Charity Bandanas

The following is from Benjamin Nieuwsma. Please take a second to read!

We are raising money for the Community Action Partnership in Moscow . The charity works to reach out to poor people in our area in a number of ways. The partnership provides food for people unable to afford it, clothing and health related expenses. Often the elderly on fixed incomes are unable to afford their heating bill during the winter and this partnership helps with that as well. They also help pay for educational expenses.

Unlike many other charities, the Community Action Partnership works towards self-sufficiency as much as it can, so for many of the underprivileged families, they help by providing work for them.

I am the project manager of a team of about a dozen students who chose this charity to raise money for as class project and we have come up with a couple different incentives for giving money to the partnership:

Donate 1 Dollar

For anyone donating a dollar to help the underprivileged in our area, we will enter them into a drawing for one of three $50 gift certificates for the online sporting good stores:

www.buysnow.com

www.buywake.com

www.buyskate.com

Donate 4 Dollars

For anyone who donates $4 (essentially the price of a nice coffee), we will give them a free bandana. They are black with a golden U of I logo design on them.

This charity is tax deductible and upon request we can provide you with verification of your donation. Unfortunately, due to some supplier problems on the bandanas, we are running out of time for this project. We need to know about everyone who is willing to donate by next Monday, November 26.

So, if you would be willing to donate a few dollars, it would be a great blessing to the charity, and a huge help to me and my team.

Please send me an email. (BenjaminN@vandals.uidaho.edu) or feel free to call (208-310-1841)

Thanks!

Benjamin Nieuwsma

One thing Ben mentioned to me is that you don’t have to pay him right away. So if you are away on break, just send him an email letting him know that you will be getting him the money whenever you get back.

Thanks!

President Cleveland ‘s Famous Veto

While President Cleveland was in office, a portion of the state of Texas had undergone a drought. Congress proposed a bill that would give the people of that region the modest, yet effective sum of $10,000 for seed. On February 17, 1887, President Cleveland vetoed that bill saying:
____________

“It is the represented that a long-continued and extensive drought has existed in certain portions of the State of Texas, resulting in a failure of crops, and consequent distress and destitution.

Though there has been some difference in statements concerning the extent of the people’s needs in the localities thus affected, there seems to be no doubt that there has existed a condition calling for relief; and I am willing to believe that, notwithstanding the aid already furnished, a donation of seed grain to the farmers located in this region, to enable them to put in new crops, would serve to avert a continuence or return of unfortunate blight.

And yet I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan, as proposed by this bill, to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for that purpose.
I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.

A prevalent tendency to disregard this limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the Government the Government should not support the people.

The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.

President Cleveland – 1887

Hat-Tip: United States History – Heritage of Freedom