AFSCME: Yes, we will waste young black minds to attack Koch Brothers
Cutting back funding of United Negro College Fund in retaliation for accepting Koch donation
One of the most powerful political and financial supporters of progressive politics and Barack Obama’s campaigns over the last decade has been the public sector union American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
On Thursday, AFSCME made a remarkable announcement — that it would will end its support for the United Negro College Fund after the group accepted $25 million from the conservative Koch Brothers.
In June, Charles and David Koch made a big $25 million donation to the College Fund (UNCF). The UNCF is the largest provider of scholarships to black college students in the U.S. and also supports historically black colleges and universities. The $25 million donation is one of the highest donations ever received by the UNCF.
In a letter made public Thursday, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said it will no longer partner with or raise funds for the fund, known for its iconic motto, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
AFSCME President Lee Saunders said the actions of the college fund’s president “are not only deeply hostile to the rights and dignity of public employees, but also a profound betrayal of the ideals of the civil rights movement.”
AFSCME’s President made no specific allegations against the Koch Brothers but instead adopted the broad attack and smear approach that Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has taken to attacking the Kochs.
The Koch Brothers are known to fund conservative and libertarian causes as well as significantly invest in communities across the nation. According to the Daily Caller, Charles Koch has given money to over 250 colleges and universities through his eponymous foundation, while David Koch has given over $200 million to support cancer research, including over $100 million to support the cancer research center at MIT that is named for him.
The donation, which is being made by Koch Industries Inc. as well as the Charles Koch Foundation, will be split between $18.5 million that will support a new Koch Scholars Program of nearly 3,000 individual scholarships and $6.5 million that will provide general support to the UNCF and historically black colleges. The Koch Scholars Program will run for seven years.
“Increasing well-being by helping people improve their lives has long been our focus. Our partnership with UNCF will provide promising students with new educational opportunities that will help them reach their full potential. We have tremendous respect for UNCF, and we are hopeful this investment will further its effectiveness in helping students pursue their dreams,” Charles Koch said in a statement published by UNCF.
The Koch Brothers caused another liberal hissy fit in March when they $100 million to New York Presbyterian Hospital:
But the new wing at New York-Presbyterian Hospital inspired a bizarre protest last weekend by activist groups including the NAACP New York State Conference, the New York State Nurses’ Association and the hospital-employee union SEIU Local 1199.
Surely there had to be a catch to the hospital wing. Why else would it be a source of such distress? Was there a provision that would cause all the nurses in the new wing to be replaced by voodoo priests?It turned out that none of these factors was at play. The new structure will simply be an ordinary wing of a hospital doing regular hospital stuff like saving lives, charging $25 for a Tylenol and (equally important to the unions, you would think) employing lots of healthcare professionals. The $100 million gift was the largest in the hospital’s history.
No, the only thing the liberal interest groups didn’t like about the new hospital wing was its funding source: the philanthropist known as David H. Koch. The new wing was gratefully to be named after Koch, who along with his brother Charles stands as one of today’s great philanthropists.
So when people aren’t getting treatments they need at hospitals, or talented African-American students don’t get scholarships — you can’t blame the Koch Brothers. You may want to look at the groups screaming the loudest. They must have something to lose: the truth.
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Comments
Sure is a lot of fighting going on in the big tent.
Blacks, except for the political class members and some freaks in academia who make a little noise now and then, were never IN the tent except to serve food and clean up and never will be. They’ve always happily accepted their position as the lowest echelon in the ‘rat plantation. They have willingly been indoctrinated to live on handouts and to do as told for decades. Their substance and identity is formed for and dictated to them – parasites whose only value is their skin color and their vote. Although the relationship between blacks and the ‘rat party is symbiotic in this respect, ‘rats thrive while blacks are merely sustained.
They haven’t awakened and they never will because it’s so much easier to just ‘take’. As long as Master ‘gives’, it will continue, and they will continue to vote for more.
Their minds are long past ‘wasted’ and their crappy little schools are no worse off for not getting money from the union thugocracy.
they contribute to a ton of liberal causes (arts stuff) too.
they seem to not inject their politics into their donations and have helped a lot of people.
oh puhleeze…. *everything* those scum do is politically driven.
Slowly I turn, step by step, inch by inch…I see you caught the Niagara Falls virus, too.
everything* those scum do is politically driven.
