FORD THE RECORD
Re: Neal B. Freeman’s
Jeez Luis — Part Deux:
We laughed off Neal B. Freeman’s light-hearted first commentary
on the Ford Foundation as good intramural fun. He broke no new
ground in asserting that the foundation is progressive in its
mission and grantmaking; we always have been and we will proudly
remain so. His second commentary, however, requires serious
correction.
Mr. Freeman correctly states that we have lost about a third of
our endowment over the past 18 months. This economic
reality has forced us — like so many other organizations — to
make very hard decisions.
But he gets it wrong when he claims that our approach runs
counter to our values. We first made every effort to avoid
impacting staff, shaving $22 million from our expenses in 2008.
When our portfolio lost another $2 billion this year, we had no
choice but to look for further savings in order to preserve our
support to grantees.
That meant making reductions we could sustain over time. With
great regret, we closed two of our regional offices. These
closures affected senior management, program staff, and support
staff equally. We also froze salaries for all staff around the
world, adjusted benefits considerably, and laid off staff in
every one of our regional offices.
In New York, we tried to obviate the need for lay-offs by
offering generous voluntary packages to a broad cross-section of
staff, including a number of managers and supervisors. The
packages were offered according to one criterion alone: Whether
the position fell within an area where the foundation could
envision more efficient ways of working. Though the process has
been painful, it has been thoughtful, fair, and tuned to the
long-term health of the foundation.
What we have refused to do is compromise our ability to make
grants and support grantees, all of whom face even tougher
circumstances than we do. The measures we have taken have
preserved our grantmaking capacity and budgets, and every dollar
saved has gone directly to our grantees.
Finally, regarding our trustees, Mr. Freeman might think about
expanding the circles in which he associates. Among them are
indeed Fortune 500 executives, university presidents, and leaders
of national nonprofit institutions. The diversity of experience
and excellence they bring to our board is a reflection of our
best traditions of leadership and, like their predecessors, they
recognize there are few other institutions that so thoroughly
attempt to live up to the values they espouse.
— Alfred D. Ironside
Director of Communications, Ford Foundation/New York
Neal B. Freeman replies:
It’s good to hear from Mr. Ironside, but I’m not sure that he
engages any of my central points. First, while he may have felt
my commentary was “light-hearted,” Ford’s low-paid employees are
feeling real, life-changing pain as management squeezes
them out in mid-recession. Secondly, my information is
that only low-paid staffers are being asked to
take the hits in the New York office. I will be glad to correct
any misimpression I may have created: can Mr. Ironside tell us
what if any cuts have been imposed on, say, the ten highest-paid
employees? And third, my comments about Ford’s Directors
were not to suggest that they are not good people, of course, but
simply to note that they do not compare in public eminence with
their predecessors. That’s a fact.
MARION MICHAEL MORRISON?
Re: Larry Thornberry’s
Remembering the Duke Again:
I agree with Mr. Thornberry’s thoughts on the Duke. However I
believe he got the original middle name wrong; it should be
Marion Michael Morrison unless I’m very much
mistaken.
— Joel Meeker
Larry Thornberry replies:
The subject of the Duke’s real name is a bit of a moving target,
thanks mostly to the Duke having led on biographers and magazine
writers by claiming his middle name was Michael. In fact it never
was.
When the Duke was born, to honor both of his grandfathers,
the Duke was named Marion Robert Morrison. When the Duke’s
younger brother came along, he was named Robert Emmett, and
Duke’s middle name was changed to Mitchell. Robert Mitchell
Morrison remained his real name for the duration, with John Wayne
a creation of director Raoul Walsh and Fox studio boss Winfield
Sheehan when casting the Duke in The Big Trail, in 1930.
Although fans and studio publicity departments always referred to
John Wayne, the big guy himself always preferred to be called
Duke. By the way, John Wayne wasn’t called Duke because it’s a
tough, masculine-sounding name. He got the nickname when he was
11 years old. The family had a large Airedale named Duke, young
Marion’s faithful pal and shadow. A group of Glendale firemen, in
a station near the Morrison home where young Marion and the dog
often visited, started calling the boy “Little Duke,” or just
“Duke.” It stuck. So Marion was shed of a name that he hated, and
that had started a fair number of fights when other boys taunted
him with it. The name Duke lasted a lifetime.
NO DOG IN THIS FIGHT
Re: The Washington Prowler’s Jersey
Dogs:
It is essential to set the record straight. Not only is the
Benenson Strategy Group not polling for Governor Corzine now, the
firm, which was founded nine years ago, has never polled for Jon
Corzine in either his Senate or Gubernatorial campaigns. Any
White House source that provided you with this information is
entirely uninformed and is trying to create false impressions
about who is or is not involved with Gov. Corzine’s relection
efforts.
— Joel Benenson
Founding Partner
The Benenson Strategy Group
CAN’T ASSUME RATIONALITY
Re: R. Emmett
Tyrrell, Jr.’s Israeli Settlements:
You and I might assess Israel’s predicament rationally, but it
would be irrational of us to expect Obama or his supporters to do
likewise. The primary reason his speeches are so persuasive is
that he knows how to say what people want to hear. His glib
assurances are virtually all style with little rational content.
They are dangerous because they appeal to many voters who tend to
believe only what they want to believe.
