Independent Women's Forum - Heather R. Higgins

Letter to the Editor: To Whom Does Your Money Belong?

info@iwf.org (Heather R. Higgins) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:02:00 EDT

Wall Street Journal

Howard Husock's excellent op-ed "Nobody Does It Better" (Taste, Oct. 25) quotes Rep. Xavier Becerra (D., Calif.) as saying charities are "getting a tax subsidy." That is key. His chain of reasoning relies on redefining tax exemption as a tax subsidy, then claiming that those funds are public dollars, and from that there is a public interest in determining how those dollars are allocated.

This not only ignores the numerous examples of tax exemptions that don't abrogate private property rights (e.g., IRAs), but also various actual subsidies that appropriately come with strings contingent on the terms of the subsidy, but in no way presume to then have a management claim (think farm subsidies).

More important, this is a slippery effort to say that a tax exemption (having private money not be taxed) is the same as a tax subsidy (receiving government dollars). This works only if you start with the assumption that all private money is really the government's. In the last understanding it is only the government's munificence, and choice, that lets private entities and individuals get to keep some of it.

That idea runs contrary to the principles this country was founded on. As Thomas Jefferson put it: "A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned -- this is the sum of good government."

Heather R. Higgins
New York

When Pigs Fly

info@iwf.org (Heather R. Higgins) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:37:00 EDT

Sen. Obama is calling the request for an apology over the putative sexism of his "lipstick on a pig" comment a "made up controversy by the John McCain campaign". Both sides have it only partially right, and mostly wrong.

To recap the bidding: Obama, when talking about Sen. McCain's economic plan, said "You can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig." Media reports said his audience, however he may have intended it, responded with vigorous applause and rising to their feet, as they seem to have heard that as a reference to Gov. Palin, who described the difference between herself, as a hockey mom, and a pit bull, as "lipstick".

The GOP and McCain camps called it disgraceful and demanded an apology; their surrogates went further, and called it sexism. Sen. Obama, in turn, said that he was referring to McCain's policies, not Palin, and refused to apologize.

But the remark was neither entirely innocent and appropriate, nor was it sexist.

Let us stipulate that using the phrase even two weeks ago, as so many have so often done, it would have been just the same colloquialism it has always been. But since Gov. Palin's speech, you have to have been stuck in a cave to not know the word "lipstick" now has taken on a whole new code, a reference for the now-famous hockey mom who wears it.

In the new context, saying "lipstick on a pig" meant to many listeners that Gov. Palin isn't just a hockey mom that was wearing lipstick, but a pig. That's not about sexism, or an attack on women generally; that's about basic civility, and what certainly came across to many as a base insult specifically directed at her.

Sen. Obama may well not have meant it as it was heard - certainly it's a common enough phrase used often in the past. But seeing his audience's reaction should have been a clue that it now has a whole new meaning. To pretend that it couldn't possibly be taken as it was heard is akin to a southerner using the term "boy" in that certain, contemptuous way and then saying he just meant "boy" and how could you possibly think otherwise? There are words that become freighted with meaning, and the polite and civil thing to drop them or be contextually sensitive in their use. And if you do inadvertently say something that could be reasonably construed as offensive, you say that that's not what you meant, apologize if offense was taken, and not use that construction again.

Unfortunately Sen. Obama has refused to do, one fears precisely because he wants to exploit the phrase in the future, with all the in-your-face double-entendre he can now hide behind while animating those who despise Gov. Palin and all she represents. More fool he if he does, for it will only redound to Gov. Palin's sympathetic support, but only time will tell.

Heather Higgins chairs the board of the Independent Women's Forum.

The Diane Rehm Show: Sarah Palin and the media

info@iwf.org (Heather R. Higgins) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:12:00 EDT

Some say Republican Vice Presidential nominee, Governor Sarah Palin, has been subjected to unfair media attention. A look at presidential campaign coverage, allegations of bias, and charges of elitism in the media.

The Wonder of Sarah Palin

info@iwf.org (Heather R. Higgins) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:38:00 EDT

Gov. Palin knocked it out of the park and beyond tonight. Eschewing the suggestions of pundits that she leave going on offense to others, she gave the single best critique of the Obama campaign to date. Payback time; you go girl!

Now even the mainstream pundits are waking up to the fact that selecting her wasn't about getting "Hillary voters" - duh - but capturing the much larger populist, reformer zeitgeist - both male and female -- that has had it with condescending elites and politics as usual in Washington.

