Tag Archives: Time Warner Cable

When You Give To A Charity, Know Where Your Money Is Going

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Yesterday BizPac Review posted an article about the Association of Black and Puerto Rican Legislators, Inc., a group of black New York State legislators who run a charity to provide scholarships for black and Latino youth.

The article reports:

The caucus of black New York state lawmakers run a charity whose stated mission is to empower “African American and Latino youth through education and leadership initiatives” by “providing opportunity to higher education” — but it hasn’t given a single scholarship to needy youth in years, according to a New York Post investigation.

The group collects money from companies like AT&T, the Real Estate Board of New York, Time Warner Cable, and CableVision, telling them in promotional materials that they are “changing lives, one scholarship at a time.”

The group — called the Association of Black and Puerto Rican Legislators, Inc.  — instead spent $500,000 on items like food, limousines, and rap music, the Post found.

The politicians refused to divulge the charity’s 2017 tax filing to the Post despite federal requirements that charities do so upon request.

The article provides some insight as to where the money collected goes:

State. Sen. Leroy Comrie of Queens, the group’s number two, refused to come out when Post reporter Isabel Vincent stopped by his office. All of the politicians mentioned are Democrats.

“The real purpose (of the charity) is to bring people to get over their apathy and out to Albany and get motivated,” the charity’s former chairman, Assemblyman Nick Perry of Brooklyn, previously said.

There has been no money used for scholarships in that past two years, the Post reported, citing sources. That’s even after the Albany Times-Union called outthe charity in January 2017 for meager spending in prior years.

The charity gave $36,000 of its $565,000 in revenue to scholarships in 2015. That year, it spent $85,000 on a concert with Eric Benet and Regina Belle, and $157,000 on food, according to the Times-Union’s analysis of its tax filings.

The group said that year it planned to double the amount of scholarships it gave, but it didn’t happen.

In 2017, its annual event featured the rap artist Big Daddy Kane.

Hopefully the Attorney General of the State of New York will decide that the spending habits of this charity are inappropriate and require this group to actually fund some scholarships. However, it’s New York, so I am not optimistic.

Common Core In North Carolina

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Yesterday the Academic Standards Review Commission (ASRC) met in Raleigh. Jerry Egolf presented the North Carolina Plan (an alternative to Common Core which is less expensive than Common Core and has its origins in the Greensboro Plan). The North Carolina Plan would bring our schools up to some of the highest standards in the nation–it includes parts of the Greensboro Plan, Massachusetts (before Common Core), Minnesota’s math programs, and California (before Common Core). It would be a wonderful alternative to Common Core.

Lady Liberty posted the following on her blog about the meeting:

Yesterday was the June meeting of the Academic Standards Review Commission (ASRC), which is tasked at reviewing the Common Core standards in order to give replacement recommendations to the State Board of Education at the end of this year.

Local media was on hand for yesterday’s event, as it included public comment from parents. Well, it was supposed to be parents. Near the end, the NC PTA President, Donald Dunn, jumped in.

Dunn’s comments were a series of pro-Core talking points; one in particular on Military families “needing the Common Core” has been thoroughly debunked. Time Warner Cable news covered the introduction of the NC Plan, which is a full set of free standards based on the best of the best state and international standards available. Time Warner Cable new also interviewed NC parent, Amy Wilmoth:

“Amy Wilmoth attended with her son Reeves.

She made the decision in February to pull her 9-year-old son from Mangum Elementary School in favor of a home school online curriculum with Liberty University; however, they remain conflicted.

“We wanna send him back to the public school system. My husband and I both are products of the public school system. But it was a very different environment then. We were able to learn and teachers had the ability to teach the children as they saw fit to teach then, and I see that missing in our school system,” said Wilmoth.”

I attended the event and also spoke as a parent of a Wake county student. Around 15 parents spoke; only three spoke in support of the standards. I’ll have more on this testimony from the supporters once I compile my notes and finish some research on some of the attendees.

I live-tweeted the event, which can be read on Storify.

Al Gore’s Current TV Has Been Sold to Al Jazeera

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There are three sources for this article–an article posted at the Daily Caller today, an article posted at The Blaze yesterday, and an article posted at the New York Times yesterday.

There are a few interesting aspects of this story. One is that Al Gore refused to sell Current TV to Glenn Beck, stating that “the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view.” I am really sorry to hear that Al Jazeera is more in line with Current TV than Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.

The Daily Caller reported that Al Gore had hoped to sell the station before the end of the year to avoid the new 2013 tax rates, but was unable to complete the sale until Wednesday.

The New York Times reports:

Distributors can sometimes wiggle out of their carriage deals when channels change hands. Most consented to the sale, but Time Warner Cable did not, Mr. Hyatt told employees.

Time Warner Cable had previously warned that it might drop Current because of its low ratings. It took advantage of a change-in-ownership clause and said in a terse statement Wednesday night, “We are removing the service as quickly as possible.”

The New York Times also reports:

For Al Jazeera, which is financed by the government of Qatar, the acquisition is a coming of age moment. A decade ago, Al Jazeera’s flagship Arabic-language channel was reviled by American politicians for showing videotapes from Al Qaeda members and sympathizers. Now the news operation is buying an American channel, having convinced Mr. Gore and the other owners of Current that it has the journalistic muscle and the money to compete head-to-head with CNN and other news channels in the United States.

America and the media market in America allow free speech. However, I do not see the attempted mainstreaming of Al Jazeera as a good thing. However, people are free to watch what they choose, and they are responsible for the decisions they make. If Al Jazeera plans to function as an unbiased news source, it will do well. If it is used primarily to dispense propaganda, the pressure of the marketplace will remove it from the market.

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