August 2004

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Charitable Chicanery at the GOP Convention

Filed under: Imported

Most of the reporting on attempts to circumvent new campaign finance laws has been focused on 527s, such as Moveon and SBVFT. But a different means of funneling contributions to politicians in order to gain access and influence is on blatant display this week in New York.

 

Since McCain-Feingold passed, it seems, Republican lawmakers have discovered a burning passion for helping poor kids with cancer, fighting the spread of AIDS, and other heartwarming causes.

 

Last year, noted Texas humanitarian Tom Delay founded Celebrations for Children, a nonprofit organization that supposedly raises money to assist "abused and neglected children." It just happens to be staffed by Republican political operatives (as well as Delay's daughter). The "charity" drew immediate scrutiny, with watchdog organizations like Common Cause imploring the IRS to reject their applications for tax-exempt status.

 

Celebrations for Children initially had big plans for the GOP convention. In return for a $500,000 contribution, the group was offering donors a week-long convention tryst with Delay and other Republican bigwigs. These philanthropists would get a private dinner with Delay, a cruise on a yacht with the House majority leader, and a luxury suite from which to listen to the President's acceptance speech, among other perks. Delay was finally shamed into putting the kibosh on this money-for-access scheme after repeated criticism.

 

(A similar event was slated to be hosted by Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln at the Democratic convention, but was also cancelled.)

 

But other charitable scams are still going forward. Most notably, there's tomorrow evening's World of Hope fundraiser at Rockefeller Center. World of Hope was formed in 2003 by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to raise money to fight AIDS. For a mere $250,000, donors will get 10 passes to a VIP reception at Rockefeller Center with various senators, as well as 50 tickets to a larger concert that will feature Brooks & Dunn. (Lord knows they're not paying $250,000 because they want to see that dull-ass hat act.)

 

How much money will actually trickle down to the causes that are supposedly benefiting (most of which are run by folks with close GOP ties) is impossible to tell. I know from my years as a reporter with The Chronicle of Philanthropy that even legitimate fundraising events often have overhead costs that swallow up 70 percent or more of the proceeds. My guess is that the charities will be lucky to see five percent of the money hauled in.

 

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a non-partisan watchdog group, issued a statement today condemning the event. The NCRP notes that the charitable organization is merely a front to allow wealthy donors to buy access to lawmakers. It further alleges that World of Hope is in violation of laws prohibiting nonprofits from getting involved in electoral politics.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 31, 2004 3:34 PM

 

ncrp release

Filed under: Imported

Posted by Paul Demko at August 31, 2004 2:44 PM

 

On The Road Again

Filed under: Imported

The fate of the Minnesota Thunder's season will be decided this weekend. It comes down to this: win on the road or go home for the winter. Tonight they face Portland; tomorrow it's Seattle.

As it stands now, the Thunder are one point clear of Milwaukee for the fourth and final playoff spot and two points behind Seattle. (Seattle has played one game more than both Milwaukee and Minnesota.) The Thunder could finish anywhere from third to fifth in the Western Conference.

It's been an infuriatingly inconsistent season for the Thunder. After surging to a 10-3-4 record, the team has fallen apart, going 2-2-5 over the last month. The reason for this collapse is not difficult to pinpoint: the Thunder have played painfully bad on the road. Even after Monday's 2-0 victory over the pitiful Emonton Whitecaps, their away record stands at 1-4-7. The last time the Thunder passed through Portland and Seattle they got mauled, 3-0 and 2-0 respectively. Portland is the best team in the west; Seattle has won five straight. Things look grim.

Tonight's game is being shown nationally on Fox Sports World. The Thunder faithful will be gathering at The Local at 10 p.m. to watch. Alas, I will be on the road myself, drinking beer and wrestling bears in the U.P. Hopefully we'll all be back at The Jimmy next weekend for the playoffs.

Come on Thunder.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 27, 2004 10:55 AM

 

Social Darwinism

Filed under: Imported

Are people in Houston just complete morons? I ask that because, according to today's Houston Chronicle, there have now been 58 light-rail related accidents in that city since the trains began running in January.

Now here in the Twin Cities, the Hiawatha light rail line began operating in June. Throughout the Spring there was much handwringing about potential safety hazards, largely based on Houston's experience. Yet as best I can determine, not a single Twin Cities driver has managed to collide with a light rail train. 

