Richard Mellon Scaife and Hillary Clinton, Redux

Last weekend, Richard Mellon Scaife, publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, endorsed Hillary Clinton for President in the Pennsylvania Primary.

So Richard Mellon Scaife has paid huge amounts of money for evidence that Hillary is a lesbian, and is perhaps the biggest financier of the “right wing conspiracy” that came a few votes shy of removing Bill from office.  He is the right wing loon who has spent well over 200 million dollars to back nearly every cause that Hillary would say is an anathema to her 35 years in public life.  

Almost every newsworthy right winger of the last 30 years has been recipient of Scaife funding. This includes hundreds of millions of dollars to right wing causes through 3 foundations, Carthage, Allegheny, and the Sarah Scaife Foundations.  

Scaife alone is responsible for making it possible for right wing ideologues to translate the 1971 Powell Memo into the conservative revolution.

Back in 1994, according to an old Salon article, Heritage Foundation president Edwin Feulner Jr. told a meeting of supporters in 1994 that 20 years earlier,

 ”Dick Scaife had the vision to see the need for a conservative intellectual movement in America. These organizations built the intellectual case that was necessary before political leaders like Newt Gingrich could translate their ideas into practical political alternatives.” 

These organizations include Heritage, the Hoover Foundation, American Enterprise Foundation, Cato, and more. Scaife veterans then filled the ranks of the Reagan and W Bush administrations and have distorted how the world and many Americans now view American democracy.

The damage is severe.  When Keith Olbermann asked Hillary about the Scaife endorsement this evening on Countdown, Clinton laughed and said she believed in “deathbed conversions.”  No conversion. The damage is institutional, long term, and it’s hardly  laughing matter.

“Meeting David Wilson” in Baltimore

Last evening, I watched the documentary “Meeting David Wilson,” which was about the film maker David A. Wilson exploring his own ancestry, tracing it back, from Newark New Jersey, to North Carolina, to Ghana. The film’s dramatic tension had to do with David A. Wilson meeting David B. Wilson in North Carolina, where B’s great great grandfather enslaved A’s great great grandfather.  The tenor of the film was reconciliation, and I found it to be quite poignant and as a teacher I think every school should make full use of this documentary and accompanying teaching materials.  If nothing else, David A would like the documentary to be used to start a conversation, and schools, regardless of their racial demographic should create curriculum to facilitate this endeavor.

For me, a NYC born white, jewish academic who does a lot of work in Baltimore communities, the 90 minute discussion after the documentary was as important as the film itself.  It was important for the unspoken tension (even tho it spoke of racial tensions quite a bit). I experienced a divide on the panels, not so much based on race, but on ways of speaking (discourse).

I saw the split in two ways. First, is the divide that David A commented on at the end of the discussion. He said he was bothered by the academese of the discussion and was concerned that most americans who ought to be engaging in this discussion would be put off by the jargon and theories being tossed around by such panelists as Michael Eric Dyson, Tim Wise, and from the audience Greg Carr.

The second divide overlaps the first and has to do with the ways in which the panelists talked passed each other, with some focusing on systems (macro), and others focusing on individuals/people (micro).  In this dialogue, the system’s speakers assume a more critical posture, and the “people” speakers assume a less critical and more conservative stance.  The most famous example of this is the Cosby–Dyson debate about which books (Dyson’s own) literally have been written. 

I happen to think that the term racism is a “systems” concept.  I adhere to the view that systems and institutions are racist not individuals. Individuals  may be bigoted and prejudiced, and can say racists things, but they are not racist, per se.  In Baltimore, it is difficult to talk about race without framing the discussion in the context of quite visible and obvious inner city blight. The blight covers a range of topics and statistics.  Fewer than 40% of Baltimore City HS students graduate; 1 in 3 young black males will be incarcerated; the incarceration rate is 2,420 per 100,000, one of the highest rates of any city in the country.  The city has about 300 murders a year, much of which is black on black, one of the nation’s highest heroin addiction rates which kills about as many Baltimore residents as are murdered each year. In all, Baltimore is the 2nd most dangerous city in the US of any city with a population of at least 500,000 residents.  We are talking about a racist system. 

I have done a great deal of work at the dallas Nicholas Elementary School in the Barclay neighborhood. The school is an almost 100% title one school. Right across the street from the school is the state parole and probation building.  The message for many dallas Nicholas Students when they leave school for home is clear: this is where you might end up. Last summer the neighborhood  experienced the city’s largest percentage of murders of many neighborhood in the city. 

This racist system needs to be overhauled. Period. 

At the same time, the Barclay neighborhood shows several signs of (re)vitalization, which focuses on life within the structures and institutions; it goes to the micro- issue because it is based on community building, individuals principals, teachers and residents who simply refuse to accept the sometimes over-determining feelings of powerlessness associated with how the system constructs and defines this neighborhood. 

