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Javier E

The 'Black Hole' That Sucks Up Silicon Valley's Money - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...560216

philanthropy silicon valley rich tax shelter money

shared by Javier E on 14 May 18 - No Cached
  • That’s not to say that Silicon Valley’s wealthy aren’t donating their money to charity. Many, including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Larry Page, have signed the Giving Pledge, committing to dedicating the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. But much of that money is not making its way out into the community.
  • The San Francisco Bay Area has rapidly become the richest region in the country—the Census Bureau said last year that median household income was $96,777. It’s a place where $100,000 Teslas are commonplace, “raw water” goes for $37 a jug, and injecting clients with the plasma of youth —a gag on the television show Silicon Valley—is being tried by real companies for just $8,000 a pop.
  • There are many reasons for this, but one of them is likely the increasing popularity of a certain type of charitable account called a donor-advised fund. These funds allow donors to receive big tax breaks for giving money or stock, but have little transparency and no requirement that money put into them is actually spent.
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  • Donor-advised funds are categorized by law as public charities, rather than private foundations, so they have no payout requirements and few disclosure requirements.
  • And wealthy residents of Silicon Valley are donating large sums to such funds
  • critics say that in part because of its structure as a warehouse of donor-advised funds, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation has not had a positive impact on the community it is meant to serve. Some people I talked to say the foundation has had little interest in spending money, because its chief executive, Emmett Carson, who was placed on paid administrative leave after the Chronicle’s report, wanted it to be known that he had created one of the biggest foundations in the country. Carson was “aggressive” about trying to raise money, but “unaggressive about suggesting what clients would do with it,”
  • “Most of us in the local area have seen our support from the foundation go down and not up,” he said.
  • The amount of money going from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to the nine-county Bay Area actually dropped in 2017 by 46 percent, even as the amount of money under management grew by 64 percent, to $13.5 billion
  • “They got so drunk on the idea of growth that they lost track of anything smacking of mission,” he said. It did not help perceptions that the foundation opened offices in New York and San Francisco at the same time local organizations were seeing donations drop.
  • The foundation now gives her organization some grants, but they don’t come from the donor-advised funds, she told me. “I haven’t really cracked the code of how to access those donor-advised funds,” she said. Her organization had been getting between $50,000 and $100,000 a year from United Way that it no longer gets, she said,
  • Rob Reich, the co-director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, set up a donor-advised fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation as an experiment. He spent $5,000—the minimum amount accepted—and waited. He received almost no communication from the foundation, he told me. No emails or calls about potential nonprofits to give to, no information about whether the staff was out looking for good opportunities in the community, no data about how his money was being managed.
  • One year later, despite a booming stock market, his account was worth less than the $5,000 he had put in, and had not been used in any way in the community. His balance was lower because the foundation charges hefty fees to donors who keep their money there. “I was flabbergasted,” he told me. “I didn’t understand what I, as a donor, was getting for my fees.”
  • Though donors receive a big tax break for donating to donor-advised funds, the funds have no payout requirements, unlike private foundations, which are required to disperse 5 percent of their assets each year. With donor-advised funds, “there’s no urgency and no forced payout,”
  • he had met wealthy individuals who said they were setting up donor-advised funds so that their children could disperse the funds and learn about philanthropy—they had no intent to spend the money in their own lifetimes.
  • Fund managers also receive fees for the amount of money they have under management, which means they have little incentive to encourage people to spend the money in their accounts,
  • Transparency is also an issue. While foundations have to provide detailed information about where they give their money, donor-advised funds distributions are listed as gifts made from the entire charitable fund—like the Silicon Valley Community Foundation—rather than from individuals.
  • Donor-advised funds can also be set up anonymously, which makes it hard for nonprofits to engage with potential givers. They also don’t have websites or mission statements like private foundations do, which can make it hard for nonprofits to know what causes donors support.
  • Public charities—defined as organizations that receive a significant amount of their revenue from small donations—were saddled with less oversight, in part because Congress figured that their large number of donors would make sure they were spending their money well, Madoff said. But an attorney named Norman Sugarman, who represented the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, convinced the IRS to categorize a certain type of asset—charitable dollars placed in individually named accounts managed by a public charity—as donations to public, not private, foundations.
  • Donor-advised funds have been growing nationally as the amount of money made by the top 1 percent has grown: Contributions to donor-advised funds grew 15.1 percent in fiscal year 2016, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, while overall charitable contributions grew only 1.4 percent that year
  • Six of the top 10 philanthropies in the country last year, in terms of the amount of nongovernmental money raised, were donor-advised funds,
  • In addition, those funds with high payout rates could just be giving to another donor-advised fund, rather than to a public charity, Madoff says. One-quarter of donor-advised fund sponsors distribute less than 1 percent of their assets in a year,
  • Groups that administer donor-advised funds defend their payout rate, saying distributions from donor-advised funds are around 14 percent of assets a year. But that number can be misleading, because one donor-advised fund could give out all its money, while many more could give out none, skewing the data.
  • Donor-advised funds are especially popular in places like Silicon Valley because they provide tax advantages for donating appreciated stock, which many start-up founders have but don’t necessarily want to pay huge taxes on
  • Donors get a tax break for the value of the appreciated stock at the time they donate it, which can also spare them hefty capital-gains taxes. “Anybody with a business interest can give their business interest before it goes public and save huge amounts of taxes,”
  • Often, people give to donor-advised funds right before a public event like an initial public offering, so they can avoid the capital-gains taxes they’d otherwise have to pay, and instead receive a tax deduction. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan gave $500 million in stock to the foundation in 2012, when Facebook held its initial public offering, and also donated $1 billion in stock in 2013
  • Wealthy donors can also donate real estate and deduct the value of real estate at the time of the donation—if they’d given to a private foundation, they’d only be able to deduct the donor’s basis value (typically the purchase price) of the real estate at the time they acquired it. The difference can be a huge amount of money in the hot market of California.
anonymous

Republican donations surge despite corporate boycott after Capitol riots | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...er-capitol-riots-idUSKBN2B118K

gop cpac capitol riot

shared by anonymous on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Right after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, dozens of U.S. companies announced they would halt political donations to the 147 Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn Donald Trump’s presidential election loss. Two months later, there is little sign that the corporate revolt has done any real damage to Republican fundraising.
  • If anything, the biggest backers of Trump’s false election-fraud narrative - such as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene - have been rewarded with a flood of grassroots donations, more than offsetting the loss of corporate money. And contributions from both small donors and rich individuals looking to fight the Democratic agenda have poured into the party’s fundraising apparatus.
  • Interviews with Republican operatives, big-money donors and fundraisers revealed little apprehension that corporate outrage over the Jan. 6 Capitol riots would damage the party’s fundraising for the 2022 congressional elections.Dan Eberhart, a major Republican fundraiser, said he had predicted for years that Trump’s support would collapse. He believed the Capitol insurrection would be the tipping point.“The data is the opposite,” Eberhart said. “You are seeing a hardening of support for Trump … I think there will be no shortage of money.”
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  • “The Democrats have become our best fundraisers,” said Fred Zeidman, a Republican donor and fundraiser in Houston and chairman of investment bank Gordian Group.
  • Ten corporate PACs examined by Reuters slashed donations in January by more than 90% compared to the same month in 2017, right after the previous presidential election. All ten of the PACs had sworn off donating to the 147 lawmakers.Asked about the corporate boycott, NRCC chairman Tom Emmer, a Minnesota congressman, told Reuters that Republican House members “don’t answer to PACs. We answer to voters.”
  • Hawley, the Missouri senator, was pilloried by Republicans and Democrats for leading the coalition of Senate objectors. He took in $969,000 in donations in January, according to a Feb. 1 memo posted on his website. That is eight times some $120,000 in donations Hawley raised in the first quarter of 2020, regulatory filings show.
rachelramirez

