's advances rather than forward to find ways citizens can enjoy more personal freedom.
For example: It won't be until a week after Emancipation Day that Americans will observe "Tax Freedom Day," the date when people essentially stop working to pay off their tax obligations and begin working for themselves. According to the Tax Foundation, April 23 is the national average. D.C. residents celebrate their particular Tax Freedom Day last - after all 50 states - on May 3...
Wouldn't it be a pleasant surprise today, Emancipation Day, if Mr. Fenty and the D.C. Council announced cuts in government spending or extended the occasional "tax-free" shopping periods?
Another way city leaders could expand freedom is to extend school choice, at a minimum, to every low-income student living in the District. Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute recently pointed out that when all costs are divided by the number of students, the District of Columbia is spending close to $25,000 per child. The District essentially is providing mediocre public schooling at elite private school prices.
Casey did point out one bright spot on the horizon. Unfortunately, if this happens, this reform will not be by the hands of the District's leadership but rather through a legal mandate from the U.S. Supreme Court: When D.C. leaders can't be relied on to extend freedom, others may help. The Supreme Court may soon step in to help D.C. residents by ending the city's ban on firearms.
Since 1976, ownership of virtually all firearms in the District has been illegal. The gun ban hasn't curtailed gun-related crimes against D.C. residents, but it robs them of the means of self-defense. The Supreme Court is expected to rule by June on a lower court's rejection of the ban.
To see the full version of Casey's commentary, click here.
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Labels: Education, Government Power, Government Spending, Guns, History, Project 21, Race
Posted by Amy Ridenour at 5:23 PM
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
EPA Jeopardizes Children in Potentially Dangerous Sludge Experiments
Project 21's Deneen Borelli
is not happy about the EPA and other federal agencies conducting de facto experiments on families in poor, black families:
EPA Sludge Tests a "Modern-Day Tuskegee Experiment"
Children in Poor Black Neighborhoods Potentially Imperiled by EPA Studies
For Release: Immediate
Contact: David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or dalmasi@nationalcenter.org
Washington, D.C.: Revelations that the federal government conducted potentially dangerous sludge-related experiments on children in Baltimore is condemned by Project 21 black leadership network fellow Deneen Borelli, who is demanding more answers about the origins of the experiment and wants to know how much other reckless policymaking is permeating federal agencies.
The Associated Press reported April 13 that researchers using federal grant money selected nine families in poor, black Baltimore neighborhoods to test if sludge could reduce child health risks from lead. Sludge derived from human and industrial waste was tilled into the families' yards and grass was planted over it.
The AP story said families were told that lead found in the soil in their yards posed a health risk and that the sludge was safe. The study, the findings of were published in 2005, did find that sludge bonded with the harmful metals lead, cadmium and zinc in the soil. However, concerns about the health risk of the sludge appear to have been overlooked, and no follow-up medical examinations of the families were reported.
The AP says, "epidemiological studies have never been done to show whether spreading sludge on land is safe."
A similar experiment was done in a poor, primarily black neighborhood in East St. Louis, IL.
"This is no less than a modern-day Tuskegee Experiment," said Borelli. "The government appears to have clearly failed - in the case of the EPA - in its mission 'to protect human health and safeguard the environment.' In fact, it is failure on both counts. For federal bureaucrats at EPA and HUD to knowingly allow this experiment to take place and jeopardize the health of children and adults is outrageous."
In 1993, the EPA began allowing Class B sludge containing human feces, medical waste and assorted chemicals to be used on farmland, in national forests and for mine reclamation efforts. EPA managers have been hostile to critics who questioned whether the sludge is safe. The hostility included angry calls and letters to public critics and unfounded ethics complaints imperiling the careers of critics within the agency. EPA scientists David Lewis and William Markus, who spoke out about the unknown potential dangers of Class B sludge, were retaliated against by their superiors, but later sued the EPA and won a $100,000 settlement.
In March a federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to compensate Georgia farmer Andy McElmurray because sludge used in his fields to grow corn and cotton to feed livestock contained extremely high levels of arsenic, toxic heavy metals and PCBs. U.S. District Judge Anthony Alaimo wrote that government-endorsed data on the sludge was "unreliable, incomplete and, in some cases, fudged." Judge Alaimo further wrote, "senior EPA officials took extraordinary steps to quash scientific dissent."
