Jesse Helms

The long racist history of Thomas Farr

Submitted by scharrison on

It's a lot more sinister and ingrained than you think:

Founded in 1937 to pursue “race betterment” for those “deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution,” the Pioneer Fund was the “primary source for scientific racism” well into the 2000s and one of the key funders of the fight against civil rights in the South from the 1950s onward.

Farr’s connection to the Pioneer Fund comes principally through his longtime boss and mentor, Thomas Ellis, the political mastermind behind the arch-segregationist Senator Jesse Helms. Ellis was a Pioneer Fund director, grantee and close associate of the hate group’s president, Harry Frederick Weyher, Jr., for over 60 years. In the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed from the Pioneer Fund to a tax-exempt foundation called the Coalition For Freedom that was under Ellis’ control and represented by Farr.

This man really has no business even being in a court of law, much less presiding over it. You may want to put on a haz-mat suit before reading any further:

Politics and Disaster Relief: North Carolina is Losing Out

Submitted by TarGator on

There is a fascinating article in the Christian Science Montitor today. The article looks at research that examines the relationship between natural disasters over the last 45 years and federal relief of the disasters. One important finding of the article is that different states received different levels of aid. In particular North Carolina did a poor job in receiving aid.

When she looked beyond the trends in losses, "what struck me was how ineffective certain states have been in getting presidential disaster declarations" over the past 40 years. For example, she continues, North Carolina and South Carolina have seen significant losses, yet have garnered relatively few disaster declarations, while North Dakota also has endured similarly high losses and has been "very good" at getting the declarations.

The article goes on to note that one difference in the amount of aid has been whether a state is seen as crucial for reelection.

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