Mountain Views News          Saturday, August 28, 2010

8

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, August 28, 2010 

STUART Tolchin ..........On LIFE 

HAIL Hamilton

My Turn

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Sham Charities Still Scamming

NICHE CONSTRUCTION

One evening 
last week I 
received a 
phone call 
from a guy 
soliciting 
donations 
for a philanthropic organization called 
“California Police Youth Charities.” 
Although I had given small amounts 
of money to the charity in the past, I 
told the caller that this year I wouldn’t 
be contributing at all. Nor would I be 
contributing ever again. 

You see, I’ve since learned that this 
particular charity, along with a number 
of others, is being sued by the California 
attorney general.

For more than a year Atty. Gen. Jerry 
Brown has been pursuing eight lawsuits 
filed May 29, 2009 against a dozen 
charities and their fundraisers, alleging 
they had used false claims to raise 
millions of dollars and then squandered 
the donations intended to help police, 
firefighters and veterans organizations.

“These individuals shamelessly exploited 
the goodwill of decent citizens,” Brown 
said in a statement when he filed the 
suits. “A shockingly small portion of 
donations went to those in need, while 
millions went to pay for aggressive 
telemarketing and bloated overhead.”

The suits are part of the ongoing 
Operation False Charity, a nationwide 
crackdown on fraudulent charities, 
and are intended to stop the deceptive 
practices and recoup funds raised under 
false pretenses, according to Brown’s 
statement. The attorney general is 
seeking the involuntary dissolution of 
eight of the charities.

Fifty-three individuals and 17 
telemarketers, among them officers 
and fundraisers, also are being sued. 
The targeted charities include the Law 
Enforcement Apprenticeship Program, 
the American Assn. of Police Officers, 
the Police Protective Fund Inc. and the 
Junior Police Academy, all based in Los 
Angeles.

The Sacramento-based California 
Police Youth Charities, along with five 
charities based in Orange County, one 
in San Mateo County and one in San 
Bernardino County, are also being sued.

Many of the groups could not be reached 
for comment or did not return calls 
requesting responses to the charges, 
which revolve around deceit, fraud, tax 
evasion and the squandering of millions 
in donated funds.

Last year Chris Eaton, executive director 
for California Police Youth Charities, 
expressed outrage over the Attorney 
General’s allegations.

“The allegations that we are fraudulent…
it’s absolutely untrue,” Eaton said. “It’s 
frustrating for us to be lumped in with 
these other groups. We help tens of 
thousands of at-risk kids in outreach 
programs. Nobody is getting rich here. 
Nobody’s doing anything fraudulent.”

Eaton said he was a 15-year law 
enforcement veteran in Southern 
California and several of his staff 
were active officers and veterans who 
volunteered their time. He said all have 
solid reputations.

The suit against the Law Enforcement 
Apprenticeship Program, for example, 
claims the group’s directors and 
fundraisers falsely promised contributors 
that their financial gifts would be used 
to operate an apprenticeship program 
for at-risk youth. But no program ever 
operated and no students ever enrolled 
in it, the suit alleges.

Instead, donations were used to pay 
for fundraising expenses, the personal 
expenses of the charity’s directors and 
the purchase of a 30-foot sailboat, 
according to the disclosed charges.

Among the charges in his suit against the 
California Police Youth Charities, Brown 
alleges that contributors were falsely 
promised that 100% of donations would 
go to support the charity’s program to 
assist at-risk youth. But in reality less 
than 20% of the $9 million raised in 
2006 and 2007 was spent on charitable 
programs, the attorney general said.

The suit against the American Assn. of 
Police Officers, the Police Protective 
Fund and the Junior Police Academy 
charges that the groups underreported 
fundraising and administrative expenses 
to the IRS and the attorney general’s 
office and overreported its expenditure 
on charitable programs.

