Philanthropy

generic cat 719

SEE reputation wash

museum

univ endowment

see davos

anand g

greenwash?

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bernie red state tour flippable seats

anti- olig tour

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The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays are typically known for philanthropic acts. However, one New York Times contributor is arguing that President Donald Trump has instead made "reverse philanthropy" one of the defining traits of his administration.

In a Thursday op-ed for the*Times*, writer Molly Jong-Fast defined "reverse philanthropy" as an act in which Trump expects the wealthiest to "give to him — or else." She then named multiple examples of Trump soliciting donations for both his second inauguration and now his $300 million ballroom, which will be replacing what used to be the East Wing of the White House.

"Instead of the richest helping the neediest, they pay tribute to the greediest. Remember the dozens of people and corporations who gave over a million dollars each to his inauguration? Mr. Trump then went to five crypto firms and eight tech companies, including some that helped fund the inauguration, for help building his ballroom. Which will itself be a place to gather fellow oligarchs and others who seek Mr. Trump’s favor," she wrote. "Think endless lavish fund-raising galas in honor of one recipient who will never truly be satisfied."

Jong-Fast — the daughter of author Erica Jong — lamented that Trump has made "rich people worse" by fostering a culture of "selfishness" among the richest members of American society. She contrasted arts patron Agnes Gund (noting that the Times called her "the last good rich person") with billionaires like Sam Bankman-Fried — who is in prison for fraud — and Elon Musk, who scored a one out of five on Forbes' 2023 philanthropy scale.

The Times contributor referenced a biennial survey conducted by Bank of America and the Indiana University school of philanthropy, which asks wealthy respondents about their altruism habits. In the 2024 poll, 45 percent of those surveyed said that they weren't giving as much to charity in order to "take care of family needs." That's a significant increase from the 2015 survey, when only 27 percent of affluent respondents listing that as their primary reason for not donating to charity.

"Trump sets the tone. His cabinet is very rich, and unlikely to be that concerned, or at least affected, by the true cost of Thanksgiving this year," Jong-Fast wrote. "Perhaps it fits with the broader picture: The rich are the richest they have ever been, and they seem mostly to be focused on … keeping their money."

"Philanthropy was always, on some level, a way for people with too much to feel better about that fact, or maybe about how they came to have all that loot in the first place," she added. "They need to be reminded of that. And of what they should be grateful for: this country, and its hardworking nonbillionaires trying to survive."

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rww 6 25 NO KINGS MARCH

06/14/2025

Peter Montgomery

Christian-right media outlets, which function as an unofficial public relations operation for President Donald Trump, set out this week to smear in advance the ‘No Kings’ protests being held across the country on Sat. June 14 to protest Trump’s authoritarianism and defiance of the law and Constitution.

“As America prepares to honor the birthday of President Donald J. Trump on June 14,” began a screed that ran on the right-wing “America Faith” platform and was republished by the Pentecostal-oriented Charisma News—not even bothering to sustain the official fiction that Trump’s military parade is more about honoring the armed forces than a presidential exercise in self-glorification.

The diatribe was written by right-wing southern California pastor Phil Hotsenpiller, who founded American Faith after Trump was defeated in the 2020 election.

In this week’s column, Hotsenpiller warned of the “disturbing agenda” of the No Kings rallies: “to crush Donald Trump’s influence, undermine constitutional authority, and destabilize American sovereignty.”

“Let’s be clear,” wrote Hotsenpiller, “this is not about preserving democracy—it’s about preventing Trump from returning to power.”

Huh? Trump has already returned to power and is flagrantly abusing that power. That’s why Americans are rallying to defend the rule of law and the constitutional checks and balances Trump’s team is working so hard to dismantle.

Hotsenpiller spun a conspiracy theory about the “Walton-Weingarten Nexus”—WalMart heiress and philanthropist Christy Walton and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, two “dangerous” women “merging to push a vision of America that looks more like socialist Europe—or communist China—than a constitutional republic.”

“June 14 is not just a protest,” Hotsenpiller ranted. “It’s a declaration of war—against populism, against Trump and ultimately against the America our Founders envisioned.”

While MAGA religious leaders portray themselves as the voice of American Christians, many Christians and other faith leaders are urging Americans to participate in peaceful No Kings protests—and have been on the front lines this week protesting the brutality of the administration’s militarized anti-immigrant operations.

Trump has threatened “very heavy force” against anyone who protests his parade. No Kings organizers have not planned an event in D.C., encouraging locals to join a flagship rally in Philadelphia, participate in Virginia or Maryland events, or take part in DC Joy Day.

American Faith hosted the ReAwaken America Tour, a traveling cavalcade of far-right conspiracies, Christian nationalism, and pro-Trump propaganda. Last year, Hostenpiller’s Influence Church hosted Christian nationalist MAGA activist Charlie Kirk, who used the occasion to rail against seminaries “infiltrated with wokeism, social justice nonsense” and “overly feminine ‘pastor-men.’” Hotsenpiller has also teamed up with MAGA musician Sean Feucht.

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when billionaires announce grand philanthropic donations for the planet, they tend to get heaps of positive attention.

Who can forget the wave of press coverage that followed Jeff Bezos’ announcement of the $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund; Elon Musk’s unveiling of a $100 million prize for “best carbon capture;” or Kim Kardashians’ recent announcement that she’s donating a portion of sales from her Skims Ultimate Nipple Bra to an environmental nonprofit.

(On the View, Whoopi Goldberg said she was “so proud of this girl" for donating money to climate change. And we are too, Whoopi. We are too.)

It is always good to see money going toward climate solutions. But one thing we notice about these media cycles is that they tend to miss a critical point: that billionaires should be giving money to fight climate change, because they are doing a lot to cause it.

Not only do billionaires personally emit one million times more greenhouse gases per year than the average person on Earth; their money often comes from high-emitting corporations that foster a global culture of excessive consumerism. (We’re looking at you, Bezos).

In addition, these media cycles also often fail to take into account that billionaires commonly use philanthropy as a way to publicly boost their own reputations, while they privately argue against heightened government regulation. As the*Guardian*reported, philanthropy can provide polluters “with a moral cover to act in quite exploitative and socially damaging ways.”

So when it comes to evaluating the generosity of billionaire philanthropy for the planet, we believe it’s not enough to simply look at the dollar amount being given. We must also ask: are they giving enough to actually offset the harm they cause?

And a new report suggests they are most likely not.

