Archive for October, 2009

John Pemberton Jr., executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1962 to 1970, died last week of congestive heart failure at age 90, reports The New York Times.

Under Mr. Pemberton’s leadership, the organization more than doubled its membership and adopted a more aggressive legal strategy, representing defendants in controversial civil-liberties and civil-rights cases rather than pursuing appeals on constitutional matters. Its clients during his tenure included Black Panthers, Vietnam draft resisters, Ku Klux Klan members, and the U.S. soldier accused of ordering the My Lai massacre.

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Strict new nutritional standards for New York City schools designed to counter childhood obesity have taken bake sales out of students’ arsenal for charity fund-raising, says the Village Voice.

Since June, when the city’s health and education departments issued the new wellness policy that strictly limits sugar, fat, and calorie levels in school food, they have enforced a regulation that only Parent-Teacher Associations can hold bake sales, and then only once a month and not during school lunch periods.

While health officials welcome the new rules, students say the ban removes their lowest-cost and highest-return vehicle to raise money for school projects and charity donations. A Facebook petition drive to overturn the edict has attracted some 3,500 signatures and support from 12 high schools.

Utah nonprofit groups will be allowed to continue to use meeting space at the state capitol for free, thanks to a lobbyist association’s rental deal with the building, writes The Salt Lake Tribune.

For months, the board that governs use of the capitol building had wrangled over whether to institute fees for advocacy, social-service, and other nonprofit organizations, which for decades have been given free use of the building for meetings and strategy sessions. But revenue from a new agreement with the Capitol Hill Association, a group of lobbyists that will lease space in the building, lessened the need for the fees.

Goldman Sachs would have to give “at least $1-billion” to charity if it expects philanthropy to mollify public anger over the billions in bonuses the firm is primed to give executives this year, the billionaire philanthropist Peter G. Peterson tells Bloomberg. Mr. Peterson co-founded the private-equity giant the Blackstone Group and created a foundation devoted to fiscal responsibility in public policy.

Goldman Sachs, the securities firm that received and paid back $10-billion in taxpayer funds as part of the government’s bail-out of financial houses and is now turning record profits, is reportedly exploring several avenues to avoid an expected public-relations disaster over compensation.