Charity for the 1%?

It seems like it’s a good time to remember some history. Do you sometimes forget relatively recent history? G. Santayana was reputed to have said something about (paraphrasing for syntactical fit) those of us who don’t remember the past being condemned to repeating it. Of course, ancient history may be inaccurate (did Nero really fiddle while Rome burned?), and this recent history might be, too. But see for yourself. Check this little bit of history from 2008 about how downtrodden the 1% were back then.

Thanks, This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

Getting More Serious

Barbara Hansen of USA TODAY used GMI Ratings, Standard & Poor’s data, and other USA TODAY research to analyze the pay of chief executive officers of US corporations in 2011. Matt Krantz and Ms. Hansen reported the results of that analysis 28 March 2012. Here is a listing of the top 10 earners for 2011. Ms. Hansen’s table, available with the story they reported, can be sorted in other ways to allow one to see data on 151 companies’ executive’s earnings.

COMPANY	EXECUTIVE	TOTAL
Viacom	Philippe Dauman	$43,077,942
Honeywell International	David Cote	$35,378,249
Walt Disney	Robert Iger	$31,363,013
Marathon Oil	Clarence Cazalot	$29,911,662
Altera	John Daane	$29,576,725
Motorola Solutions	Gregory Brown(1)	$29,313,864
IBM	Samuel Palmisano	$24,221,865
Johnson & Johnson	William Weldon	$23,362,939
United Technologies	Louis Chenevert	$22,878,306
American Express	Kenneth Chenault	$22,490,401
Qualcomm	Paul Jacobs	$21,722,333
Coca-Cola	Muhtar Kent	$21,161,811
Cooper Industries	Kirk Hachigian	$21,116,678

Now, I don’t begrudge people making money, especially if they work hard, and I presume these men work hard, probably as hard as I do. And it’s not about me and them. But, what does one do with this sort of money. In one year, they’re making more than what a well-paid teacher made (including nice retirement and health benefits) over the past 35 years. Equitable?

Well, if these men gave 1% of their incomes to an endowment for a local school for five years, that would amount to something. Those schools would suddenly have budgets that would allow them to buy curricula that they might not otherwise be able to purchase, given the anti-tax and anti-education mood of many neighbors. And, if these savvy business men said, “You have to buy curricula that have a proven track record of success with the funds from this endowment (and here are the sensible rules for deciding what counts as such a curriculum),” then they might be “giving back to the community,” as their similarly wealthy athletics stars say.

In fact, mayhaps we could just ask that these way-wealthy folks would form coalitions and tackle problems such as this, just as the Buffet, Gates, Broad, and other families have addressed international problems. Mr. Atlanta Falcon Matt Ryan, Atlanta Coca Cola Mr. Muhtar Kent, Mr. Atlanta Hawk Joe Johnson, and Mr. Atlanta Braves Chipper Jones…y’all could do some good works among you, if you formed a team. Just 1-2% of your incomes a year for a three-year run for schools, boys-and-girls clubs, community music programs, shelters for indigent elderly folks…. Do you think you could afford 10%?

Who’s the 99%?

Rev. Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir have an answer to that question. It’s actually pretty obvious, ’cause the 1% (really the one-tenth of one percent) are all those folks you and I see pretty much every day. May Day is just around the corner.

Understanding current events

Mark Fiore’s guide to current events is Susie Newsykins who explains just how to say “no,” create a “sooper-dooper” broccoli committee, and much more about how adults run the USA.

Look for “Dogged Daze“

I haven’t been keeping up with Mr. Fiore’s current events, though I have been monitoring some of the events transpiring in the USA news (how can one avoid the trumpeting of them in the popular media?), so when I checked on the site this morning, I was glad to have this refresher about what had been happening during the summer just past. Now I feel much better prepared for the school year.

Budgeting for the future

Lost in all this flap about the debt ceiling, revenue, spending, and such is an important discussion about who’s going to be doing things 30, 40, or 50 years from now. How well prepared will those people be who are going to be responsible in the future for the economy, environment, government, and so forth? Those are investments that really matter for all of us.

In a column opposite the New York (NY, US) Times editorials 17 July 2011, Nicholas D. Kristof discussed some of these issues. He remembered his own school days fondly, likening his “beloved old high school in Yamhill, Ore. — a plain brick building” to a rocket ship that allowed him and his classmate to rise to positions as columnists or lawyers, and raised questions about the current rounds of financial constraints that are crushing education around the USA. He rightly encouraged citizens to reconsider priorities.

Still, we nation-build in Afghanistan and scrimp at home. How is it that we can afford to double our military budget since 9/11, can afford the carried-interest tax loophole for billionaires, can afford billions of dollars in givebacks to oil and gas companies, yet can’t afford to invest in our kids’ futures?

Without an educated populace, we have very little on which to depend for the future. Education does a lot. An educated populace not only earns more and creates more, it makes smarter decisions about child bearing and rearing, purchasing, and on and on.