Upgrade to paid

$13 billion—and still nowhere near enough

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According to a philanthropy report released today by the nonprofit ClimateWorks, rich people and foundations around the world donated $8 to $13 billion to climate change mitigation in 2022.

While that number may seem large on its own, it’s actually quite small in the context of how much rich people and foundations usually donate to charitable causes. Specifically, climate-related giving made up less than 2 percent of the $811 billion in philanthropic giving in 2022, according to the report.

Climate giving also slowed in 2022 compared to previous years. “In the face of a challenging global economy,” the report read, “overall climate giving stayed flat, due in part to a 12 percent increase in foundation funding” while funding from individuals fell.

While a 12 percent increase from foundations seems good on its face, the report notes it represents “significantly slower growth than the 45 percent increase in the previous year.”

*(For more specific info on trends within climate giving, check out the press release and entire report)

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The level of climate philanthropy in 2022 “is not commensurate with the urgency of the crisis and the scale of the efforts needed to limit global warming to 1.5° C,” wrote the report’s authors, who said philanthropic giving to climate causes has been at “disappointing” numbers since 2015.

“This is not the direction we should be heading if we are going to have a fighting chance at a liveable future,” said ClimateWorks CEO Helen Mountford.

That level of giving is also not commensurate with the impact that many of the givers are having on the planet. Take Jeff Bezos, who has pledged to donate $10 billion over 10 years to climate change solutions. While that number is far larger amount than other billionaires, so is Bezos’ own contribution to climate change:Right now,up to 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions can be traced back to the products and services we consume—and Amazon is, by far, the world’s most popular place to consume products and services.

*Further reading: Why we’re taking Jeff Bezos’ $10 billion climate pledge with 10 billion grains of salt

And even though $10 billion is a lot for a billionaire to give to climate change, it’s still small in the grand scheme of philanthropic donations.

Think of it this way: for climate philanthropy to have made up exactly 2 percent of global giving in 2022—not less than 2 percent, as it was—“we would have needed $10 billion more in climate giving,” said Helene Desanlis, one of the report authors and director of climate philanthropy at ClimateWorks. That’s another Bezos Earth Fund, just to reach 2 percent.

“This report should be a wake-up call for philanthropy,” Mountford added. “The intensifying climate crisis demands greater ambition, scale, and urgency to safeguard lives. There has been meaningful climate progress, but maintaining the status quo is not enough, and that includes philanthropy.”

How billionaires can actually help

Before we throw the billionaire out with the bathwater, experts in philanthropic funding say they do have a part to play in solving the climate crisis. But solutions must be "funded like we want them to win," said Mountford. And right now, they’re not.

Here’s how much it’s going to actually cost to solve climate change, according to the Climate Policy Initiative: at least $4.3 trillion per year. So far, the International Monetary Fund reports that the world is only spending $630 billion a year in climate finance—a shortfall in the trillions.

*Related reading:The climate case against Elon Musk

No one person or foundation could cover that amount for a year, let alone the lifetime it will take to help mitigate the climate crisis. Nor should we expect philanthropists to cover it all—particularly because ideally, in a democracy, voters would get to decide how to solve society’s most complex problems.

But the wealthiest people on Earth can certainly afford to give more than 2 percent of their total donations to stop the climate crisis—especially given their role in continuing it.

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https://dailycaller.com/2022/02/16/associated-press-climate-change-reporting-progressive-groups/

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ENERGY

‘Mutually Beneficial’: Major News Outlet Expands Climate Change Reporting Funded By Left-Wing Activist Groups

[Death Toll Rises To 6 As Redding Area Wildfire Spreads To 90,000 Acres

Terray Sylvester/Getty Images]

Daily Caller NewsFoundation logo

THOMAS CATENACCI

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT REPORTER

February 16, 2022

The Associated Press announced Tuesday that it had secured funding from several progressive interest groups to hire two dozen climate change reporters.

“This far-reaching initiative will transform how we cover the climate story,” AP executive editor Julie Pace said.

The five organizations — the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, Quadrivium and the Walton Family Foundation — are well known for pushing a variety of left-wing causes and funding Democratic political campaigns.

The Associated Press announced Tuesday that it had secured funding from several progressive interest groups to hire two dozen climate change reporters.

The outlet referred to the groups’ funding as “philanthropic grants” and promised that the groups wouldn’t have any editorial control over the climate change content published, according to an announcement. But the five organizations — the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, Quadrivium and the Walton Family Foundation — are well known for pushing a variety of left-wing causes and funding Democratic political campaigns.

“This is a mutually beneficial arrangement,” said Brian Carovillano, the vice president of the AP’s news partnerships and grants.

The AP’s expansion of its climate change reporting will lead to about 20 new hires worldwide while other journalists will be reassigned, the outlet said. The reporters will be based in Africa, Brazil, India and the U.S., and they will reportedly write about climate change’s impact on various sectors, including the economy, agriculture and culture.

“This far-reaching initiative will transform how we cover the climate story,” AP executive editor Julie Pace said. (RELATED: Leftist Millionaire To Fund Associated Press Climate Change Reporting: REPORT)

The five groups agreed to give the AP an $8 million grant lasting three years.

“Funders have no influence over AP’s reporting on this topic or any other,” AP spokesperson Lauren Easton told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “AP has long provided accurate, factual coverage of climate and the environment. This initiative is an expansion of that fact-based journalism. AP retains all editorial control.”

An entrance to the ExxonMobil headquarters is pictured on Feb. 1 in Houston, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images) WHY?]

‘Extremely well-funded and includes paid media coverage’

The Hewlett Foundation has long supported leftist causes, including abortion provider Planned Parenthood and Defending Democracy Together, according to the Capital Research Center. The organization has also funded several climate groups and causes like the Sierra Club, Urban Environment Foundation and ClimateWorks Foundation.

Hewlett has also funded the Niskanen Center, which has argued in favor of punishing oil companies for climate change and provided legal support in a Colorado case against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy seeking environmental damages. (RELATED:James MurdochGave $20 Million To Biden, Progressive Groups In 2020: REPORT)

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, meanwhile, gave 98% of its political contributions for federal candidates to Democrats in 2020 [AKA THE ONLY PARTY TO PROVE HEALTH CARE], according to OpenSecrets. The group has historically given the vast majority of its political donations to Democrats, including President Joe Biden, OpenSecrets data showed.

