The downside of philanthropy

June 30, 2006

[tag]Warren Buffett[/tag] is poised, through tens of [tag]billions[/tag] in charitable donations, to literally change the face of international [tag]philanthropy[/tag] and relief efforts. The ability to ease suffering, combat disease, and reduce poverty received an unprecedented boost. It is, by any reasonable definition, a development to celebrate.

Naturally, everyone around the world is impressed and inspired by the generosity. Well, almost everyone. (thanks to slip kid no more for the tip)

Warren Buffett’s new philanthropic alliance with fellow billionaire [tag]Bill Gates[/tag] won widespread praise this week, but anti-abortion activists did not join in, instead assailing the two donors for their longtime support of Planned Parenthood and international birth-control programs.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to which Buffett has pledged the bulk of his $44-billion fortune, devotes the vast majority of its funding to combating disease and poverty in developing countries. Less than 1 percent has gone to Planned Parenthood over the years. And the Gates Foundation does not permit its gifts to Planned Parenthood to be used for abortion services.

“The merger of Gates and Buffett may spell doom for the families of the developing world,” said the Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, a Roman Catholic priest who is president of Human Life International.

Referring to Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi death camp doctor, Euteneuer said Buffett “will be known as the Dr. Mengele of philanthropy unless he repents.”

It’s not just some random priest. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a powerhouse religious-right group, wrote a commentary this week blasting Buffett for funding clinical trials of RU-486 in 2000. “Since then, approximately 500,000 American babies have been killed with RU-486,” Perkins wrote. “Buffett’s billions have the potential to do damage like this on a global scale.”

And Steven Mosher, head of the far-right Population Research Institute, said Buffett and Gates are dangerous. “Some of the wealthiest men in the world descend like avenging angels on the populations of the developing world,” Mosher wrote this week. “They seek to decimate their numbers, to foist upon vulnerable people abortion, sterilization and contraception.”

Is this where the right wants to go? Lashing out the most generous philanthropists the world has ever seen?

I was hoping that someone would put this one up.

“The merger of Gates and Buffett may spell doom for the families of the developing world”

And famine, war, genocide, lack of fresh water, lack of resources aren’t bad enough?

These guys still don’t get it. We don’t have enough resources for the people we have, let alone the ones the Fundies want to save!!!

Even one percent of 44Bil devoted towards family planning is a “mere” $440 Million which far exceeds whatever Perkins and crew have available even if they stop buying such religious necessities as hookers, Merceedes and tailored suits.

Stories like these give me a glimmer of hope.

  • What originally caught my eye was the “Josef Mengele” reference. Classy folks, these extremists.

  • The twisted “thinking” of these extremists seems to be that it’s better for the unfortunate residents of the “developing world” to suffer and die from all manner of preventable ailments than to live and prosper if doing so means transgressing against their, um, limited view of what is moral.

    That’s sick, and they should be called on it. Every Republican who has taken money or endorsements from these monsters should be asked, repeatedly until they answer, if they share the view that what Buffett and Gates are doing is evil.

  • My favorite part of this is their suggestion that the developing world is in serious danger of suffering population shortages.

    What a bunch of assholes.

  • Why does anybody give these fools any coverage at all? That includes Carpet bagger.

  • The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few, puts those few in the center of conflict with the many clamoring to influence philanthropic decision making.
    How these massive resources will be distributed seems a question of chance..Qualification for running foundation depend only on having accumulated wealth.
    My solution is the redisrtibution of wealth and reduce the need for charity.

  • Why don’t we ship all these right wing nut jobs to Afghanistan, they could co-exist with the Taliban rather well I bet.

  • Why does anybody give these fools any coverage at all?

    Because it’s worth knowing what leading conservative voices, who have enormous influence in government, want and believe. People like Tony Perkins meets regularly with congressional leaders and has contacts with the White House.

    What’s his agenda? What are his values? What kind of priorities does he have? It matters — because what he wants, he’s in a position to ask policy makers to give him.

    We could pretend these are fringe ideologues whose ideas don’t matter, but I think it’s better to shine a light on them so we know what we’re up against and so the public in general knows how truly radical today’s conservative movement really is.

  • The Catholic Church has a position on birth control that has never made sense to me. It is a moving target. Their reasoning changes as science progresses. When I was in high school during the sixties the no-no was the barrier methods (condoms and daiphrams) because such methods were artificial and interferred with the natural act between a man and woman. Then the pill became common and they tried to change their arguement. That type of reasoning never worked for me or for any Catholic I ever knew. Now they say condoms are OK for AIDS prevention. Give me a break. People make their own decisions about reproduction, and the opinion of some distant clergyman is ridiculous. The Catholic Church is a big tent though, and there are a lot of nuts in it.

  • Seeing as how Tony Perkins paid $82,500 for David Duke’s mailing list in 1996, he might want to worry about offending his base with Nazi references.