“…”
Projection, again.
redc1c4 when and what did you donate last? Amount? and to whom? UNCF? and what drove you to donate, if at all? And did a union make the decision for you?
Funny that Charles and David Koch don’t mind giving money to causes that also receive money from people they might disagree with — unlike the loony left, who cut ties with worthy causes for precisely that reason. So who’s more political?
If the Koch brothers were really diabolical, they’d give money to a bunch of erstwhile Collectivist outfits and let them form a circular knife-fight.
Fun to contemplate.
But, seriously, isn’t AFSCME’s position just racism, straight up?
Collectivists are incapable of sin .. it’s a mental thing
Horrifying news. What exactly does the AFSCME hope to accomplish by taking such action? Political divisiveness is just getting worse and worse. Didn’t Obama say that something along the lines being open to acknowledge a good action regardless of whether it came from a Republican or a Democratic source? What could be a better action than contributing to college scholarships and minority education?
Perversely, this announcement gives a lot of power and influence to the Koch brothers. I wonder what would happen if the Koch brothers donated to a Democratic candidate? Would unions stop supporting that candidate? Would the candidate be publicly forced to return the money? As they saying goes, pass the popcorn.
LOL! AFSCME undermines its own power by pulling back their money. Their other choice would be to make an even bigger donation than the Kochs did, thus decreasing funds available to ‘rat candidates, which would also undermine their power. It’s a lose-lose for AFSCME either way.
More work to undermine union slush funds and union power is needed, but this was a nice step.
As for UNCF, it’s a racist organization that supports hate-filled, anger-mongering and historically perverse curricula at anti-white Marxist colleges unworthy of accreditation.
That’s a real shame, so I’m not happy the Kochs fed the beast, but it was a slick move politically. That it pissed off a big union like AFSCME is very telling about the unions and why they donate in the first place.
Money talk$, bull$hit walks.
“An AFSCME mind is a terrible thing”
“A mind is a terrible thing to waste”.
I think that every time I see a picture of Grandpa Simpson Reid or Nanny Pelosi.
You would have to have one to waste in the first place, no? Those two are out of the running….
article says AFSCME President Lee Saunders called the Kochs “the single most prominent funders of efforts to prevent African Americans from voting” and said Lomax’s appearance at their function was “a betrayal of everything the UNCF stands for.”
it then goes on to say AFSCME gave between $50,000 and $60,000 annually to the UNCF for its AFSCME/UNCF Union Scholar Program, which has served 94 students since 2003.
$50-60K per year vs $25 Million with no strings attached. Tough decision. Sounds like Saunders should apply for a scholarship so he can gain some enlightenment.
Without having read what you did, my comment was going to be that I bet Koch’s donation to the UNCF drwarfs AFSCME’s, and that by announcing plans to cancel donations to the UNCF it wasn’t going to hurt UNCF very much.
Per your comment, UNCF gets a big windfall donation from the Kochs, AFSCME gets to shift the relatively small amount of money it typically donates to UNCF to some other cause AND it gets to burnish its “street cred” with progressives by jumping on the Koch hatred bandwagon.
So wonderful to be in this post-racial era of ultimate healing that was ushered in by the election of our “first black president”.
The positivity, the psychic rewards, the good feelings around that abound in this new color-blind epoch of joyous unity just lift my heart.
When it comes to the hard-core leftist/progressive/facist control freaks, they operate from an ever-ready (even if it’s scorched-earth) stance:
A meme is a terrible thing to waste
All else is simply collateral damage, the necessarily broken eggs needed for the utopian omelet.
When are blacks gonna wake up and realize that the Left is sacrificing them on the altar of the progressive agenda?
It may still take awhile longer before they awaken from the Dem/Lib-induced “altared” state into which they’ve been conned.
Blacks have NO CLUE yet how severely obamullah has kicked them to the curb, especially with his illegal alien fiesta, just the latest of his many treasons.
But it’s not a surprise they have no clue.
Not sure how the website of the Center for Public Integrity leans but this was the first Bing search result.
AFSCME expenditures in the 2012 election cycle was $8.2 million to super-pacs and from 2007 to 2012 spent $15.6 million on federal lobbying. Imagine where they can flush that money now that they are not donating it to the UNCF.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/12/21/11969/donor-profile-afscme
This is William Koch’s page from the same website.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/07/30/10458/donor-profile-william-bill-kochoxbow-carbon-llc
You might be a racist if you take money away from a group that helps poor blacks get to college.