The third group, the Rockefeller Foundation is a “pillar of the liberal philanthropic establishment,” a report from InfluenceWatch, which tracks non-profit organizations, said. The group has fundedliberal think tanks, including the Urban Institute, the New America Foundation, PolicyLink and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The foundation has also promoted anti-fossil fuel activism such as the “ExxonKnew” campaign, whichalleges that ExxonMobil has hidden data about climate change for half a century. In 2016, the Rockefeller Family Fund announced it would divest from fossil fuel companies and accused Exxon of “morally reprehensible conduct.”

James Murdoch speaks during Vanity Fair's 6th Annual New Establishment Summit on Oct. 23, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Vanity Fair)]

“ExxonKnew is acoordinated campaignperpetuated by activist groups with the aim of stigmatizing ExxonMobil,” the fossil fuel company said in a February 2021 statement. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Top Conservative Group Slams Aspen Institute’s Disinformation ‘Hypocrisy’ In Letter)

“Funders of the ‘#ExxonKnew’ campaign have placed ‘pay to play’ news stories [2 PAGE AD ADVERTORIAL FOR DECADES?], released flawed academic reports and coordinated with public officials to launch investigations and litigation, creating the false appearance that ExxonMobil has misrepresented its company research and investor disclosures on climate change to the public,” the company statement said.

The company specifically noted that Rockefeller funds were involved in promoting the campaign, which the statement said was “extremely well-funded and includes paid media coverage.”

Quadrivium was founded by James Murdoch, the son of billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and his wife Kathryn. The couple donated $20 million to Biden’s election campaign and other progressive political groups in 2020.

The foundation, which lists climate change as among its priorities, has been active during recent federal elections, often giving millions of dollars to progressive groups and candidates, OpenSecrets data showed. The Murdochs funneled $100 million into the organization in 2019, but it’s unclear how much was doled out during the 2020 election, according to tax documents obtained by CNBC.

James Murdoch previously resigned from the board of Fox News parent company News Corp in 2020, citing “disagreements over certain editorial content published” as the reason for his departure.

Finally, the Walton Family Foundation is an active donor to multiple environmental groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund, World Wildlife Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Meridian Institute. The foundation also funded the New Venture Fund, which helps grow left-wing advocacy groups, according to InfluenceWatch.

Lukas Walton, who chairs the foundation’s environment program committee, has a history of donating to Democrats, and he owns a major stake in First Solar,a large solar panel manufacturer.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Tags : exxonmobil niskanen center the associated press

founded 1949 gates walton etc

https://www.cof.org/page/our-partners

https://www.desmog.com/:{2022/02:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:/16/private-equity-fossil-fuels-blackstone-kkr-carlyle-dapl/

Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams. Originally published on Common Dreams.

A report published Tuesday by a pair of nonprofits shines a light on the “Wall Street heavyweights” at private equity firms who “burnish their reputations through hundreds of millions of dollars in philanthropy, even as their investments help drive climate catastrophe.”

“The private equity industry largely evades public scrutiny, despite investing billions in fossil fuel investments.”

The new analysis from LittleSis and Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) — entitled Private Equity’s Dirty Dozen: 12 Firms Dripping in Oil and the Wealthy Executives Who Run Them — highlights that as asset managers and big banks face rising scrutiny for their climate-wrecking conduct, “private equity firms and the billionaires and multi-millionaires who lead them have largely escaped scrutiny.”

“This needs to change,” the document declares. “Private equity firms are fueling the climate crisis and environmental injustice with investments in fracked gas, oil pipelines, coal plants, and offshore drilling. These damaging investments mirror private equity’s other destructive impacts in other areas of the economy like in retail, restaurants, healthcare, and incarceration.”

Meanwhile, executives at these firms “are some of the most influential people in the world,” the analysis continues. “They are chummy with powerful elected officials, to whom they donate piles of money. They hold prestigious trusteeships at elite universities and cultural institutions. Buildings are named after them. They own professional sports franchises.”

“Between their yachts, mansions, and private jets, these private equity executives live some of the lushest lives of anyone on the planet,” the report adds. “But in many cases, they sustain their wealth and status by steering their firms’ investments into — among other dubious things — dirty energy.”

LittleSis and PESP targeted:

Stephen A. Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group;
David M. Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group;
Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR);
Daniel R. Revers of ArcLight Capital Partners;
Marc Rowan and Leon Black of Apollo Global Management;
Antony “Tony” Ressler of Ares Management;
Adebayo Ogunlesi of Global Infrastructure Partners;
Richard “Ric” Kayne of Kayne Anderson;
Bruce Karsh and Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital;
Chip Kaye and Timothy Geithner of Warburg Pincus;
David M. Leuschen of Riverstone Holdings; and
David B. Miller of EnCap Investments.

While some of the firms didn’t respond to requests for comment from the Guardian — which was granted exclusive access to the report — others pushed back, with spokespeople for Blackstone and KKR pointing to each firm’s investments in the global energy transition.

Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm, “has one of the most substantial portfolios of fossil fuel assets across its various funds,” the report says, specifically noting its nearly 7 percent stake in the company that owns the Dakota Access Pipeline, which has provoked years of Indigenous-led protests met with brutal crackdowns by law enforcement and private security. [TWT]

Dubbed “Wall Street’s top political donor,” Schwarzman “is a top ally, donor, and fundraiser” for former President Donald Trump, the analysis says, pointing out that the Blackstone executive reportedly “even defended Trump’s election denialism at a CEO meeting shortly after the 2020 election.”

Schwarzman — the firm’s chairman, CEO, and co-founder — has also “doled out hundreds of millions to get prestigious buildings named after him” and “is a current or past member of some of the most powerful business, policy, and think tank boards,” the report notes.

Report co-author and LittleSis research director Derek Seidman said in a statement that “it’s a serious problem when superrich private equity executives who invest billions in harmful fossil fuels can greenwash their reputations through acquiring coveted board seats at prestigious universities and cultural institutions.”

“This helps these Wall Street billionaires hide the fact that they’re among the world’s biggest oil and gas barons,” Seidman said.

For each executive, the groups put together graphics that illustrate their ties to powerful institutions and people as well as their firm’s investments in the fossil fuel industry. Schwarzman’s chart reveals connections to prestigious universities along with controversial fossil fuel projects.

A screenshot from the report illustrates Blackstone Group CEO, chairman, and co-founder Stephen Schwarzman’s connections to fossil fuels.

The other profiles continue in a similar fashion. The Carlyle Group section states that “no other private equity buyout firm—not Blackstone, not KKR—is currently as bullish on oil and gas as Carlyle,” and “few private equity tycoons have bought as much influence—and are as waist-deep in dirty fossil fuels—as billionaire David Rubenstein,” its co-founder.