Even Trump's Kids Haven't Donated to His Campaign - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...t-donated-to-his-campaign.html

trump politics US policy

shared by rachelramirez on 28 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Even Trump’s Kids Haven’t Donated to His Campaign
  • With less than two weeks until the election, Donald Trump has amassed an impressive army of small donors, fueling his bid with individual contributions of $200 or less. But noticeably absent from the list of contributors is basically anyone with the last name Trump, many of the surrogates who represent The Donald on national television, and members of his own campaign staff.
  • On Sept. 7, 2016, Eric Trump appears to have contributed $376.20 listed only as “meeting expense: meals.”
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  • Ivanka Trump, who previously contributed to Hillary Clinton and John McCain in 2007 and 2008 respectively, does not appear to have given to her father.
  • t. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former Defense Intelligence Agency director turned Trump warm-up act, has not given the candidate a dime. Neither has Governor Chris Christie
  • Many of Trump’s surrogates, who have been generous in previous campaigns, this year have kept their wallets closed to The Donald.
  • Ben Carson, another staunch Trump defender, gave Mitt Romney $1,000 in April 2012 but nothing to Trump this cycle.
  • And contributions below $200 are not required to be reported by presidential campaigns.
  • The kind of anything goes rule when it comes to donations applies evenly to both candidates in the race and some of Clinton’s team is not on record providing contributions either.
  • However, Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta appears to have given $2,700 on April 16, 2015. And Chelsea Clinton gave her mother’s campaign $2,700 on Jan. 21, 2016. There are also documented contributions from newly-appointed Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook, and former strategist for President Obama David Axelrod.
  • One major Clinton surrogate who is noticeably absent from her extensive list of contributors is billionaire Mark Cuban who has been a public thorn in Trump’s side.
  • And by September, Trump had paid his own businesses around $8.2 million, comprised of rent, food, and facilities and payroll for corporate staffers. He even used tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to buy copies of his own book.
  • Meanwhile, Trump is still asserting that he will invest $100 million in his own campaign
lenaurick

International campaign finance: How do countries compare? - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...global-campaign-finance

international campaign finance politics US history crisis

shared by lenaurick on 29 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • The Center for Responsive Politics estimates $6 billion will be spent in the U.S. elections by campaigns, political parties and corporations hoping to propel their candidates into the White House and what writer Mark Twain once called the "best Congress money can buy."
  • The projected price tag of the 2012 U.S. election dwarfs that of other nations, but corruption monitors from Transparency International (TI) say it's not just how much will be spent but where the money is coming from that threatens the integrity of politics around the world.
  • While the trajectory for spending in U.S. elections is soaring, total party spending in the 2010 general election in the United Kingdom was actually 26% less than in 2005.
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  • the absence of limits on the amount individuals or corporations can donate has contributed to the ongoing erosion of public confidence in the political process in the UK, according to one watchdog organization. "When donors are making contributions exceeding £20,000 ($31,000) -- and some are making donations well over £250,000 ($390,000) -- it's perfectly understandable you don't give away that kind of money without expecting something in return,"
  • n Norway, government funding accounted for 74% of political parties' income in 2010, according to Statistics Norway. And unlike in the U.S., where candidates and their supporters can buy as much television time as they can afford, political ads are banned from television and radio.
  • Corruption monitors say the lack of public funding in India, the world's largest democracy, has contributed to a staggering influx of under the table corporate contributions to candidates that has undercut the integrity of recent elections.
  • Intelligence reports received by India's Electoral Commission suggested that upwards of $2 billion in so-called "black money" will be spent to influence the Uttar Pradesh state elections this year, according to Anupama Jha, executive director of TI India."Everybody knows about black money," Jha told CNN. "Corporations are expected to donate no more than 5 percent of their profits, but they pay more than that under the table. Those who donate funds also control the politicians, and the politicians (become) more accountable to their sponsors than to their constituents."
  • ut it's not just corporate black money that's a problem, but the buying of votes in poor areas with hard cash, and sometimes with smuggled liquor.
  • In the 2009 election in Tamil Nadu, a state with a population roughly the size of France, 33.4% of voters received money from candidates' supporters for their vote, according to a poll by India's Centre of Media Studies -- and in 2011, voters were lured to the polls with blenders, grinders and other household appliances.
  • "This is why good people don't want to contest elections ... so ultimately you vote for corrupt people, because those are the only people you have to choose from."
  • The parties try to hijack whatever they can hijack in Russia," Panfilova told CNN
  • "There are two sets of rules in Russia -- one set for parties who are paying out of their own pockets, and another for the party and candidates with access to public resources," says Elena Panfilova, head of TI Russia.
  • While there are no limitations on the amount U.S. political parties can spend on televison ads, broadcast time in Russia is doled out on a limited basis, and is proportionate to the results of the last election.
  • Roughly $2 billion was spent by parties and candidates in the 2010 presidential election, according to Claudio Weber Abramo, executive director of TI Brazil.
  • Nearly 98% of winner Dilma Rouseff's campaign donations -- and 95.5% of her main opponent's -- came from corporations, says Abramo.Abramo says corporations donated 99.04% of all money spent in Sao Paulo, Brazil's most populous state, during the 2010 election -- a reflection mainly of voters' apathy and politicians' failure to form relationships with their constituents.
  • "The distribution of money reveals something deeper in the Brazilian political landscape, which is that citizens are not very much concerned about supporting parties and having a political life."While some observers want to ban corporate spending outright, Abramo says that will only make it harder to track corporate influence on politics in the country."The interests are still there even if you prohibit corporations from donating to candidates above the board," he told CNN. "They will do it in a hidden way, and they will lose visibility."
  • no reliable information exists for how much money was spent during the 2011 presidential election in Nigeria.
  • While Nigerian law gives the country's election commission the right to set a maximum spending limit for parties, the commission neglected to do so before the 2011 election, according to Magnus Ohman."Parties can do whatever they want, there's no limit to the amount they can spend," Ohman told CNN. "Candidates do have limits, but the money they get from their parties is excluded from that limit."
  • 2011 elections were hailed as a step forward in Nigeria's evolution as a young democracy, the lack of restraint on political spending is a worrying development for election monitors."It really was an expensive election not only at a presidential level but also at the gubernatorial level, especially down in the south," said Ohman. "It's an electoral system where you need to spend."
  • UK corruption monitor Chandu Krishnan says an ever-increasing amount of money in elections is a global problem."In many countries across the world, the cost of elections is increasing," he told CNN. "If parties and politicians can't find the resources from the state, there is an increasing desperation to seek them from private sources -- and that is where the corruption comes in."
carolinehayter