Perhaps I'll be the first. Then I'll have to move to Houston.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 26, 2004 3:37 PM

 

Misc Debris

Filed under: Imported

1. I'm just catching up on last week's New Yorker. I sort of enjoyed Philip Gourevitch's political dispatch. It's about Errol Morris' commercials featuring Republicans who intend to vote for Kerry. Of course, the Kerry campaign didn't want to run the spots for fear of upsetting someone or another somehow. It confirmed all my worst fears about what a bunch of pussies they are. But then I actually watched the commercials at Move On and was completely underwhelmed. Anyway, the story led me to the American Museum of the Moving Image's fabulous collection of presidential TV commercials.

2. Speaking of pussies, yesterday I read George Tabb's very funny new memoir, Playing Right Field: A Jew Grows in Greenwich. Tabb's the punkiest punk rocker of them all (he was once, briefly, a Ramone)--and a self-described pussy. As a scrawny, hook-nosed, kinky-haired Jewish kid growing up in the WASP paradise of Greenwich, Connecticut, he got his ass kicked an awful, awful lot.

3. It was great to see comedian Jason Lewis back on the local scene. (He's apparently now "Charlotte's Mr. Right".) The first paragraph of his Sunday Op-Ed piece was so damn funny that upon reading it milk shot out of my nose and I couldn't continue. The folks at Fraters Libertas are speculating that Lewis might be headed back to this market permanently. Oh joy. 

Posted by Paul Demko at August 25, 2004 3:37 PM

 

Coming Up for Air

Filed under: Imported

Apologies for the prolonged silence. I've been deep in the weeds with Anderson trying to drudge up a quick turnaround cover story for CP about the recent carnage in North Minneapolis. Hopefully it doesn't come off like two white boys daytripping through the ghetto.

I don't really have much to say. My brain's on holiday. Buy the new Jon Dee Graham album. It's lovely. And the Johnny Paycheck tribute. Check out the Alec Soth exhibit at the Weinstein Gallery. It's only there for a few more weeks. Get drunk and watch Slim Cessna's hillbilly freak show tonight at Lee's with me and Sparks. And watch out for Jimmy Gaines.

UPDATE: Just for you dedicated LNW! readers, here's a link to the cover story hitting the streets tomorrow.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 24, 2004 4:55 PM

 

World Cup Qualifying

Filed under: Imported

The semifinal round begins tomorrow night for the U.S. They will face Jamaica at the National Stadium in Kingston. El Salvador and Panama are also in their group. The top two teams advance to the final qualifying round. In the Twin Cities folks will be gathering at The Local at 6 p.m. to watch the game on the TV.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 17, 2004 4:35 PM

 

The Jimmy

Filed under: Imported

Saturday night at 7 p.m. is the final regular season home game for the Minnesota Thunder. This means it's potentially your last opportunity to visit The Jimmy.

The team's decision to relocate to the Central High School stadium this season was met with considerable skepticism from footy snobs, myself included. The Jimmy has three big strikes against it: artificial turf, permanent football lines, and a much-too-narrow pitch.

That said, my feeling is that the move has been an unequivocal success. The most significant positive attribute of The Jimmy is that fans are much, much closer to the action than they were at the National Sports Center. This means that, not only is the game much more aesthetically appealing, but that the home fans can also hurl abuse at the enemy forces from close range.

This has led to some outstanding comedic moments during the course of the season. There was Milwaukee's Moron In Chief Art Kramer hurling his visor at us following his squad's overtime victory in June. And San Jose's classy veteran defender Jeff Agoos flipping us his middle finger.

But, by my estimates, the funniest moment of the season came during the very first game at The Jimmy. With the Thunder leading 2-0, Bruce screamed out to the Edmonton goalkeeper "Nick, your team's terrible!" Rather than ignore the comment, as one might expect from a professional athlete, the guy actually turned towards the stands in the middle of the game and shrugged his shoulders, basically conceding the point. (My recollection of that game is that "terrible" was an entirely fair and accurate characterization of the Edmonton squad.)

