The Last Of The Millenniums
Just because it always has been, doesn't mean it always will be
Archive for the day “July 29, 2013”
Blog Running – Thinking Outside The Box Edition – ‘The Charitable-Industrial Complex’
‘Peter Buffett is a composer and a chairman of the NoVo Foundation’.
‘I HAD spent much of my life writing music for commercials, film and television and knew little about the world of philanthropy as practiced by the very wealthy until what I call the big bang happened in 2006’.
‘That year, my father, Warren Buffett, made good on his commitment to give nearly all of his accumulated wealth back to society’.
‘In addition to making several large donations, he added generously to the three foundations that my parents had created years earlier, one for each of their children to run’.
‘Early on in our philanthropic journey, my wife and I became aware of something I started to call Philanthropic Colonialism’.
‘I noticed that a donor had the urge to “save the day” in some fashion. People (including me) who had very little knowledge of a particular place would think that they could solve a local problem’.
‘Whether it involved farming methods, education practices, job training or business development, over and over I would hear people discuss transplanting what worked in one setting directly into another with little regard for culture, geography or societal norms’.
‘Often the results of our decisions had unintended consequences; distributing condoms to stop the spread of AIDS in a brothel area ended up creating a higher price for unprotected sex’.
‘But now I think something even more damaging is going on’.
‘Because of who my father is, I’ve been able to occupy some seats I never expected to sit in’.
‘Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders’.
‘All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left’.
‘There are plenty of statistics that tell us that inequality is continually rising’.
‘At the same time, according to the Urban Institute, the nonprofit sector has been steadily growing. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent’.
‘Their growth rate now exceeds that of both the business and government sectors’.
‘It’s a massive business, with approximately $316 billion given away in 2012 in the United States alone and more than 9.4 million employed’.
‘Philanthropy has become the “it” vehicle to level the playing field and has generated a growing number of gatherings, workshops and affinity groups’.
‘As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.”
‘It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity’.
‘But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place’.
‘The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over’.
‘What we have is a crisis of imagination. Albert Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem with the same mind-set that created it. Foundation dollars should be the best “risk capital” out there’.
‘There are people working hard at showing examples of other ways to live in a functioning society that truly creates greater prosperity for all (and I don’t mean more people getting to have more stuff)’.
‘Money should be spent trying out concepts that shatter current structures and systems that have turned much of the world into one vast market’.
‘Is progress really Wi-Fi on every street corner’?
‘No’.
‘It’s when no 13-year-old girl on the planet gets sold for sex’.
‘But as long as most folks are patting themselves on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got a perpetual poverty machine’.
‘It’s an old story; we really need a new one’.
From : http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/the-charitable-industrial-complex.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
‘Obamacare Turns The GOP Against Tax Breaks For The Middle Class’
‘What if I told you about a $1.3 trillion disaster passed mostly under a contortion of the Senate rules known as “reconciliation” and signed into law by a new, untested president whose legitimacy was questioned by millions’?
‘What if I told you this big government giveaway would destroy years of hard-won fiscal responsibility, resulting in a “lost decade for jobs” as we fought two wars and expanded the government in unprecedented, unfunded ways? And after this $1.3 trillion boondoggle fueled skyrocketing inequality and blasted a gaping hole in the budget we would be left with a once-in-a-half-century financial crisis that would leave America borrowing more than a trillion dollars a year’?
‘You might say, “Boycott the Bush tax cuts!”
‘But Republicans would call you a crazy, un-American, ACORN-suckling, Sharia trial lawyer, communistic, socialistic, fascistic, Maoistic, son-of-a-Saul Alinsky. Who would turn down a tax break? That’s our money, libtard. GIVE IT BACK’.
‘On October 1, up to 26 million Americans will begin to find out that they are eligible for subsidies through the Affordable Care Act. Many, if not most, Americans have no idea that these tax credits are heading to all legal residents who earn up to 400 percent of the poverty level, up to $45,960 a year for a family of one’.
‘In order to stomp on this good news before it begins to spread, conservatives are actually arguing that middle- class Americans should reject these tax breaks’.
‘Reuters’ David Morgan explains’:
“FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, a conservative issue group financed by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, known for funding conservative causes, are planning separate media and grassroots campaigns aimed at adults in their 20s and 30s – the very people Obama needs to have sign up for healthcare coverage in new online insurance exchanges if his reforms are to succeed”.
“We’re trying to make it socially acceptable to skip the exchange,” said Dean Clancy, vice president for public policy at FreedomWorks, which boasts 6 million supporters. The group is designing a symbolic “Obamacare card” that college students can burn during campus protests”.
‘This is why today’s Republicans can’t admit the real reason why they oppose Obamacare: The middle-class tax breaks in Obamacare are paid for almost entirely by taxes on the richest 2 percent of Americans and corporations’.
