Philanthropy Notes: October 2014

A coalition of nonprofit religious employers including nursing home operator Little Sisters of the Poor say they will carry on with lawsuits against the Obama administration’s constitutionally questionable contraception coverage mandate. The government tinkered with the requirement and said in the future that a religious nonprofit employer may object to providing the contraceptive benefit, at which point the government would order the employer’s insurance provider to offer the coverage free of charge. Lawyers for the Little Sisters of the Poor say the new rules “merely offer the Little Sisters another way to violate their religion and comply with the mandate.”

The U.S. Department of Labor collaborated with the White House over whether to make public hidden parts of former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ schedule as she dealt with an FBI investigation into her allegedly illegal fundraising for President Obama, the Daily Caller reports. Cause of Action discovered emails in which the Obama White House thanked the Labor Department for “flagging” a public information request for “withheld” portions of the then-cabinet officer’s schedule. Solis allegedly did fundraising for the Obama campaign and headlined a fundraising event in her official capacity as a cabinet member, a violation of the Hatch Act.

Nonprofits’ ability to attract funds for worthy projects will be hampered if Congress fails to renew the New Markets Tax Credit program whose statutory authorization lapsed last year, Will Lanier of Nonprofit Finance Fund argues in a Chronicle of Philanthropy op-ed. The program was created to bring private funding to low-income communities for projects like new community facilities, health centers, or schools. “Rather than being characterized as a tax break for large banks, the tax dollars that the U.S. forgoes by offering these tax credits should be seen as an investment by the government—an investment in communities that are underserved by traditional markets,” Lanier writes. The U.S. Treasury has granted $40 billion in New Markets Tax Credit allocations since 2002.

The George Soros-funded Media Matters for America (MMfA), the sleazy pretended media watchdog founded to monitor “conservative misinformation” in the media, is now celebrating 10 years assassinating the character of people whose views its leaders don’t agree with. Just in time for the 10-year anniversary, MMfA workers joined Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in response to horrible working conditions. Media Matters recently claimed victory when News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch dropped 21st Century Fox’s effort to buy Time Warner.

GOLDMAN SACHS WATCH

Unlike many Wall Street powerhouses, Goldman Sachs Group reserves to itself great leeway to decide which of its executives’ often hefty legal bills to pay, the Wall Street Journal reports.  “While the corporate bylaws of other banks definitively state which employees will have legal fees covered in the course of their duties, Goldman’s bylaws are ambiguous on the matter of one group of people – its so-called officers – whose legal bills it is supposed to cover,” the newspaper of record reports.  The unusual policy surfaced when a federal appeals judge recently ruled that the company’s bylaws might make its employees believe they are entitled to have their legal expenses covered in the event of an investigation or court proceedings.  Judge Julio M. Fuentes in Philadelphia wrote in a decision that the bank was “reserving the right to make unpredictable post hoc determinations about which former employees should be advanced attorney’s fees and which shouldn’t.”