Billionaire Give-Away: The Fog of Robberyby Jonathan Tasini
Thursday 05 of August, 2010
Count me in the group, perhaps small, that is unimpressed with the pledge by a group of billionaires to give away large parts of their fortune. Not because I oppose the idea of philanthropy. Rather, the announcement obscures a reality: very little of the money will go to challenging the root causes of the incredible robbery that has happened to the people around the globe, a robbery that most of the billionaires benefited from--and, in fact, in one case--the case of Pete Peterson--the donation of billionaire money will increase the robbery.
The Giving Pledge has as its goal:
The Giving Pledge is an effort to invite the wealthiest individuals and families in America to commit to giving the majority of their wealth to the philanthropic causes and charitable organizations of their choice either during their lifetime or after their death.
Take a moment to peruse the list of billionaires. Let's see: there are the monopolists like Bill Gates who made his fortune by engaging in predatory capitalism, destroying smaller competitors for the sake of piling up profit (not to mention making the god-awful Windows products--but, admittedly, as a Mac convert, that is a disputable point).
There is Sandy Weill. Among Weill's many achievements in life was a leading role, when he served as the CEO and chair of Citigroup, in attacking the Glass-Steagall Act. In fact, in his office, he had an etching of himself (of course) with the inscription "The Shatterer of Glass Steagall". Weill, like his fellow Glass-Steagall opponents (Robert Rubin was a leading figure in the anti-Glass-Steagall campaign, along with, among many legislators, Chuck Schumer), continue to lamely defend their role in campaigning to repeal a law that arguably, had it survived, could have prevented the financial crisis of the past several years.
There is New York's own Mike Bloomberg. Among Bloomberg's accomplishments--having complete disregard for the people of New York's democratic decision to impose term limits on city officeholders. I happen to be against term limits--but the voters of New York City twice voted for term limits. With Bloomberg engineering the move behind the scenes (using, subtly or not so subtly, his massive wealth, as a carrot and as a stick), the self-serving City Council overturned the voters' will.
What strikes me about the people on the list is that, with few, if any, exceptions, they are vehemently anti-union. They made their fortunes on the back of the millions of people who passed through the doors of their businesses--refusing to even take a neutral position in union representation efforts. ............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=14977
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