I found myself thinking with more than a little irritation, People should be allowed to become poor, become rich, or give away their own money in the manner of their choosing. A society that doesn't permit these things isn't free.A foundation that remains colorblind in giving and hiring is suspect, even criminal, in other words. The congressman has threatened government intervention if foundations don’t spend more on minorities and the poor; if he pushes on Capitol Hill for diversity mandates, he will likely count as allies his House Ways and Means colleagues Charles Rangel, John Conyers, and John Lewis.
Becerra argues that foundations’ assets, because they are tax-exempt, are virtually public money. Foundations are simply private managers of those public funds, in this view, and should be responsive to political pressure. Until now, Congress has required only that tax-deductible dollars go to educational, charitable, scientific, or religious purposes. Becerra, the Greenlining Institute, and other diversity advocates seek to constrict donors’ discretion in their charitable giving to supporting minority-run (or female- or LGBT-run) organizations or those that purport to serve the poor. But rather than rewriting the tax code to limit the tax deduction to these purposes, they have chosen a politically easier strategy: strong-arming foundations through the diversity-reporting requirements. These public-disclosure mandates put extra-legal pressure on foundations to obey the advocates’ definition of charity. Given how politically correct the philanthropic sector already is, foundations that do not have enough blacks on their boards or in their list of grants will rightly fear stigma. If stigma doesn’t work, Becerra has signaled his willingness to take on the tax code itself.
Indeed, no one has a right to receive charity; if they did, it wouldn't be charity but a debt paid. Part of the purpose of freedom is to give virtue the dignity of voluntary expression. Is not virtue impoverished by coercion?
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