The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Buffett's Billions

6.29.06 @ 12:01AM

WORSE THAN THE U.N.
Re: Jay D. Homnick's You Can Buff It, But You Can't Make It Shine:

Where the ghastly Gates philanthropy is concerned, Mr. Homnick has nicely pointed out the tip of the iceberg, but no more than that.

The former editor of one of the other VRWC opinion journals has given us his Law: All institutions which are not explicitly right-wing tend, over time, to become left-wing. The Gates Foundation is well down that road, dancing, as Mr. Homnick points out, with the Planned Parenthood ghouls at the party of death. Nothing known to us at this juncture suggests the Gates monstrosity, now augmented by the Buffett Billions, won't join and then exceed the other bastard children of our beloved capitalist pigs in that race down the slippery slope. One thinks of the Ford Foundation and its fellow travelers, now reduced to relative fiscal pissantry by this unholy BuffetGates singularity, and one must shudder. The thing is much bigger than, say, Cuba, and is already inside the gates, so to speak.

It's bigger than the UN, for that matter. Perhaps this is a mission for the indispensable Jed Babbin. Start your research, Jed, there's a best seller in your future: Inside the Asylum: Why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Is So Very Much Worse Than the U.N.
-- Paul Kotik
Plantation, Florida

Once again, Mr. Homnick, with added wit and satire, hits the nail on the head regarding the elite and their sad and twisted ways of thinking. I assume that given their wealth and power, these men of influence have morphed into demi-gods whose very thoughts and actions are deemed divinely inspired and will only provide goodness to all, especially the "little people." Well, the little people they think should exist anyway. Regardless, the world will go on, with or without the billions they place in the hands of those who adhere to the Culture of Death (as the late Pope John Paul II aptly named it) and survive. Hope springs eternal, especially for those who believe in God, not in the machinations of men.
-- David P. Bennett
Chicago, Illinois

Apparently everyone except you feels there are already too many damn people on this planet, and the population keeps increasing geometrically everyday as families, in the third world especially, keep squirting out babies. As health increases, people live longer and infant mortality goes down. The population and resulting sprawl (and poverty) then increase at an increased rate, gobbling up more resources (including misapplied charity monies).

We don't need any more people on this planet. We could function just as well with half. Easily. Why must we help third world nations develop if the result will be greater population and more mouths to feed? The earth's resources are finite. The space on earth's surface is finite. Family planning makes perfect sense (not necessarily Planned Parenthood's approach). Of course, deciding what the plan should be will never probably happen because no one will agree. China was smart enough to know about what over-population was doing to their country. They enforced small families (democracy is sometimes way too slow). Yes, birth control and abortion were and are widespread there as they are here in the U.S.

As an aside, I'd like to know is why is abortion considered murder by some and birth control not, especially by those who think God is somehow in control of all birth (shoot away and let God sort 'em out!)? Truth is, God gave us the brains to figure out how to improve our planet as well as the common sense to know that the burgeoning population is causing increased misery and untimely deaths. Also, we can still experience wealth and efficient allocation of resources without population growth. Economic growth and population growth need not be co-related, although some people act as if it were the case. We need more planning and less mindless sprawl. We all cherish our freedom, but it's hard to be free when everyone is crowding each other out.
-- John Sperling, Republican
Las Vegas, Nevada

I could not keep from chuckling over the reports of Warren Buffett donating the bulk of his fortune to a private foundation. For years, Mr. Buffett has been an outspoken advocate of the inheritance tax, destroyer of family farms and small businesses. Yet when it came to his own estate, he chose to divert it so it would not be largely confiscated by the government.

Of course, even after taxes his fortune would still have been sufficient to endow generations of Buffetts. Perhaps he feared that bequeathing riches to his descendants would spawn legions of Paris Hiltons. Heirheads living absurd lives may not be the legacy he wanted associated with his name. Perhaps he agrees with Andrew Carnegie's maxim that the man who dies rich should be ashamed, so that forking it over to any charitable end use is better than checking out with a big checking account. Perhaps Messrs. Buffett and Gates genuinely believe they are doing good with their charity, although Jay Homnick is right that the Gates Foundation's support of abortion surely will turn out to be wildly destructive rather than beneficial for the intended recipients. Perhaps these modern Midases have simply fallen prey to Liberal Guilt and are trying to buy their way into heaven.

In the long run, however, we all know what will happen to Warren's wealth and Bill's billions. Like Rockefeller before them, they have created another United Nations: a self-serving bureaucracy of international do-gooders, accountable to no one and accomplishing nothing. The money will be squandered and embezzled, and gradually put to uses completely at odds with the original intent of the donors. Within a few decades, their foundation will be unrecognizable to its long-dead founders.

The world would be better off if they gave their money directly to ordinary people. Therefore, I invite all the billionaires reading TAS who want to avoid Mr. Buffett's mistake to send your donations to:
-- Jim Bono
Midlothian, Virginia

As Mr. Homnick eloquently points out, for Mrs. Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates to use their blessings to deny the most innocent among us life itself is beyond perverse.

It reminds me of when I worked for a company that put on a charity drive wherein they wanted as close to 100-percent employee participation as they could get. To that end someone went around to the employees imploring us to contribute at least $1 to the cause, thereby giving the company bragging rights. When I saw that the cause was the United Way, one of whose charities is Planned Parenthood, I steadfastly refused to contribute. My employer's Shylock tried to impress upon me that I could designate that my contribution went only to some specific charity associated with United Way.

Nevertheless, I continued with my refusal. Since money is fungible my donation of a clamshell to their shell game would have simply caused United Way to designate my $1 (net overhead, of course) to the charity of my choice while simultaneously removing an equivalent amount from that charity's portion of the general fund and redistributing the general fund accordingly. Therefore the net result of my contribution would have been to increase Planned Parenthood's coffers by, say, .016 cents. But that would have been .016 cents too much!
-- R. Trotter
Arlington, Virginia

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Business, Social Security, Satire, Sports, Abortion, Global Warming, Constitution, Law, United Nations, NATO, Energy, Oil