In addition to holding positions at various other institutions, KKR co-founder and co-chairman Kravis is a “director of the Palm Beach Civic Association alongside other hedge fund billionaires, and the city’s main performing arts center bears the Kravis family name,” the report says. “He owns a beachside mansion alongside a slew of other Wall Street billionaires like Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone), Carl Icahn (Icahn Enterprises), Ken Griffin (Citadel), and Nelson Peltz (Trian).”

“Private equity threatens to undermine our hard work to tackle the climate crisis and advance environmental justice.”

“KKR owns dozens of energy companies, with over 80% of its energy holdings in the extraction, transportation, or burning of climate-destroying fossil fuels,” according to the document. “Moreover, from racist and colonial pipelines to toxic oilfield development, KKR is behind some of the dirtiest and most controversial oil and gas projects around.”

Along with pouring money into activities that heat the planet, “Kravis and KKR have no qualms about pillaging companies or investing in unethical products in order to turn a profit,” the analysis adds, noting that “the firm helped oversee the notorious raid of Toys ‘R’ Us that devastated the company’s workers.”

Responding to the report, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs — tied its findings to criticism of the private equity industry’s broader practices.

“By plowing money into dirty coal plants, offshore drilling, and deforestation, private equity threatens to undermine our hard work to tackle the climate crisis and advance environmental justice,” she told The Guardian. “It’s just another page from private equity’s standard playbook: boost short-term profits at the expense of the long-term well-being of communities.”

Reiterating that “the private equity industry largely evades public scrutiny, despite investing billions in fossil fuel investments that have spewed greenhouse gases from pipelines, fracking operations, and power plants across the globe,” report co-author and PESP research director Alyssa Giachino advocated for a swift shift across the industry.

“Private equity should move away from fossil fuels,” she said. “It’s necessary to help mitigate climate change and it’s necessary for environmental justice.”

https://yyy.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/08/how-philanthropy-benefits-the-super-rich?

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How philanthropy benefits the super-rich

There are more philanthropists than ever before. Each year they give tens of billions to charitable causes. So how come inequality keeps rising? By Paul Vallely

by Paul Vallely

Tue 8 Sep 2020 01.00 EDT

Philanthropy, it is popularly supposed, transfers money from the rich to the poor. This is not the case. In the US, which statistics show to be the most philanthropic of nations, barely a fifth of the money donated by big givers goes to the poor. A lot goes to the arts, sports teams and other cultural pursuits, and half goes to education and healthcare. At first glance that seems to fit the popular profile of "giving to good causes". But dig down a little.

The biggest donations in education in 2019 went to the elite universities and schools that the rich themselves had attended. In the UK, in the 10-year period to 2017, more than two-thirds of all millionaire donations - £4.79bn - went to higher education, and half of these went to just two universities: Oxford and Cambridge. When the rich and the middle classes give to schools, they give more to those attended by their own children than to those of the poor. British millionaires in that same decade gave £1.04bn to the arts, and just £222m to alleviating poverty.

The common assumption that philanthropy automatically results in a redistribution of money is wrong. A lot of elite philanthropy is about elite causes. Rather than making the world a better place, it largely reinforces the world as it is. Philanthropy very often favours the rich - and no one holds philanthropists to account for it.

The role of private philanthropy in international life has increased dramatically in the past two decades. Nearly three-quarters of the world's 260,000 philanthropy foundations have been established in that time, and between them they control more than $1.5tn. The biggest givers are in the US, and the UK comes second. The scale of this giving is enormous. The Gates Foundation alone gave £5bn in 2018 - more than the foreign aid budget of the vast majority of countries.

Philanthropy is always an expression of power. Giving often depends on the personal whims of super-rich individuals. Sometimes these coincide with the priorities of society, but at other times they contradict or undermine them. Increasingly, questions have begun to be raised about the impact these mega-donations are having upon the priorities of society.

There are a number of tensions inherent in the relationship between philanthropy and democracy. For all the huge benefits modern philanthropy can bring, the sheer scale of contemporary giving can skew spending in areas such as education and healthcare, to the extent that it can overwhelm the priorities of democratically elected governments and local authorities.

Some of this influence is indirect. The philanthropy of Bill and Melinda Gates has brought huge benefits for humankind. When the foundation made its first big grant for malaria research, it nearly doubled the amount of money spent on the disease worldwide. It did the same with polio. Thanks in part to Gates (and others), some 2.5 billion children have been vaccinated against the disease, and global cases of polio have been cut by 99.9%. Polio has been virtually eradicated. Philanthropy has made good the failures of both the pharmaceutical industry and governments across the world. The Gates Foundation, since it began in 2000, has given away more than $45bn and saved millions of lives.

Yet this approach can be problematic. Bill Gates can become fixed on addressing a problem which is not seen as a priority by local people, in an area, for example, where polio is far from the biggest problem. He did something similar in his education philanthropy in the US where his fixation on class size diverted public spending away from the actual priorities of the local community.

Other philanthropists are more wilfully interventionist. Individuals such as Charles Koch on the right, or George Soros on the left, have succeeded in altering public policy. More than $10bn a year is devoted to such ideological persuasion in the US alone.

David Koch at an Americans for Prosperity summit in Washington DC in 2011.

David Koch at an Americans for Prosperity summit in Washington DC in 2011. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The result has been what the late German billionaire shipping magnate and philanthropist Peter Kramer called "a bad transfer of power", from democratically elected politicians to billionaires, so that it is no longer "the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich who decide". The Global Policy Forum, an independent policy watchdog that monitors the work of the United Nations general assembly, has warned governments and international organisations that, before taking money from rich donors, they should "assess the growing influence of major philanthropic foundations, and especially the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation … and analyse the intended and unintended risks and side-effects of their activities". Elected politicians, the UN watchdog warned in 2015, should be particularly concerned about "the unpredictable and insufficient financing of public goods, the lack of monitoring and accountability mechanisms, and the prevailing practice of applying business logic to the provision of public goods".

Some kinds of philanthropy may have become not just non-democratic, but anti-democratic. Charles Koch and his late brother, David, are undoubtedly the most prominent example of rightwing philanthropy at work. But there are scores of others, most particularly in the US, who embrace causes which many find controversial and even distasteful. Art Pope has used the fortune he has amassed from his discount-store chain to push for a tightening of the law to prevent fraud in elections, even though such fraud is negligible in the US. Pope's move, which would require voters to show ID at the polls, effectively disenfranchises the 10% of the electorate who lack photo ID because they are too poor to own a car and are unlikely to go to the expense of getting a driving licence or other ID simply to vote. Such voters - many of them black - are statistically unlikely to vote for the arch-conservatives that Art Pope smiles upon.