GOP group tells online donors: Give every month or 'we will have to tell Trump you're a... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...rechecked-boxes-trump-defector

GOP politics US trump policy Culture

shared by carolinehayter on 08 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • The campaign arm of House Republicans is using an aggressive tactic to push online donors toward committing to monthly contributions, telling them that opting out of having the same amount automatically charged to their credit card or withdrawn from their bank each month is an act of disloyalty toward former President Donald Trump.
  • "We need to know we haven't lost you to the Radical Left. If you UNCHECK this box, we will have to tell Trump you're a DEFECTOR & sided with the Dems."
  • "If you want Trump to run for President this is your LAST chance to FLIP the House," donors are told above another pre-checked box. "Change your Trump Victory Fund Status to ACTIVE now! Remain inactive = Republicans lose."
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  • ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform, allows some groups to use such boxes.
  • But Republicans -- including Trump's 2020 campaign -- have gone to new lengths to tap into Trump's popularity and strong-arm supporters into regular, automatic contributions.
  • The NRCC's language was first reported by the Bulwark, a news site run by anti-Trump conservatives, which highlighted similar pre-checked boxes the NRCC has used in recent weeks, including one that told donors to "check this box if you want Trump to run again" -- when, in reality, what donors were being asked to do was leave checked a box that signed them up to make monthly donations
  • "As a TOP grassroots supporter, we were surprised to see you ABANDONED him. This is your LAST CHANCE to update your status to ACTIVE!" the pre-checked box said.
  • Using the same tactics that the New York Times reported Trump's campaign used -- provoking complaints and a surge of refunds -- the larger, ominous warnings are placed above more easily missed, smaller fonts that make clear what donors are actually committing to do.
  • The NRCC's pre-checked boxes also appear to ignore the cease-and-desist letter Trump's lawyers recently sent to Republican committees instructing them not to use his likeness to raise money.
  • The NRCC's counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, also uses pre-checked boxes to sign online donors up for automatic monthly contributions.But the language donors see from the DCCC is straightforward about what they're being asked to do.
  • On the DCCC's ActBlue page, donors are asked immediately under their selection of an amount to donate to "Make it monthly!" The "Yes, count me in!" box is pre-checked, and has a "No, donate once" alternative next to it. Those who do opt for monthly donations then see a window thanking them for their monthly contributions, with an option to click a link to "Make this a one-time contribution instead."
  • "Unlike the NRCC, we use clear language and confirm with our grassroots supporters that they would like to set up a recurring monthly donation," DCCC spokeswoman Helen Kalla said.
katherineharron

Biden 2020 campaign: New analysis shows how women helped fuel fundraisingsurge - CNNPol... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

biden

shared by katherineharron on 26 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Donations from women to Democrat Joe Biden's presidential campaign surged as he picked California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate -- widening the gap in political giving between Biden and President Donald Trump
  • The Biden-Harris ticket received more than $33.4 million in itemized contributions from women in August -- more than double the $13.7 million the Democrat's campaign had collected from female donors the previous month
  • By comparison, Trump's campaign raised far less money -- roughly $8.7 million in itemized contributions -- from women in August
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  • Biden announced Harris as his choice for vice president on August 11, and in interviews, some Democratic women donors described a concerted effort to flood the campaign with cash in support of Biden's choice
  • Harris' sorority sisters, who have made more than 22,000 donations in increments of $19.08 -- marking the year, 1908, that Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. was founded at Howard University.
  • Polls show Trump consistently lagging behind Biden in surveys of women voters.
  • The cash infusion in August helped Biden and his aligned party committees shatter the single-month fundraising record for a presidential contender and helped fuel an advertising blitz for the former vice president as the fall campaign swung into view.
  • The gap has only grown wider as Biden has outpaced the President in overall fundraising.
  • And women have contributed $2 billion to federal candidates in this cycle, surpassing the $1.3 billion they donated in 2016 when Democrat Hillary Clinton sought the presidency, according to the Center for Responsive Politics
  • "They realized they need to have a role and a voice because this was a place affecting their lives and the lives of their families, and they couldn't sit on the sidelines," she said.
  • The lopsided support for the Biden-Harris ticket among female donors who give in larger amounts comes as women have stepped up their political activity more broadly. This year, a record 298 women are running in the general election for US House seats, topping the previous record of 234, set during the 2018 midterms, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
  • The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks money in politics, identifies donors' gender by applying an algorithm that compares the most popular US Census names to the names of donors reported to the Federal Election Commission
  • The growing influence of women donors is no accident. Donors and strategists have worked for years help direct political money to female candidates.
  • For instance, Electing Women Bay Area -- a "giving group" with 100 members in Northern California -- financially supports Democratic women in competitive races
  • "One of the things we have long stressed ... is this idea that men are used to writing the checks, and it's a muscle that has to be exercised," said Alexandra Acker-Lyons, who is Electing Women Bay Area's political director and runs her own philanthropic and political consulting firm. "Much like being a voter is a habit, being a donor is a habit."
  • Once it became clear that Biden intended to pick a female vice presidential nominee, some donors timed their contributions to make a big splash
  • "The fact that it was Kamala made it even made it even more intentional," she said, "because we were, and obviously still are, in a moment in our country where we particularly wanted to show up for a black woman nominee."
  • "Almost immediately, I started to see $19.08, $19.08, $19.08 on repeat," Clayton Cox, the Democratic National Committee's finance director, said of the stream of new donations that began popping up the day Harris joined the ticket.
  • More than 22,500 donations in increments of $19.08 have flowed into the Biden Victory Fund-- bringing in more than $430,000,
  • Michelle Arrington, an Atlanta attorney who pledged AKA at Howard a decade after Harris, has long supported Harris' political campaigns, dating back to her bid for California attorney general. Harris' push to promote research into uterine fibroids -- a condition Arrington has faced and that disproportionately afflicts Black women -- underscores the value of broad representation in government, she said.
  • But the informal movement to donate in amounts that reflects sorority's founding date was no surprise, she said. "It's indicative of the types of things we do: We'll start meetings at 12:08 or 7:08 p.m."
Javier E

