island94.org

Peter Elbow on the editorial act, from Writing without teachers (1973):

The essence of editing is easy come easy go. Unless you can really say to yourself, “What the hell. There’s plenty more where that came from, let’s throw it away,” you can’t really edit. You have to be a big spender. Not tightass.

More…

You can’t be a good, ruthless editor unless you are a messy, rich producer. But you can’t be really fecund as a producer unless you know you’ll be able to go at it with a ruthless knife.

More…

Editing must be cut-throat. You must wade in with teeth gritted. Cut away flesh and leave only bone. Learn to say things with a relationship instead of words. If you have to make introductions or transitions, you have things in the wrong order. If they were in the right order they wouldn’t need introductions or transitions. Force yourself to leave out all subsidiaries and then, by brute force, you will have to rearrange the essentials into their proper order.

Every word omitted keeps another reader with you. Every word retained saps strength from the others. Think of throwing away not as negative—not as crumpling up sheets of paper in helplessness and rage—but as a positive, creative, generative act. Learn to play the role of the sculptor pulling off layers of stone with his chisel to reveal the figure beneath. Leaving things out makes the backbone or structure show better.

Try to feel the act of strength in the act of cutting: as you draw the pencil through the line or paragraph or whole page, it is a clenching of teeth to make a point stick out more, hit home harder. Conversely, try to feel that when you write in a mush, foggy, wordy way, you must be trying to cover something up: message-emasculation or self-emasculation. You must be afraid of your strength. Taking away words lets a loud voice stick out. Does it scare you? More words will cover it up with static. It is no accident that timid people are often wordy. Saying nothing takes guts. If you want to say nothing and not be noticed, you have to be wordy.

Today, according to NPR (and many other outlets), “more than 30 pastors across the country are expected to preach a sermon that endorses or opposes a political candidate by name. This would be a flagrant violation of a law that bans tax-exempt organizations from involvement in political campaigns.”

I’ve previously discussed two pillars of nonprofit structure: Incorporation (and Discretionary Conception) and Tax Exemption

Raiders of the Lost Ark dvdrip

. So today lets talk about Restrictions on Political Activity for nonprofits.

Section 501(c)3 of the Tax code is relatively clear on prohibiting candidate endorsement: organizations are prohibited, directly and indirectly from participating in, contributing to, or speaking on on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.

Nonprofit organizations are allowed though:

• Neutral and non-partisan voter education and registration activities. For example, an organization could indicate how candidates voted in the past or a survey of opinions on an issue, so long as all candidates were included no preference was given to the outcomes.
• Lobbying, so long as “no substantial part” of their activities may be that of attempting to influence legislation. Lobbying rules are complicated but the The Nonprofit Lobbying Guide makes it all very clear.

So how did this all come about: some sources place responsibility upon the shoulders of Lyndon Johnson and reactionary, red-baiting, 1950s politics.

In 1952, the Cox Committee was formed to determine “whether foundations have been infiltrated by communists, as well as whether tax-exempt groups are using their money for stated purposes and are not endangering our existing capitalistic structure.” The committee found that foundations weren’t infiltrated, but were vulnerable. Foundations were powerful and could exercise “thought control” and through this could “materially influence public opinion”(OMB Watch).

Echoing today’s nonprofit criticisms (other than the fear of communist leanings) foundations were knocked for their arrogance, insular and irresponsible mismanagement, cronyism, and ignorance of sound practice—existing tax rules did not compel compliance, “as interpreted by the courts, permits far too much license.” Said one former fund advisor, testifying before the Cox Committee:

Meet Wally Sparks video

“Not a single member of the staff [of The Ford Fund for the Advancement of Education], from the president down to the lowest employee, has had any experience, certainly none in recent years, that would give understanding of the problems that are met daily by the teachers and administrators of our schools…. As a former member of the so-called Advisory Committee I testify that at no time did the administration of the fund seek from it any advice on principles of operation, nor did it hospitably receive or act in accordance with such advice as was volunteered.”

(This quote, along with many others, can be found in the right-leaning American Mercury article “Tax Exempt Subversion”, kindly hosted by BibleBelievers.org.au. The full transcript here.)

Jump ahead to 1954, when Sen. Johnson, having been colorfully elected by 87 votes in 1948, was seeking reelection. He was dogged by 2 nonprofit groups attacking him and his liberal agenda as communism. Supported by the findings of the Cox Committee (and however much of LBJ’s election saga you wish to include) Lyndon Johnson proposed an amendment to the tax code on June 2, 1954 prohibiting nonprofits from engaging in any political campaign activity. The amendment was adopted without hearings or testimony and has been subsequently upheld by courts.