The importance of education was a foundational notion for people who conceived of democracy. In a letter to George Wythe of 13 August 1786, Thomas Jefferson wrote that he considered “by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people” and recommended that Mr. Wythe “Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [tyranny, oppression, etc.] and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”

I hope the politicians don’t toss the wheat with the chaff.

Read Mr. Kristoff’s “Our Broken Escalator.” Read more of Mr. Jefferson’s quotations about the importance of education for a democracy.

Wavy wonder works

Beacon Marquee

For fun this past weekend, Pat and I attended the New York City version of Wavy Gravy’s 75th birthday celebration. It was just a gossamer disguise for yet another fund-raiser for the Seva Foundation, an organization that does and has been doing lots of good deeds hither and yon. Seva has worked with the World Health Organization and leading international ophthalmology people to prevent and treat blindness, promoted health and literacy for girls and women, created healthy water management systems for indigenous people, developed innovative ways to address diabetes in Native American communities, and completed many other successful projects.

Those dang TJ muzzles must be here somewhere

O.K. I hope I’ve set this up correctly so that this delightful image by artist Sam Welty is linked to the page that will show the TJ Center muzzles when they are announced on Mr. Jefferson’s B’day, 13 April 2011.

HB, Mr. Jefferson. Thanks for thinking about things.

Free us from TSA?

David Vincent Wolf has a dang good take on the flap about

intrusive | invasive | insensitive

[pick one or insert another] searches recommended by the US government. How far will the populace of the home of the free go to be secure? How many freedoms will we sacrifice for safety? What price paranoia?

O.K. That “paranoia” is probably a little hyperbolic. But, hasn’t this gone about far enough?

The image is hot, but if you’d rather have the URL so you can copy it and share it directly here ‘tiz:

http://davidvincentwolf.com/notes/22611-land-of-the-free

Rev. Billy Reaches Out to California

Leave it to the Right-on Reverand Billy to tie about forty-eleventy strings into one bow.

According to Reed Johnson of the Los Angeles Times, Rev. Billy, Savi, and a bunch of the other of them are holed up in LA doing some gigs. They’re trucking along that lefty coast singing the gospel.

On a drizzly evening earlier this week, the Rev. Billy, who calls Mickey Mouse “the Antichrist,” was denouncing the evils of mindless consumerism at CalArts, the Valencia college partly founded and funded by Walt and Roy Disney.

Thursday night, the Rev. Billy and his Life After Shopping Gospel Choir will be preaching their puckishly anti-capitalist message from the bully pulpit of REDCAT, the multipurpose venue tucked inside Walt Disney Concert Hall. A late-night performance was added after the first one sold out.

More 10-10-10

Check this: Bill McKibben, who’s written books about environmental matters and is a founder of 350.org, is throwing down the gauntlet. Here’s his pitch:

We’re holding a Global Work Party on 10-10-10. All over the world, people will be putting up solar panels, digging community gardens, and laying out bike paths, all in an effort to show some actual leadership in fighting climate change. It’s an effort, in part, to shame our political leaders—to show them what actual work looks like.

And a week in advance, I’m willing to make two predictions about the event: one that I’m pretty sure will come true, and one that I hope proves wrong.

That’s the lead (“lede?”). To read his predictions, go to his post, “Bill McKibben: ‘I Dare the Media to Cover This’.” Please promote 350.org.

AAI Conference

Wooohooo! I’ll just run the 1st three paragraphs of the press release here:

Ottawa, Ontario — (SBWIRE) — 09/30/2010 — Atheist Alliance International (AAI) in collaboration with Humanist Canada (HC) announce their joint convention, to be held October 1st, 2nd and 3rd, 2010, uniting atheists and humanists in an international movement transcending political and cultural borders.This will be the first ever explicitly atheist convention in Montreal, as well as the first North-American AAI convention held outside the U.S.A. The event, organized with local support from Atheist Freethinkers and CFI Montreal, will welcome hundreds of participants and be held at the Delta Centre-ville Hotel on 777 University St. in the heart of the city.

This bilingual event will feature a plethora of both anglophone and francophone convention speakers. A partial list of those confirmed so far includes: anthropologist Daniel Baril speaking on the evolutionary origins of religion; Philippe Besson, French freethought leader; Daniel Dennett, celebrated philosopher and author of Breaking The Spell; Belgian historian of atheism Serge Deruette; Belgian philosopher and secularism advocate Nadia Geerts; Louise Mailloux, founder of Citizens’ Collective for Equality and Secularism; famous evolutionary biologist and Pharyngula blogger P.Z. Myers; Jeremy Patrick, legal expert on blasphemy legislation; screenwriter and comedian J.D. Shapiro; Skeptical investigator Karen Stollznow, a.k.a. SkepChick; Rodrigue Tremblay, economist and author of The Code for Global Ethics.

The 2010 Richard Dawkins Prize will be awarded to Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. Several other activities will take place in conjunction with the convention: for example the September 30th party to mark International Blasphemy Rights Day and underline the importance of freedom of expression; and an evening of stand-up comedy on Comedy Night.