April 14, 2003
How else to explain that Meremec Community College student Crystal Lewis and others like her, are paying for a myriad of causes and advocacy efforts sponsored, endorsed, and overseen by white knight Ralph Nader?
According to Radley Balko, whose stories are posted on theagitator.com, "if you’re in college, or have kids in college, the odds are pretty good that you’re supporting Ralph Nader too. And that’s just the way Nader and his nationwide network of Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGS) would like to keep it."
The PIRG idea was born in the late 1960s, but really caught on through the 1970s and 1980s. It has again picked up momentum in the last few years, due mainly to the publicity that accompanied Nader’s presidential campaign. The scam varies campus to campus, but Balko gives a description on how it happens.
"Each time a college student registers for classes, he or she is automatically billed somewhere between three and eight dollars, all of which goes directly to the local PIRG chapter. There, it’s funneled directly to the state chapter, where it’s used to lobby state legislatures on issues like tougher emission standards, campaign finance reform, and a bevy of other environmental and anti-corporate causes. Very little, if any of the money, actually stays at the campus where it’s generated.
"It’s also used as "seed money" for more fund-raising campaigns. And about 10 percent of the money goes to USPIRG, the national chapter, where it’s used to lobby on the federal level."
Balko goes to the movement’s roots to show the procedure for start-up campus PIRGS: "First, they attempt to institute mandatory, non-refundable "contributions" from the student body, either through a student referendum, a petition drive, or by going through school administration. The University of Wisconsin requires all of its students to donate to the local PIRG chapter, as does the University of Oregon, and about a third of the state colleges in New York’s SUNY system.
"If that doesn’t work, PIRG chapters attempt to institute a "reverse check" system, where each student automatically donates to PIRG each time he registers for classes, unless he specifically knows to look for an already checked box asking for his support--and "un-checks" it.
"If they can’t win support there, PIRG groups will attempt a "refundable fee" system, where each student is automatically billed, but can request a refund by taking the bill to the university registrar or bursar’s office, filling out some paperwork, then taking the form to the local PIRG’s campus office to get the money back.
"Such systems rake in millions for PIRGs because they put the burden on the college students to educate themselves about each line item on their tuition bill, or to go to great effort for a comparatively small refund, particularly unlikely when mom and dad, or Mr. Perkins and Mr. Stafford, are paying for college anyway.
"Craig Rucker is executive director for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, an organization that’s been fighting the PIRG scams for years. Rucker estimates that Nader’s causes take in somewhere between $10 million and $20 million annually from college students, most all of it unwittingly.
"What’s remarkable is the blatant, transparent hypocrisy the PIRGs use to defend their tactics. The USPIRG website claims that mandatory student fees earmarked for liberal activism are "protected by the First Amendment" and are intended to "foster a marketplace of ideas."
"Yet that same USPIRG website is a staunch supporter of radical campaign finance reform, and says that contributions to political candidates are not political speech and, therefore, not protected by the First Amendment.
"Get it? The act of forcing students at state colleges to fund causes they don’t believe in is "protected speech" but voluntarily giving to a political candidate isn’t. Remarkable.
"This is also the same Ralph Nader who (correctly at least on this issue) rails against corporate welfare because he says it’s deplorable to take money from taxpayers and then funnel it to corporations whose interests might be different from those of said taxpayers. It’s the same Ralph Nader and USPIRG organization that cries out against the "injustice" of ATM fees, and criticizes credit card companies for preying on the naivete of college kids.
"Yet this same Ralph Nader and USPIRG has no problem with mandating, tricking, or manipulating college students into donating to leftist activism."
Genetic tinkering okay by most of us
Did you know that genetic tinkering is hardly new to agriculture?
Genetic tinkering did not find its debut on the world stage through frankenfoods, and Thomas Bray of the Detroit News puts it into perfect perspective.
"Farmers have been crossbreeding strains of corn for centuries to produce hardier, more productive crops. The leading scientific academies in Europe and America are unanimous that genetic modifications to plants pose little or no threat to society or the environment. And one suspects that most European objections stem from a desire to avoid foreign competition to their increasingly obsolete agriculture sector.
"What really bugs the greens is the fact that the agricultural revolution poses a direct challenge to one of the core beliefs of late 20th century environmentalism: that the world is running down and running out.
"This theory has a long and discredited history. It was most famously posited by a British divine, the Rev. Thomas Malthus, in 1798. He asserted that population growth was mathematically certain to outrun the ability of the world to feed itself, resulting in widespread famine and misery. Malthus was largely forgotten, amid the incredible surge of prosperity of the industrial world in the 19th century.
"But the population spurt of the late 20th century resurrected the Malthusian doctrine. In the late 1960s, Stanford University’s Paul Ehrlich penned a best seller titled The Population Bomb, predicting worldwide famine by the 1980s. Environmentalists predicted the depletion of natural resources, particularly oil.
"But a funny thing happened on the way to apocalypse. The price of most natural resources has actually dropped, proof positive that they aren’t running down or running out.
