Bill Clinton, Rush Limbaugh and charity
Two high-profile charity news stories from the past couple weeks:
- Bill Clinton's book, Giving, and
- The charity auction of the Senate letter condemning Rush Limbaugh
may benefit some good causes, but they also echo the kind of actions that, in the 1960s, gave rise to today's complex rules governing private foundations and public charities.
Back then, a number of politicians were upset by how certain wealthy charities supported causes and politicians they (the politicians) didn't like. It was a rather motley alliance of constituencies that saw themselves as disenfranchised: white southerners opposed to the civil rights movement (which major foundations were funding), Western politicians who saw the major foundations giving grants to power brokers from the Northeast and industrial states; Christians upset that money was going to fund charities supported by candidates who were . . . can you believe it, I mean, here in All-American New York City? . . . Jewish!!!
While the complaints and political alignments may seem odd today, the laws they produced live on, and there's a real possibility that high-profile politicized charity could prompt another round of so-called reforms. Imagine--
Conservatives upset by Bill Clinton using charity to build support for his wife . . .
Liberals upset that a family charity could pay 2.1 million dollars in an eBay auction that also serves to promote the Rush Limbaugh show . . .
Who knows what could happen if these wacky kids get together?
Stranger things have happened in charity law--just another reason why it's said that politics makes strange bedfellows.
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