From a letter we received last month:

We know that in the past you have used the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) [United Way] to channel your gift to the American Friends Service Committee.  Since 2024 the CFC required AFSC and other non-profit organizations who receive funding …to sign off on a “Counterterrorism Compliance” form which required AFSC to check our employees and grantees against a number of governmnet “watch-lists.”  In 2024 using these lists was a requirement.  In 2024, after the ACLU won a suit questioning the constitutionality of the requirement, the CFC form was edited to instead suggest the use of these lists.

The AFSC Board feels that if we cross reference employees and grantees names with “watch-lists” whose accuracy and origin have not been judiciously reviewed, then we would be making ourselves a party to a procedure in which the unsubstantiated charges are used as evidence, and anyone accused by being named on the lists is denied the opportunity to meet their accusers or refute implications that they are terrorists.

The American Friends Service Committee, a Nobel Peace Prize winning group, will not receive money through the Combined Federal Campaign this year.  Nor will they screen  their grantees against the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld team’s blacklist.

Bravo

This started as a post expressing my disappointment that David Weinberger is doing a turn on stage at the Milken Institute. Michael Milken has served some time, not nearly as much time as he was sentenced, and far less time than the judge recommended, but he has served his time for some of his felonies. And then, when he violated his probation, he made it up to us by turning over tens of millions of dollars of fees plus a little interest in order to stay out of jail. And he did have prostate cancer, so it’s easy to understand that while he had technically violated his probation to the tune of hauling in the $42 million of illegal fees the SEC identified, and probably another $50 million according to the current iteration of Wikipedia, it’s easy to see why they wouldn’t treat him like some common criminal, say a guy on the street caught with a joint in violation of his probation. He was ill and he deserved a break.

And while he has been identified as the proximate cause of the crash of 1987 and he was accused of tearing apart viable companies in his corporate junkyard and putting the employees on the street in order to gin up more “high risk securities” to meet the market demand he created with his scandalous greed-is-good philosophy, Michael Milken did get out of jail with a billion dollars in his pocket. His long struggle back to social acceptability includes the Milken Institute.

I guess my bottom line on this has to be that Milken won. His billion dollars bought him the respectability he wanted, and like Andrew Carnegie he will be remembered more for the good he did than for his rapacious criminal greed. We don’t boycott Carnegie Mellon just because it was endowed by a criminal master class of monopolists and manipulators. If people choose to gather annually in the house that junk-bond-greed built, it simply demonstrates how flexible we are as a culture. Besides, “Michael Milken” is ever so much more mellifluous than — say — Ivan Boesky.

I learned this morning from Shelley that Russell Beattie is closing up shop. Shelley observes that we all change over time and that a fresh start for personal blogs is often called for, if only to tidy up the code and clear cobwebs from our thinking.

Russell Beattie has been a fixture, one of those guys in the neighborhood who often has something compelling to say, and whose presence one has come to assume. I think my connection with him was always by linking through to his place following comments at Shelley’s. I don’t even seem to have him on my blogroll! But this morning I have him on my mind.