About Me 0062: Who's Making Money

After Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison announced her retirement after she was declared a top target of Tea Party activists, the race for the Republican nomination became even more crowded and contentious. Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams immediately became a Tea Party sensation and last week resigned from the Railroad Commission in order to be a full-time candidate.

The American Spectator today features a glowing profile of Williams, saying that “something about him says ‘Don’t mess with Texas.’”

Williams even won the endorsement of Tea Party leader Sen. Jim DeMint, who’s Senate Conservatives Fund lifted a number of far-right candidates like Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell to victory in GOP primary contests.

But Williams first garnered the support of the Party’s far-right when he unsuccessfully tried to block scholarships for minority students when he worked at the Department of Education under President George H. W. Bush. The New York Times reported in 1990 that Williams caused uproar when he tried to prohibit “colleges and universities that receive Federal funds from offering scholarships designated for minority students.”

Michael L. Williams, the Education Department's Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, said yesterday that "race-exclusive" scholarships, or those based on ethnic origin, were discriminatory and therefore illegal.

College administrators and scholarship fund directors reacted with alarm, saying the decision could reverse decades of efforts to increase the enrollment of members of racial and ethnic minorities who have been historically underrepresented in colleges.

"We were shocked by this decision," said Richard F. Rosser, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, which represents 815 institutions. "We have been making enormous efforts to increase the numbers of minority students in our colleges and universities, and this has necessarily required a great deal of financial aid."

Neither Rosser nor anyone else contacted yesterday could say how many institutions, or what percentage of total financial aid to minority students, might be affected by the new enforcement policy. But the practice of setting aside money to attract qualified minority students and make college more affordable for them has been widespread for at least 20 years.

Ultimately, then-Secretary Lamar Alexander (now a Republican Senator from Tennessee) stopped Williams from implementing his policy, including his attempt to block the Fiesta Bowl from setting “aside $100,000 for a fund for minority scholarships.” As Williams happily notes in his campaign’s biography, he succeeded Clarence Thomas in his position at the Education Department.

In a Republican primary in Texas where each candidate has to demonstrate their right-wing credentials, Williams may try to use this case to his advantage.

The other day I reported on a Hollywood Reporter story about how Uwe Boll is filing a lawsuit against the Berlin Film Festival over the matter of the fest's differing requirements when it comes to the 125 euro ($170) entrance fee. The man himself then shot me off an email to clarify that his lawsuit is about more than him and a petty sum of money.

Here's what Boll had to say (I cleaned up his English a little):

"If you read the guidlines to the festival it is clearly stated that everybody must pay the 125 euro or you cannot run in the festival. So what the festival says is in fact untrue. Because the (fest) director (Dieter) Kosslick waived the entry fee for a lot of movies he breached the rules and I and thousands of other filmmakers have the right to get their 125 euros back. We are talking millions of dollars."

Basically, he's fighting not just for himself. He's fighting for every filmmaker that has ever had to pay the entrance fee and believes every last one of them should be issued a refund because the Berlin Film Festival's entire financial set-up is corrupt.

Boll then forwarded me a German article that details the lawsuit from his perspective better clarifying what exactly this is all about. Here's the link to the full length article. I think these selected paragraphs pretty much get to the heart of the matter.

"Now he raises new, serious allegations against the head of the Berlinale. “I raise this criminal complaint representatively for all the umpteen thousand candidates who pay the 125€ film admission fee from their pockets and think they’d have a fair chance - but in reality do not”, says Boll to “Welt Online”. “The whole pay system is just there to rob the small directors so that the Berlinale can cover its expenses.”

"He’s also meaning the trips abroad of the festival chief and his employees on which they watch films, which they consider interesting for the Berlinale. By his own statement Kosslick won the US western “True Grit” of director brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, which got nominated for 10 Oscars, for the Berlinale on one of these travels abroad. Boll: “A film, which I could have gotten for the Berlinale with an email, because it is showed in US cinemas for two months now and badly needs publicity in Germany! You don’t have to travel for something like that!”

But Boll is also talking about other trips. Kosslick is said to have told “Focus” about a visit of actress Cate Blanchett: “We know each other quite well now and became friends, I’ve even visited her and her family last year in Australia!” Boll to that: “So, guess who’s paid for that? Hopefully not the tax payer.”

Boll is sure that this way Dieter Kosslick is on up to 20 trips per year. “Of course always with the justification of having to screen films and meet people. If he was seeing the films which got handed in for the fee of 125€, he would not have to be out making sure the world is round indeed”, says Boll."

Expect to hear more about this lawsuit in the weeks to come.

- The Foywonder

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Submitted by Foywonder on Sun, 02/13/2011 - 9:13pm.

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About Me 0062

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Who's Making Money

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