But do such philanthropic activities manipulate the democratic process any more than do the campaigns of the billionaire financier George Soros to promote accountable government and social reform around the world? Or hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer's funding of a movement to encourage more young people to vote on climate change? Or the attacks by the internet billionaire Craig Newmark on fake news? In each case these rich individuals are motivated to intervene by something arising from their own lived experience. By what yardstick can we suggest that some are more legitimate than others?

David Callahan, the editor of the Inside Philanthropy website, puts it this way: "When donors hold views we detest, we tend to see them as unfairly tilting policy debates with their money. Yet when we like their causes, we often view them as heroically stepping forward to level the playing field against powerful special interests or backward public majorities … These sort of à la carte reactions don't make a lot of sense. Really, the question should be whether we think it's OK overall for any philanthropists to have so much power to advance their own vision of a better society."...[long]

The Smithsonian takes a lot of corporate money. There is the Koch Hall of Origins anthropology exhibit at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. They renamed the Air and Space museum theater, Lockheed Martin theater, erasing the name Langley, an daviation pioneer. The museums newly renovated Hall of Oceans might have been called the American Petroleum Institute Hall of Oceans if not for the intervention of Sen. Leahy of Vermont and another corporate philanthropist, Roger Sant, then chair of the Smithsonian board and an energy industry millionaire.

window into the hearts and minds of billionaire donors

Hans Peter Schmitz, University of San Diego

A careful review of more than 200 letters written by the wealthy people who signed the Giving Pledge over its first decadesuggests a big contradiction.

https://www.**urban.org**/sites/default/files/**2019**/06/27/conservative_philanthropy_in_higher_education.pdf

...The importance of the Walgreen Foundation’s support raises a counterfactual: would these scholars have enjoyed prominent careers without that financial assistance? Like all counterfactuals, the conclusion must be speculative. Certainly, many of the scholars at the University of Chicago who received funding from the Walgreen Foundation (such as Posner and Becker) may well have had brilliant academic careers even if the Walgreen Foundation and the Graduate School of Business had never existed. However, this misses the point: the success of George Stigler’s Walgreen-funded project created a scholarly network and a financial infrastructure with which to promote their pro–free market ideas. Without Walgreen’s support, that may well have been more difficult.

CASE STUDY II: HENRY MANNE AND LAW AND ECONOMICS

The success of Stigler’s project can be understood within the context of a broader conservative philanthropic movement that built upon past victories. Before Stigler constructed an antistatist economics and business program at the University of Chicago, Keynesians (who supported muscular state interventions in the economy) tended to dominate economic thought in the United States. The most prominent economists and economics programs in America (e.g., Paul Samuelson, who served as an economic advisor to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and built MIT’s economics department into a powerhouse) predominantly belonged to the Keynesian tradition.11 Stigler’s antistatist economics program not only allowed for the transformation of economics programs throughout American higher education, but provided academic support for the conservative transformation of the law. Steven Teles’s (2008) book on the development of the conservative legal establishment, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law, strongly emphasizes the Chicago school’s importance in the creation of the field of “law and economics” in the 1970s. “Law and economics” is, essentially, the application of economic analysis—specifically economic analysis rooted in the Austrian school’s free market philosophy—to public policy and legal questions.12 Not every early attempt to institutionalize conservative legal and economics programs was as successful as Stigler’s. Henry Manne, whom Teles calls one the great organizational entrepreneurs of law and economics, attempted to build a dedicated conservative law program at the University of Rochester in the late 1960s by cultivating conservative alumni and foundation support.

...

CASE III: THE OLIN FOUNDATION AND THE BEACHHEAD THEORY

Although a dense network of conservative philanthropic foundations—including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation—became prominent funders of right-wing causes in the 1970s and early 1980s, the John M. Olin Foundation has received the most scholarly attention for the following three reasons: (1) it was one of the first conservative foundations to focus on giving in higher education to achieve its political aims, (2) its peer institutions considered it an innovative leader in right-wing philanthropic giving, and (3) it has actively supported studies that highlight its history and mission. Such studies include John J. Miller’s official history of the foundation, A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America, and Steven Teles’s more neutral The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, both of which received support from Olin Foundation grants. 17 Scholars and philanthropic officials have centered these points (particularly its reputation for innovation) in criticisms of the Olin Foundation’s politics (Sally Covington’s Moving a Public Policy Agenda, for example, devotes one of its major case studies to the foundation because of its reputation for innovation and impact).

Given the success of the Olin Foundation’s projects and of its broader vision of promarket social change rooted in college and university campuses, this reputation is well deserved.18 John M. Olin, whose Winchester Repeating Arms Company made a fortune during World War II manufacturing arms and ammunition for the US Army, was not the first right-wing billionaire to establish a dedicated philanthropic foundation in their name (Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and even the comparatively less wealthy Charles Walgreen preceded him). But Olin was concerned that “mission creep” had set in at the major establishment philanthropic organizations, leading them to betray their founders’ promarket ideals. He was determined to avoid the same fate, and to ensure his money was tied to meaningful institution-building and political change. The Olin Foundation was therefore designed to have a limited lifespan: Olin died in 1982, and the foundation folded in 2005 after having disbursed nearly $300 million to conservative causes.19

...

CASE IV: THE KOCHS AND GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

The Koch Family Foundations took a similar approach to Olin, except that unlike Olin, the Koch foundations funded “Gramscian” and “Fabian” strategies simultaneously. As of 2015, the Kochs had spent nearly $150 million funding academic programs at no fewer than 307 higher education institutions. In fact, they dedicated $50 million to a single flagship campus in the Koch system: George Mason University.34 How GMU became a Koch campus—or rather, how the Kochs became the major financial backers of several of the school’s promarket research centers, along with its economics department and law school—is worth exploring in detail. The Kochs’ approach to philanthropic giving is similar to Olin’s in important ways, among them the committed ideological vision, the importance of

...

