Free Republic

EATONVILLE -- Rev. Al Sharpton spoke to the congregation at the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Eatonville, invoking Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis as he urged members to vote in the upcoming election. “How do we answer Stand Your Ground in Florida? How do we answer our outrage over Trayvon Martin? How do we answer the things that we consider abusive and disrespectful and offensive? We go to the polls!" Sharpton said Tuesday. "They should not say, in the light of all that we’ve seen in Florida, that we were missing in action when we had an opportunity to do...

Philip Gara LaMarche is a secretive political operative who funnels billions of dollars from undisclosed donors to nonprofits and astroturf groups. But you won't hear unhinged Harry Reid railing Queegishly about him on the Senate floor. Why? Here's why: LaMarche is a militant leftist philanthropist. He's a protected elite -- Columbia University grad, former ACLU leader and Human Rights Watch official -- with ready access to the White House. He and the left's other dark money managers preach transparency and openness, while plotting behind closed doors to secure power at every level of government. LaMarche currently heads the shadowy...

President Barack Obama issued an executive order Monday prohibiting workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity for federal contractors. What does this mean for Christian organizations that remain faithful to the biblical teaching on homosexual behavior? Here are two main points that those groups need to be aware of: First, the order only applies to government contractors and sub-contractors, it does not apply to groups that receive government grants. Most religious non-profits that provide services for the government do so through a government grant. They would not be affected. A grant recipient is awarded money for general purpose,...

WASHINGTON (BP) -- Charities could face dwindling donations if Congress adopts a new tax reform proposal introduced by Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Camp's long-awaited plan to overhaul the tax code, introduced last month, has received some positive reviews, but charitable organizations say it could cost them billions in donations. "I know Chairman Camp wants charitable giving to go up, [but] his discussion draft does not [promote] that," said David Wills, president of the National Christian Foundation (NCF). "It hurts charitable giving significantly." NCF is part of the Faith and Giving Coalition, which...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up preliminary appeals brought by Roman Catholic groups that want an exemption from part of President Barack Obama's healthcare law requiring employers to provide insurance that covers contraception. The cases were brought by a series of Roman Catholic-affiliated nonprofit groups based in Washington, D.C., including Catholic University. The legal issue is different from one involving for-profit companies that also object on religious grounds to the so-called contraception mandate, which was argued before the high court last week. The Supreme Court's decision not to hear the two cases at this stage means...

James Madison had it exactly right. Referring to infringements on our freedoms, the Father of the Bill of Rights once wrote that such encroachments were more often “gradual and silent” than “violent and sudden.” That’s exactly what we’re seeing with President Obama’s proposed regulation on so-called 501(c)(4) groups: a stealth attempt to stifle the ability of ordinary Americans to participate in the political process. The administration’s proposal, quietly floated over Thanksgiving, is just the latest in a long line of attempts to skirt the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United, which basically said that businesses and independent groups have...

The Obama administration moved on Tuesday to rein in the use of tax-exempt groups for political campaigning. The effort is an attempt to reduce the role of such loosely regulated yet influential super PACS as Crossroads GPS, which was co-founded by GOP political strategist Karl Rove, and Priorities USA, which ran searing ads against rivals of President Barack Obama to support his re-election last year. The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department proposed new rules that they said would prohibit such groups from using "candidate-related political activity" like running advertisements, registering voters or distributing campaign literature as activities that...

For immigrants working toward the American Dream, some employers are now helping them reach their dream of becoming Americans. Health clinics, hotels and a clothing factory are pairing up with immigrant advocates to offer on-site citizenship assistance as one of the perks of the job in greater Los Angeles, Miami, Washington and Silicon Valley as they aim to make naturalization more convenient for the 8.5 million legal immigrants eligible to become U.S. citizens. The effort is billed as a win-win for both employee and employers: Workers avoid legal fees and having to shuttle to and from law offices to complete...

Taxes fund environmental suits - Environmental law firms reap billions in fees to fund lawsuits October 15, 2009 The federal government has paid out billions of dollars to environmental groups for attorney fees and costs, according to data assembled by a Cheyenne, Wyoming, lawyer. Karen Budd-Falen of Budd-Falen Law Offices [main@buddfalen.com or 307-632-5105] said the government between 2003 and 2007 paid more than $4.7 billion in taxpayer money to environmental law firms -- and that's just in the lawsuits she tracked. The actual figure, she said, is far greater. "I think we only found that the iceberg exists," she said....