How the Mormons Make Money - Businessweek - 0 views

www.businessweek.com/...how-the-mormons-make-money

mormon business theology

shared by Javier E on 22 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • “The Mormon Church is very different than any other church. … Traditional Christianity and Judaism make a clear distinction between what is spiritual and what is temporal, while Mormon theology specifically denies that there is such a distinction.”
  • To Latter-day Saints, opening megamalls, operating a billion-dollar media and insurance conglomerate, and running a Polynesian theme park are all part of doing God’s work. Says Quinn: “In the Mormon [leadership’s] worldview, it’s as spiritual to give alms to the poor, as the old phrase goes in the Biblical sense, as it is to make a million dollars.”
  • “There are religious groups that own radio stations, but they don’t also own cattle ranches. There are religious groups that own retreats, but they don’t also own insurance companies,” says Ryan Cragun, a sociology professor at the University of Tampa and co-author of the recently published book Could I Vote for a Mormon for President? “Given their array of corporate interests, it would probably make more sense to refer to them as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Holdings Inc.”
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  • As a religious organization, the LDS Church enjoys several tax advantages. Like other churches, it is often exempt from paying taxes on the real estate properties it leases out, even to commercial entities, says tax lawyer David Miller, who is not Mormon. The church also doesn’t pay taxes on donated funds and holdings.
  • Under U.S. law, churches can legally turn around and sell donated stock without paying capital-gains taxes, a clear advantage for both donor and receiver.
  • According to U.S. law, religions have no obligation to open their books to the public, and the LDS Church officially stopped reporting any finances in the early 1960s. In 1997 an investigation by Time used cross-religious comparisons and internal information to estimate the church’s total value at $30 billion. The magazine also produced an estimate that $5 billion worth of tithing flows into the church annually, and that it owned at least $6 billion in stocks and bonds.
  • a recent investigation by Reuters in collaboration with sociology professor Cragun estimates that the LDS Church is likely worth $40 billion today and collects up to $8 billion in tithing each year.
  • Several high-ranking church insiders told him that the church’s finances are so compartmentalized that no single person, not even the president, knows the entirety of its holdings
  • it’s important to start at the very top: The Mormon Church is owned and run by what is called the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This entity is a “corporation sole,” which is an obscure legal body owned entirely by one person. In the case of the Mormon Church, that person is Monson, the prophet.
  • McMullin says the Mormon Church has “two or three or four for-profit entities under the Presiding Bishopric,” and names DMC, AgReserves, and Suburban Land Reserve. He says DMC has about “2,000 to 3,000 employees.” He also confirms Hoover’s estimate that DMC has annual revenue of roughly $1.2 billion
  • The Mormon belief in the spiritual value of financial success goes back to 1830, when the religion’s founder, Joseph Smith, announced to his followers that God had told him the following: “Verily I say unto you, that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal.” In other words, historian Quinn translates, “whether it’s investing in a merchandising store, or tannery, or a lumber mill, or a hotel, or a bank—all of which occurred under Joseph Smith’s leadership—according to that 1830 revelation, it’s all spiritual.”
  • In its early days, the church’s entrepreneurial rigor was fueled by necessity. Mormons, who clashed with neighbors and government authorities over practices such as polygamy, often had to fend for themselves. The group also espoused separatist financial goals of “erecting and maintaining an improved economic system for its members,” according to historian Leonard J. Arrington, who points out that 88 of Smith’s 112 revelations deal directly or indirectly with economic matters.
  • When Mormons arrived in Utah in 1847 it was a barren territory, still under Mexican jurisdiction. To settle the land, Arrington writes, over a 15-year period in the late 1800s, “Mormons constructed 200 miles of territorial railroad, a $300,000 woolen mill, a large cotton factory, a wholesale-retail concern with sales of $6,000,000 a year, more than 150 local general stores, and at least 500 local cooperative manufacturing and service enterprises.”
  • oday, Temple Square is filled with statues glorifying the industry of those pioneers. The state emblem is a beehive, in honor of diligent work, and the term “deseret,” used in the titles of many Latter-day enterprises, derived from the Book of Mormon, means “honeybee.”
  • Until the 1990s, wards—the Mormon equivalent of parishes—kept some donated member money locally to distribute for aid and activities as they saw fit. Today all money is wired directly to Salt Lake City. McMullin insists that not one penny of tithing goes to the church’s for-profit endeavors, but it’s impossible for church members to know for sure. Although the Mormon Doctrine and Covenants says “all things shall be done by common consent in the church,” members are not provided with any financial accounting.
  • the Mormon Church donates only about 0.7 percent of its annual income to charity; the United Methodist Church gives about 29 percent.
  • “Though the church’s monetary donations are significant, much of the ‘value’ of our service is not monetary, but in the hundreds of thousands of hours of service and the talent and expertise given by church members to help others around the world.”
  • The LDS Church’s legions of missionaries and volunteers don’t merely spread the Mormon message around the world; they’re also vital to the church’s businesses. According to McMullin, DMC alone employs 1,400 “people who are volunteering their time and their services—some are part-time and some are volunteer.” Many of these members being asked to serve full- or part-time are retirees.
grayton downing

Ruling in Lhota Bid Is Blow to New York Law Limiting Donations - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ited-donations-court-says.html

new york donations law politics

shared by grayton downing on 24 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that a conservative group supporting the mayoral candidacy of Joseph J. Lhota may accept contributions of any size, saying New York State’s limit on donations to independent political groups was probably unconstitutional.
  • The case was brought by New York Progress and Protection PAC, which said that a conservative donor from Alabama, Shaun McCutcheon, pledged to donate at least $200,000 to the group, and that other donors were likely to do the same.
  • “This was a very good and clear decision by the court, and it’s consistent with courts all across the United States.”
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  • “This could usher in an era where super PACs call the shots in campaigns all over the state, not just in the city,”
  • “Today’s decision will empower the right-wing billionaires, like the Koch brothers, and Tea Party groups who support Joe Lhota to drown out the voices of New Yorkers,” said Lis Smith, a spokeswoman for the de Blasio campaign. “The stakes are too high to let the same Republican extremists who shut down the government hijack the mayoral election.”
  • But the ruling on Thursday, by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, said the group’s challenge of the contribution limit had a “substantial likelihood of success,” noting that many other courts had struck down similar laws.
  • “With this decision, New York City voters will now get a more democratic mayoral race, one with an even financial playing field,” Mr. Pell said. “This will result in a campaign where ideas speak rather than money.”
  • “Elections should empower the free expression of all voices, and not just act as auctions where office is sold to the highest bidder,” she said.
  • “Attorney General Schneiderman believes that every voter should have an equal voice in our democracy, and that New York’s campaign finance laws are essential to protecting the integrity and fairness of our elections,” Mr. LaVera said.
katyshannon

Texas Eliminates Funding to Planned Parenthood | TIME - 0 views

time.com/...texas-planned-parenthood

texas cutting funding planned parenthood time US history policy crisis

shared by katyshannon on 20 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Texas is eliminating taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood in the state, based on concerns over the organization’s fetal tissue donations, the governor announced on Monday.
  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office issued a statement, saying Texas is ending Medicaid’s participation with Planned Parenthood, which means the women’s reproductive health nonprofit will no longer receive Medicaid funding in the state.
  • “Following the release of gruesome videos filmed at Planned Parenthood facilities, including Gulf Coast in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott announced his LIFE Initiative to provide greater protections for children in the womb and prevent the sale of baby body parts,” Abbott’s statement reads. The cancellation “calls for funding to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers out of taxpayer money to be eliminated completely, both at the State and local levels,” according to the announcement.
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  • Abbott said that canceling Medicaid participation for Planned Parenthood in Texas moves the state closer to “providing greater access to safe healthcare for women while protecting our most vulnerable – the unborn.”
  • Planned Parenthood has long said that its fetal tissue donations are legal, since the organization did not accept payment for the donations beyond the reimbursement of costs. On Oct. 13, Planned Parenthood announced that it will no longer accept reimbursements for expenses related to donated fetal tissue. “Planned Parenthood’s policies on fetal tissue donation already exceed the legal requirements,” Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards wrote in a letter to the National Institutes of Health. “Now we’re going even further in order to take away any basis for attacking Planned Parenthood to advance an anti-abortion political agenda.”
  • katyshannon on 20 Oct 15
     