CASE V: THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY

Institutions created by conservative philanthropy in higher education can have profound political, social, and cultural influence. The most influential of these institutions is the Federalist Society, founded as a group for conservative law students in 1982. The Federalist Society has given educational and social support to a generation of right-wing judges, attorneys, and legal scholars. The landmark cases settled by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court in the past decade—Citizens United v. FEC, Shelby County v. Holder, Janus v. AFSCME, and Trump v. Hawaii 46—would have been considerably more difficult for conservatives to win without the Federalist Society’s influence, not least because Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, the late Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas are all Federalist Society alumni. One opinion columnist has called the Federalist Society the “farm system for the [judiciary],” ensuring the ideological reliability of judicial appointees and preventing missteps like Richard Nixon’s appointment of Harry A. Blackmun (who wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade) to the Supreme Court or George H.W. Bush’s appointment of David Souter (who was identified with the court’s liberal faction for most of his career).47 Although the media

...

CASE V: UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT GROUPS

Although the Federalist Society and conservative domination of the legal system represent conservative philanthropy’s most consequential achievements, other kinds of higher education philanthropy have contributed to right-wing political success. Conservative activists and philanthropists have underwritten right-wing undergraduate student activism that advocates free market ideology on college campuses. One of the earliest organized efforts was Young Americans for Freedom, founded by a group of some 90 young activists at conservative publisher William F. Buckley Jr.’s Connecticut estate in September 1960.55 (Young Americans for Freedom is not to be confused with Young America’s Foundation, discussed below. For clarity, I refer to both organizations by their full names...

notes: 54Maxine Joselow, “Is George Mason the New Trump U?” E&E News, July 17, 2018, https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060089361; “Tracking Deregulation in the Trump Era,” Brookings Institution, January 16, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation-in-the-trumpera/. 55 There are three scholarly treatments of Young Americans for Freedom by historians. These are Gregory L. Schneider’s Cadres for Conservatism: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right (New York: New York University Press, 1999), John A. Andrew’s The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), and sociologist Rebecca E. Klatch’s A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). There are also a handful of accounts from conservative pundits involved in Young Americans for Freedom, notably William F. Buckley Jr.’s Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater (New York: Basic Books, 2008) and Wayne J. Thorburn’s (former executive director of Young Americans for Freedom) A Generation Awakes: Young Americans for Freedom and the Creation of the Conservative Movement (Ottawa, IL: Jameson Books, 2010). ]]

It should also be noted that Young America’s Foundation and Leadership Institute alumni have gone on to prominent positions in the American Right in the 2010s,including White House advisor and architect of the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policy Stephen Miller (Young America’s Foundation) and media provocateur James O’Keefe (Leadership Institute). 65

This poses another counterfactual: would a similar conservative leadership cadre have developed absent support from organizations like Young America’s Foundation and the Leadership Institute? Ultimately, it seems unlikely that conservative organizations operating independently on college campuses without any kind of overarching political and financial coordination would have developed such a wide-ranging and politically disciplined leadership class. For instance, the broad support that conservative philanthropy has provided to conservative firebrand Dinesh D’Souza, now a bestselling author, suggests that a vibrant conservative ecosystem, both on and off campus, is crucial for cultivating conservative leaders. The Olin Foundation and the Institute for Educational Affairs first supported D’Souza through his right-wing campus newspaper, Dartmouth Review, in the early 1980s. After graduating from Dartmouth, D’Souza secured a John M. Olin Fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute, where he helped popularize the phrase “political correctness” to decry early 1990s campus culture. It seems fair to say that D’Souza owes much of his success to Olin, which can likely be said for many lesser-known conservative thinkers and writers who have reliably promoted free enterprise and procapitalist views.66

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

A survey of the literature on conservative philanthropy in higher education yields the following key themes: The importance of dense networks to achieve immediate and long-term goals. Michael Joyce, a senior official at the Olin Foundation and later the head of the Bradley Foundation, called this the “wine collection” effect; I refer to it as the career pipeline. This pipeline is a way for foundations to invest in conservative figures when they are students or scholars, who mature and eventually contribute to rightwing politics off campus.67

This was the Olin Foundation’s stated goal when it supported writers and activists like Dinesh D’Souza. But it was also a goal of institution-building on college campuses. Multiple foundations funded overlapping efforts at colleges and universities across the United States to establish centers for right-wing thought, and those efforts operated cumulatively over time. The creation of a center of conservative economic thought at the University of Chicago allowed for future successes; even failed attempts like Manne’s entrepreneurship at Rochester and Emory reaped results under different circumstances at George Mason.

The establishment of conservative student groups, from the Federalist Society to undergraduate conservative newspapers, provided a pipeline of talent to these institutions and, in the case of the Federalist Society, eventually provided financial support. Identifying faculty organizational entrepreneurs and sympathetic administrators. From an operational standpoint, this was a critical component of the eventual establishment of conservative centers on campus. When any of the three ingredients (dense networks of donors, dedicated organizational entrepreneurs among faculty, and a sympathetic administration)were lacking—as at the University of Rochester in the 1960s and Emory University in the 1980s—the institution-building efforts failed.

When those three ingredients were present, as they were at Harvard in the late 1980s and George Mason University since the 1970s, the transformations could be profound. The Koch network at George Mason would never have been as successful as it has been without the collaboration of faculty and administrators. A corollary to this is the importance of overcoming institutional resistance. There has been tremendous resistance in the academy to right-wing philanthropy. Three of the right-wing efforts discussed in this review—at the University of Chicago in the 1940s, the University of Rochester in the 1960s, and Emory University in the 1980s—were unsuccessful because of faculty or administration resistance; the successes were possible when support from faculty and, above all, administration was forthcoming.

http://www.anand.ly/

cols

https://www.nytimes.com/by/anand-giridharadas

guk no lnx

anand Giridharadas was surprised this September when Google invited him to their offices, given his outspoken criticism of tech giants. “I applaud whoever it was who invited me or did not read my book,” Giridharadas said to a few tepid laughs.

Afflicting the comfortable is a talent honed by Giridharadas, and his talk about breaking up monopolistic companies like Google and checking the power of its elite executives – while speaking at Google – is only one recent example.

A former McKinsey consultant-turned New York Times columnist, Giridharadas is now a bestselling author. His recent book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, torches the privileged circles he has moved in much of his adult life, and is rooted in insider knowledge.

The book stems from a speech he was asked to give several years ago to the Aspen Institute, a thinktank that organizes exclusive ideas conferences for the wealthy and powerful,as part of a program designed to raise up a “new breed of leaders” and solve “the world’s most intractable problems”. Instead he delivered an electrifying critique, arguing the “change makers” and “thought leaders” in America’s winners-take-all economy – once again, the very people he was speaking to – are less helping the world through their various philanthropic efforts than propping up the broken system that made them.[city arts: 20 ceos zzz, so include a jrnlsit and couple other , he was "indian spicwe; he says they no longer have outsiders]

What billionaires want: the secret influence of America’s 100 richest

Giridharadas first gained access to the high-flying group he censures in 2011 when he was selected as part of a group of distinguished fellows for the Aspen Institute. Giridharadas was a strange pick, as not only the youngest member at 29, but also the sole journalist in a group composed largely of rising stars in the business world (the 2018 fellows group is composed almost entirely of CEOs).

