The Conservative Cave
Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: Ptarmigan on January 26, 2008, 05:15:51 PM
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Muffling the Left
Chisun Lee
Village Voice
August 6-12, 2003
The Bush administration is actively seeking to gag or punish social service organizations that challenge the party line on such matters as health care for poor children and HIV prevention, according to a new report. Nonprofits that disagree with the president's own solutions, or go further and blame him for problems in the first place, have come to expect unpleasant consequences. Those might include audits of federal-funds spending and reviews of content, such as workshop literature.
"If you disagree with the administration on ideological grounds, they're going to come down with a hammer. This has huge implications for the free flow of speech in this country," says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, itself a nonprofit, which released the report last week as part of its 20-year-old mission to monitor White House budget and spending decisions.
As dramatic as that assessment sounds, the assault has been nearly invisible to the public. The Bush administration and its allies have hit progressives under the radar, maneuvering in the soporific—if enormously important—realm of nonprofit oversight.
The idea of a right-wing conspiracy to audit nonprofits is more likely to set off yawns than outrage. Yet virtually every imaginable social cause—civil liberties, reproductive rights, affirmative action, accessible health care—relies on a lifeline of nonprofit advocates, fundraisers, and service providers. Since nonprofits operate on a tax-exempt basis and often receive government funding, they have always been subject to federal oversight and are forbidden from engaging in electoral politics. Under George W. Bush, however, oversight has quietly morphed into ideologically motivated intimidation and censorship, according to OMB Watch's review of some dozen specific conflicts.
Even though causes of the right have their own tax-exempt advocates, conservatives have long reviled nonprofits in general for "supporting the welfare state," according to Bass. He points to the major efforts to defund nonprofits and restrict their advocacy during the Reagan administration in the '80s and in Newt Gingrich's Congress in the '90s.
Full Article (http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0332,lee,46039,6.html)
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Yawn. Whiny crybaby article from leftist rag Village Voice. Clinton had groups audited, including the Cato Institute.
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Not only do they want to go against the USA, they want us to pay them for the pleasure.
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I guess illegally harboring 900 FBI files was an initiative for the Almighty Free Speech the left loves to taut.
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Most hospitals are not for profit and a Tylenol will cost you $100. I wish they get back to wanting to make money cause this other way costs me too much.
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Y'all are the ones who wanted McCain-Feingold, not us.
Enjoy it.