You trust GOOGLE's interests to align sufficiently with ours, to the extent that you're willing to cede government affairs to them?
pb
On Sun Jan 22 12:48:50 2012, geni wrote:
On 22 January 2012 18:00, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Pedro Sanchez pdsanchez@gmail.com wrote:
I'm worried that we may be getting in trouble. I don't know about US laws, but are charitable organizations allowed to meddle in political lobbying?
I'd appreciate if more knowledgeable people could give us some light.
It's perfectly allowed, and we're allowed to take positions on specific bills - it is just that lobbying cannot be a 'substantial part' of the WMF's activities unless it switches its charity type. (Googling around, I was reading http://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/whitepaperdetail.cfm?ItemNumber=12202 and http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/eotopicp97.pdf )
What is highly questionable is if it a remotely worthwhile use of money. If Google's lobbyists can't impact SOPA and the like what makes the foundation think our can?