    Texas cuts funding to Planned Parenthood
Javier E

Taxpayers may have paid $10 million to help wealthy families bribe their way into elite... - 0 views

www.marketwatch.com/...-into-elite-schools-2019-03-14

philanthropy scandal admission college

shared by Javier E on 15 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • In a worst-case scenario, if all $25 million that the accused parents allegedly paid out was funneled through a public charity and claimed as tax deductions, as prosecutors outlined in a criminal complaint, then taxpayers chipped in as much as $10 million
  • “Assuming these are all high-income individuals, they’re all paying at the highest tax rate, which presumably was about 40%, roughly,” Hackney told MarketWatch. “Assuming they were able to deduct the entirety of it, that would be 40% of the $25 million. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 [million] to $10 million, approximately, that taxpayers are footing the bill for, and that’s troubling.”
  • Had Charity Navigator’s reviewers examined Key Worldwide Foundation, a few red flags would have stood out immediately, she said. For one, the charity listed $3.7 million in revenue in 2016 (the last year it filed a Form 990) but said it spent nothing on fundraising costs. That’s unusual, Post said. The foundation also claimed to make grants to other nonprofits, but, despite the nearly $4 million in took in 2016, it made only one $10,000 grant to another group. That would be “concerning” to Charity Navigator,
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  • The wealthy parents charged in the scheme seemed to assume they wouldn’t get caught as long as their payments were disguised as contributions to a charity, and that worries Hackney, the Pitt professor. It seems to indicate a perception that charities aren’t closely scrutinized, and that the wealthy can use them to do their bidding
  • “It tells us there’s a problematic culture developing at high-income levels in charitable giving,” Hackney said. “Something’s out of whack with our system of inequality and our philanthropic systems. Even though it wasn’t an actual charity, they saw philanthropy as a weak space, a place they could arbitrage and take advantage of.”
  • That’s partly based in reality, said Hackney, who worked in the office of the chief counsel of the IRS before joining the university faculty. The IRS is underfunded and short-staffed. The audit rate is, in general, “really low” and even lower for charities
  • And philanthropy is indeed increasingly the domain of the very wealthy. Charitable giving reached an all-time high in 2017, but that was largely due to big donations from America’s richest families. In 2018, donations of $1,000 or more increased by 2.6%, while donations in the $250 to $999 range dropped by 4%, and donations of under $250 dropped by 4.4
  • “Giving is increasing because of larger gifts from richer donors,” said Elizabeth Boris of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. “Smaller and midlevel donors are slowly but surely disappearing — across the board, among all organizations.”
rerobinson03

U.S. Covid Vaccine Donations Will Go to 'Wide Range' of Nations - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nations-coronavirus-biden.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 07 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The White House, besieged with requests from other nations to share its supply of coronavirus vaccine, announced Thursday that it would distribute an initial 25 million doses this month across a “wide range of countries” in Latin America and the Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa, as well as the Palestinian territories, war-ravaged Gaza and the West Bank.
  • Thursday’s announcement comes a week before Mr. Biden leaves for Cornwall, England, to meet with the heads of state of the Group of 7 industrialized nations, where the global vaccine supply is certain to be a topic of discussion. Officials said the Biden administration would donate additional doses throughout the summer as they become available.
  • Some African nations have less than 1 percent of their populations partly vaccinated, according to data from the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford, and the percentages of vaccinated people in Honduras and Guatemala are around 3 percent of the population.
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  • Mr. Biden’s pledge to donate 80 million doses this month involves vaccines made by four manufacturers. Besides AstraZeneca, they are Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, the last three of which have received U.S. emergency authorization for their vaccines.
  • The president has described the vaccine donations as part of an “entirely new effort” to increase vaccine supplies and vastly expand manufacturing capacity, most of it in the United States. To further broaden supply, Mr. Biden recently announced he would support waiving intellectual property protections for coronavirus vaccines. He also put Mr. Zients in charge of developing a global vaccine strategy.
hannahcarter11

Dolly Parton learned she funded the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine when the rest of us did - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

vaccine cnn coronavirus Dolly Parton

shared by hannahcarter11 on 01 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • The diminutive diva's $1 million donation to Covid-19 research was partly used to fund Moderna's promising Covid-19 vaccine -- something she didn't even know until her name appeared among other sponsors in a preliminary report on the vaccine.
  • The Moderna vaccine is thought to be 94.5% effective against coronavirus, according to early data released by the company.
  • Parton first donated to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center's Covid-19 research efforts in early April, when there were around 200,000 cases of Covid-19 in the US.
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  • Parton, who said she'd found out her donation contributed to the vaccine trial on Tuesday morning,
  • Vaccinations could begin as soon as late December, top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said, though they'll be made available first to high-risk groups like health care workers, the elderly and people with underlying medical conditions.
  • In April, Parton encouraged her fans who could afford it to donate to the Vanderbilt Health Covid-19 research fund. Since then, it's raised more than $100,000 of its $250,000 goal.
cartergramiak

Trump Forms PAC in Hopes of Keeping Hold on G.O.P. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-pac.html

trump gop Policy

shared by cartergramiak on 10 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • President Trump is has formed a so-called leadership political action committee, a federal fund-raising vehicle that will potentially let him retain his hold on the Republican Party even after he leaves office.
  • The move comes just days after the major news networks and newspapers, as well as The Associated Press, called the 2020 election for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
  • Such committees can accept donations of up to $5,000 per donor per year — far less than the donation limits for the committees formed by Mr. Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee — but a leadership PAC could accept donations from an unlimited number of people. It could also accept donations from other political action committees.
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  • On Monday night, fund-raising solicitations from the Trump campaign revealed that 60 percent of donations would be directed to the new entity, “Save America.”
  • “The president always planned to do this, win or lose,” Mr. Murtaugh said, “so he can support candidates and issues he cares about, such as combating voter fraud.”
  • Still, a PAC could give the president an off-ramp after a bruising election fight, as well as keep him as a dominant figure as the next Republican presidential primary races are beginning for a new standard-bearer.
  • Even as Mr. Biden has gathered more than the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win, and as he has taken leads of tens of thousands of votes in several battleground states, Mr. Trump has maintained there was voter fraud on a wide scale, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He has directed his campaign to march forward with legal challenges in states like Arizona and Nevada, despite most advisers believing that the race is over and that he should move on.
  • While the leadership PAC could not help him in such an effort, it could provide an interim vehicle that would let him travel and engage in some political activity, even if he never actually runs again.
izzerios