Attendance at the Jimmy was quite shaky at the beginning, and it's still not great. The week before the Thunder's first game there, the team's marketing honcho told me that he was expecting a sellout. It was not even remotely close. The announced attendance was 2,506, but I doubt there were half that many people actually present. (The Jimmy holds about 6,000.) The next game was even worse, with just 1,446 paying customers.

But things have built steadily over the course of the season to the point that attendance is comparable to previous seasons in Blaine. Over the last three games at The Jimmy, the average crowd has been 4,289.

The Thunder's record is 11-8-3. They halted a four-game losing skid Tuesday night with a crucial 2-1 victory over the Vancouver Whitecaps. If the Thunder can get a win Saturday night against the league-leading Portland Timbers, they are all but assured a place in the playoffs. (The top four teams in each division make the playoffs.) It's particularly crucial that the Thunder don't falter given that the team's final five games of the season are on the road where they are yet to win a single game, compiling an astoundingly stinky record of 0-6-3.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 13, 2004 4:49 PM

 

Hurricane Season

Filed under: Imported

I only suffered through one real hurricane scare while living in South Florida. All the others were transparently bogus hokum trumped up by the TV news vultures to scare the snot out of people and drive up ratings.

But Hurricane Floyd, in September of 1999, looked like the real deal, with 100 mph winds that had already wreaked havoc across the Bahamas. The media was absolutely hysterical, with non-stop footage of destruction from previous hurricanes, apocalyptic weather maps, and live reports from local Home Depots as crazed homeowners attempted to transform their residences into nuclear bunkers.

For three days, as the delirium mounted and Floyd crept closer, I remained calm. I'd lived through a slew of hurricane warnings while growing up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland--and none of them ever amounted to squat. About the most destruction I'd ever witnessed were a few downed tree branches and some trashcans sent hurtling down the street.

But as I piddled around the offices of New Times Broward/Palm Beach on the day that Floyd was slated to arrive, I began to get a little antsy. The staff had all been issued cell phones so that we could remain in contact and effectively cover the carnage that was about to ensue. By early afternoon most people had already fled the office. All of the reporters were planning on bunking at Norman's house because it was the furthest west--and therefore the least likely to be completely underwater in 24 hours. Every media outlet, from oldies stations to PBS, seemed to be broadcasting nothing but storm warnings.

Around 3 p.m. I finally succumbed to the frenzy. I hopped in my car and drove the forty miles north to Lake Worth so that I could feed my cat and gather some supplies. By the time I got there the first vestiges of the storm were arriving. It was already dark out and the wind was whipping around in odd, ominous ways. Rain was sporadically pelting the ground. I grabbed a flashlight, sleeping bag, and change of clothes, and immediately headed towards Norman's house in Plantation, probably a 50 minute drive.

But for some reason I decided that I needed to stop and pick up more emergency provisions. I stopped at a grocery store and sifted through the dregs of what remained after three days of terror-driven shopping: batteries, tuna fish, soup, corn nuts, bottled water, more tuna fish.

But, to my horror, there were no more can openers left. I was convinced that I could not survive Hurricane Floyd without a can opener. I'd be found a week after the storm, dead from starvation, lying next to a tower of unopened cans of tuna fish. I stopped at two more stores, but had no better luck purchasing an instrument with which to open my tuna fish.

Then, just a few miles from Norman's abode, I tried one last grocery store. There was exactly one can opener left. I grabbed it off the rack immediately and felt positively blessed. As if Jesus himself had picked me to be the recipient of this last, lovely can opener--and thus spare me from a painful, protracted death.

We had a good old time at Norman's that night, drinking beer and watching Monday night football and waiting for Armageddon to be unleashed. It never happened. Hurricane Floyd decided to push back out to sea and largely spared South Florida. The next morning, instead of reporting the details of destroyed lives, we swam in Norman's pool and played touch football. It was a glorious day.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 12, 2004 5:42 PM

 

Misc. Debris

Filed under: Imported

The 'N Word'

Bin Laden Speaks

"Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)"

Hating the Bush Haters (cribbed from Radosh)

 

Posted by Paul Demko at August 11, 2004 2:11 PM

 

Tom the Gardener

Filed under: Imported

I have a gardener. His name's Tom. I don't pay him a dime. It's a great deal. 

Let me explain.

