U.S. Plan Threatens Free-Book Group (Reading Is Fundamental) [View All]

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Source: The New York Times

Changes in the way the federal government plans to allocate money to increase and improve literacy pose a severe threat to one of the country’s best known nonprofit groups, Reading Is Fundamental.

Known commonly as RIF, the organization, which provides free books to needy children and has been promoted in memorable public service announcements by celebrities like Carol Burnett and Shaquille O’Neal, stands to lose all of its federal funding, which accounts for roughly 75 percent of its annual revenues.

“We are looking at having to completely reinvent ourselves,” said Carol Rasco, chief executive of RIF, which has received a grant from the Department of Education every year for the last 34 years.

Under the federal budget proposed for the 2011 fiscal year, the Department of Education has proposed pooling the money it allocates to RIF, another nonprofit organization, the National Writing Project, and five of its own grant programs, and instead distributing it to state and local governments. Under that plan, RIF and the Writing Project would have to compete state by state for federal funds.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/education/09grants.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Yikes! How dare the government reposition its budgetary method to threaten the promotion of literacy!

:tinfoilhat: The Republicans are planning on making voters illiterate enough to be spoon-fed information via conservative talk radio and Free Republic and thus support the Wrong Wing.