Saturday, September 27, 2008

Is the Professional Staff Congress Violating Section 501(c)(3)?

NYPIRG is an ideological advocacy group that encourages college students to advocate on behalf of causes of which Ralph Nader approves. Under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, universities receive tax exemption on the condition that they do not engage in political lobbying, engage in ideological advocacy or political activity. I just received the following message through campus e-mail from Scott Dexter, a representative of the City University of New York's faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress. I would guess that this was not authorized by the university. Is this political advocacy? You be the judge.

>From: owner-announce-l@brooklyn.cuny.edu on behalf of Professional Staff Congress (PSC) - BC Chapter
Sent: Fri 9/26/2008 11:20 AM
To: announce-l
Subject: Student voter registration with the PSC and NYPIRG

The PSC is urging its members who work in the classroom to invite a representative from NYPIRG (the New York Public Interest Research Group) to their classes to register students to vote. At Brooklyn College, NYPIRG can be reached by email at brooklyn@nypirg.org or by phone at (718) 859-7177; their office is in 0302 James.

The New York deadline for voter registration is Friday, October 10, so please get in touch with NYPIRG soon to arrange visits to your class.

Scott Dexter

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Given the fact that the current PSC can't even get its own members to vote in PSC related contracts and elections I highly doubt that they'll be able to have any significant impact whatsoever.

(Go look at the numbers of the latest contract ratification. A total of 7,244. http://www.psc-cuny.org/NewContractJuly08.htm#CONTRACT_RATIFIED_BY_93% . Now go to the following link to look at the 2006 membership count according to Steve London during one of his pathetic attacks against Professor Sharad Karkhanis. http://www.newcaucus.org/FactVinvective.htm)


Their ineptitude at running anything makes the current sitting members of congress seem like a godsend.

However, it's interesting to note that just like Obama and his campaign, the PSC and its cronies refuse to listen to dissent and will simply threaten, bully or take away the right of anyone to speak out against them. They all seem to be using the same "Campagin & Tactics for Leftists Dummies" book.

The saddest part is to see the steamroller job they did to the adjuncts within CUNY and yet the adjuncts themselves fail to understand how royally screwed they got.

I guess the community organizing body of Bowen and co. followed the theory of getting the "little people" behind them, promise them the world, use them and then throw them all away when they were done.
(Go here for an interesting read. Http://www.adjunctnation.com/blog/archive/10207/ )

When will the people ever wake up?

Mitchell Langbert said...

Yes, and rather frighteningly this seems to be the direction in which our nation is moving. "Change".

Anonymous said...

You're confusing advocacy with partisanship. NYPIRG is a nonpartisan organization as are all the PIRGs. As a student organization one of their main missions is to increase student registration regardless of political/partisan inclination - and build political power for young voters, a hereto ignored part of the electorate. For instance, U.S. PIRG's New Voters Project works with both the College Democrats and Republicans on a large number of campuses. PIRG also sponsored the Young Republican's workshop on youth mobilization held at the RNC this year which featured Mike Huckabee.

Mitchell Langbert said...

Allow me to quote from the IRS website*:

"...voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias that (a) would favor one candidate over another; (b) oppose a candidate in some manner; or (c) have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates, will constitute prohibited participation or intervention."

Voter registration is indeed allowed if conducted in a non-partisan manner. However, David Seidemann has obtained a court ruling that declared NYPIRG to be an ideological organization, hence partisan, in nature. See

http://mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com/2008/09/david-seidemann-comments-on-pscs-use-of.html

*http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=163395,00.html

Unknown said...

Mitchell you fool! Don't you know if it endorses a far left wing candidate it's not partisanship. It's change! Only republicans, conservatives and right leaning ppl. are partisan hacks. Pure evil I tell you! Pure Evil!

About it being non partisan? Well some ppl. would disagree with that.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2008/07/30/2008-07-30_cuny_hit_on_fee_for_nypirg.html

In no way am I saying that this is FACT. It's just that some ppl. wouldn't agree with that blanket statement.

BTW... Did you know that our beloved Barack Obama is listed as one of the famous NYPIRG'ers?

Is NYPIRG a form of student community organizing? :)