Free Republic

The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal highlighted the growing menace of groups like California's Greenlining Institute. Greenlining is a left-wing pressure group that threatens adverse public relations campaigns against lenders that refuse to bow to its agenda. The Journal editorial begins: Readers who run a foundation, serve on a board or are thinking of starting such a charitable effort should know about the gauntlet of shakedown artists forming up to demand a piece of the action. As with so many marginal ideas, this one is coming out of California. A proposed bill there would have required foundations with...

...As with so many marginal ideas, this one is coming out of California. A proposed bill there would have required foundations with more than $250 million in assets to report the racial, gender and sexual orientation of their board members, staffs and grantees. The bill's sponsors recently agreed to drop the issue in return for a political payoff of millions of dollars from 10 of the state's biggest charities...

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - A decade ago, a small group of immigrants from Mexico united to send money back home for a bakery, baseball diamond and sewer system in their mountain village of Jalpa.</p> <p>Today, that group and hundreds like it have evolved from hometown philanthropic clubs to become members of a burgeoning political network seeking to improve life for immigrants in the United States and for their families back home.</p>