Muffling the Left -Health- Watchdog Reveals Effort to Gag Anti-Bush Causes

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Saturday, September 13, 2003 10:21 AM

Muffling the Left - Watchdog Reveals Effort to Gag Anti-Bush Causes

 

 

Watchdog Reveals Effort to Gag Anti-Bush Causes

Muffling the Left

by Chisun Lee

August 6 - 12, 2003

 

The Bush administration is actively seeking to gag or punish social service

organizations that challenge the party line on such matters as health care

for poor children and HIV prevention, according to a new report. Nonprofits

that disagree with the president's own solutions, or go further and blame

him for problems in the first place, have come to expect unpleasant

consequences. Those might include audits of federal-funds spending and

reviews of content, such as workshop literature.

 

" If you disagree with the administration on ideological grounds, they're

going to come down with a hammer. This has huge implications for the free

flow of speech in this country, " says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB

Watch, itself a nonprofit, which released the report last week as part of

its 20-year-old mission to monitor White House budget and spending

decisions.

 

As dramatic as that assessment sounds, the assault has been nearly

invisible to the public. The Bush administration and its allies have hit

progressives under the radar, maneuvering in the soporific-if enormously

important-realm of nonprofit oversight.

 

The idea of a right-wing conspiracy to audit nonprofits is more likely to

set off yawns than outrage. Yet virtually every imaginable social

cause-civil liberties, reproductive rights, affirmative action, accessible

health care-relies on a lifeline of nonprofit advocates, fundraisers, and

service providers. Since nonprofits operate on a tax-exempt basis and often

receive government funding, they have always been subject to federal

oversight and are forbidden from engaging in electoral politics. Under

George W. Bush, however, oversight has quietly morphed into ideologically

motivated intimidation and censorship, according to OMB Watch's review of

some dozen specific conflicts.

 

Even though causes of the right have their own tax-exempt advocates,

conservatives have long reviled nonprofits in general for " supporting the

welfare state, " according to Bass. He points to the major efforts to defund

nonprofits and restrict their advocacy during the Reagan administration in

the '80s and in Newt Gingrich's Congress in the '90s.

 

But those were head-on, equal opportunity offensives, going after an entire

genre. Under obvious attack, " the nonprofits really rose up like a

firestorm " and survived, says Bass. The selective, stealthy approach of

today is " unprecedented, " he says. His organization had wanted to put out

the alert months ago, but piecing together the scattered developments took

time. " Almost every example we have here, there's a link to the Bush

administration directly, not just ideologically, " says Bass.

 

Bush spokesperson Allen Abney declined to comment Monday, saying the White

House had not yet thoroughly reviewed the July 28 critique.

 

In perhaps the clearest example of the report's claims of squashed dissent,

Bush's Health and Human Services Department (HHS) threatened advocates of

the nonprofit Head Start-including parents and teachers of poor

children-with monetary sanctions or even prosecution for speaking out

against a presidential proposal.

 

Head Start is the hardly controversial program that has promoted education

and healthcare for young children nationwide since 1965. Participating

providers launched a campaign earlier this year to get parents and teachers

to tell Congress their concerns that standards and funding might fall with

Bush's plan to decentralize the program. HHS soon began warning Head Start

affiliates that their lobbying might violate nonprofit rules. This summer

the National Head Start Association sued the administration, claiming it

was interfering with First Amendment rights, and won. But organizers worry

that the administration's warnings, wrong as they were, might have

frightened many into silence.

 

HHS began its apparent policing of protest a year earlier, when it audited

over a dozen AIDS service organizations after they publicly shamed the

administration at a July 2002 AIDS conference in Barcelona. There,

U.S.-based advocates accused the Bush administration of cheaping out on HIV

prevention and, during HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson's closely watched

speech, heckled so forcefully as to drown out his entire address.

Conservative members of Congress immediately demanded that HHS review the

nonprofits' spending of federal funds in Spain. HHS complied.