Donations to Foundation Vexed Hillary Clinton's Aides, Emails Show - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nton-foundation-wikileaks.html

hillary clinton foundation

shared by izzerios on 27 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • In the years before Hillary Clinton announced she would run again for president, her top aides expressed profound concerns in internal emails about how foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton’s own moneymaking ventures would affect Mrs. Clinton’s political future.
  • The emails, obtained by hackers and being gradually released by WikiLeaks this month,
  • personal income from some foundation donors and “gets many expensive gifts from them.”
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  • Clinton Foundation gathering in Morocco at the behest of its king, who had pledged $12 million to the charity.
  • “She created this mess and she knows it,” a close aide, Huma Abedin, wrote of Mrs. Clinton in a January 2015 email.
  • Founded in 1997, when Mr. Clinton was still president, the foundation has raised roughly $2 billion to fund projects around the world, helping African farmers improve their yields, Haitians recover from a devastating 2010 earthquake and millions of people gain access to cheaper H.I.V./AIDS medication, among other accomplishments.
  • At the time, she was beginning to exert influence at the foundation, expressing concerns that Mr. Band and others were trying to use the charity to make money for themselves, and accusing another aide in her father’s personal office of installing spyware.
  • One such donor, Laureate International Universities, a for-profit education company based in Baltimore, was paying Mr. Clinton $3.5 million annually “to provide advice” and serve as its honorary chairman
  • Chelsea Clinton helped enlist an outside law firm to audit the Clinton Foundation’s practices.
  • the foundation “ensure that all donors are properly vetted and that no inappropriate quid pro quos are offered to donors in return for contributions.”
  • In August, the foundation said it would no longer accept foreign donations should Mrs. Clinton win the White House.
  • Russian government’s efforts to use cyberattacks to influence the election in favor of the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump.
  • asked whether Mrs. Clinton’s name would be used in connection with the foundation, which is formally known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. “It will invite press scrutiny and she’ll be held accountable for what happens there,”
  • a lawyer and top aide, said she discussed with Mrs. Clinton various “steps” to take to adjust her relationship with the foundation, including her resignation from the foundation’s board.
  • Mr. Band, who helped Mr. Clinton build the foundation, clearly felt irritated by Chelsea Clinton’s stream of implications that he had padded his own pockets from his work for her father.
  • “As they say, the apple doesn’t fall far,” he wrote. “A kiss on the cheek while she is sticking the knife in the back, and front.”
anonymous

The White Supremacist And Extremist Donors To Trump's 2020 Campaign | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...020_n_5f9336c7c5b6494ba13be8d8

shared by anonymous on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign has repeatedly accepted donations from well-known white supremacists, extremists
  • The Trump campaign, which did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on this story, has been aware of at least some of the white supremacists’ donations, past media reports show
  • it is common practice for political campaigns to voluntarily forfeit donations from extremists.
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  • American Bridge 21st Century found 30 extremist donors giving money directly to the Trump reelection campaign
  • Overall, the extremists’ donations added up to more than $120,000 dating back to 2015, including about $50,000 given to Trump’s 2020 bid.
  • Just this week, yet another White House official, this time deputy communications director Julia Hahn, was exposed as having deep ties to white supremacists. 
  • The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremists, calls Geller “probably the best known — and the most unhinged — anti-Muslim ideologue in the United States.” 
  • In 2011, after Norwegian white supremacist Anders Breivik killed 77 people to promote his manifesto against the “Islamization of Europe,” it was revealed that Breivik had cited Geller’s writings 12 times in that document.
katherineharron

Feds chased suspected foreign link to Trump's 2016 campaign cash for three years - CNNP... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

trump

shared by katherineharron on 14 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • federal prosecutors investigated whether money flowing through an Egyptian state-owned bank could have backed millions of dollars Donald Trump donated to his own campaign days before he won the 2016 election
  • It represents one of the most prolonged efforts by federal investigators to understand the President's foreign financial ties, and became a significant but hidden part of the special counsel's pursuits.
  • The investigation was kept so secret that at one point investigators locked down an entire floor of a federal courthouse in Washington, DC, so Mueller's team could fight for the Egyptian bank's records in closed-door court proceedings following a grand jury subpoena.
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  • It's not clear that investigators ever had concrete evidence of a relevant bank transfer from the Egyptian bank. But multiple sources said there was sufficient information to justify the subpoena and keep the criminal campaign finance investigation open after the Mueller probe ended.
  • Justice Department confirmed that when the special counsel's office shut down in 2019, Mueller transferred an ongoing foreign campaign contribution investigation to prosecutors in Washington. Some of CNN's sources have confirmed that the case, which Mueller cryptically called a "foreign campaign contribution" probe, was in fact the Egypt investigation.
  • The probe was confirmed this week by a Justice Department senior official who responded to CNN's queries: "The case was first looked at by the Special Counsel investigators who failed to bring a case, and then it was looked at by the US attorney's office, and career prosecutors in the national security section, who also were unable to bring a case. Based upon the recommendations of both the FBI and those career prosecutors, Michael Sherwin, the acting US attorney, formally closed the case in July."
  • there could have been money from an Egyptian bank that ended up backing Trump's last-minute injection of $10 million into his 2016 campaign, according to two of the sources.
  • Yet neither the special counsel's office, nor prosecutors who carried on the case after Mueller, got a complete picture of the President's financial entanglements. Prosecutors in Washington even proposed subpoenaing financial records tied to Trump, before top officials finally concluded this summer they had reached a dead end, the sources said.
  • Mueller's primary task was to investigate Russian government attempts to interfere in the 2016 election, which had consumed the political and investigative conversations in the early days of Trump's presidency. But Mueller's mandate also allowed him to take on related criminal investigations, which in this case included another probe of potential foreign influence connected to the campaign.
  • Zainab Ahmad, a former international terrorism prosecutor, and Brandon Van Grack, a national security and counterintelligence specialist, co-led it, according to sources. Public records also show they focused on cases separate from other trial attorneys in the special counsel's office and had senior titles equivalent to other Mueller team leaders.
  • Mueller's team tried to understand both the $10 million contribution Trump gave to his campaign 11 days before the 2016 election and the Trump campaign's ties to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, according to sources and redacted interview records released from the Mueller investigation.
  • One official familiar with the work said some investigators believed the Egypt inquiry presented a more direct avenue for Mueller's team to examine Trump's finances, in part because it did not have an obvious tie to Russia.
  • Soon enough, the bank was arguing it shouldn't have to give Mueller records because it was interchangeable with the foreign government that owned it. The US courts disagreed repeatedly, saying the company couldn't be immune from the Mueller team subpoena.  
  • Mueller's office pressed witnesses to explain how the Trump-Sisi meeting in late 2016 came about. Ahmad, whose aims on the investigation were cloaked in secrecy, was repeatedly present in interviews touching on both Trump's $10 million contribution to his campaign and the campaign's ties to Egypt.
  • In a session months later, Bannon was asked about Trump's $10 million contribution to his campaign, according to another recent release of Mueller's interview memos.
  • Mueller asked the President, "Did any person or entity inform you during the campaign that any foreign government or foreign leader, other than Russia or Vladimir Putin, had provided, wished to provide, or offered to provide tangible support to your campaign?" Trump wrote back in his written answers that he had "no recollection of being told during the campaign" of support from a foreign government.
  • Needing a final push before Election Day as the polls tightened in 2016, the Trump campaign was running low on cash. Trump's top campaign officials scrambled to convince Trump to inject money, according to memos of witness interviews from the investigation and contemporaneous news reports. Trump lagged well behind a pledge he made to spend $100 million of his own money on his campaign. Less than two weeks before Election Day, Trump wrote his campaign a $10 million check, publicly calling it a loan. Campaign finance records showed it as his single largest political contribution, by far, and not one the campaign would reimburse him for.
  • When the federal appeals court in Washington, DC, heard arguments in the case in December 2018, security cleared journalists from an entire floor of the federal courthouse, allowing attorneys involved in the case to enter and exit the building and the courtroom without being seen.
  • The case even landed before the Supreme Court in early 2019. The high court ultimately declined the company's bid to block Mueller's subpoena in March 2019.  Even then, however, the standoff between US prosecutors and the Egyptian bank ended in a stalemate. 
  • In the end, it was the bank's word against the investigators. The court proceedings ended with prosecutors getting nothing more than what the bank was willing to turn over, and the bank was excused from hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines that had accrued for defying the subpoena. It appeared to be a dead end -- and not justification enough for Mueller to keep his office open to finish this case alone.
  • In late March 2019, shortly after Mueller's investigation concluded, Howell, overseeing final court proceedings in the Egyptian bank's subpoena case,  asked a prosecutor point-blank if the investigation was over. "No, it's continuing. I can say it's continuing robustly," David Goodhand of the DC US attorney's office told the court.
  • Liu told prosecutors she didn't believe they had met the standard needed to seek the records. The investigation stagnated, but Liu didn't close the case. She declined to comment for this story.
  • It's unclear how much activity occurred after Liu rejected the subpoena request. Prosecutors who disagreed with her decision believed it was now impossible to resolve questions about Trump's 2016 campaign contribution. Liu told people in her office that if the investigation had produced enough evidence, Mueller would have made the decision to take additional steps, according to sources.
  • On paper, Mueller described the investigation with only three vague words: "Foreign campaign contribution."
Javier E

