Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Foundations - A Halo On Greed

Clinton Foundation is not unusual, in fact it is how the game is played.  James Carville defends it on disingenuous grounds:
"Somebody is going to hell" over the political attacks on the Clinton Foundation, longtime Clinton confidant James Carville declared Tuesday, denouncing the recent scrutiny and criticism of the charitable organization.
...
"The bad would be you'd be out hundreds of millions of dollars that are doing good. What the Clinton Foundation does, it takes money from rich people and gives it to poor people. Most people think that's a pretty good idea," Carville said.
These foundations are just where the rich park billions pretax and are obliged to spend only 5% a year on charity, while the rest is invested, making more than 5% given the insider track billionaires have in the economy.

And that 5% may be spent on family and friends who are either featherbedding or doing some other work deemed charitable.

In capitalism they take your loaf of bread and invite you to apply for a grant of crumbs.  I am always amazed at how popular grant-writing courses are in continuing education, and how avidly people who have been dispossessed debase themselves by formally begging.  Time spent preparing a grant request is not spent creating customers.  It must discourage foundation minions to see how easily humanity can be degraded.  And no doubt they thank their lucky stars they are on the side doing the degrading, not the begging.

Gates Foundation is exemplary in funding nothing any given congress wouldn't fund, Malthusian Darwinists that they are.  In Washington state, while parking their billions safely in a Foundation, the Gates family backed an inheritance tax on anyone who happens to inherit a tidy some, chup change to Gates, but usually in the form of a family business.  I actually got into it with a call-in talk radio show where I and a newspaper publisher piled on the Gates.  I noted the Gates had a army of lawyers assuring they would never pay a dime in Fed taxes, inheritance or otherwise.  ld Man Gates noted he knew that Blethen, the publisher of the Seattle Times, and Gate's opponent,  would not either. The newspaper publisher said the tax wiped out the news business, because small local businesses are the ones whose ads made newspapers profitable.  The inheritance tax made passing a business on liability, since the heirs ending up owing a bundle.  So a common tactic is to take out a multi-million dollar life insurance policy on the owner (Dad) of the company, and when he dies, do they use the money to pay the inheritance tax?  No!  Insurance money is not taxed, so they fold the company and enjoy the cash windfall.  Good-bye advertiser. Gates' firm had handled the law work to do exactly that for Blethen, which  thought was rather unprofessional of Gates to hint at it. Anyway, USA is get big or get out, and inheritance tax makes sure at least by the time you are dead, you are out.

(How come Gates, Buffett, Bezos etc are all buying up newspapers? Will there be a renaissance in news rags for some reason?)

The Rockefellers have kept theirs going, like the Ford Foundation, and finding all sorts of nefarious activities, all for the good it would seem.

There is some argument that the progenitors of these foundations would be appalled at the distribution of funds.  Maybe so, all the more reason to never form one.  But it is their ex nihilo credit tally, invested in financially engineered entities, even if they stole the funds, it's theirs fair and square, and they can do what they want.  That much I believe.

My question is why do we have to pay to protect the 1%?  Why do we have police, lawyers, courts, jails, etc to protect them, why not they use their own money?  Well, actually, they all do have their own private armies, and can buy whatever protection they need in the system.

So I don't mean that kind of protection, I mean the rules and practices of government regulations that allow someone to park billions and keep it for their own private accumulation and outsized wealth.

Your property is that which you produce mixing your labor with natural resources, or that with which you buy with your own money.  Billionaires are reckoned in dollar terms of the value of their ex nihilo credit holdings.  Let's never redistribute it, let's just say what you cannot manage yourself, is open to adverse possession, just like land.  If you cannot get around to manage the odd billion, anyone else can came an put it to work, and you lose ownership.  It is no crime for some junior accountant to put a billion of yours to work and it becomes his, say after three yeas, if you do not notice.

Yes, Bernie Madoff would be rich and out of jail right now.  And all those people who had accumulated more than they could manage would have their excess redistributed.  But Madoff would have lost more than he could humanly manage, too.

Redistribution is coming, and we have to figure out how without the hegemon directing it, nor blood in the streets.  How?

We could also deregulate banking and have strict separation of money and state, and the problem would go away as well.  So would USA though, and that will not happen by design.

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.


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