The federal Affordable Care Act, better known as “ObamaCare,” may provide activists and government a little-known wedge to advance their obesity agendas through regulated health-care providers — specifically America’s nearly 3,000 non-profit hospitals. One organization, The STOP Obesity Alliance, recently identified this wedge as a way to have such hospitals embrace its core convictions, including one principle which questions the role of personal responsibility as a cause and a solution to obesity.Community Health Needs Assessments. Section 9007 of the Act requires non-profit hospitals, as a condition of maintaining their tax-exempt status, to conduct Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs). These documents, which...

May 16, 2013 Column One: Obama and the ‘official truth’ Caroline B. Glick Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has been sitting in a US federal prison in Texas since his photographed midnight arrest by half a dozen deputy sheriffs at his home in California for violating the terms of his parole. As many reporters have noted, the parole violation in question would not generally lead to anything more than a court hearing. But in Nakoula’s case, it led to a year in a federal penitentiary. Because he wasn’t really arrested for violating the terms of his parole. Nakoula was arrested for producing...

The pro-amnesty lobbyists who helped craft the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill included within the bill two "slush funds" amounting to $150 million that may be supplemented with additional taxpayer dollars for years to come. Slush fund grantees are "public or private, non-profit organizations" described in the bill as including "a community, faith-based, or other immigrant-serving organization whose staff has demonstrated qualifications, experience, and expertise in providing quality services to immigrants, refugees, persons granted asylum, or persons applying for such statuses." In other words, the grantees would include many of the groups involved in writing and promoting the amnesty. [IRS] Section 2537...

In a move that foreshadows the radical left’s plans for churches should gay marriage become the law of the land, the California legislature is moving to strip the Boy Scouts of America – a private organization – of its non-profit status for refusing to allow gay scoutmasters...

New York pols turn non-profits into personal piggy banks with tax dollars. * Queens state Senator Shirley Huntley steered $30,000 to her niece; Huntley was arrested and lost reelection. * Ex Brooklyn councilman Larry Seabrook was convicted of funneling $1.5 million to his mistress, his sister, two brothers and other pals through a network of nonprofits. * Ex Bronx state senator Pedro Espada was convicted of looting $545,000 from his federally funded health clinic for vacations, lavish parties...and $1 million to cover his legal fees. * Ex Queens assemblyman and powerful labor leader Brian McLaughlin stole $3.1 million from public...

Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed counselor accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in his care, testified Wednesday that he ripped off a charity he founded ostensibly to help poor Brooklynites. “You used this not-for-profit for personal gain?” asked a Brooklyn prosecutor. “Yes I did,” Weberman replied, admitting that he spent donations meant for his group, B’Lev V’Nefesh, on tuition for his kids’ yeshiva — and that its cash was also spent at stores like BMG Corset & Lingerie. Creepy, sure. But par for the course in New York, where politicians routinely turn nonprofits into personal piggy banks. For example:

Nice prayer service, Democrats. A Muslim leader wears a tattered and torn US flag as a scarf at the Jumah at the DNC event today in Charlotte. Muslims gather for outdoor “Jumah” prayers at Marshall Park in Charlotte, N.C., on Friday, the first of several events planned by the Bureau of Indigenous Muslim Affairs in the run up to the Democratic National Convention in the city. (MSNBC) Of course, the women were lined up behind the men. It’s the DNC’s very own War on Women. The Obama Campaign listed an “Islamic Jumah at the DNC” as an “official function” at...

A defining aspect of the American tradition is that groups of citizens band together for a wide variety of civic purposes.  They recruit volunteers, raise funds and spend those funds to promote whatever project or cause brings them together. [Snip] We don’t apply a political test to these civic groups – we recognize the fundamental right of Americans to organize and to pool their resources to promote whatever causes they believe in...  [Snip] In order to be recognized as non-profit groups, these organizations must register with the IRS – a purely ministerial function that has, in the past, been applied...

Check out form 990 from Atty. Gen. Marsha Coakley's public-charities website. Good old Joe, ex-Congressman and father of Congressional wannabe JoJoJo Kennedy, made a total of $708,000+ in all of his Citizens Energy dealings in 2010. And guess who Citizens' "director of marketing" is. None other than Mrs. Joe Kennedy, a/k/a Beth. She took home another $261,000. Hugo Chavez must be muy proud of his gringo amigos! (Form 990 link at site)

The tax-exempt sector is in trouble when even stern critics of big government demand that Congress and the IRS rein in nonprofits. The latest example comes from the hard-right American Thinker website. Unfortunately, the essay’s author hasn’t thought through her argument, which adopts the flawed thinking of her political opponents. ...Worst of all, she repeatedly attacks her targets by stressing how much money they have and how little control and taxation government exercises upon it.

Many nonprofit organizations will be getting less money from state and federal governments.