How a Scottish Moral Philosopher Got Elon Musk's Number - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ective-altruism-elon-musk.html

philosopher philanthropy moral strategy

shared by Javier E on 09 Oct 22 - No Cached
  • a Scottish moral philosopher.The philosopher, William MacAskill,
  • his latest book, “What We Owe the Future,” became a best seller after it was published in August.
  • His rising profile parallels the worldwide growth of the giving community he helped found, effective altruism. Once a niche pursuit for earnest vegans and volunteer kidney donors who lived frugally so that they would have more money to give away for cheap medical interventions in developing countries, it has emerged as a significant force in philanthropy, especially in millennial and Gen-Z giving.
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  • In a few short years, effective altruism has become the giving philosophy for many Silicon Valley programmers, hedge funders and even tech billionaires. That includes not just Mr. Bankman-Fried but also the Facebook and Asana co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, who are devoting much of their fortune to the cause.
  • “If I can help encourage people who do have enormous resources to not buy yachts and instead put that money toward pandemic preparedness and A.I. safety and bed nets and animal welfare that’s just like a really good thing to do,” Mr. MacAskill said.
  • Mr. Musk has not officially joined the movement but he and Mr. MacAskill have known each other since 2015, when they met at an effective altruism conference. Mr. Musk has also said on Twitter that Mr. MacAskill’s giving philosophy is similar to his own.
  • Mr. MacAskill was one of the founders of the group Giving What We Can, started at Oxford in 2009. Members promised to give away at least 10 percent of what they earned to the most cost-effective charities possible.
  • If the movement has an ur-text, it is the Australian philosopher Peter Singer’s article, “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” published in 1972. The essay, which argued that there was no difference morally between the obligation to help a person dying on the street in front of your house and the obligation to help people who were dying elsewhere in the world, emerged as a kind of “sleeper hit” for young people in the past two decades,
  • Traditionally, effective altruism was focused on finding the lowest-cost interventions that did the most good. The classic example is insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent mosquitoes from giving people malaria.
  • Mr. MacAskill argues that people living today have a responsibility not just to people halfway around the world but also those in future generations.
  • The rise of this kind of thinking, known as longtermism, has meant the Effective Altruists are increasingly associated with causes that have the ring of science fiction to them — like preventing artificial intelligence from running amok or sending people to distant planets to increase our chances of survival as a species
  • The two men first met in 2012, when Mr. Bankman-Fried was a student at M.I.T. with an interest in utilitarian philosophy.
  • Over lunch, Mr. Bankman-Fried said that he was interested in working on issues related to animal welfare. Mr. MacAskill suggested that he might do more good by entering a high-earning field and donating money to the cause than by working for it directly.
  • Mr. Bankman-Fried contacted the Humane League and other charities, asking if they would prefer his time or donations based on his expected earnings if he went to work in tech or finance. They opted for the money, and he embarked on a remunerative career, eventually founding the cryptocurrency exchange FTX in 2019.
  • Bloomberg recently estimated that Mr. Bankman-Fried was worth $10.5 billion, even after the recent crash in crypto prices. That puts Mr. Bankman-Fried in the unusual position of having earned his enormous fortune on behalf of the effective altruism cause, rather than making the money and then searching for a sense of purpose in donating it.
  • Mr. Bankman-Fried said he expected to give away the bulk of his fortune in the next 10 to 20 years.
  • Mr. Moskovitz and Ms. Tuna’s net worth is estimated at $12.7 billion. They founded their own group, Good Ventures, in 2011. The group said it had given $1.96 billion in donations
  • Those two enormous fortunes, along with giving by scores of highly paid engineers at tech companies, mean the community is exceptionally well funded.
  • Mr. MacAskill said that he got to know Mr. Musk better through Igor Kurganov, a professional poker player and effective altruist, who briefly advised Mr. Musk on philanthropy.
  • In August, Mr. Musk retweeted Mr. MacAskill’s book announcement to his 108 million followers with the observation: “Worth reading. This is a close match for my philosophy.” Yet instead of wholeheartedly embracing that endorsement as many would, Mr. MacAskill posted a typically earnest and detailed thread in response about some of the places he agreed — and many areas where he disagreed — with Mr. Musk. (They did not see eye to eye on near-term space settlement, for one.)
  • Mr. MacAskill accepts responsibility for what he calls misconceptions about the community. “I take a significant amount of blame,” he said, “for being a philosopher who was unprepared for this amount of media attention.”
katyshannon

Planned Parenthood Sues Ohio In Dispute Over Fetal Tissue - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...wsuit_566e0541e4b0e292150e4e15