In 1987 Congress clarified the rule, explicitly prohibiting endorsing and opposing candidates; added an excise tax on any private foundation that seeks to affect the outcome of any public election, non-partisan registration drive, or other non-charitable purpose; and provide for the assessment of tax, or an injunction against organizations in violation of these rules. (IRS explanation)

Some Analysis

Based upon some of my previous writing, it’s not difficult to rationalize why tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations should not be engaged in political activities. Based upon the subsidy model—that tax-exemption is equivalent to significant government subsidy—it’s clear that the US Treasury and public-coffers should remain neutral in political affairs. Upon the sovereign model—that a nonprofit exists in corollary, rather than in subjugation to the government—it makes sense that there is a prime distinction between the realm of government and that of a nonprofit. That the rules governing this prohibition of political activity should evolve in the manner it did does call into question the distinct purposes for which they serve.

That the impetus for writing this (though it was on my to do list), should come from a topical event, and a religious one at that, is also interesting. As far as I can tell, the majority of analysis and rhetoric around the 1954 Amendment and subsequent prohibition on political activity comes from churches and religious organizations. This is interesting because, unlike charity organizations, churches need not incorporate (though they lose the protections of incorporations) to receive granted tax-exemption (and donor deduction) automatically under Section 508 of the Tax Code. Despite this, according to one source, less than 10% of US Churches are unincorporated; Virginia and West Virginia do not even allow churches to incorporate. The reasons why a church would apply for 501(c)3 have been varied, from “everyone is doing it”, to stronger guarantees that donations are deductible and properly managed. (A more religious explanation of incorporation and tax exemption is here.)

Structurally and most interesting, is that religious nonprofits seem to view the structural forces as more fluid than other nonprofit organizations. I have found no concerted effort by non-religious nonprofit organizations to contest the ground-rules of being a nonprofit. As I discussed in an earlier posting, non-profits are a legal and regulatory construction. Religious nonprofits seem much more adept at reaching the conclusion of this: laws and regulations can be influenced for self-benefit. While failed, the The Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act of 2004 and 2005 sought to remove 1954 Amendment as it applied to churches.

Links

• The History of Church Electioneering – OMB Watch
• Tax Exempt Subversion – American Mercury 56-64 (July 1957)
• The Nonprofit Lobbying Guide – Independent Sector
• 501(c)3 Facts – Heal Our Land Ministries
• Do Churches Need 501(c)(3) Status? – 10 Commandments: Information about The Display of The Ten Commandments & Our Christian Heritage
• The History of The Johnson Amendment of 1954 And House Resolution 235 – Calvary Christian School – Mr. Garrisons Current Events Class
• The Truth About Church Incorporation – Ecclesiastic Commonwealth Community

My associate, Rebecca, and I have been starting to think critically about Panlexicon.com, the unique, tag-cloud based thesaurus I’ve written about previously. We’re hoping to put some more time and effort into the project and in the process, learn some more about what’s happening with the language and the underlying structure of the thesaurus taxonomy.

The thesaurus data we’re working with is the Moby Thesaurus from the Project Gutenburg library of free electronic texts. Like many thesauruses, it’s structure in an interesting way. Every word is assigned to one or more groups based on it’s general meaning or idea. Each group has a keyword, also known as a headword, that is a general encapsulation that idea—this is why, for example in Roget’s, you must first look up a word in the index to acquire its keywords. Each group has only one keyword, but a keyword can exist in other groups (but as an ordinary word).

This thesaurus structure allows us to do some easy simplifications and analysis on the data. For many functions, we can treat the groups as supernodes, performing operations and storing connections upon them in place of the words themselves. For example, when determining relatedness between words, we only have compare the groups they are a part of; while there are approximately 100,000 words in our database, there are only 30,000 groups, which greatly diminishes the size and complexity of the data set we’re working on.

Currently Panlexicon works by comparing the overlap between groups of words. When typing in a search term, Panlexicon looks up all of the groups that word is a member of. It then returns a list of words that are also in those groups. The weight of each word (or size in our word cloud model) is calculated according to how many groups—-of those groups that include the search term—that word is a member of. A property of this is that no other returned word will have a heavier weight than the search term. When searching multiple terms, Panlexicon creates a set of groups such that all search terms are a member. In the case when there exists no groups that contain all the search terms, Panlexicon returns nothing.

Already we’re digging into some interesting relations that turn up in the thesaurus data. For example, one of my favorite linguistic myths is that Eskimos have 50 different words for snow. The supposed lesson was that eskimos had a different conception of snow than us (the non-Eskimos). I always wondered, “Well, is 50 a lot?” The largest group in our thesaurus has the keyword cut with 1448 related words or synonyms. This is followed by set (1152), turn (1108), run (1025), and color (1007). That’s quite a bit.

Also, interestingly in our dataset, are the most versatile words. These words are members of the most groups. The list shares four out five of the same words as those of the most synonyms, beginning with cut, being a member of 1120 distinct groups. This is followed by set (928), run (750), turn (715), and check (699).

Right now, we’re investigating paths between words. This will allow us to play the Kevin Bacon game, making connections between words that may not share the same group. It will be interesting to determine what words are connected (even through a medium) and which ones are disconnected. Lastly on our list of things to do is determine the eigenvectors of our groups in relation to how their connected to other groups. This will allow us to determine—without using fancy words like Markov chains—which words are probably used the most. I say probably because we’re analyzing a taxonomic work, rather than actual speech. Who knows if they match up; we’ll find out.