Gov. Palin is a living foil to the Sen. Obama we are coming to know. The McCain campaign must be looking forward to contrasting Obama's association with Tony Rezko and passive acquiescence to Chicago politics to Palin's active refusal to compromise her ethics and track record of taking on corruption; Obama's ultra-extreme views on abortion to Palin's moral responsibility in not aborting her Down's Syndrome baby (and ditto for her daughter); and his fantasy blather on the capacities of alternative fuels v. her real life achievements in energy production.

In short, Gov. Palin does an excellent job of embodying the zeitgeist and symbolizing the change we really want - a grounded real person (think Cincinnatus), who understands politics but isn't about making a career of it, a doer not just a talker, who has high principle, a positive vision, and embodies our best selves.

Obama Has Yet to Truly Move Beyond Race

info@iwf.org (Heather R. Higgins) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:32:00 EDT

First appeared in Human Events.

Currently up for numerous Tony awards is a splendid revival of the 1949 Rogers and Hammerstein musical "South Pacific." It's worth remembering that its theme, examining racial and cultural prejudice, was highly controversial; indeed, there was a legislative challenge to its decency in Georgia. Key to the show is the song "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught," which the authors insisted would stay in even if it meant the show's failure.

In that song, a young American lieutenant, unexpectedly in love with a Tonkinese girl, realizes he can't marry her and bring her home to a country that would be appalled by an interracial union and a family that would be dismayed by a wife below his social class. The lyrics resonate far beyond marriage per se to prejudice and racism generally:

You've got to be taught to be afraid,

Of people whose eyes are oddly made,

And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,

You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,

Before you are six or seven or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate,

You've got to be carefully taught.

Cut to 2008. The encouraging news is that among young people particularly, race and ethnicity almost doesn't register. Focus groups and polls suggest most people are clearly "over" race. They say what matters are someone's attributes, skills, and character. Most believe that any preferences should be based on need, not ethnicity.

Yet this progress, apparently, hasn't touched Trinity United Church of Christ, the church Barack Obama -- now the Democrats' nominee for U.S. President -- attended for over 20 years. There the "black liberation theology" of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright prevailed, reiterated for us all this past week in Father Michael Pfleger's racist rant about whites generally and Hillary Clinton in particular.

It is this that makes Barack and Michelle Obama's decision to be part of the life of this church for so long so disturbing. It isn't simply the content of the sermons -- lots of us have endured sermons with which we disagree. It isn't Wright's radical views -- by all reports, he is charismatic and personally well liked, and his more controversial sermons contain legitimate grievance mixed with factually mistaken history and wacky conspiracy theories. Most of us know someone like that and just try to steer clear of those issues and be polite. Moreover, we understand that politicians particularly have to smile and make common cause where they can, and that endorsing and being endorsed are not equivalent.

No, what's disturbing is that the Obamas have children. And presumably they know other people in that congregation have children. People take children to church precisely to help inculcate them with the church's values. We now have some vivid examples of the received wisdom, what directly or indirectly gets drummed into each dear little ear from year to year at Trinity United, how they are told to be afraid of people whose skin is a different shade, how they are taught before they are six or seven or eight (or older) to hate all the people their fellow congregants hate.

This is a long way from Obama's "what unites us" message -- if anything, it is an old and toxic wine in a new bottle. Some assert that blacks can't be racist, as though black racism is so justified that it ceases to be racism. But anyone familiar with the occasional stigma in this country towards those darker than a paper bag by lighter-skinned African-Americans knows that racism and prejudice can infect any soul of any shade.

Obama has been adept at recognizing when his far-left base conflicts with the larger, all-embracing image he wants to present. Perhaps that is why he finally resigned from Trinity United. One can only hope that, given his speech on race in Philadelphia, combined with his repeated problems of long-time associates who surprise him with their views, that he will lead the effort to take a bolder step. Much as Lyndon Johnson's need to change how he was perceived on race issues moved him to endorse the Civil Rights Act, Obama could urge the nation to move beyond race-consciousness to the race-transcendence Martin Luther King advocated, but which was bypassed in our well-intended attempts at rapid atonement. One can only hope.

Heather Higgins chairs the board of the Independent Women's Forum.

