Capitol Ideas: The Hazards of Charity
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell The Hazards of Charity V cry often, rich people give money to causes that are already being funded by governments. I suppose the idea is that no one will come along...
...T he subversion of the donor's will has received a lot of attention from conservatives because it is always twisted in the same direction: to the left...
...So there's no good reason to worry what they might think about the uses to which their money is put...
...Whatever its unintended effects, philanthropy really does benefit the people who work for the foundations...
...In the former article, Nicholas Eberstadt points out that the latest U.N...
...Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon observed that Wirth's paper trail "epitomizes the world view of those who see the poor as a threat to their own consumption, a menace to the ecosystem, and a portent of social unrest...
...Recently he has been spending a lot of money opposing the "war on drugs," and he may even have a point...
...Of course...
...Here, nonetheless, is an amazing case, as it was reported in the Washington Post in December KM...
...In sum, perpetuity is the enemy of donor intent...
...An interesting case in the other (but more normal) direction involved the founders of the Reader's Digest, DeWitt and Lila Wallace, and the foundations set up in their name...
...And that's okay...
...Believing that "rapid population growth continues to be a significant worldwide problem," it supports family planning in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, and gives grants to such well-established groups as the Population Council and the U.N...
...He even gave $1 million over five years "to the aggressively liberal Corporation for Public Broadcasting...
...Foundation Watch reported last year that the DeWitt Wallace-Readers Digest Fund had granted $10 million to Equity 2000, a progressive-education outfit that seeks to eliminate tracking in all subjects and at all grade levels, and to "make equal the proportion of minority and nonminority students entering higher education...
...What he wanted to do, you could say, was give the Strange New Respect award to the Wallaces, posthumously...
...The currency speculator George Soros is another, although very different maverick...
...of brown people who arrive in flotillas from the Ganges and points east...
...The taxman they can handle...
...Going back to John D. Rockefeller, this has been perhaps the most enthusiastically embraced cause of the rich...
...Not that it's possible to measure those costs and benefits...
...Hammer's heir and grandson Michael married a Christian evangelical, Dru Ann Mobley...
...There he will find a worthy cause, and one that has already been validated by politics...
...It concerns the late Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum...
...I suppose the idea is that no one will come along later and accuse you of being irresponsible...
...Right on...
...Expense accounts would blossom...
...18 Ju y 1998 • The American Spectator de by Bill Sammon in The Washington Times, has "pointedly declined to align himself with the religious right...
...Unconsciously, I suspect, they have in mind the plot of The Camp of the Saints, the unmentionable 1973 novel by Jean Raspail (I believe it's sold under the counter today, the way pornography used to be...
...Such donors seem to be as risk-averse in giving the money as they were tolerant of risk in earning it...
...If the foundation is set up with the right of perpetual existence, R. Randolph Richardson has pointed out (he was president of the Smith-Richardson Foundation for twenty years), "the record heavily favors eventual staff control, with trustees being mere legal decorations...
...George V. Grune, the chairman of the Reader's Digest Fund making the grant, was soon thereafter feted as Philanthropist of the Year, with an appropriate 2,000 guests in attendance at the Marriott Marquis in New York...
...In the latter, published by the Washington Post, fertility rates in some African countries are said to have declined by one-third in recent years...
...Even the maverick donor Richard Scaife, inheritor of Mellon millions, who stirred up such an angry buzzing of the Hive recently—he has boldly departed from the pattern of fashionable giving expected of inheritors —seems not entirely immune to the rich man's temptation...
...Inheritors of large wealth seem to be particularly susceptible to this dread...
...But if they obdurately persist in giving the money to right-wing disreputables —well, look at what happened to Scaife...
...The renamed Douglas L. Mobley Foundation summarizes its activities for the IRS in this way: "Held public meetings in which the Gospel of Jesus Christ was shared with thousands of individuals...
...No study has yet demonstrated the long-term health effects of recreational-drug consumption (maybe Soros should fund such a study), and the claim that giving needles to junkies doesn't encourage them to use more drugs is suspect...
...And still he didn't get any credit in the wider press...
...He dutifully enrolled in the Rockefeller Foundation Course in Practical Philanthropy, according to a splendid New York Times article...
...It's as though they are confident they will be allowed to enjoy their wealth more or less undisturbed, as long as there aren't too many people born in other parts of the world...
...An unhappy former Digest employee commented: "I could be philanthropist of the year, too, with the help of a couple of billion from the Wallaces...
...programs...
...So, the Rockefeller people run a course for rich people looking for their badge of merit...
...Soros is on shaky ground in subsidizing needle exchange for drug addicts, however, which is his latest venture in contrarian philanthropy...
...How many times do you hear of a rich liberal who sets up a foundation and dies, whereupon the trustees dole out the money to Human Events and Young Americans for Freedom...
...numbers foresee actual world populationdecline by the 2040's...
...Wisely, he decided on further reflection not to give the money to existing U.N...
...Microsoft's Bill Gates recently gave a seven-figure sum to the United Nations Population Fund...
...44 20 July 1.998 • The American Spectator...