  • O, ye of feeble minds. When god said, “be fruitful and multiply,” he meant two seperate things. You were supposed to be fruitful, and then multiply the number of your fruits through the next few generations so that you’d one day invent contraception to keep this fruit thing from getting out of control. Jeez.

  • Now, now.

    Surely you’d have had something cynical to say if Buffet were giving billions to Focus on the Family or to form an anti-abortion group.

  • These guys missed our discussion on Godwin’s Law about a month ago.

    Buffett is one of my favorite rich guys. Supports the estate tax, thinks his kids need to earn their own fortune, gives tons of cash to the city, and his house is a two-story in Dundee, one of Omaha’s oldest neighborhoods, not one of the McMansions out in West Omaha, like what Pete “I’m just like the average Joe, only richer and better” Ricketts lives in.

    The only gripe I have is when they have the annual BerkHath haj here, Omahans treat it like Christ just entered Jerusalem.

  • If Buffet were that stupid, he probably wouldn’t have made the money he made. The FACT is, he didn’t so this point is rather irrelevant and pointless.

  • Euteneuer said Buffett “will be known as the Dr. Mengele of philanthropy unless he repents.”
    . . .
    Tony Perkins…wrote a commentary this week blasting Buffett for funding clinical trials of RU-486 in 2000. “Since then, approximately 500,000 American babies have been killed with RU-486,” Perkins wrote. “Buffett’s billions have the potential to do damage like this on a global scale.”
    . . .
    And Steven Mosher, head of the far-right Population Research Institute, said Buffett and Gates are dangerous. “Some of the wealthiest men in the world descend like avenging angels on the populations of the developing world,”

    BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! Now, if they can only put an end to AIDS and malaria, they will truly have destroyed the world!!!!

  • Keep on exposing these people CB.

    I once read somewhere – “If there’s a wasp in the room, I like to know where it is.”

    I feel the same way about these whack jobs.

  • Tony Perkins, the “good Christian” who wants to enforce the death penalty on “unchaste women.” The guy who bought David Duke’s mailing list.

    The other amazing thing to read today is that the FDA is set to recommend universal vaccination with the HPV vaccine, and the Family Research Council (among the rest of the loonies) wants to maintain “parental choice” since obtaining the vaccination will tell their daughters that it’s now OK to engage in sex. Right: ” we want to keep you in fear and ignorance, daughter dearest, and if you act out of that fear and ignorance and do something we don’t like, we want you to die.”

    I would definitely be willing to set aside my opposition to the death penalty in the case of Tony Perkins.

  • There are more people on the face of the earth now than existed in all the rest of humankind through the millenia. And these guys are stressed that there are not enough of us?

    St. Thomas Aquinas said one of the best quotes ever: “Beware the man of one book.” That includes the bible. Beware the activist of one cause who is so beholden to it that nothing else on the planet matters. Abortion activists are just such a scourge: the world can go to hell for the memory of cells that could have been.

  • These groups have to disparage relatively liberal rich people such as Gates and Buffet. It goes against the conservative paradigm that implies you can’t be liberal, rich, and a decent person.

    After all, the heroes of the conservative right are the Enrons and the Tom DeLays of the world.

  • I know this is a classless thing to say but why is it that the extreme religious right wants a growing conception rate in these hellish places? Are they fertilizer? Are a hundred thousand fly-blown children dead from disease or starvation some kind of unholy sacrifice to their lord?

    When I was a kid we were taught a song that began “Jesus loves the little children…” and the Jesus I was taught about would NOT have preferred the suffering of the born to the cessation of the unborn. It’s like the church today want’s even MORE misery in the world, as if that is how they will usher in the end times.

    Lord save me from your followers.

  • Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, stopping fornication at any cost. Said costs include but not limited to starvation, birth defects, death from venereal disease, death from complications of pregnancy, death from cervical cancer, death from child abuse…

    One wonders exactly what intricate mental gymnastics led Rev. Etueneuer from the gentle words of Christ to the brutal, dogmatic position he now holds.

  • When I was a kid we were taught a song that began “Jesus loves the little children…”

    Bush & co have changed the words slightly …

    Jesus loves the little children
    All the children of the world
    White and white and white and white
    They are precious in his sight
    Jesus loves the little children of the world

    Any questions?

  • ” we want to keep you in fear and ignorance, daughter dearest, and if you act out of that fear and ignorance and do something we don’t like, we want you to die.”

    Sounds like the taliban honor killings, only long, drawn out, and painful.

  • Am amazed at the littlemindedness of ‘The Downside of Philanthropy’. Gates-Buffett may be doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons, but beneficiaries in Africa can be excused for being disinterested in their motives.

    The Pro-Lifers’ minds are caught in a groove. What is a possible baptism-fodder compared to the real needs of the languishing poor and diseased?

    Nick

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