planned parenthood ohio dispute tissue politics US

shared by katyshannon on 14 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Planned Parenthood sued Ohio's health director on Sunday in a dispute over how the organization's affiliates handle the disposal of fetal tissue in the state.
  • The organization is accusing the state's health department of changing the interpretation of a fetal tissue disposal rule without notice and then unfairly targeting Planned Parenthood, violating its due process and equal protection rights.
  • he federal lawsuit filed in Columbus follows an investigation by the state's attorney general into the organization's three facilities in Ohio that provide abortions.
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  • Planned Parenthood has said some fetal tissue is donated for medical research. Such donations are illegal in Ohio, and a Planned Parenthood state leader has said no donation program exists here.
  • DeWine's office found no evidence that the group made money from aborted fetuses, but the report instead criticized Planned Parenthood facilities for disposing of fetal remains in landfills.
  • DeWine told reporters on Friday the disposal practice is callous and violates state rules requiring that fetuses be disposed of in a humane manner. He plans to seek an injunction Monday to prevent Planned Parenthood from disposing of fetal remains in landfills.
  • Planned Parenthood called the alleged wrongdoing "inflammatory." The organization said it follows Ohio law and uses the same practices as hospitals and ambulatory surgical facilities, which generally contract with outside companies to dispose of all medical waste.
  • Stephanie Kight, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, said the disposal process is handled safely and respectfully. She said Sunday the tissue is processed and sent to a solid waste facility that's specifically licensed for medical material, not a typical landfill.
  • In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood said it's always abided by the directive that fetal tissue be disposed in a "humane" manner and has never been cited by the Ohio Department of Health, which licenses abortion facilities in Ohio, for violating those regulations.
  • Attorneys for Planned Parenthood accused the state's health director, Richard Hodges, of abandoning his standard process of providing notice of alleged non-compliance and providing an opportunity to correct such issues. Planned Parenthood said it didn't hear from health officials about the alleged violation until the group reached out to them Friday.
  • "This sudden and targeted treatment is no doubt motivated by his animus to a woman's right to safe and legal abortion and to Planned Parenthood in particular," the attorneys wrote.
  • Planned Parenthood has asked the court to block the state from any taking action and allow Planned Parenthood to work with the health department to sort out any issues related to the regulations.
  • Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers in the GOP-controlled Ohio House planned a Monday news conference to announce legislation following the attorney general's investigation.
Javier E

Farms aren't tossing perfectly good produce. You are. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...perfectly-good-produce-you-are

farm food waste recycling

shared by Javier E on 12 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • f food waste were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter of CO2, after China and the United States. In our nation alone, we throw away some 63 million tons of food a year, even as 40 million Americans are considered food insecure.
  • “Approximately 20% of organic and conventional produce in the U.S. never leaves the farm just because it looks a little different. . . . We think that’s crazy.”
  • advocates are getting the problem exactly backward. Less than 20 percent of total food waste happens at farms and packinghouses, where the ugly-produce movement works its magic, according to ReFED, a nonprofit dedicated to researching food waste policies.
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  • The vast majority of waste — more than 80 percent — is generated by homes and consumer-facing businesses like grocery stores and restaurants.
  • The hype surrounding this movement is inflated by the public’s ignorance of the food supply chain.
  • Despite the dramatic anecdotes about truckloads of landfilled crops, little of farm waste is due to merely “cosmetic” blemishes. Much of it is bruised or weeping goods that can quickly break down and rot the entire crate. With many crops, misshapen produce knocks against its neighbors during transit, poking holes and jeopardizing entire bins. “Drops” (produce that’s fallen on the ground) are left behind because otherwise they tend to cause food-poisoning outbreaks. Farms till excessively damaged produce back into the soil along with the crop’s stems and leaves, recycling their nutrients.
  • North America’s packinghouses discard about 1 percent of the produce that enters their doors, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization — usually because it’s straight-up rotten.
  • For the most part, ugly-produce initiatives are simply gentrifying second-grade produce that was already being eaten — just not, perhaps, by upscale shoppers. It’s the food equivalent of Lyft “inventing” a bus.
  • The most effective ways to tackle that
  • boil down to the old mantra to reduce, reuse and recycle.
  • The single biggest source of U.S. food waste, accounting for 43 percent of the problem, is our own homes
  • Most of all, we should sync our shopping habits with our eating habits. Affluent shoppers waste the most produce because of how much of it they buy and then trash
  • The most important behavioral change consumers can make to address food waste isn’t to buy certain kinds of produce. It’s to actually eat what we bring home.
  • Homes, food service and grocery stores generate 7.8 million tons of food waste per year that can’t be salvaged, accounting for 12 percent of the problem. This waste needs to be recycled. The Environmental Protection Agency says that the United States composts only 5 percent of its food waste. (Compare that with 15 percent in the European Union.)
  • Biochar — made by heating inedible food and other organic waste until it becomes inert, odorless, nutrient-rich charcoal — could be a very effective way to recycle food waste, but it’s underutilized, because the equipment to do it at municipal scale is so new. Like composting, biochar can be used as a fertilizer, returning food waste’s nutrients back to the soil. Unlike composting, it can handle food waste that’s mixed with general nonhazardous trash — no need for costly separate collection and handling. Biochar also sequesters carbon for centuries.
  • But the infrastructure — donation matching software, cold storage and refrigerated trucks — to handle large donations of eggs, dairy, meat, bread and produce is still being built. Funding more food bank infrastructure, educating potential donors about liability laws, creating more donation tax incentives and standardizing food safety regulations would recover up to 996,000 tons of food, or 1.7 billion meals, per year, according to ReFED.
  • For certain crops like berries, tomatoes, leafy greens and cucumbers, farms can take advantage of state and federal funds that would help them switch from open-field to hoophouse or greenhouse methods. Already common in East Asia and Europe, these methods boost yields and dramatically reduce how much of the crop is too damaged to leave the farm
  • As long as we eat fresh food instead of shelf-stable nutrient bars, perishability is part of the bargain. The only way to completely eliminate food waste is to abolish fresh food. Beyond that, all we can do is manage the waste.
johnsonel7

How Bernie Sanders Is Weaponizing Joe Biden's New Donors | Time - 0 views

time.com/...biden-sanders-campaign-finance

election biden sanders funding policies

shared by johnsonel7 on 06 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • After months of internal hand wringing, the Democratic Party’s biggest financial backers have flocked to former Vice President Joe Biden. And Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Senator running as the scourge of the elite, is trying to turn it against him.
  • As the Democratic presidential race shifts into a two-person contest, two campaigns with two very different funding models are now being put to the test: Biden’s bid backed by longtime Democratic donors and bundlers who have now united behind him, and the massive grassroots movement of small-dollar donations that has fueled Sanders. In a sense, the dueling models are a microcosm of the competing visions for the Democratic Party itself: whether it will continue operating under the status quo, or shift towards the grassroots-led model the progressive wing has been pushing for years. Whoever prevails will not just get the party’s nomination, but could possibly determine its future financial model.
  • “The folks who, for a long period of time would not give me money for the campaign because they did not think [Biden] was going to be the leading candidate turned — particularly turned when Pete [Buttigieg] and Amy [Klobuchar] came on board and since [Michael] Bloomberg dropped out,” says attorney Stephen Cozen, founder of the law firm Cozen O’Connor and a Philadelphia-based Biden donor who has been raising money since he entered the race. “I’ve had a tremendous influx of contributions to the campaign from people who have said ‘You were right all along.'”
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  • According to January’s filings with the Federal Election Commission, 53% of the $25 million Sanders received in campaign donations were unitemized, or under $200. Biden could say the same for about 35% of his campaign donations. In both fundraising emails and stump speeches, Sanders is using this discrepancy to bolster his claims that “the establishment” — a term loosely defined as longtime party stalwarts and fundraisers that he frequently invokes — is on a mission to undermine his progressive movement.
  • Sanders’ grassroots support has put him in the unique position of being able to rail against these fundraising practices as part of his platform. Nearly every candidate — including Biden — began the race eschewing super PACs, which cannot coordinate with the campaigns but can spend unlimited amounts. But that stance eventually collided with the reality that it is hard to raise money while competing in a crowded field that until recently included two self-funding billionaires. Even Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who exited the race Thursday, reversed a campaign pledge and did not disavow a super PAC when one formed to support her as she struggled to gain traction.
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