The 'Diversity' Threat to California Charity

info@iwf.org (Heather R. Higgins) — Fri, 30 May 2008 11:03:00 EDT

The Wall Street Journal

A bill purporting to encourage diversity among nonprofits has passed the California Assembly and faces a key vote in the state senate in early June. While little attention has been paid to this bill, it poses an enormous threat to private philanthropy in this country.

The Foundation Diversity and Transparency Act requires California foundations with $250 million in assets to report the composition by ethnicity and gender orientation of their boards and staffs, the boards and staffs of the charities they support, and the degree to which they are run by or support certain minorities.

The bill has been rightly criticized for its potentially crippling costs: fewer funds and greater bureaucratic burdens for the thousands of charities served by charitable foundations. Worse is the attempt to institute quotas through the back door. A group dedicated, say, to protecting sea otters, will begin to worry about the future of its grants if its staff isn't sufficiently ethnically diverse, or if its non-minority-interest-serving cause is now less favored. Meanwhile, the Latina executive director of a community organization might wonder if putting a white woman or gay Alaskan Native on her board is a good idea to keep happy the diversity-counters at the foundations that support her organization.

The Greenlining Institute, a racial-justice advocacy group that is a strong sponsor of the bill, asserts that only "20% of foundation funding from the state's 50 largest foundations is going to 'minority serving' causes," an "embarrassingly low" number. Come again? In the first place, many foundations specialize in altogether different causes. Moreover, the phrase "minority-serving" deliberately obscures such everyone-serving causes as hospitals, medical research, homeless shelters, educational initiatives, substance-abuse treatment and environmental improvement activities. But even a charity that feeds or educates minority kids is not considered minority serving - unless the organization is itself 50%-plus minority staffed and minority controlled.

Champions of the bill claim that its only goal is to "request diversity data." Then why force the donors to collect this information from grantees, instead of asking each registered charitable organization simply to report the information directly to the government? The bill's critics fear the real goal is to pressure charities into meeting "diversity" goals out of fear of displeasing their funders - who themselves fear that ultimately their ability to set their own goals, or even their tax-exempt status, will be at risk if diversity goals aren't met.

The bill creates the opportunity for grandstanding, public relations shakedowns, and litigation. Already, foundations that have questioned this legislation have been publicly attacked. The executive director of Greenlining recently stated that "most of our money comes from lawsuits."

The "diversity" bill, if enacted into law, would be just the beginning. Already contemplated is legislation to cover all foundations, and all grant recipients, not just in California, but nationally; and to broaden reporting requirements to include the aged or the disabled. Ultimately, this all leads in one direction: to politically determine how private charities manage and deploy their resources.

At a recent hearing, state senators claimed that because of their tax exemptions, taxpayers "subsidize" charities and charitable money is "taxpayer money." But a tax exemption must not be confused with an actual government appropriation. The benefits arising from various tax exemptions - everything from libraries to child care, art galleries to IRAs - do not mean that the private money involved is suddenly public, giving politicians the right to strong-arm givers, or recipients. Yet such is the direction California is going.

The state senate should understand what a disincentive - and an injustice - it would be for the government to micromanage private charity to favor a preferred political agenda, thereby turning private funds into public funds by diktat.

Ms. Higgins is Chairman of IWF's Board of Directors and Vice Chairman of the Philanthropy Roundtable.

"Juno", Love, and Marriage

info@iwf.org (Heather R. Higgins) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:28:00 EST

I haven't yet had the pleasure of seeing the movie "Juno", but the promos are everywhere in the wake of its many nominations. In a clip that's part of the ad for the movie, the young woman is asking how she can know who to marry, how you can know that it's going to last. A male answers that no one can assure her of that, that the best you can do is find someone who really loves you for who you are.

What wretchedly wrong advice! It captures the current marriage zeitgeist -- nothing more than the manifestation of love for however long that lasts, or doesn't -- and that in itself explains why more marriages don't last.

How about "You should look for someone who not only loves and respects you, and you him, but you should have shared values, and one of those has to be that you both believe in marriage itself. Then you've got a shot. Love doesn't stay the same - sometimes it grows, but sometimes even when it grows there will be times when you get tired and irritated with each other, when someone changes, when things get stale. If you haven't married someone who is committed to making the marriage work, particularly once there are children, sticking it through and doing everything you can to make it work, then chances are you don't have a prayer." That probably wouldn't make a good movie. But it makes a heck of a good life.