Still, he made fast friends with his Aspen compatriots, and even officiated one of their weddings. Soon he found himself flying around in their private jets and mingling with them in ostentatious mansions.

Tony Blair at theAspen Ideas Festival. The Aspen Instituteorganizes exclusive ideas conferences for the wealthy and powerful.

Tony Blair at the Aspen Ideas Festival. The Aspen Institute organizes exclusive ideas conferences for the wealthy and powerful. Photograph: Zuma/Rex

The unstated thesis behind their being chosen by Aspen was clear: that the people best-equipped to protect the interests of the poor are the rich and rich adjacent.

Giridharadas was bothered by it, and particularly by how the program seemed to encourage elite participants from tech giants and hedge funds to start philanthropic side-hustles doubling as vanity projects, rather than find ways to do less harm in their day jobs. (At a Goldman Sachs-sponsored lunch put on at a fellowship reunion, for instance, the corporate giant’s role in the 2008 financial crisis went unmentioned as its do-gooding was praised.)

And so, given an opportunity to speak at an Aspen gathering in 2015, Giridharadas behaved like the journalist he is. Instead of presenting what was expected, he called things as he saw them. “I love this community, and I fear for all of us – myself very much included – that we may not be as virtuous as we think we are, that history may not be as kind to us as we hope it will, that in the final analysis our role in the inequities of our age may not be remembered well,” he said, to an aghast audience that included Madeleine Albright, the former US secretary of state, and prominent writers like himself.

The book that grew out of that moment is unsparing in its criticism and sometimes even strident. Giridharadas mercilessly mocks the wealthy who would change everything but the rules that enabled and protect their status, and ridicules their coinage of notions like “win-win”, the idea that there’s no tension between doing well for yourself and doing good for others.

The bad behavior of the richest: what I learned from wealth managers

Perhaps no one better emulates the failure of the “win-win” ethos than the Sackler family, Giridharadas writes. Their pharmaceutical empire helped make them one of America’s wealthiest and most philanthropic families, with wings of universities and concert halls named after them – including an entire Smithsonian museum. But they’ve also profited off America’s opioid crisis, which the US Department of Justice and others have accused them of fueling through their aggressive and misleading marketing of the widely used drug OxyContin. Their company agreed to pay $635m in fines in 2007, a pittance compared with how lucrative the drug had been. Now, in precisely the kind of the “win-win” model that Giridharadas reviles, the family’s patriarch, Richard Sackler, is working to fight the opioid epidemic – and make money doing it – by patenting a new drug to help wean people off opioids.

Giridharadas also calls special attention to the Clinton Global Initiative, Bill Clinton’s recently defunct annual gathering that extracted charitable commitments from corporations and plutocrats in exchange for some good PR and image laundering. “They fly here because they see investment opportunities; they see branding opportunities,” Giridharadas quotes Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, saying of the conference: “It’s this idea that you can support a health initiative in Nigeria or the Niger Delta to reduce disease or diarrhea or whatever, and you can also make an investment in a company that is a polluter in the Niger Delta.”

And yet Giridharadas wants to do more than just shame people – he wants to have a conversation, and with people whom he considers his peers. “Many of my friends are drunk on dangerous bullshit. However, they’re still my friends,” he says.

The Sackler’s pharmaceutical empire helped make them one of America’s wealthiest and most philanthropic families. They also profited off of America’s opioid crisis.

The Sackler’s pharmaceutical empire helped make them one of America’s wealthiest and most philanthropic families. They also profited off of America’s opioid crisis. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

It’s been called a traitor-to-its-class kind of book, and though it wasn’t written per se for the elites it excoriates, it does appear to have their attention. The 2015 speech was first written up by David Brooks, a New York Times columnist who was in attendance and is no stranger to the ideas circuit Giridharadas excoriates. And when the book first came out, renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz took to the pages of the Times to urge philanthropic plutocrats to “read a copy of this book while in the Hamptons this summer”.

It has also found deeper resonance in a country still searching for explanations of the last presidential election. “It’s hard for me to think of anything better designed to burn down this age of business fundamentalism, this age of market worship than the flamboyant failure of the faux billionaire, faux savior Donald Trump,” Giridharadas says.

Why are so few US politicians from the working class?

Trump’s campaign was boosted by the same logic by which America’s wealthy “saviors” deem themselves fit to lead, he argues: that their familiarity with and even greedy exploitation of America’s financial and political systems somehow makes them uniquely qualified to fix them.

Giridharadas admits he’s long been repelled by the notion that, for instance, the best course of action for young would-be world savers is to get an MBA. And his book rails against what he sees as a central myth that’s taken hold in American culture: that training at Goldman Sachs or a stint at McKinsey is somehow essential, or even particularly relevant, to making good policy or a meaningful understanding of the world.

He chafes at the quick, self-aggrandizing solutions hawked by the people who speak at ideas conferences. And so, perhaps, it follows that when pressed for solutions, he bristles. “This is a book about tearing down dogma,” he says. “It’s trying to convince you that other people’s unfounded dogma have hijacked the discourse,” he adds. “I don’t have a substitute dogma to replace this dogma with.”

In a way his resistance makes sense. He doesn’t want to be the anti-thought leader leading the charge against thought leading, after all. And he’s all for reform, but only once the problem has been fully considered, which, by the way, he thinks it almost never is.

“It’s hard for me to think of anything better designed to burn down this age of business fundamentalism, this age of market worship than the flamboyant failure of the faux billionaire, faux savior Donald Trump,” Giridharadas says.

‘It’s hard for me to think of anything better designed to burn down this age of business fundamentalism, this age of market worship than the flamboyant failure of the faux billionaire, faux savior Donald Trump,’ Giridharadas says. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

“It’s the winners who want these solutions,” he says, to mask their desire for premature absolution. “I think the desire for solutions and takeaways itself has an agenda,” he adds. “I think takeaway culture is a big part of why we’re here: because we’re not willing to think any more and understand the complexity of these problems, and sit with them.”

Is America an oligarchy dominated by billionaires?

