Story #3: Bill and Melinda Gates Donate $1.5M to ABC News
RUSH: We have a story here from Mediaite, which is a site that reprints what happens in the media out there. Now, listen to this. "The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (a charitable organization started by two people whose names escape me) is helping fund a year-long series for..." dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut "...ABC News. The expensive series, entitled 'Be the Change: Save a Life,' will take viewers all around the world and focus 'on the diseases and health conditions that disproportionately afflict the world’s poorest people.'" So basically Bill and Melinda Gates are gonna give ABC News a million and a half dollars to produce a piece of propaganda. ABC News is accepting a million and a half bucks from the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. Now, imagine if I were to give Fox News a million and a half dollars and say, "Here, produce a series on American exceptionalism." Can you imagine what would happen if I did that? And not only if I gave the million and a half to fund it, then I directed how it's going to be produced. I'm paying for it so therefore I am in charge of the content, Fox News. ABC News is taking a million and a half, and... (sigh) never mind, never mind.
And I thought it was interesting as well. Instead of giving a ton of money so that people can make a documentary about people living in poverty, how about create a business in a few towns and give the poor a chance to get some jobs!
I was reminded of the recent article on Bono's charitable foundation. The powers that be had done a study of it and found that only 1/10th of donations ever went to charitable causes. Bono's explanation - his charity wasn't set up to fight poverty in third world countries. It was set up to DRAW ATTENTION to poverty in third world countries.
Then there's the story about Haiti, which Rush will perhaps discuss today. The billion dollars that the US government promised Haiti still hasn't been delivered. Well, what I want to know is, what happened to all the charitable donations that started pouring in as soon as the disaster struck. What happened to that money? Indeed, where has all the charitable money gone? And didn't I read some articles where the Haitian government was asking people to stop donating, because the Haitians had stopped working to restore their country and instead were sitting around living off the charity. And people who hadn't been affected by the quake had nevertheless moved into the tent cities so they could get some of the free stuff being handed out.
I don't know the solution - but I'm thinking it's another case where institutionalized incompetence has triumphed over common sense.
I know that when I give money to St Vincent de Paul, that over 9/10 of every dollar goes to the person who needs it. This is because the staffing for each individual conference/district is 100% volunteer. However, SVDP monies rarely ever leave the community in which they are given. But with these other organizations with forcasted budgets, fancy brochures, and paid staff, one never knows how much, if any, of their donated dollar goes to the people in need.
ReplyDeleteFor me, if I wanted to be sure that my dollar goes to its targeted destination, I would never give it to one of those "popular" organizations, but instead want to give it directly to the person in need.