 

Thompson's deputy, Claude Allen, told The Washington Post at the time that

advocacy groups " need to think twice before preventing a Cabinet-level

official from bringing a message of hope to an international forum. "

 

In an interesting but brief mention, OMB Watch also reveals that groups

currently applying for federal grants to provide humanitarian relief in

Iraq are required to advertise the U.S. government's generosity.

Presumably, any criticism of Bush administration policy would be considered

to send the opposite message.

 

Proof that this new scrutiny of nonprofits is political, and not just about

careful accounting, shows in the probes of work that groups do with money

from nonfederal sources, according to the report. " What is striking is this

notion that government may be reaching into groups they don't agree with to

see even how their private dollars are being spentand using that to decide

whether they receive federal dollars, " says Bass.

 

Most squarely in the administration's sights are groups that deal

progressively and explicitly with sex education. One of them, Stop AIDS, is

a San Francisco-based nonprofit that has used streetwise language to

promote HIV prevention among gay and bisexual men since 1984. Since Bush

took office, it has been audited twice by HHS and forced to submit program

materials for review by the HHS subsidiary Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention (CDC), according to Stop AIDS spokesperson Shana Krochmal.

 

Even after these grillings, Stop AIDS received a letter this June from the

CDC objecting to workshops with titles such as, " Oral Sex = Safe Sex? " and

" In our Prime: Men for Hire, " which promised to cover " seven guidelines for

safe and friendly relations with escorts. " The government letter threatens

a " disallowance or discontinuation of federal funding " if Stop AIDS

continues to use language the administration believes promotes sexual

activity.

 

Krochmal says the organization has been careful not to use its federal

funding for such workshops, instead relying on the more progressive support

of city government. " We know that what it takes to catch the eye of a guy

walking down Castro Street 20 years after the movement began may raise the

eyebrows of men in Washington, D.C. But it takes a certain kind of method

to get our point across, " she says.

 

She called the Bush administration's crackdown on Stop AIDS " about

politics, not about public health, " because the language it wants quashed

has proved effective in luring clients for prevention services.

 

The fight with Washington has forced Stop AIDS to consult with legal

counsel, something many resource-strapped nonprofits worry about having to

do. If CDC prevails, Krochmal says, it will add another brick in an overall

homophobic agenda she sees building under Bush. From Stop AIDS's troubles

to the proposed federal anti-gay marriage legislation, " It's an

institutionalizing of policies that continue to devalue the lives of gay

and lesbian people in this country, " she says.

 

At the same time the Bush administration is making it harder for some

progressive nonprofits to operate, it has bent over backward for those with

which it is more ideologically in tune, says Bass. While OMB Watch supports

federal funding of faith-based nonprofits, Bass says it is unfair that Bush

has granted these groups special exemptions, for instance the ability to

discriminate in hiring and substitute religious qualifications for

professional ones.

 

Meanwhile, a December 2002 letter from the federal government to groups

dealing with HIV prevention and sex education abroad admonished that " all

operating units should ensure that USAID-funded programs and publications

reflect appropriately the policies of the Bush administration. " Some

nonprofits worry that the smallest conflictfor instance over the use of

words like " condom " or " abortion " on a websitecould give the government an

excuse to funnel funds to groups whose views it prefers.

 

OMB Watch's report also touches on nonprofits' fears about post-September

11 surveillance by law enforcement. A major lawsuit filed by the American

Civil Liberties Union and Muslim interest groups last week calls

unconstitutional a section of the USA Patriot Act that allows investigators

to secretly examine organizations' financial and membership records and

even seize them without notice. Such probes need only be minimally linked

to a national security investigation. The privacy of nonprofits' staff and

clients is not guaranteed, and advocates say the fear of attracting the

FBI's notice restricts freedom of expression.

 

" If this is a pattern that is sustained, then it erodes a key part of our

ability to pursue justice, " says Bass of the selective policing of

nonprofits. Indeed, Stop AIDS's Krochmal says, " We have been told there is

a shortlist of organizations that won't be funded next year. It's obviously

of great concern to us. "

 

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Read more of the Voice's coverage of the attack on civil liberties in

post-September 11 America.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0332/lee.php

 

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