Others named as defendants are 
Association for Firefighters and 
Paramedics, Association for Police 
and Sheriffs, Inc., Coalition of Police 
and Sheriffs, Disabled Firefighters 
Fund, American Veterans Relief 
Foundation, Washington, D.C.-based 
Homeless and Disabled Veterans, and 
its for- profit fundraiser, Atmost, Inc., 
and San Bernardino-based California 
Organization of Police and Sheriffs, 
its directors, officers and its for-profit 
fundraisers — Civic Development 
Group, LLC and Rambret, Inc.

 
Ever wonder what 
is the point of life? 
We are all running 
around trying to do 
something or other 
but most of the time 
it’s pretty difficult to 
identify what that 
something or other is. Often what we are 
trying to do seems contradictory. For 
me, when I went to elementary school 
and all through high school, the thing I 
wanted most was to be normal Just to 
be like everyone else was all I wanted 
except for one thing—I wanted to be 
certain that I was smarter than everyone 
else. Obviously, I never achieved either 
goal. Certainly I was never smarter than 
everyone else, but even more certainly I 
never achieved being normal.

 The business of being smarter was 
something I could work on. I could 
study harder, or read more, or rationalize 
my errors as resulting from carelessness 
that had nothing to do with my 
underlying and undeniable smartness. 
For a long time I sort of fooled myself 
into thinking I really was smart, until 
one day I realized that the whole concept 
was nonsense. It hit me that there was a 
bunch of different kinds of intelligence 
that included a certain kind of emotional 
intelligence, which had nothing to do 
with academic smarts. Some people 
know how to get along with other people 
and actually know how to enjoy their 
life. They get invited to parties; people 
ask them to lunch and dinner. They 
belong to clubs and maintain strong 
relations with others. These same kinds 
of folk continually develop new interests 
and are good at the things they do. They 
even like taking lessons and profit from 
these lessons.

 Well, let’s face it folks. I am not 
one of these people with emotional 
intelligence. I rarely get invited to 
parties and generally have a miserable 
time when I do go. Every day I eat lunch 
alone and generally have my nose buried 
in a book. I do not make a lot of money 
and drive an eleven-year old car. I have 
a few close friends but I find myself 
always criticizing them and wonder if 
they really like me. Lessons make me 
feel self-conscious and inferior. Much 
as I would like to feel and be normal, 
I’ve never even come close. My sister 
says I pretend to be interesting just so 
people won’t know how dull I really am. 
(I love this concept) The weird thing is, 
though, I’m generally pretty happy. I 
love talking to strangers and waiting in 
long lines and getting to know people 
that I probably will never see again. 
I’m generally happy fitting things into 
categories and the categories don’t even 
have to be interesting. I love thinking of 
famous people with consecutive initials. 
Mine are ST. I am actually proud that 
my name STU is the only name I can 
think of that is composed of three 
consecutive letters. Who cares? I do. 
Also I love spelling things backwards—
MOORPARK is my favorite.

 None of this seems very normal, to 
me but now I have learned that there is 
no “Normal”. An issue of Ode Magazine 
contained an excerpt from the book 
“NEURODIVERSITY, Discovering the 
Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, 
Dyslexia, and Other Brain Differences” 
authored by Thomas Armstrong. The 
excerpt explains that really there are a 
whole bunch of different types of human 
brains with different types of abilities. 
Depending on the time and place a 
certain type of brain will be in harmony 
with what the culture at that particular 
time and place values. An example 
given is that for almost all of human 
history the ability to read was valueless 
and irrelevant. After the creation of 
written language this ability was crucial 
and those without that particular ability 
were seen as deficient and inferior 
and their other abilities were ignored. 
The excerpt also explains that being 
successful actually has an impact on the 
brain and makes future successes more 
likely.

 Well, the point of the excerpt that I 
find really exciting is the revelation that 
“Success in life depends upon modifying 
your surrounding environment to 
fit the needs of your unique brain”. 
This ongoing construction of a niche 
includes career and lifestyle choices. 
Positive niche construction modifies the 
brain, which in turn enhances its ability 
to adapt to the environment. Do you 
get the significance of this? No more 
trying to fit in and always feeling like an 
outsider. The point of life is to find or 
construct a space that fits you ----and 
the better you get at doing this the easier 
life gets!!