He sounds some hopeful notes, provocatively quoting the billionaire Vinod Khosla as saying “capitalism exists by permission of democracy”. It’s a way, perhaps, to suggest that real change requires politics and collective action, something Giridharadas has argued previously in the pages of the Times. “We ended slavery by acting together,” he tells me now. “We defeated fascism together. We electrified rural America together. We got kids out of factories and antifreeze out of medicine acting together.”

In addition he thinks Aspen would do well to spend its time listening to more of society’s losers, and fewer winners. “The powerful are very good at disseminating their own bullshit,” he says. “They don’t need the intellectual reputation laundering of ideas festivals to make their heavily marketed bullshit smell even sweeter.”

“I sincerely believe,” he says, “that had more of the institutions of this country – and particularly those involved in thinking and ideas, not just conferences but all kinds of things – been more skeptical of elite fantasies and more mindful of what was actually going on in other people’s lives in this country, I think it’s very possible we wouldn’t have orange Mussolini in the White House.”

aha:? family fdn tax shelter, ~ estate tax, arts philanthropy also tax dodge but also rehabiliatation PR (// "job-creators"?)

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/heres-the-dark-side-of-billionaire-philanthropy-and-the-threat-to-american-democracy/

no lnx

Here’s the dark side of billionaire philanthropy — and the threat to American democracy

Anthony Quintano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Written by Independent Media Institute October 15, 2019

by Tom Conway

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, America’s fourth-richest person, finally admitted that no one deserves to accumulate as much wealth as he has.

But hey, he says, at least he plans to give a lot of his $69.6 billion net worth to charity.

That’s nice. But it’s not enough considering the threat of concentrated wealth to the American ideal.

America’s very democracy is dying because billionaires like Zuckerberg amass ever more wealth—and thus ever more political power—while everyone else struggles with less—less money, but, just as importantly, less clout in government.

Philanthropy is fine. But to preserve a functioning democracy, everyone, including billionaires, must pay a fair share of taxes so that America has the money it desperately needs to address shared priorities, reinvigorate the middle class and repair the social fabric torn by income inequality. And we need real limits on campaign contributions to stop the nation’s slide from democracy, where many have a voice, to oligarchy, where only the rich are heard.

The rich don’t pay anything like their proportionate share of taxes right now. Not even close.

In fact, a new study shows that the super-rich pay a lower rate than working Americans thanks to the Republicans’ 2017 tax giveaway.

Last year, the nation’s 400 richest families paid an average effective tax rate of 23 percent, compared to the 24.2 percent paid by the bottom half of U.S. households. It turns out hotel queen Leona Helmsley was right all those years ago when she said only the little people pay taxes.

In 1960, the tax rate for America’s 400 richest families was 56 percent. By 1980, it had dropped to 47 percent. As the tax rate for those families fell between 1960 and last year, the middle class shrank, income inequality rose to a 50-year high and the rich consolidated political power through unchecked political contributions.

It’s a vicious cycle. Rich people use their money to hijack the political process and pass laws, such as the 2017 tax windfall for the rich, that give them still more money to push their agenda at the expense of middle-class priorities like stronger Social Security and Medicare.

The few are ruling the many. Make no mistake, American democracy is under attack from within.

During a company town hall meeting, a Facebook employee asked Zuckerberg about the morality of being a billionaire. Zuckerberg said no one “deserves” to accumulate the vast wealth that he has, but he quickly pointed out that he gives much of it away.

Better that rich people donate some of their money than blow it all on waterfront mansions, mega-yachts and sports cars for themselves. And philanthropy can fund important research and social service projects.

But it’s dangerous for a small group of rich people to decide which issues get attention and buckets of cash. This just enhances their status and power.

In a functioning democracy, everyone gets a voice in these kinds of decisions through proper representation and taxation. Taxes are an obligation for the common welfare. Everyone contributes a fair share so that the pool is big enough for the people—through their duly elected representatives—to address shared priorities, from national defense to public schools.

For example, with funds from equitable taxation of all people—rich and not rich—Americans might decide to overhaul their roads, bridges, tunnels, locks and dams. Their condition right now is a national disgrace. A major tax investment in infrastructure would generate family-sustaining jobs—something that would pump up the decimated middle class—and keep commerce flowing.

Some of the additional tax money also could be spent on programs to help Americans struggling to pay for college and health care. Or it might be used to provide food stamps for the poor.

Right now, to save $4.5 billion, the Trump administration wants to kick nearly 8,000 households off of food stamps and reduce benefits to thousands more. Yes, Trump intends to short-change the poorest of the poor after helping the super-rich dodge their tax obligations. But that’s what happens when the rich control the political process.

America’s political system, ideally, is based on a one person, one vote principle. That means each voter possesses the same political clout as every other.

But Americans don’t have an equal voice. And they will never get a just tax policy as long as the rich can buy whatever political policy they want with unchecked campaign contributions and loads of lobbyists. The U.S. Supreme Court gave the rich this gift—the power to spend unlimited amounts on campaign ads and use corporations to inject unlimited dark money into politics. The rich have used piles of money to muffle individuals, even large groups of individuals.

The relationship is transactional. The rich give Republican politicians the money they need to win elections. And then Republicans pass laws benefiting their benefactors and block laws for the 99 percent.

Just look at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s opposition to a hike in the minimum wage.

The House this past summer passed a bill to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, up from the current poverty-level wage of $7.25 an hour. It would be the first increase since 2009. It’s urgently needed to help counter decades of general wage stagnation for American workers.

Kentucky, McConnell’s home state, had the nation’s sixth-highest poverty rate—16.9 percent—last year, and lots of Kentuckians would benefit from a minimum wage bump. But McConnell won’t bring the bill to the floor. Wealthy employers told him they don’t want it.

Similarly, the power of the 1 percent is the reason that far fewer workers will receive overtime pay than deserve it.The Obama administration proposed extending overtime eligibility to all workers making $47,476 a year or less. The cut-off had been $23,660. But wealthy business groups protested the Obama number, won a court decision that the Republican Trump administration declined to appeal, and now Trump’s Labor Department has reduced the overtime number to $35,568. That means 8 million fewer workers will benefit. Great for wealthy business owners who don’t have to pay. Not so great for those who do the work.

Zuckerberg knows lack of equal representation is a problem. Last year, he gave $200 million in Facebook stock to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which asserts: “A healthy democracy is dependent on all community members influencing public policy decisions that affect their lives and neighborhoods.”

Zuckerberg’s charity isn’t going to make that true nationwide, however. Americans must change the system corrupted by big money.

Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).