Borelli wants to know if there are other issues championed by the agency in which necessary assessment was bypassed to meet desired political goals.
"One can't help but compare the scandal in Baltimore to global warming policy promoted by environmental activists and many of their supporters in the government bureaucracy," added Project 21's Borelli. "In the case of the EPA, the agency's lack of sound analysis regarding climate change will undoubtedly lead to dire economic consequences. For instance, the American Council For Capital Formation predicts '...the United States would lose between 1.2 and 1.8 million jobs in 2020' and that the 'primary cause of job losses would be lower industrial output due to higher energy prices, the high cost of complying with required emissions cuts, and greater competition from overseas manufacturers with lower energy costs.' We can't be allowed to run headlong into a crisis without proper scientific evidence. In Baltimore and the nation as a whole, it looks as if the government is putting policy goals ahead of public welfare."
Between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a study on the effects of syphilis on black men. In the process, researchers intentionally denied full knowledge and treatment for the debilitating sexually transmitted disease to the 399 black men studied. Called the Tuskegee Experiment because government researchers used the renowned black institution's medical facilities, the race-based study led to the deaths of 128 of the study's subjects while 59 wives and children contracted or were born with syphilis.
The AP story was written by John Heilprin and Kevin S. Viney.
-30-
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Labels: Corruption, Government Power, Project 21, Race, Regulatory Victims, Social Welfare
Posted by Amy Ridenour at 11:49 AM
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Racial Bias Is What Some People Want Us to See... No Matter What
Townhall.com has published an op-ed by our David Almasi on the Vogue magazine-LeBron James-Gisele Bundchen mini-scandal (covered on this blog previously
here):
Racial Bias is What Some People Want Us to See… No Matter What
Comedian Chris Rock used to play a recurring character on "Saturday Night Live" named Nat X. During the humorous, nonsensical rants of this Black Nationalist talk show host, Nat X would sometimes be chased by his studio's "white-man cam.” When it caught him, bars would appear on the screen and Nat X would yell "That's what you wanna see!"
April's cover of Vogue magazine, featuring an Annie Leibovitz photo of basketball phenomenon LeBron James and supermodel Gisele Bundchen promoting its "shape issue," is drawing fire for what magazine critic Samir Husni calls an image that "screams King Kong."
Leibovitz's photo featured James, dressed to play and bouncing a basketball, looking like he is yelling while clutching a smiling Bundchen around the waist.
Adding to Husni's criticism, University of Maryland assistant professor Damion Thomas told the Associated Press that the Leibowitz photo "reinforce[s] the criminalization of black men."
This criticism turns a high-end fashion magazine with a circulation of around a million into an international news story and a potential flashpoint for racial hostility.
The controversy over the photo is the creation of conspiracy theorists willing to find a racial angle in just about anything.
The alleged victim James' response was one of indifference. He told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "who cares what anyone says?" and that he was "just showing a little emotion."
Darryn "Dutch" Martin, a black conservative with Project 21 (full disclosure: a group with which I work), said in a press release: "There are people who are, and probably forever will be, racially hypersensitive for either personal or professional reasons. Nothing that reasonable people say or do will convince them otherwise. I believe critics are using this canard of racial stereotyping as a smokescreen to hide their true disdain for any images of interracial closeness or intimacy between black men and white women."
Hours after Project 21's press release hit the Internet, I received an e-mail from liberal blogger Rogers Cadenhead suggesting I visit his blog. A fellow liberal blogger had already gone to the trouble of tracking down a World War I-era army recruiting poster that closely resembles the Vogue photo. On his "Watching the Watchers" blog, Cadenhead reproduced the magazine cover and the poster and opined: "Leibovitz, who has a history of referencing iconic images in her photographs, appropriated the composition from a famous poster that's believed to be an inspiration for the film King Kong… I wonder if James, presented with the two images, would be as generous."
Leibovitz has not yet said this is what she did – it is only speculation. And the poster was comparing Germans to apes (and not necessarily King Kong).
Vogue's cover didn't personally make me draw a comparison between LeBron James and King Kong until I read Husni and Thomas's criticism. Nor was I aware of the recruiting poster until Cadenhead contacted me. Despite now being exposed to it, I don't think of James as an ape not do I hold him in the same contempt as I do Kaiser Wilhelm II and the German empire of nearly a century ago.