From : http://www.nationalmemo.com/obamacare-turns-the-gop-against-tax-breaks-for-the-middle-class/
A ‘Conservative’ vision for America – The Stupidity Of FOX Viewers – ‘Fox News Anchor Dumbfounded That A Scholar, Who Is Muslim, Had The Audacity To Write A Book About Jesus’
How dare a Muslim write a book about (insert celestial music) Christianity.
First she asks him why he would write a book about Christianity and then asks him why he would be interested in the Founder of Christianity.
Curiosity?
Let’s NOT have a debate over the intellectual questioning of Religion.
(Pun intended) God forbid!
He has 4 degrees and has been studying religion for 2 decades!
Lauren Green. The perfect example of FOX dumbing down it’s viewers and the viewers just sitting there like the lumps of rocks they are and accepting it without question.
THAT is the ‘Conservative’ vision for America.
Too dumb to question.
‘Rand Paul to Chris Christie: You need to talk to more real Americans’
I’m sorry, but in a battle of wit, words or wisdom, I’ll take Chris Christie over Rand ‘The Bigot’ Paul anyday!
And least we all forget Senator Rand Paul’s real thoughts on using drones on American soil against Americans…..
‘Rand Paul Endorses Using Drones to Kill Suspected Liquor Store Robbers’
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him…”
@ : http://jimbovard.com/blog/2013/04/23/rand-paul-endorses-using-drones-to-kill-suspected-liquor-store-robbers/
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‘Republican rivals Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky are escalating their feud over national security policy and liberty’.
“This strain of libertarianism that’s going through parties right now and making big headlines I think is a very dangerous thought,” Mr. Christie said Thursday in Aspen, Colo. on at a forum of Republican governors. “You can name any number of people and [Mr. Paul is] one of them.”
A top aide to Mr. Paul immediately fired back, telling The Washington Times the senator’s opposition to government drone policies and surveillance programs are designed to “protect the freedoms that make America exceptional.”
“If Gov. Christie believe the constitutional rights and the privacy of all Americans are ‘esoteric,’ he either needs a new dictionary or he needs to talk to more Americans, because a great number of them are concerned about the dramatic overreach of our government in recent times,” Paul senior advisor Doug Stafford said’.
“Defending America and fighting terrorism is the concern of all Americans, especially Senator Paul,” Mr. Stafford, who is Mr. Paul’s closest adviser, said. “But it can and must be done in keeping with our Constitution and while protecting the freedoms that make America exceptional.”
Govedrnor Christie :
“President Obama has done nothing to change the policies of the Bush administration in the war on terrorism. And I mean practically nothing,” Mr. Christie said. “And you know why? Because they work.”
“I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation,” Mr. Christie said. “And they won’t, because that’s a much tougher conversation to have.”
‘Former Reagan White House official Don Devine :
“Coming from the one person most responsible for the re-election of Barack Obama, I think we can take what Christie said with a grain of salt,” Mr. Devine said. “He will be the Jon Huntsman of 2016 if he enters the Republican presidential nomination race.”
From : http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/26/rand-paul-chris-christie-you-need-talk-more-real-a/
Gun Nuts Out Of Control – ‘Gun Advocacy Group Sends Zimmerman $12,000 To Buy Guns’
In case you want to write them and express your opinion of raising money to buy a murderer new guns….here’s their link :
http://www.buckeyefirearmsfoundation.org/
‘On Tuesday, an Ohio-based gun advocacy group sent George Zimmerman, who fatally shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a $12,150.37 check with which to purchase more guns’.
‘Buckeye Firearms Foundation said that it came under cyber attack since raising money for Zimmerman and has had its website hacked. The page was not accessible at the time of publication’.
From : http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/07/26/2359831/gun-advocacy-group-sends-zimmerman-12000-to-buy-guns/
One Man’s Trash…… – ‘Trump Heads to Iowa, Plots a 2016 Run’
The Donald represents all that is the ‘New’ Republican Party.
I hope, really, really hope he does run. Because just like Sarah Palin, once The Donald starts talking, stupid comes out.
‘Donald Trump has long resisted calls for him to run for president. But now, at age 67, he tells me he’s considering a bid’.
“I’m looking,” Trump says. “I have a large following of people who are tired of seeing this country ripped off, and taken advantage of [by] everyone who does business with us. We used to be the smart one of the block, and now we’re the dummies on the block. They want to see me, and I want to see them.”
‘Trump cautions that it’s early. But for the first time in his life, he’s preparing to potentially put his business work on hold. Behind the scenes, he’s examining how his family could manage his operations on an interim basis, should he decide to run’.From : http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/354535/trump-heads-iowa-plots-2016-run-robert-costa
The Last Of The Millenniums 