...Already he has learned to talk about root causes...
...Liberals need jobs, and they are not cut out for the dirty world of commerce, where money is so new and green that it leaves a bitter taste...
...More often, I think, your newly minted multi-millionaire, contemplating the objects of his benefaction, will narrow the search by requesting a copy of the Federal Budget, or perhaps the United Nations Annual Report...
...He did, after all, make his money that way: betting against central banks...
...No surprise there, certainly...
...Young Soros went on the trip...
...G000-ood lad...
...Raspail fantasized a Western Europe overrun by uncontrollable hordes Tom BETHELL is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...Like all foundation people, George Grune had good intentions and wasn't just thinking about being invited to the right parties...
...It bankrolled io9 projects last year, becoming a crucial backer of groups such as Planned Parenthood, Population Action International and the Alan Guttmacher Institute...
...The $10,000 it costs to enroll in the Rockefeller course ("the Rolls Royce of this new educational discipline") is a bargain, surely...
...The David & Lucille Packard Foundation is taking no chances, however, and is "pouring money into population control," the Wall Street Journal noted the other day...
...Maybe there are similar root causes in both New York and Rio," he concluded...
...Foundation people are famous for being able to ignore the worldview and intentions of the man who made the money, in cases where that may be necessary (as it was in the case of the old curmudgeon John D. MacArthur...
...For all he knows, Soros may be helping to kill them off by encouraging them to think there's nothing wrong with the drugs, as long as they avoid the bugs...
...David Packard died in 1996, but his long-time partner William Hewlett, 85, is of like mind in this as in business matters...
...The Foundation also spends a ton of money funding abortion training in Ethiopia and Uganda, sending oral contraceptives to Vietnam, and promoting the use of emergency contraceptives in the U.S...
...The foreign born are another matter...
...Yes, but don't forget, diversity in education is the fashionable cause of the day, and however much they might have disapproved, DeWitt and Lila are dead anyway...
...This costs another $1o,000...
...Roderick MacArthur, son of the insurance man whose wealth created the MacArthur Foundation and its "genius grants," once asked an assistant to "come up with a list of the world's problems," so that he could lavish money upon them...
...But that was too broad, surely...
...If they follow instructions obediently, it is understood, they will be restored to society's good graces...
...Population Fund...
...Hundreds of these individuals accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior...
...Instead, he will be selecting from a "menu" of new programs, intended (I gather) to help "the poorest of the poor...
...Greed...
...His nephew, Jeffrey Soros, is hewing to the straight and narrow, however...
...The cultural air we breathe prevents any such thing from happening and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future...
...A general despoliation of the rich might then be precipitated...
...His William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which ambitiously seeks "the wellbeing of mankind," and is administered by Hewlett's son Walter, has poured tens of millions of dollars into population control...
...An aide surely warned Turner that within existing programs, the money would literally be eaten up—in New York City restaurants...
...There's an enormous need for family planning and a very short time window," says heiress Julie Packard...
...The Rockefeller people don't actually say it, of course, but we know what the root cause of poverty is, don't we...
...Those interested in him should get Edward Jay Epstein's brilliant book, Dossier: The Secret History ofArmand Hammer...
...Michael Hammer says that he is "helping people," just as grandpa did...
...The evangelical work of condom distribution continues apace, despite such recent headlines as 'The Population Implosion," and "Birthrates Declining in Much of Africa...
...The rich, of course, have been told so many times that their disproportionate holdings are unjust that they are grateful to accept professional advice in disposing of it...
...Tom Wolfe, where are you now that we really need you...
...Far from doing more of what governments do, he goes directly against their wishes...
...Millionaires get crucial advice on "what groups are most deserving of their money," and then, in a "variation ofthe Junior Year Abroad, the third week of the course takes students to impoverished areas of a foreign country," according to the Times...
...The man with most say in pursuing this noble goal will be the former Colorado senator and undersecretary of state for global affairs, Tim Wirth...
...He has for years been a supporter of abortion rights, and, according to a recent artiHow to give money and stay out of trouble...
...One year it gave $450,000 to the radical Catholics for a Free Choice...
...Above a certain number, they are thought to constitute a destabilizing mass...
...Another population worrier, Ted Turner of CNN, promised $loo million a year for ten years to the United Nations itself...
...Just as "reproductive services" is a euphemism for abortion, so "population" in this context usually means depopulation...
...indeed they will be elevated high within it...
...In the genteel foundation cellars, however, it is allowed to age gracefully and acquire an aroma of respectability...
...The cost of criminalizing drug-users outweighs the benefits of interdiction, he believes...
...Instead of the New York City Opera, the Elie Wiesel Foundation, Ford's Theatre and the Corcoran Gallery of Art," the Post reported, "Hammer's money is now going to Jews for Jesus, Italy for Christ, Don Dennis Ministries [and] Marty Goetz Ministries...
...This year they spent a week in Brazil, first checking into the Copacabana Palace and then setting to work studying the problems that besiege the poverty-stricken slums of Rio de Janeiro...
Vol. 31 • July 1998 • No. 7