On Good Friday, as I was heading out of my house to meet my visiting parents for dinner, Tom stopped me on the street corner. I'd seen him a few times before and was vaguely aware that he lived with my next door neighbors. Tom told me that for some time he had been wanting to speak with me.

Now I'm not what you would call yard proud. I'm generally a subscriber to the theory that nature should be free to run amok, mettlesome code inspectors be damned. This means that there are a few weeds in my yard that could probably be more properly classified as trees, and that the grass sometimes approaches wild prairie heights. (Okay, you could also just say that I'm lazy.) Since I live in Frogtown and not, say, Kingfield, I can generally get away with this kind of groundskeeping slovenliness without facing inordinate fines from the keepers of the nanny state.

Tom explained to me that he'd recently been taking a horticulture class and that he wanted to start a garden. Unfortunately, the couple that own the house next door, and with whom he lives, weren't interested. In fact, they're kind of my polar opposites when it comes to yard-maintenance philosophy. The area immediately surrounding their house is covered with black tar paper so that absolutely no plant life whatsoever will be able to survive. Given these circumstances, Tom wanted to know if he could build a garden in my yard. He'd apparently spent some time poking around in my backyard and was excited by the prospects.

I already had a garden of sorts. The previous homeowners, a Hmong couple with two kids in wheelchairs, had cultivated herbs and vegetables in the backyard. Since purchasing the house in 2001, however, I'd simply left the jumble of plants to flourish or die. Consequentially, the roughly 15 x 15 patch of land was now an intimidatingly dense melange of wild onions, dead brown plants, and massive weeds.

Given these decrepit conditions, I figured there were worse possibilities than allowing my neighbor to take over curatorial duties. I gave him my blessing and headed off to dinner with my folks. A week or so later, having completely forgotten the conversation, I noticed Tom out in my backyard with a shovel, diligently rooting out the vegetative chaos. Over the next few weeks, he appeared regularly outside my kitchen window, tirelessly transforming my woebegone backyard into an orderly garden.

Eventually, feeling guilty at the sight of this man slaving away on my land, I went out back and pitched in a bit. I spent one Saturday afternoon clearing out an approximately 2 x 3 corner of the garden that Tom hadn't gotten to yet, and another installing plastic fencing around the plot. I even made my own feeble contribution to the burgeoning garden: a cantaloupe plant.

By the end of May, the patch of land was a riot of greenery. I felt like I could literally see the plants growing. They sucked up so much water that no matter how long the hose was directed at them within 15 minutes the ground appeared dry and baked.

Now's the payoff time: tomatoes, spearmint, green peppers, chili peppers, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, plum tomatoes, celery, peppermint. Lord knows what else. It's such a dense thicket of vegetative life at this point that I can hardly tell.

The tomato plants are collapsing from the weight of so much fruit, despite Tom's best efforts to reign them in. I can't wait to eat one.

 

Posted by Paul Demko at August 10, 2004 3:45 PM

 

Bloody Hell

Filed under: Imported

Posted by Paul Demko at August 5, 2004 6:18 PM

 

Lunacy

Filed under: Imported

The Hennepin County Courthouse is trying to drive me insane. I don't know why. I never did nothing to it as far as I can remember.

The last time I was down there, about a week ago, of the seven computer terminals at which you can access civil and criminal records, only one was functioning. Of course, it was being utilized by some fella who apparently was conducting criminal background checks on every person within an eight block radius of his home. The other six computers were adorned with fluorescent pink signs announcing their dysfunctionality. Nobody seemed to be attempting to fix them. So I left.

When I got down to the courthouse this afternoon, the computers seemed to have a whole new operating system. This was promising. Then I noticed that two of the computers, despite the new operating system, were already off line and dysfunctional.

I sat down at a seemingly functional terminal and began to follow the printed directions for looking up civil cases. Unfortunately they made no sense. They didn't correspond in any way whatsoever to what was on the computer screen. I tried another terminal and ran into the same dilemma.

Finally, I asked an employee if she could help me decipher the damn machine. She directed me to a long line of people paying parking tickets. After 20 minutes or so of waiting I managed to convince one of the women behind the counter to help me. She walked over to the terminal and punched in something completely different from what's stated in the instructions. When I asked her why they don't tell you to do that in the directions, she shrugged her shoulders and walked away.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 3, 2004 4:24 PM

 

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