"Even with the latest spike in the price of oil, due to war fears, it’s still well below the levels of the 1970s. And the main problem for farmers around the world--except for a few benighted outposts like North Korea or Zambia (whose president has also banned genetically modified food despite starvation caused by his government’s policies)--is too much food. As a result, farmers demand price supports and other subsidies, which only encourage more over-supply. If greens were serious, they would be protesting such government intrusion in the marketplace.
"What Malthus, and most environmental extremists, failed to reckon with was the existence of a virtually inexhaustible resource--human creativity. Thanks to this creativity, the average American household spends 15 percent of its budget on food, down from nearly 75 percent in the Rev. Malthus’s day. A Rockefeller University economist estimates that if the world’s average farmer reaches the yield of the average U.S. corn grower, it will take only half of today’s cropland to feed 10 billion people--freeing up enough land for parks and forests, among other things.
"Better still, peasant farmers no longer need five strapping sons to work the fields. As a result, population is expected to peak somewhere around 8-11 billion by the end of this century, compared with 6 billion now. In much of the industrialized world, population is declining.
"This may not impress hard-core environmentalists, who tend to hail from the upper middle classes in America and Europe. In their view, there are still too many people cluttering up the view from their front porches. But what appears to be truly running down and out is the doom-and-gloom vision by which greens have been trying to gain control over how the rest of us live our lives."
Jesse Jackson’s reversal of fortune
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who recently scored CNN publicity for stating his willingness to personally negotiate and end to the war in Iraq, continues to lose his financial empire.
According to the Washington Times, Jackson’s financial empire took a $3 million loss of revenue in 2001, as he continued to receive financial backing from companies he has threatened with boycotts over the years.
How does Jesse do it?
His primary funding mechanism is the tax-exempt Citizenship Education Fund. Among the 2001 benefactors of the 20-year-old education fund who were at one time either threatened with boycotts by, or were "in discussion with" Jackson, were AT&T ($300,000), Burger King ($100,000), Coca Cola ($50,000), McDonald’s ($100,000), NASCAR ($150,000), SBC Communications ($152,950), and United Parcel Service ($55,000).
Jackson’s education fund received a $100,000 contribution from the Mel Karmazin Foundation, whose namesake is president of Viacom Inc.
In early 2001, Jackson pressured Karmazin, at that time chairman of CBS, to sell his subsidiary UPN network to a minority owner.
That deal was never completed, but Jackson abruptly halted his campaign for the sale.
Other donors to the Citizenship in Education Fund in 2001 include: Texaco Inc., $10,000: In 1996, Jackson threatened a boycott of the company if it did not settle a $520 million discrimination lawsuit and put together a program for minority employees. Texaco paid a $176 million out-of-court settlement.
Ameritech paid the fund $15,000: Jackson opposed the merger in 1999 of Ameritech and SBC Communications, until Ameritech agreed to sell part of its cellular business for $3.3 million to a partnership that included Chester Davenport, a longtime Jackson friend.
Apple Computer Inc. donated $10,000 to the fund: In 1999, Jackson issued a threatening statement on his Rainbow/PUSH website to the company, saying. "I am not fooled when Apple Computer uses the images of Jackie Robinson, Cesar Chavez, and Miles Davis in its advertising campaigns, but fails to include a single African American or Latino on its board, or the use of money managers or ad agencies. I am not fooled, and I will act."
The Citizenship Education Fund’s purpose is "voter education," according to its tax return. Corporations say the money they give Jackson is part of their "diversity effort."
"We are not pressured; this is just the way we do business," said Cindy Neale, a spokeswoman for AT&T Corp. "That donation is part of AT&T’s commitment to diversity."
Contributions to the Citizenship Education Fund dropped from $9.2 million in 2000 to $6.2 million in 2001.
In fact, tax records show Jackson’s empire has incurred financial setbacks since January 2001, when it was revealed that Jackson had fathered a child out of wedlock.
Meanwhile, perhaps Saddam Hussein does not know about the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s reversal of fortune.
Mother Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years
Veteran journalist Alan Caruba blasts environmental activists in his newly released book, The Good News Is That The Bad News Is Wrong.
Caruba relishes exposing what he sees as hoaxes perpetrated daily in the name of science.
A giant pebble in the shoe of the radical environmental movement, he is a master at shining a light on the hypocrisy of activists.
"One of the great devices of the far left is deliberately to mislead people with language," Caruba recently told Townhall.com. "For instance, the environmental movement is entirely a process of deception. You can present radical environmentalists with 20 contrary research studies on a topic and they will dismiss them out of hand because they don’t fit their political agenda.
"Environmentalism is used to deceive people into thinking the Earth is in big, serious trouble. I always remind people that it’s been around for 4.5 billion years and seems to be doing just fine, but try to tell that to Chicken Little. Environmentalism is about controlling people’s lives and especially the economy. The environmentalists have a long record in the United States of attacking the timber industry, agriculture, mining, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. It doesn’t matter.
"Of course their primary target is property rights. Without property rights, you don’t have capitalism; it ceases to exist. I never have seen an environmental proposal that wasn’t aimed at harming some element of the economy, both of the United States and internationally."