"To quote President Obama, 'I screwed up,' " Reinharz wrote in a letter e-mailed to the faculty and students.
"How would *you* like to be 'Secretary of Education Reinharz'?"
Posted on 02/06/2009 2:49:41 PM PST by george76
Brandeis University president Jehuda Reinharz issued a public mea culpa to the university community yesterday, admitting that he mishandled last week's announcement about the planned closing of the school's Rose Art Museum.
"To quote President Obama, 'I screwed up,' " Reinharz wrote in a letter e-mailed to the faculty and students.
In yesterday's attempt to quell a public outcry, Reinharz walked a fine semantic line, saying in his letter that "the museum will remain open" and "be more fully integrated into the university's central educational mission."
In reality, the Rose will eventually cease to operate as a public art museum.
Reinharz's effort yesterday to soothe a fractured Brandeis community followed last week's surprise announcement that the school planned to close the museum and sell off its artwork as it confronts a financial crisis. That decision had incited protests on campus as well as a firestorm of criticism from the art and philanthropic worlds.
Michael Rush, museum director, said yesterday that he accepts the apology by Reinharz, but dismissed the president's attempt to cast a more positive light on the museum's fate.
"This does not change the future of the Rose Art Museum, as far as I can see," said Rush...
As for the art, Reinharz said that the university does not intend to put all 7,180 works on the auction block. Only a "minute number" would be sold ...
Brandeis was forced to consider the drastic step of closing its museum, Reinharz said, because it operates "on the edge" financially due to its ...shrinking endowment, and over-reliance on donors, many of whom have seen their fortunes tumble in the stock market and in the Ponzi scheme allegedly run by Bernard Madoff.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
What kind of financial shape is Brandeis in?
ht comments
“”To quote President Obama, ‘I screwed up,’ “”
I love it! We’ll be hearing a lot more of that from BHO, I’m sure...
Bernie - the gift that keeps giving. ACLU had to lay off people.
Guess they never heard the expression: Cheaters never win... What goes around, comes around.
What I'd like to know is did these institutions, foundations, and nonprofit organizations pay taxes on their big returns.
Because as nonprofits, they pay NO taxes...
Breaks your heart, eh? ;’) Thanks geo.
"To quote President Obama, 'I screwed up,' " Reinharz wrote in a letter e-mailed to the faculty and students.
"How would *you* like to be 'Secretary of Education Reinharz'?"
The foundations are all tax scams for wealthy people.
“To quote President Obama, ‘I screwed up,’ “
You beat me to it.
I expect this to become a universal leftist's tagline.
“Mistakes were made.”
Oh, dude, Absolute Zero has been in office for two weeks and he already has a quotable legacy!
ACLU "invested" with Bernie----LOL.
POINTS TO PONDER The number of tax-exempt organizaitons connected to Madoff's fraud is very fishy.......schools, charities, family foundations, The Picower Foundation, The Chais Family Foundation, Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, Steven Spielberg's tax-exempt Wunderkind Foundation, tax-exempt Yeshiva University, the Kehilath Jeshurun synagogue, the Maimonides, Ramaz and SAR day schools---and more---all invested with Madoff.
The landscape is littered with these "tax-exempts." For example, Madoff investigators need to determine why Brooklyn, NY residents registered some 800 tax-exempts in Lakewood-----a small flea-bitten central New Jersey town.
=======================================
KEEP IN MIND The IRS has asserted that tax-exempt organizations are the locus classicus for tax evasion, IRS fraud, and money laundering.
Investigators may be looking at the legal parameters of prosecutable crimes including making false statements to state and federal officials, filing falsified documents, obstruction of proceedings before state and federal agencies, fiduciary negligence, and obstruction of US justice.
The N/P's might have facilitated IRS fraud by integrating:
1. Secret control over N/P fund-raising committees.
2. Requiring only one signature on tax-exempt N/P bank checks.
3. Utilizing pre-signed tax-exempt bank checks.
4. Using secret bank accounts to keep secret the actual financial position of tax-exempt N/P's.
5. Assigning bank deposit and account reconciliation functions of tax-exempts to one person.
6. Conspiring to hide oversight of expenses and supporting vouchers from public view.
7. Having no outside auditor to review tax-exempt N/P's statements.
8. Cashing unusually large amounts of tax-exempt checks.
9. Having no official tax-exemp deposit and withdrawal control system.
Authorities should investigate the Madoff-invested tax-exempts's US Postal Service mailings, wire transfers, computer transfers, electronic submissions, and unregulated money transfers, and all bank transfers connected to secret tax-exempt non-profits’ bank accounts.
Fraudulent tax-exempt non-profit activities might have involved using checks passed from one account to another in multiple conspiracies to launder monies.
The stratagem could have been international in its scope due Madoff's worldwide connections.
Authorities need to determine the extent to which donors to Madoff-invested N/P's colluded in schemes that may have included misusing reserve bank accounts, concealing transfers, inflating asset values and improperly accounting for transactions.
A formal inquiry should be conducted into the Madoff-invested tax-exempts and their financial activities with officers of publicly-held companies) including (1) Enron-style accounting frauds by manipulating N/P records, (2) bundling contributions into the pockets of politicians, (3) the extent to which networks of companies are financing political candidates in the names of business partners without their knowledge or consent, (4) the extent to which officers of publicly-held companies used accounting fraud to hide illegal campaign contributions, and, (5) the extent to which campaign donations exceeded campaign-finance limits.
Charges might include Madoff-invested tax-exempt charities' accounting managers misappropriating funds to cover personal expenses, fraudulently overcharging for management services, diverting non-profit funds, then converting them to campaign accounts, or in the style of WorldCom greed spending thousands of non-profit dollars on organization credit cards for personal expenses.
A formal inquiry should be undertaken with respect to the Madoff-invested N/P's relatives, associates, co-conspirators or subsets of them, and donors (particularly officers of publicly-held companies), the business dealings between recipients, employees and elected and appointed officials and the extent to which influence-peddling is taking place, and more specifically the extent to which relatives, associates, and principles of the Madoff-invested foundations and charities and their co-conspirators or subsets of them, directed political activities from tax-free non-profit organizations in illegal arrangements.
The BIGGEST FRAUDS are between foundation and foundation .....writing checks to each other (which is the MO for laundering tax-exempt monies).
Authorities need to determine the extent to which the Madoff-invested charities manipulated philanthropic transactions, such as:
(1) loans, the (2) sale, (3) exchange or (4) leasing of property to related organizations, and donors, and the extent to which organizations reported (5) "excess benefit transactions" on Form 990, and, (6) the extent to which executive pay properly accounted for with the IRS.
The Madoff-invested charities need to reveal the dimension of contributions these organizations that may have been illegally redirected to political activity and be requested to explain:
(1) how the Madoff-invested charities solicit non-profit contributions,
(2) how non-profit donations are made, and,
(3) the manner in which donors to the Madoff-invested N/P's (particularly officers of publicly-held companies) allocated company assets).
The Madoff-invested N/P's should be asked for details about who inside, and outside, these organizations is soliciting contributions, how the various subcommittees are funded, and the extent to which the Madoff-invested N/P's their donors (particularly officers of publicly-held companies) are colluding to perhaps finance political campaigns surreptitiously, and are engaging in other illegal transactions.
Stanley Chais offers remarks at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
STANLEY CHAIS IS PROMINENT WITHIN THE SOCIAL LABYRINTH MADOFF USED TO RAKE IN BILLIONS---
MAP IS INTERACTIVE AT WEB SITE
WEB SITE http://news.muckety.com/2008/12/28/madoff-used-social-family-networks-to-rake-in-billions/9031
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