Defunding and Refunding Charity

By Charles Storch11/8/2004 via COF List Serv in The Chicago Tribune

Even if the election map from Tuesday had come out far bluer, Diana Aviv would still be seeing red -- the color of ink on the federal budget for years to come.

The president of Washington-based Independent Sector, a leading coalition of foundations and non-profits, said she is focusing not on which party came out ahead but on how long a ballooning deficit will be tolerated on Capitol Hill. And she is concerned that budget-cutting hawks will be circling over entitlement programs and discretionary funds for social services.

Budget cuts make the needs greater. Tax cuts make the promotion of philanthropy to wealthy people harder by reducing the tax incentives. Compassionate Wealth must now make good on its promise to trickle down, or descend like Justice in a mighty torrent. We need not only more giving, but giving that goes to those in need, not just to nonprofits frequented by the wealthy. Maybe Hudson and Bill Schambra could do a study showing how Compassionate Conservatives are self-tithing for the poor. Better yet, rather than predicting it and waiting for it, let's do what we can, across the great divides to promote giving, and to help people make good on their Christian values, if they are Christian, or whatever values they have, so long as they are compassionate. Lest Christian values be only fire, brimstone, and smoke, and stink in the nostrils of an Angry God. We tax payers subsidize these conservative think tanks; let's get some value for the money.

Comments

[Harry]

Business genius, as I was taught, consists of finding a well managed company that produces a product or offers a service without which life would be more difficult and/or less agreeable. I wouldn't mind being a sewer magnate or investing in a competent waste managment company. It's not as glamorous as reshaping public opinion to fit a class interest ripped from an Ayn Rand novel, but the rate of return is solid on things people will always need.

So why then, plow money into grafting think tank social engineering schemes onto a public that must be propagandized to have faith in them? 5 or 6 percent, compounded over a lifetime, is better than attempting to fit legions of square pegs into round holes. Investing in the fostering of well-educated, healthy workers who don't live in fear all the time -- of the evildoer or moral threat du jour -- should make sense to compassionate conservatives. A consumer economy needs lots of consumers willing to display confidence through steady purchases. A quick killing undermines long term prosperity.

But if the goal is shock therapy to reassert the natural order of willing obedience to God's Chosen, then they're doing just fine. A nation of ignorant, sick and fearful people is poor sport for a vanguard and not one I would choose. It was acceptable to the apparatchiks of the Soviet Union.

[Phil]

The public interest is best served by private interest run amok.

[Harry]

I would find this sneaky little plutocratic order more acceptable if it were delivered without the tedious moralizing. Raw power wielded without shame, half-hearted apologies and jejune attempts at justification has the virtue of being honest. Cutting through the sanctimony and the tortured think tank studies is a waste of time. Why not just say, "perform for me or I'll make you suffer"? We're all grown ups. There's no need to play sophomoric mind games and twist classic works to fit the econoporn agenda found in cheap novels. Point the gun and I'll do as I'm told.

[vernaculo]

Isn't that tension where we came in?
Selfishness kept at bay means the thing we're doing gets more opportunities to do more with available resources, including the intangibles like hope inspiration dreams imagination?
Little guys ganging up on big guys without annihilating them, because we need big guys, because some of the best stuff gets done by big guys. Though most of it gets done by moms I think.
Chimps share 98.4% of our DNA. Let this thing run for another couple million years and there'll be two versions of what we are today, homo plutocrans and homo domesticus. With maybe a high 80's percentile correspondence.
But what if the goal was only to get the tech developed, to get the elect off planet, and that required a consumer/developer labor pool of gargantuan measure?
Maybe we have the future of the race in our little pink hands right now. And so do them plutocrats. Grrrr.