 I CAN HARDLY WAIT. (I’m using 
new and creative punctuation and 
capitalization because I think this fits 
my real needs) I have spent nineteen 
dollars and now own the book which 
sits unopened right next to me. Now if I 
can only construct a niche that gives me 
time to actually read the book. 

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Left Turn/Right Turn

GREG Welborn

Clarifying the Election (Part 2)

HOWARD Hays 

As I See It

 
Too many Republicans are too confident 
that the up-coming mid-term election 
will hand them a substantial victory. In 
a sense, they are already dancing on the 
President’s political grave, receiving some 
weird encouragement along the way from 
the president’s own press secretary, who 
admitted in a public interview that the 
Democrats might lose the House. I would 
caution Republicans that winning the mid-
term elections isn’t the same as winning in 
the market place of ideas. In short, don’t 
underestimate President Obama.

 President Obama has already achieved 
a certain historic stature for his Presidency. 
Getting Obamacare passed secured that for 
him. The bill has fundamentally changed 
1/6th of the U.S. economy and put us on the 
road to national healthcare. Changing that 
direction will take more than just winning 
a mid-term election. If nothing else is 
passed, Obamacare will roll into existence 
along the multi-year timeline contained 
in the bill. More taxes, more control over 
healthcare decisions given to the Feds and 
lower quality healthcare are our future. As 
Democratic Senator, Max Baucus, pointed 
out in a moment of uncharacteristic 
honesty for a politician, this bill has begun 
one of the largest transfers of wealth in 
U.S. history. That is a significant political 
accomplishment.

 President Obama’s second major 
accomplishment has been the financial 
reform bill, which just passed. It may 
or may not actually prevent financial 
meltdowns in the future – given the history 
of most government “fixes”, I wouldn’t bet 
that it’s going to be of much help in this 
area. But the bill has given to the federal 
government unprecedented power in the 
financial industry. It’s not just the major 
banks and brokers which are affected; this 
bill’s 2,300+ pages will ultimately affect 
detailed transactions at storefront cash 
registers all across America. 

 Third, this president was able to win an 
election based on criticisms of the financial 
profligacy of the previous administration 
and then turn around inside of 365 days to 
push through the largest federal budget and 
deficit in our country’s history. Included 
in this $1.6 trillion deficit package is a 
fundamental restructuring of the way 
budgeting works. Obama’s great genius 
was in specifically increasing the amounts 
that go to entitlement programs which are 
on autopilot. These are considered non-
discretionary in the sense that Congress 
doesn’t ever have to vote on the expenditures 
again. As a result, we are quickly coming to 
the place where there just wont’ be enough 
money in the discretionary parts of the 
budget (the parts the Congress has to vote 
on each year) to eliminate the budget. 
Cutting expenses won’t work. Unless the 
entitlements are taken away, we will be 
forced to impose new taxes.

 President Obama has certainly made a 
lot of enemies in his short months in office. 
He suffers the lowest approval rating of any 
President since we started keeping track 
of approval ratings, and if there were a 
general election now, I don’t think he’d have 
a prayer of winning. But that’s exactly the 
problem. Obama doesn’t have an election 
now, this year or even next. Members of his 
Democratic party in 
the House and Senate 
have an election, and 
many of them will be 
forced by the voters 
to fall on the sword 
because of what 
Obama has done. 
Sadly, for them, it’s clear from the actions of 
this administration that Democrats in the 
House and Senate were always considered 
expendable. 

