by Russ Steele
The real economic cost of funding non-profits is often hidden from the public. This is especially true among the plethora of non-profit organizations in Nevada County.
In Nevada County there are 852 nonprofit organizations that in 2010 had an annual revenue stream exceeding $150 million dollars, with total assets of over $233 million dollars. On this list of 852 there are 32 non-profits in Nevada County with a net worth of over $1million.
Most of this money does not stay in the county, but passes through to other communities. For example, the True North Foundation in Grass Valley is a 501(C)(3) non-profit with assets of $14,695,135 dollars according to IRS filings. The Foundation distributed about $2.7 million in 2010, mostly to charitable organizations in California and Alaska. In 2009, they distributed over $2.3 million to 76 charities, none of which are in Nevada County. Most of the (509(A)(1) receiving charities were in the Bay Area, with some funds going to anti-mining groups in Alaska, California, Montana, Colorado, and Minnesota.
If you are donating to the True North Foundation, your money is not supporting organizations in Nevada County. In fact, the money is being sucked out of the county, and some of it is being given to environmentalist organizations that have a much larger anti-business agenda.
On the larger scale, many Nevada County citizens may donate to the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Earth First, Climate Progress, Environmental Defense Fund, The World Wildlife Fund and other local environmental organizations. The actions of these environmental groups often result in anti-business policies by government agencies.
These organizations use your tax dollars to lobby legislators to craft anti-business legislation in their quest to restore the earth to its pristine state, all the while controlling how we live and work. The result is often economic disaster for some businesses.
An Australian writer, speaker and author of The Skeptic's Handbook, Jo Nova has prepared an analysis of how our tax dollars are being used to fund environmental organizations which are trying to dupe their donors into believing in anthropogenic global warming. Warming they claim is a significant contributor to weather disasters and future long-term droughts.
Here is a graphic that Jo Nova published on her website (joannenova.com.au), demonstrating how your tax dollars are flowing into multiple climate change scare machines.
Look closely at the Government Funded Activities block; it has some significance to our economic well being in California. We have our own version of the US EPA and the government funded California Air Resources Board. These agencies have direct links back to the GFA block. For example, CARB uses the UN IPCC climate change assessment reports, of questionable value, to justify the need for AB-32, the Global Warming Solutions Act.
Donna Laframboise obtained two lists. One was a list of the people hired by the World Wildlife Fund, which is a huge international non-profit corporation listed under the Green Groups on Jo Nova’s graphic. According to the WWF, these "scientists" work for the WWF to support the claims by "Climate Witnesses", whoever they are?
The second list was a list of authors who wrote the 2007 IPCC Climate Assessment Report. When Laframboise compared this IPCC authors’ list with the WWF list she found 78 people at the intersection of these two lists. According Laframboise’s report:
. . . there are 23 coordinating lead authors among those 78 names: the coordinating lead authors are in charge of a whole chapter. Note that the other ranks include "generic" lead authors, review editors, and numerous "rank and file" contributing authors. All these types of IPCC members are represented in the WWF panel; however, the overrepresentation of the IPCC's most powerful people in the WWF structures is striking.
Just imagine a hypothetical situation in which 78 authors of the IPCC were found on an oil company scientific advisory board, and 23 of them were supervising the writing of an IPCC chapter. The left-wing activists and lame stream media would be screaming about this conflict of interest. But, when the exact opposite happens, the lame stream press seems to think it's just fine. Why?
This is a clash of interest between a non-profit funded foundation and science. How can anyone expect such a prejudiced organization like the WWF to produce impartial observations – or make any impartial judgments on the scientific research that should be done and incorporated in any scientifically sound IPCC reports? Reports that are used by CARB to justify the need to reduce greenhouse gases, and modify how we live and work in California. CARB is using tainted science to make public policy.
The US EPA has also used the questionable IPCC reports to justify their greenhouse gas Endangerment Finding. According an EPA Court Filing, they are asking taxpayers to fund up to 230,000 new government workers to process all the extra paperwork required by the enforcement of this Endangerment Finding. This expanded staff is estimated to cost $21 billion annually. That cost does not include the economic impact of the regulations themselves.
I think you can see the path here. Government agencies are funding the UN IPCC. The UN IPCC writing teams are being staffed by non-profit environmental organizations with questionable scientific backgrounds and an agenda. These scientifically tainted IPCC staffs are then writing reports, which are used by the EPA and CARB to justify policies that can have a significant negative impact on our economy. The other funding path is through non-profits like the True North Foundation who use donated funds to lobby governments to establish anti-mining policies.
Before you make any donations to any non-profit organization, be sure you know how those funds will be used. Your donation could be used by those non-profit organizations to put your company out of business.
[Jo Nova’s graphic was published with permission]
Russ Steele is a freelance writer, who blogs at The Next Grand Minimum and Is it 2012 in Nevada County Yet? He encourages CABPRO readers to comment on his blogs.