| Number 386 | September 30, 2007 |
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This Week: A Little o' This, A Little o' That
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Greetings, This week it's a little o' this and a little o' that. Next week is WEEK ONE of the biannual Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive. Such drives—besides giving readers new and old a chance to show their support for the Notes—gives me a chance to back off of monitoring the daily news stream and reflect on some of the lessons learned and the goals of this independent media experiment. I have something exciting in mind for next week. Some of you have sent in your Pledge renewals without even needing to be reminded. Thank you so much! Not only does it save me a stamp or two, it shows me that you value this service and that you want it to continue. All of your comments and tips show me the same thing. Thanks a million! See you next week, Nygaard |
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From the September 6th New York Times, in a piece headlined "Big Gifts, Tax Breaks and a Debate on Charity," comes this week's "Quote." The main point of the article was that "For every three dollars [rich people] give away, the federal government typically gives up a dollar or more in tax revenue, because of the charitable tax deduction and by not collecting estate taxes." And these tax breaks are one of the reasons rich people give away any money at all. Good for the Times for putting this on the front page. "Roughly three-quarters of charitable gifts of $50 million and more from 2002 through March 31 [2007] went to universities, private foundations, hospitals and art museums, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. The article added that "few gifts of that size are made to organizations ... whose main goals are to help the poor in this country. Research shows that less than 10 percent of the money Americans give to charity addresses basic human needs, like sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry and caring for the indigent sick, and that the wealthiest typically devote an even smaller portion of their giving to such causes than everyone else." Then they quoted H. Art Taylor, president and chief executive of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, who got to the anti-democratic heart of the matter: "Donors give to organizations they are close to. So they give to their college or university, or maybe someone close to them died of a particular disease so they make a big gift to medical research aimed at that disease. How many of the superrich have that kind of a relationship with a soup kitchen? Or a homeless shelter?"
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George W. Bush, on May 15, 2006, said of the United States, "We're a nation of laws." The headline in the New York Times of September 24, 2007, Page 11, said: "Bush to Skip U.N. Talks on Fighting Global Warming." The article was about a UN meeting that was held that day to talk about how to deal with global warming. About 150 countries attended (there are about 190 countries in the world), with about 80 of them represented by their head of state. George Bush "skipped" it, although he did go to the dinner. As the Times put it, speaking of Bush, "His focus instead is on his own gathering of leaders in Washington later this week, a meeting with the same stated goal, a reduction in the emissions blamed for climate change, but a fundamentally different idea of how to achieve it." "Mr. Bush's aides... say that Mr. Bush hopes to persuade the nations that produce 90 percent of the world's emissions to come to a consensus that would allow each, including the United States, to set its own policies rather than having limits imposed by binding international treaty." "Binding international treaty" means "law." The U.S. Constitution, in fact, says that "treaties... shall be the supreme Law of the Land." The president's chief environmental adviser, James L. Connaughton, told the Times that "It's our philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be." This position is entirely predictable. As I pointed out in Nygaard Notes Number 373, "For poor people, their power is increased when they work with others. For wealthy and powerful individuals, working with others has the effect of decreasing their power, since they have to share it." And so it is with nations. The U.S., as the most powerful nation in the world, sees multilateral, democratic processes as a threat to its power. After all, we wouldn't want to be "bound" by the wishes of the rest of the world—that is, "laws"—would we? If the U.S. were in fact a "nation of laws" our leadership would support a law—that is, a "binding international treaty"—that is agreed to by the majority of the world's people's to deal with a crisis that threatens us all. Instead, as the Times reiterated that "senior [Bush administration] aides emphasized that each nation should decide for itself how to reduce emissions." That is, that there should be no "law" in this area. In an example of one nation "deciding for itself" on policy in this area, the Associated Press reported on September 13th—11 days before Mr. Bush's conference—that "The [U.S.] government's climate change research is threatened by spending cuts" imposed by the Bush administration. |
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On August 30th, six cruise missiles with nuclear warheads were carried on a B-52 bomber from North Dakota's Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. "The Air Force has not permitted its bombers to overfly U.S. territory since the late 1960s when a series of nuclear weapons accidents involving the U.S. Air Force in this country and abroad created embarrassing scandals," says the Center for Defense Information. Still, despite the fact that there have been literally hundreds of "nuclear weapon incidents" in the past 40 years, military folks are calling the Minot/Barksdale expedition "one of the biggest mistakes in US Air Force history," according to The London Independent. But was it simply a "mistake?" Hard to say, but it's unlikely we will learn much from the official investigation that was launched by the Air Force to look into the matter. For one thing, any organization's investigation of itself should be suspect. For another thing, the Los Angeles Times reports this week that "the government's investigation is continuing and classified." Perhaps in response to suspicions of this secret, in-house "investigation" by people more influential than Nygaard Notes, "Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked for an outside inquiry" of the "accident," the Associated Press reported last week. The "outside" inquiry will be led by "a retired general who once commanded the strategic bomber fleet." This is what the military calls an "outside" investigation, apparently, and this elicited no comment from the corporate media who reported this less-than-amusing charade. By the way, Barksdale Air Force Base is a primary staging point for Middle East operations. And nuclear weapons are going there? Hmmm.... Is there any media outlet in the country that will use its resources to try to unearth the facts about this incident? It could be serious, we just don't know. That, theoretically, is why we have a news media. Isn't it? It doesn't look like it's going to happen, so if any of you readers hear anything about this mysterious and troubling "accident," please let me know.
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