U.N.believable

...Turner wants the gift to go to "non-administrative programs" involving children, land mines, environment, health...

...Even if we assume he gives all the money away, there's a big quo that Turner gets for his quid...

...So here's what Turner gets: For well under a billion dollars, he is being hailed as the world's only billion-dollar philanthropist...

...If Turner chooses to spend only the foundation's income, rather than its capital, he will find himself at the end of a decade exercising near-absolute authority over a globe-spanning multi-billion-dollar foundation, and the only one that enjoys a semi-official relationship with the United Nations...

...And a 501(c)3 charitable foundation of the sort Turner will certainly establish to administer the gifts can only give to qualifying charities—and the U.N...

...is not one...

...It is, by any standard, one hell of an offer...

...So Turner is doing something very big—but it's something other than giving money to the United Nations...

...But an offer of what...

...What it looks like he's doing is setting up a charitable powerhouse whose board will be tightly under his control...

...Since no one thinks the stock market is undervalued, one could easily see the gift winding up at afraction of a billion dollars...

...Nor is the avoidance of capital-gains taxes on his Time-Warner stock the issue, since Turner wants to hold onto all 62.4 million shares of it, anyway...

...He thus gets credit for a piece of financial rescue in a way that arrogates to him the lion's share of the credit for the organization's most popular programs...

...But spread over 10 years, with tax deductions and inflation, the gift will come to less than a billion dollars...

...He's getting credit for bailing out an international organization that he cannot, by law, even contribute to...

...But no one should doubt, either, that Ted Turner has already got his money's worth...

...by congressional estimates (the U.N...

...Prior to Turner's U.N...

...Two weeks later, only three things are certain: First, the gift won't be a billion dollars...

...Turner, who throughout his career at CNN and Time Warner has always shown an uncanny sense of political timing and an ability to anticipate trends, may be reacting to the death of Princess Diana—specifically to the outpouring of sympathy for her charitable work...

...Turner managed to convey both that he had made the decision without the help of his financial advisers, and that they had tried to dissuade him from making a similar gift weeks earlier...

...Charter permits only member states to contribute to the organization's operating expenses...

...U.N.BELIEVABLE by Christopher Caldwell Ted Turner's offer to give a billion dollars to the "cash-strapped" (as it's invariably described) united Nations has not been out of the papers since he sprang it on an audience at the united Nations Association award ceremonies in mid-September...

...And for all Turner's hammering at the "stinginess" of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, among other billionaires, it should be remembered that Gates earlier this year made a $215 million gift to increase Internet access in schools and libraries...

...Turner wants to use the gift to shame not just other billionaires, but also the U.S...

...Turner may not be history's biggest giver— Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller each gave away about $5 billion at current rates—but his contribution is certainly the most heavily spun donation in the annals of philanthropy...

...in the first place, because of two basic problems that he could be expected to notice even without the help of his accountants...

...Originally under the impression that his creation of the first global network and his establishment of the "Goodwill Games" in the 1980s would do the trick, he may now realize that he has to sweeten his resume somewhat...

...at all...

...Second, it won't do anything to solve the united Nations' "cash-strapped" status...

...pledge, in fact, Gates had given five times as much to charity in 1997 as Turner had given in his entire life...

...And before he has given a penny, this heretofore stingy plutocrat has cast himself as the conscience of philanthropic circles, and made himself synonymous with the world's most popular charities...

...Christopher Caldwell is senior writer at The Weekly Standard...

...Because the CNN founder and Time-Warner vice chairman made the gift so impetuously, accountants are still scrambling to work out the details...

...What's more, Turner has insulated himself from downside risk by saying he'll donate a billion dollars or the value of his Time-Warner stock, whichever is lower...

...And third, it won't go to the u.N...

...says the figure is $1.5 billion...

...His only comments on the gift came the day after he announced it, in the course of a tightly controlled conference call...

...Under relevant tax law, such a foundation would have to give away only 5 percent per year of its net worth...

...First, Article 17 of the U.N...

...Sources close to Turner's thinking say he hopes to win the Nobel Peace Prize and has actively sought for years to drum up a nomination...

...It's been widely reported that the billion dollars is the equivalent of the U.N.'s annual budget...

...No one should doubt that this is a gift of huge proportions...

...But wait a second: Turner can't actually give the money to the U.N...

...Not that Turner is making money off the deal, as USA Today suggested in a recent article: Charitable gifts such as his can only be deducted up to 30 percent of the donor's income...

...In fact, the U.N.'s operating and peacekeeping expenses come to $2.6 billion a year, so Turner's gift, which will be separated into 10 tranches of a maximum value of $100 million, will cover less than 4 percent of the budget...

...When Turner was Gates's age, he was giving next to nothing to charity...

...government, which is $900 million in arrears to the U.N...