 If Republicans simply look at winning 
one or both houses this November as 
success, or as some sort of repudiation of 
Obama, they will be committing a fatal 
flaw. Simply winning and becoming leaders 
in the old Washington power structure 
again won’t please any of the voters. It 
won’t be what they were elected to do. 
No, Republicans had better come up with 
a coherent alternative to the President’s 
vision for America, articulate it consistently 
and broadly, and then take concrete steps 
to implement their vision. If they go back 
to the old “go along to get along” mentality 
which stalks most politicians, and which 
was in ample evidence among the last group 
of Republican leaders, President Obama 
will be able to take a page out of Clinton’s 
playbook and simply “triangulate” his way 
to victory with the rest of his agenda.

 Make no mistake about it; this president 
is not finished with his agenda. He needs to 
cement his 3 early victories, insulating them 
from future dismantling, and he will push 
forward agenda items in the energy industry, 
with environmental taxes, with taking over 
college education and in granting some 
measure of permanent amnesty to illegal 
aliens in this country. Republicans can’t 
afford to win in November 2010 and wait to 
win again in November 2012. Republicans 
had better take this man seriously and see 
a victory this election year as simply the 
beginning of the battle to take this country 
back to the principals on which it was 
founded.

 Republicans can’t simply be the party of 
“no” or allow themselves to be portrayed 
that way in the media. That’s what the 
administration will inevitably try to do, 
and Republicans must be on guard against 
it. The best way to do that is to put forth 
concrete ideas and proposals to move us 
back toward the prosperity and freedoms we 
once enjoyed, and allow the administration 
to rightly be seen as the one saying “no”. 

 Republicans can’t be afraid to pass 
legislation, send it to the president for 
signature and then have him veto it. Let 
this president be the one who stands in 
the way of what 70% of Americans want. 
The pressure to go along with some sort of 
“compromise” or “bipartisan” approach will 
be overwhelming, but it must be resisted.

 IF Republicans win in November, it will 
be because they have articulated a better 
vision for America than the one presented 
by Obama. This president is committed 
to his agenda. His place in history is 
already assured, and he’ll therefore have no 
qualms about being a one-term president. 
Republicans had better be willing to commit 
themselves to their agenda or they may yet 
see President Obama hanging around in a 
second term.

I addressed the subject in 
my last column. It’s been 
Greg’s topic for the past 
two weeks. Most every 
talking-head-pundit has 
been obsessing about it 
for almost a month. But 
the real question is: Why 
are we fretting about this NYC “mosque”, 
anyway? It’s one of those things nobody was 
concerned about until everyone in the media 
started telling us the American people are 
concerned about it.

 This isn’t about a mosque, but a proposed 
Islamic cultural center with prayer rooms, 
basketball court and (here’s the important 
part) culinary kitchen. In conducting 
research for this column, I found that a focal 
point in Big Apple mosques is the food. For 
the Masjid Al-Hikmah mosque on 31st 
Avenue in Queens, one participant offered, 
“Imagine being invited to an Indonesian 
potluck, where everything is homemade by 
cute little hijab-covered Indonesian women.” 
Another concluded, “ . . . get the dessert items! 
They’re great!”

 There’s concern about the Islamic Society of 
Mid Manhattan on East 55th Street; “This is 
the place I go for Friday Prayers (from time to 
time). It’s nice and convenient since it’s close 
to my office, but they need some serious help 
with cleanliness.”

 For the Islamic Center at New York University 
in West Village, the on-line reviewer offers, 
“Hosts numerous events & classes throughout 
the week in addition to the normal Friday 
Jummah service. Very comfortable and 
inviting environment where everyone gets 
along really well.”

 Among the two-dozen-or-so NYC mosques, 
the biggie is the Islamic Cultural Center of 
New York on Third avenue between East 96th 
and 97th Streets. Although its initial leaders 
disgraced themselves with anti-Semitism, its 
current activities include dialogues between 
prominent imams and rabbis.

 What does this mean with the advent of 
another Islamic center, proposed for the site 
of an old Burlington coat factory? Following 
recent coverage, you’d think it’s a proclamation 
of victory for the jihadists behind 9/11, or 
another step towards imposition of Sharia law 
over America, or, as Greg warned last week, 
nothing less than a battle in the apocalyptic 
“Clash of Civilizations” (now playing in 
IMAX 3-D).

