Scottish tycoon teams up with Clinton to combat poverty

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/hearafrica05/story/0,15756,1571465,00.html

A Scottish multimillionaire entrepreneur, who started his business career selling trainers from a van, is to team up with Bill Clinton in a project tackling world poverty. The businessman, who made his initial fortune with the Sports Division store chain, is hoping to create a development model that will allow some of the poorest areas of the world to be self-sufficient.

Sir Tom Hunter was in New York yesterday to launch the Clinton-Hunter Development Initiative. The businessman, who models himself on the Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, has made $100m (£55m) available as seed money to be used to establish two projects, probably one in Africa and one in either Asia or Latin America.

Speaking from Manhattan yesterday, Sir Tom said that he had had a long talk with the former US president, whom he had first met four years ago when they flew to Africa to visit existing projects. They decided to set up pilot schemes aimed at self-sufficiency so that the foundation could then move with the same model elsewhere.
"The great beauty of working with President Clinton is that he has very good relations with the leaders in many countries," said Sir Tom, who also started the Hunter Foundation and was estimated by the Sunday Times rich list to be worth £678m. "That means you can get things done very quickly." Sir Tom, who put more than £6m into Band Aid, said that he was motivated by the example of Andrew Carnegie, the Dunfermline-born steel magnate who gave away $350m of his fortune and whose motto was "a man who dies rich dies disgraced". Sir Tom described Carnegie as "my all-time hero" and said that he saw poverty as a "silent malevolent horror".

[blm]

1. This is why I see Clinton as a great fit to be the next head of the UN.

,

[leftofcool]

2. I hope so!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You go Big Dawg!!!!!!!!!!

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

3. Carnegie history lesson

This was a really ugly blot on Carnegie's legacy...hope Sir Tom Hunter doesn't TOTALLY model himself on Carnegie.


The Homestead Strike


One of the most difficult episodes Andrew Carnegie's life -- and one that revealed the steel magnate's conflicting beliefs regarding the rights of labor -- was the bitter conflict in 1892 at his steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Carnegie's involvement in the union-breaking action left many men dead or wounded and forever tarnished Carnegie's reputation as a benevolent employer and a champion of labor.

The conflict at Homestead arose at a time when the fast-changing American economy had stumbled and conflicts between labor and management had flared up all over the country. In 1892, labor declared a general strike in New Orleans. Coal miners struck in Tennessee, as did railroad switchmen in Buffalo, New York and copper miners in Idaho.

Carnegie's mighty steel industry was not immune to the downturn. In 1890, the price of rolled-steel products started to decline, dropping from $35 a gross ton to $22 early in 1892. In the face of depressed steel prices, Henry C. Frick, general manager of the Homestead plant that Carnegie largely owned, was determined to cut wages and break the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, one of the strongest craft unions in the country.

Behind the scenes, Carnegie supported Frick's plans. In the spring of 1892, Carnegie had Frick produce as much armor plate as possible before the union's contract expired at the end of June. If the union failed to accept Frick's terms, Carnegie instructed him to shut down the plant and wait until the workers buckled. "We... approve of anything you do," Carnegie wrote from England in words he would later come to regret. "We are with you to the end."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/peopleevents/pande04.html

[bemildred]

4. Oh goody, another Plutocrat come to save us. nt

[T_i_B]

5. There is nothing wrong with Charity

One thing that does annoy me is that on the one hand you have the right, who often like to mention the virtue of Charity but who don't think that Government should lift an finger and on the other hand there are a few on the left like the idea of the government being charitable but all too often fall sort in their own lives as much as the supposedly "selfish" conservatives.

Why can't government and charity go hand in hand to help alleviate the needy and the suffering? Why do right and left have to play one against the other to the detriment of the most vulnerable in society? Government and charity should not be mutually exclusive.

[bemildred]

6. Opinions on this subject vary.

My view is that the government is properly the instrument and
enforcer of the popular will, and that it is the government's
proper business to help all those in need, to give them both
a handout and a hand up, as needed.

My complaint with this situation is that this one fellow has
vast quantities of wealth, which he most certainly did not earn
by his own labor, and that others are put in the position of
petitioning this fellow and those like him for what ought to
be theirs of right as citizens.

This does not mean that private charity does not have it's place,
too.

All that said, it will be seen, I hope, that I agree with you.