WhackyNation

The monstrously large and greedy hand of Big Government has stretched out once more to grasp an important private area in which it has no business interfering — the vast and significant domain of private charities and foundations, where, traditionally, it has been “persona non grata,” and wisely so.

For some time now, the federal government, spurred by several Liberal elements in Congress, has had its eye on the billions in the treasury of the world’s largest and most generous foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Liberals have cast their collective eye on the foundation as a result of the gift to the foundation of $31 billion by another billionaire, Warren Buffett, increasing the foundation’s total to more than $60 billion.

Together, the Gateses and Buffett have agreed to expand the Gates’ remarkably generous program to promote better health and education in the world’s most poverty-stricken regions. That program is going well everywhere, and it must not be sullied by the greedy hand of Big Government.

However, the Liberals are pointing to the examples of the convicted lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, and irregularities discovered in the management of Red Cross and Nature Conservancy funds to make a case for their insistence that the operations of the Gates Foundation and other charity organizations must be controlled by government under a new set of rules.

At the moment, the elements in Congress seeking to invade private charities’ arena are relatively quiet, possibly because the Gates Foundation in particular has achieved extraordinary successes in its multi-million-dollar programs to fight AIDS and other diseases in several African nations.

But large charitable institutions should remain on guard to forestall a new assault on their funds by the tax-mad creatures in Congress and in federal government. Under no conditions should money advanced for worthy charitable purposes be subjected to federal tax programs.

In fact, Congress should be following an opposite tack and move to pass legislation specifically forbidding government or any other source from trying to extract funds from any charity for tax purposes. The whole idea is devilish and un-American, and the people should stand at the ready to ward it off for all time.

Furthermore, it is well known that Gates, Buffett, and other billionaires and millionaires in our midst have already paid their dues in the form of federal taxes. Wouldn’t any proposal to tax their foundation funds actually amount to a case of “double taxation,” something that has long been forbidden in America?

No one in the world admires Bill and Melinda Gates more than I do for the extraordinary work their foundation is doing in improving the health and welfare of poverty-stricken nations in Africa and elsewhere. Their generosity and concern have been unmatched in the planet’s history.

And now, to their credit, they have attracted the support and financial help of another billionaire, Warren Buffett, who pledged $30 billion of his fortune to the Gates Foundation to be used in the worldwide fight against disease. Buffett’s money has more than doubled the size of the foundation’s cash reserves, a phenomenal mark never before approached by the likes of the Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Fords.

Primary targets in the Gates Foundation program are to attack the sources and causes of AIDS and malaria, and most of their money, especially in Africa, will go to that struggle. However, I have to express one major disappointment in the otherwise remarkable health program thus far. My longtime friend and co-author, the late Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, and I detailed that disappointment in our two books, Trashing the Planet and Environmental Overkill, and we repeated it time and again in articles, speeches, and appearances on radio and television shows. I have carried it forward since Dr. Ray’s death in 1994.

In fact, I have tried to relay that disappointment to Gates for at least ten years, but the phalanx of receptionists, secretaries, and other assistants protecting him from outside sources has been so efficient that my letters, e-mails, and phone calls have not been able to get through to him. Perhaps this message will be carried to him and Melinda.

At any rate, I hasten to detail the disappointment. Way back near the middle of the 20^th Century, science came up with the most effective, easy-to-use, and harmless pesticide called DDT. It was prescribed to be spread everywhere on earth where mosquito-drawing swamps existed — and that was billions of acres around the world and particularly in Africa, Asia, and South America — and in the U.S., as well.

Before DDT was developed, more than 3,000,000 souls, most of them babies and children, were succumbing each year to the ravages of malaria fostered by the unprotected swamps in rural areas. With the application of DDT in areas everywhere, including the swamps in the U.S., the death toll from malaria was miraculously slashed from 3,000,000 annually to a few hundred.

Then, in the early 1970s, a short time after the introduction of Rachel Carson’s scientifically inaccurate book, Silent Spring, the environmentally extremist camp began a political movement designed to ban DDT from use because it was, they said, without reason nor proof, harming the eggs of eagles and other birds. With the irresponsible and, again, unscientific support of federal environmentalists, who should have known better, the government and Congress banned DDT, an action that was copied around the world. Within a year of the ban, the world’s deaths from malaria rose from a few hundred back to the annual 3,000,000 mark, where it stands today!

I believe the extremists who masterminded the gross political move to ban DDT should be charged with genocidal murder! At any rate, the Gates Foundation and, now, Buffett, should make a gigantic effort, backed by their billions, to restore the use of DDT and save the lives of the millions who are dying from malaria each year!

As they have from time to time, many national and local charitable organizations are reporting that contributions have fallen off at the present time, and virtually all of them attribute the drop to a troubled economy. Although it isn’t the only problem, the high price of gasoline is cited as the primary reason for the reported falloff.

I don’t buy that reasoning, nor do I believe that there has actually been a drop in donations. To begin with, the economy is robust at the present time, even though the stock market has been having its ups and downs. As I see it, the “drop” in charitable donations is more fiction than fact.

We hear the dire reports from such organizations as the Salvation Army and the nation’s largest private social agency, Catholic Charities USA. It also emanates from various other charities at the national and local levels. And they are able to support the alarms, because they have experienced lower donation totals for their own agencies.

However, it is quite clear that they are all firing at the wrong target and interpreting their own drops as reflecting a falloff in the entire charity field. Americans have not become less charitable. On the contrary, the real evidence is that they’re contributing much more to charity than ever before.

The real problem is that the number of charitable groups at both the national and local levels has increased sharply in recent years, all of them competing for the same dollars from the same donors. The truth is that there simply are just too many charitable agencies in competition for the contributions.

It’s a carbon copy of the condition we can recall many decades ago that led to the formation of what is now called the United Way, successor to the Community Chest organizations of earlier years. People grew tired of the barrage of requests they received for charitable donations in the mails, in the news media, and at every street corner.

What has happened in recent years is that too many charity groups have broken away from United Way and campaigned on their own. I think it’s time to bring many of them back into the United Way fold. And it’s something that should be done before a real revolt begins against giving.

Regardless of the problems that might exist in the charity field, something else should be recognized, not only by Americans but by all the other nations of the world. That is that the American people have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are the kindest, most charitable people in the world. It is a characteristic I wish the rest of the world would recognize and applaud.

The greatest giveaway of all time, the Marshall Plan, was a typically American form of charity that was never given credit for its accomplishments among the suffering people of Europe after the Second World War. That plan had much to do with the rehabilitation and economic comeback of a Europe that had been nearly destroyed by the world’s worst war.

I’m not suggesting that we eliminate our charitable giving to downtrodden nations. But maybe we should require nations receiving our charitable dollars in the future to return the favor, perhaps not with money but at least with promises of good will and maybe even increased trade agreements. It’s an idea the Marshall Plan and other American aid plans should have included before handing over a single buck.