This all supports my contention that bad policy is based on
emotion and good policy on reason. That argument is repeated
throughout my book “Reason, Emotion, and Human Error.” It is in
your queue, but my intention is not to pester you to deviate from
your natural reading order. This will all come together in its
own time.
— William Best
New Whiteland, Indiana
MODERATELY WEAK
Re: Angelo Codevilla’s
Pro-Mexico (from the June
issue) and Jonathan Aitken’s Rowan Williams Rebounds:
What the hell? After reading the articles by Codevilla and Aitken
in my last issue of TAS, that is my immediate reaction.
I found Codevilla’s article about embracing Mexican illegals less
than thoughtful, as Regnery suggested in his introduction to the
issue. I find it difficult to feel guilty about resenting the
many depredations caused by the mass of illegals trespassing on
the border ranch lands and overburdening our health care system,
our social welfare system and our laws. There was no mention of
the high percentage of illegals in our prisons, the Mexican gangs
and their violence, the costs placed on our hospitals and local
governments that far outweigh anything the illegals contribute
with their cheap labor. I have to take the statistics put out by
studies done by Heritage, et al., over the earnest supplications
of Mr. Codevilla. He also neglected any mention of the sorry and
enraging spectacle of the demonstrations by illegals demanding
their rights while waving the Mexican flag. But not to worry!
Pres. Obama is well on his way to solving the problem of illegals
trampling our southwest deserts to come and work. He brilliantly
has figured out that by destroying our economy and subsequently
the job market, the Mexicans will have a much better chance of
finding employment in their own hopelessly corrupt and violent
homeland. They might as well not bother wearing out their
hauraches coming here.
I had simmered down a little after reading Codevilla until I
moved on to Aitken. I generally enjoy his “High Spirits” articles
but I didn’t buy his assertions about what a great and brilliant
guy, Archbiship Rowan is. He said he was misquoted in his
endorsement of some aspects of sharia law but then negelected to
clarify on how this was so. Then he went on to say that he has
done a great service by turning the church’s concerns from such
introverted things as homosexual clergy to the great religious
problem and global concerns of environmentalism. Just at a
point when more and more people are waking up from being asleep
at the wheel and realizing that the environmentalists are a bunch
of lying, hysterical leftist extremists, Aitkin thinks the church
should follow these Luddites into the abyss of economic
destruction and possibly world starvation if they get their way
in destroying the agricultural industry.
If TAS is going to insert anymore of this “moderate”
drivel in what usually is a refuge of brilliance and humor for
this conservative/libertarian, please put some kind of warning
under the subject line or at the bottom of the first page.
— Jill Hiller
Valparaiso, Indiana
BAD COMPANY
Re: Quin Hillyer’s
Lib Leadership and Double Standards:
Expecting Democrats to have moral or intellectual integrity is
like asking Barack Hussein Obama to produce his long form birth
certificate to prove beyond a doubt he is a native born American
— it just won’t happen. One could even compare asking Democrats
to have moral and intellectual integrity to asking Adolf Hitler
and Joseph Stalin (proto-Obamas) to stop practicing genocide —
it isn’t going to happen. The Democratic Party is a morally and
intellectually bankrupt group of self-serving egotists bent on
milking the system for all they can get out of it, and the
country and its hard working people be damned.
— Michael Tomlinson
Jacksonville, North Carolina
TJ PREDICTED IT
Re: Jonathan Witt’s
The Mr. Potato Head Constitution:
An excellent article by Dr. Witt. I seem to recall a Mr. Thomas
Jefferson opining the following regarding the effects of the
Judiciary on the Constitution as something like this:
“The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in
the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist, and shape into
any form they please.”
I suppose we should be surprised and thankful at the two
centuries of relative restraint, all things considered. There
does seem to be an alarming rate of wax deformation in the last
sixty years, however, consistent with this trenchant analysis by
the estimable Dr. Witt.
— Thomas Herring III
Mission Viejo,
California
A HILL TO DIE ON
From time immemorial, with full knowledge that defeat was the
only foreseeable outcome, people have made pledges and taken
stances for what they believe is right. In the military these
stands are often called “suicide missions.” Sometimes miracles
happen and a righteous victory is granted. But even in defeat,
honor is persevered.
The Republican senators are now presented with a clear moral and
ethical choice: stand down and let Judge Sotomayor be confirmed
without opposition or take a stand, no matter how deeply the odds
against victory, and let their voices be heard: this is still the
land of liberty and a country of laws. The risks of opposition
are many, but taking a stand against the tyranny of the majority
was one of the core values espoused and lived by our Founding
Fathers. Now is not the time to abjectly demure to the Democratic
majority. Sotomayor’s espoused and well-recorded philosophy make
her unfit for the Supreme Court of the United States of
America.
If our good senators are unwilling to stand for what is right,
then they must be unseated.
— I.M. Kessel
TIME TO LEAVE THE STAGE
Age is not kind to those who are blind
To the sensitivities of others.
Lampooning rudely,
Getting laughs crudely
Is pathetic, and if we had our druthers,
Having reached this stage, you’d close the page.
Your talent once was sunny.
You’ve been around overmuch.
You are out of touch.
Mr. Letterman, you are no longer funny.
— Mimi Evans Winship