To be honest, the first thing I thought about when I saw the photo was how it resembled the way James looks on the bottle of Powerade that is sitting in my refrigerator. James is an endorser of the sports drink.
LeBron James is a noted basketball player who is at the peak of his physical prowess, which is what Vogue was celebrating by featuring him on the cover with one of the world's top supermodels. Rather than judging James – and, by extension, other blacks – by the content of their character, skills or intellect as Vogue intended, the race-mongers instead seem more interested in bringing things down to the lowest common denominator. There never seems to be a party where they don't want to be a skunk.
After all, Nat X said that's what we wanted to see.
Go
to Townhall.com if you'd like to make a public comment on this op-ed or this issue generally. To contact author David Almasi directly, write him at
dalmasi@nationalcenter.org.
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Labels: Political Correctness, Race, Social Issues
Posted by Amy Ridenour at 1:27 AM
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Is Annie Leibovitz Picture of Gisele Bundchen and LeBron James Racist?
Project 21 has
weighed in on the question: Is the Annie Leibovitz picture of Gisele Bundchen and LeBron James on the cover of April's Vogue magazine racist?
Here's what Project 21's Deneen Borelli and Darryn "Dutch" Martin had to say:
Black Activists See No Racial Double-Meaning in LeBron James-Gisele Bundchen Vogue Magazine Cover
While some might consider it a milestone that basketball star LeBron James became the first black man to grace the cover of Vogue for the fashion magazine's April issue, critics are saying the photo of him with supermodel Gisele Bundchen is racially insensitive and "screams King Kong." Members of the Project 21 leadership network join with James and others in saying those complaining about the photo are making a big deal out of nothing.
"There are some people who view everything through the lens of racial stereotypes," said Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli, who has worked as a professional model. "LeBron's accomplishments on the basketball court lead him to the cover of Vogue magazine, making him the first black man to do so. Given the numerous disappointing stories involving professional athletes, LeBron's story of success should be a focus and cause for celebration."
Vogue's April cover, advertising its "shape issue" that features articles on top models and athletes, is a photo taken by award-winning celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. In the photo, James - wearing athletic clothing, bouncing a basketball and seemingly yelling at the camera - has an arm around a smiling, gown-clad Bundchen.
Magazine analyst Samir Husni told the Associated Press the cover "screams King Kong" and that "when you have a cover that reminds people of King Kong and brings those stereotypes to the front, black man wanting white woman, it's not innocent." University of Maryland assistant professor Damion Thomas said photos such as this "reinforce the criminalization of black men."
James dismissed the criticism of the photo. He told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "who cares what anyone says?" Regarding his expression in the photo, he said he was "just showing a little emotion."
Others suggest the criticism of the photo is racially-motivated for different reasons. In a Fox Sports column, Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock wrote: "Would we be having this discussion if LeBron struck the same pose on the cover of Ebony while holding [model] Selita Ebanks? Think about it. And if we wouldn't be having the discussion, what does that say about us? Are we only bothered by negative images of black men when the primary/sole consumer of the image is white people?"
"Do you want to know what I think is the real reason behind this non-controversy? There are people who are, and probably forever will be, racially hypersensitive for either personal or professional reasons. Nothing that reasonable people say or do will convince them otherwise," said Project 21 member Darryn "Dutch" Martin. "I believe critics are using this canard of racial stereotyping as a smokescreen to hide their true disdain for any images of interracial closeness or intimacy between black men and white women."
Not everyone agrees.
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Labels: Media, Project 21, Race
Posted by Amy Ridenour at 12:50 AM
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Race Preference Policies Are "Discriminatory On all Ends" Says Borelli
From David Almasi: Congratulations to Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli for spelling out the antiquity of affirmative action policies in the March 18 Boston Globe.
Globe reporter Matt Negrin called Project 21 to ask if the election of a black U.S. president would show that race preference policies are no longer needed. Ward Connerly of the American Civil Rights Institute and Abigail Thernstrom of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and Manhattan Institute, among others, were also interviewed.
Deneen told the Globe: Times have changed. There are plenty of opportunities available, but to have this crutch... is just wrong. It's discriminatory on all ends.
Deneen has previously written about affirmative action in a New Visions Commentary that can be read by clicking here.
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Labels: Affirmative Action, Project 21, Race
Posted by Amy Ridenour at 5:00 PM
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