 Here’s the real low-down: Republicans don’t 
see “More tax breaks for millionaires” or 
“Vote for those who got us into this mess” as 
effective campaign slogans for the 2010 mid-
terms. They’d rather go with, “The Muslims 
are comin’ to getcha!” It’s not the first time 
stoking fear and hatred towards an ethnic or 
religious group has been used as a political 
tactic.

 In mid-nineteenth century NYC, political 
bosses maintained power by manipulating 
the gang wars between Protestants and more 
recent arrivals, primarily Irish Catholics. 
Republican operatives for Herbert Hoover in 
1928 and Richard Nixon in 1960 conducted 
whisper campaigns asking to whom their 
opponents, Al Smith and John Kennedy, 
respectively, would owe their allegiance - to 
the American people or the Pope?

 In the 1930s there were efforts to unearth 
Jewish ancestry for Franklin Roosevelt. 
“Bolshevik Jews” in his administration 
imposed a “Communist New Deal”, while 
Jewish bankers brought us the Great 
Depression and took us to war against peace-
loving Germany and Japan. In 1938 Father 
Charles Coughlin, the Glenn Beck of the era, 
had two thousand marchers in the streets of 
New York City protesting a proposed asylum 
law that would allow more Jewish refugees 
into the country. 

 In the wake of passage of civil rights legislation 
in the mid-1960s, Republicans developed their 
“Southern Strategy”; warning southerners 
that northern liberal elites threatened to 
take away their cherished traditions - like 
institutionalized racial segregation. 

 When deficits soared under Ronald Reagan, 
the culprit wasn’t a ballooning defense budget 
or tax cuts for the wealthiest, but instead 
that apocryphal “Welfare queen” who drove 
her Cadillac to pick up the assistance check. 
Nobody had to identify her race, nor was 
race mentioned in a 1990 TV ad for Sen. Jesse 
Helms (R-NC): “You needed that job, and you 
were the best qualified. But they had to give it 
to a minority . . .”

 Crime rates are down in Arizona, and 
border enforcement and deportations are up 
compared to what they were under President 
Bush, but Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) coasted to 
a primary victory amid stories of decapitated 
corpses in the Arizona desert and Phoenix 
becoming a “kidnap capital”. She also 
asserted their recent immigration law has 
nothing to do with race; a statement as true as 
those other stories.

 In a recent news account on the thievery of 
Bell city officials, a resident was asked why she 
and others hadn’t paid more attention to what 
was happening. She replied that although 
that’s the way things were in the country she 
emigrated from, she thought here in America 
it would be different. In New York City, a 
Muslim resident was asked how she felt about 
the persecution of a minority religion. She 
replied that although that’s the way things 
were in the country she emigrated from, she 
thought here in America it would be different.

 Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said Republicans 
shouldn’t lay out an agenda, because it 
could become a “campaign issue”. The two 
Republican senators from Texas, John Cornyn 
and Jeff Sessions, said on MEET THE PRESS 
that Americans knew “what Republicans 
stand for”, but didn’t know themselves, as 
frustrated host David Gregory was unable 
to elicit a single specific policy proposal 
from them. Senate Minority Leader Mitch 
McConnell (R-KY) says Republicans know 
what they’ll do, but won’t tell anybody until 
“late September”.

 In the meantime, Republicans are exploiting 
what Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) characterizes as 
“all about hate and Islamophobia”. They’re 
campaigning on fear and ignorance. 

 A recent Pew research poll found 1 in 5 
Americans think President Obama is a 
Muslim, while 1 in 3 Republicans do - an 
increase from a year ago. As I see it, the correct 
answer for an American to the question, “Is he 
a Muslim?” is not simply, “No, he’s not.”, but 
rather, “No, he’s not. But if he was, so what?”.

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