I’ve had these notes kicking around my desktop for a few weeks and just got around to typing them up into a cohesive post.

• Drop Zone trailer

I’ve an avid participant of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center‘s Tuesday Luncheon Series. On February 27, author Matthew Pearl gave a great talk on copyright in the nineteenth century; I have reordered and summarized the content, though you can listen to the full audio. Through analysis of the writings and motivations of numerous 19th century authors, publishers and tradesman, Matthew Pearl carried an interesting theme: the intellectual property rhetoric of pirates and thievery was pure artifice until the rhetoric itself was codified as law, or still in some cases, not.

The mid-ninteenth century was a heady time for American publishers and a frustrating one for authors. The United States, while having domestic copyright law protecting the literary rights of American authors, had no International Copyright provisions. The works of foreign authors–British especially, because they were English language–could be printed or altered without royalty or the permission of their writers. The works of Charles Dickens, or , could be freely printed in America, and they were. Publishing agents would eagerly wait at the docks of Boston for transatlantic clippers to arrive with the newest novels to then reprint. The publisher Harper & Brothers, today HarperCollins, was the most notorious and proud of their unapproved additions.

The free-spirited atmosphere created by a lack of international copyright affected both foreign and domestic authors. Foreign authors did not receive royalties on books printed in America; the content was also sometimes modified from the author’s original text. Domestic books, by such authors as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and James Fennimore Cooper, sold less because the prices were undercut by non-royalty paying foreign novels.

At this time the authors often banded together in copyright clubs or leagues to protest. James Russell Lowell, noted poet and president of American Copyright League penned this motto:

In vain we call old notions fudge,
And bend our conscience to our dealing;
The Ten Commandments will not budge,
And stealing will continue stealing.

This motto, in the same vein as many other pro-copyright writings, is interesting because of the themes it calls up. Notably, it evokes a traditionalist past implying that there was a time when literary property was respected. The motto also refers explicitly to stealing, yet at the time, there did not exist a legal framework of infringement. Indeed, courts at the time stated that there existed no common-law for the protection of literary works

Beneath the Planet of the Apes film

In the same vein, Rudyard Kipling published the Rhyme of the Three Captains, a long and complicated poem literalizing the theft of one of his books by Harper. Kipling moralizes the episode with the serious line “Does he steel with tears when he buccaneers? For God then why does he steal?” One reviewer even goes so far as to call them “book-aneers”.

Other works contained similar ideas of constant, instantaneous and expected crime. Edgar Allen Poe’s Purloined Letter concerns a crime that is completely in public view. Charles Dicken’s Martin Chuzzlewit is about the “false commerce” of America.

But authors, while protecting their writings, had a tightrope wire to walk with themes very American: democracy, class, culture and slavery.

Royalty-free novels made possible, for the first time, “railway station” editions that could cheaply purchased by the general public. In the past, only library quality editions could be purchased by those who could afford their high costs. Restoring high prices these could viewed as keeping knowledge or betterment from the masses. Additionally, the growth of the publishing industry was fueled by cheap foreign novels, and to be against them placed authors as elitists above the working class typesetters and bookbinders.

At this time there did not fully exist the concept of the sanctity of a creator’s work. English books were often Americanized, removing British language or themes and replacing them with more American counterparts more easily understandable or acceptable to American palates. Twain’s A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is the archetypal American meddling with high British romance: invading, changing and ultimately destroying it.

Disallowing the modification of works was even viewed as imposing a slavery of words. When Harriet Beecher Stowe went to court to prevent an unauthorized German translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she was named a hypocrite by some in calling for the emancipation of the negro yet shackling her novel.

Charles Dickens, on his two visits to America, was viewed with much animosity by the American public. On these visits he called for an international copyright but was derided as only seeking greater profits for himself.

Indeed, authors went to great lengths to not fall too heavily on either side. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass contains a very measured call for stronger protections. Mark Twain, in a confusing episode before the U.S. Senate, gave strange or contradictory answers. James Fennimore Cooper would outright lie when asked about having signed petitions.

Despite all of this, there was created by authors a wholly successful fictional narrative superimposed on an actual legal regime. Today’s concepts—and laws—of copyright infringement, piracy, robbery and thievery are based upon these artificial metaphors and themes. At the time no laws existed to make the actions of publishers such as Harpers illegal, but rhetoric, poems and stories were created until a legal framework could codify them.

To learn from these episodes Matthew Pearl makes this important point:

It is easy for us to forget that at one point there existed the need to craft the rhetoric of “a shadow copyright regime”.

Today, it’s difficult for us to notice how we adjust the rhetoric, for better or worse, in the popular conceptions and legal framework of ownership and copyright protection. And when taking into account concepts like Fair Use, noticing that conceptions may be just rhetoric.