I have worked with the “Barclay Boys” summer program, the BOOST after school program, the growing community school headquartered inside the elementary school, and the local neighborhood associations.  These programs and projects would not thrive were it not for the commitments of named individuals.

Still, they would not survive were it not for the threadbare financial support they receive from the city, state and local funders.

The politics of race in Baltimore’s barclay neighborhood integrates the macro and the micro, and concrete next steps have to do with increasing the numbers of committed individuals,  securing the political support of the local city government; going beyond individuals to mobilize political support that is capable of securing city, state and national funds for the schools, after school and community school programs, and so forth.

There is nothing about working on the micro level that excludes thinking and communicating on the macro level. Nothing about personal responsibility on the micro level and critical race theory theory on the macro level.  this leaves David A’s question about too much academese, and the challenge to people who are helping to frame the debate to lessen the jargon; it is quite possible and beneficial to communicate complex ideas, which we all have, in everyday language which makes the dialogue democratically accessible.

In sum, the dialogue needs to find a narrative that is capable of holding macro and micro issues within the same conversation. Only then will conversants really be able to hear and respond to each other.

 

Conservatives Waging War on Nonprofits

Robert Koulish

The Bush administration’s proposed 2008 budget, which threatens elimination of 141 programs, is a reminder of another war – the one against nonprofits.

Since 9/11, nonprofits have been financially starved, privatized out of business and even criminalized, under the “material aid” provisions of the Patriot Act. The Bush budget attempts to escalate this low-intensity conflict against nonprofits.

The seeds for the war on nonprofits lay in the 1971 “Powell Memo” penned by corporate lawyer and future Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell. The memo instructed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to confront nonprofit critics of the business community, personified by Ralph Nader and the American Civil Liberties Union. It urged forming right-wing think tanks and philanthropies, hiring intellectuals and confronting progressives.

The Powell Memo has been credited with providing a blueprint for conservative dominance after the 1978 midterm elections as well as the surge in right-wing think tanks and civic organizations, and the “K Street Project” for conservative domination of lobbying firms.

After 9/11, confrontational strategies against nonconservatives took an unprecedented turn with funding cuts, financial audits and National Security Agency surveillance of political opponents. Suddenly, policy wonks, social workers and civil litigators were subject to investigation as if they were suspected terrorists.

According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, audits of 501(c)3’s engaged in social programming have risen sharply, with Greenpeace, Advocates for Youth and the National Endowment for the Arts enduring such politically inspired harassment. The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights report that Greenpeace and dozens of other progressive nonprofits have also been targeted for NSA and Pentagon spying.

Another strategy is to deprive nonprofits of resources. Recent Bush budgets have drastically cut such strategic initiatives as Community Development Block Grants, Community Outreach Partnership Centers and the Community Reinvestment Act. The evisceration of these programs has had the effect of securing the demise of nonprofits.

Privatization provides another means of accomplishing this. In New Orleans, multinationals such as KBR have replaced nonprofits in delivering services. Federal funds earmarked for emergency social programs – funds ordinarily channeled to nonprofits – ended up in Halliburton’s bank account.

Regrettably, the nonprofit sector has adapted to these attacks by emulating conservative strategies – and turning these strategies not on the conservatives but on itself.

The nonprofit sector increasingly boasts a “big box,” one-size-fits-all culture. Look no further than the Red Cross in post-Katrina New Orleans. New York City’s Foundation Center says the Red Cross, which raised perhaps $2 billion for Katrina relief despite widespread accusations of mismanagement, “ranked as by far the largest named recipient of contributions from foundation and corporate donors in response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita.”

To its credit, the Red Cross is favored for its convenience, economy of scale and historical legacy. Unfortunately, its economy of scale is responsible for sucking the air from donors, crushing smaller nonprofits, and making decisions that are not responsive to local concerns. The “big box” phenomenon overlooks grassroots organizations with records of responsiveness and accountability.

Conservatives have won an enormous amount of turf in their war on nonprofits. Progressives must take back the nonprofit sector and its mission of caring for people.

We need a progressive version of the Powell Memo that calls on adherents to create a movement that goes beyond what liberal think tanks are doing. This movement should include progressive media programming, progressive news sources funded by foundations and philanthropists, new think tanks and political strategies that solidify progressive values and lead to political success at the local, state and national levels.

Congress must be urged to reverse the damage to the nonprofit sector and establish a new progressive agenda that supports local associational life and a government committed to the things the private sector cannot do.

The alternative is a nonprofit agenda that will continue to strengthen and perpetuate the very conservative system that seeks its demise.

Robert Koulish is a political scientist and France-Merrick professor of service learning at Goucher College. His e-mail is rkoulish@goucher.edu.

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