Mark Zuckerberg is pretty right-wing politically and this is one of the
mechanisms that he and others of his ilk use to further their agendas. Its
ironic that all of the progressives are so enamored with Facdebook.
Chuck
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2015 7:10 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] We Don't Want Mark Zuckerberg's Charity
Farbman writes: "Every dollar in Mark Zuckerberg's private charity is a
dollar wrested from public coffers - and democratic control."
CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg. (Photo: ABC)
We Don't Want Mark Zuckerberg's Charity
By Jason Farbman, Jacobin
09 December 15
he media-as-public-relations-machine was in full swing last week, abuzz
over Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's public letter to their daughter
that contained a $45 billion pledge to establish the Chan Zuckerberg
Initiative.
The mainstream media produced an avalanche of praise. "Mark Zuckerberg
Philanthropy Pledge Sets New Giving Standard," announced Bloomberg Business,
who declared that Zuckerberg and Chan were "setting a new philanthropic
benchmark by committing their massive fortune to charitable causes while
still in their early thirties." From the Wall Street Journal came more
praise: "Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan to Give 99% of Facebook Shares
to Charity."
But when BuzzFeed revealed the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was not a
nonprofit, but a for-profit Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), which has
no obligation to actually engage in charitable activity, the tenor of some
of the commentary became more negative. Was the donation to a Delaware-based
LLC nothing more than a way to duck California taxes?
The truth is that both nonprofit and for-profit charities can and do serve
as tax shelters for the obscenely wealthy. Non-profits themselves have few
restrictions around them, and only require that 5 percent of a foundation's
assets each year be spent towards its stated charitable goals, including
expenses and lobbying.
Still, in the last few years we've seen the growth of ventures like
Google.org, the charitable but largely for-profit division of Google created
in 2006 with $900 million worth of Google stock. Freed from the even the
limited guidelines to which nonprofits are held, some of the projects
Google.org has poured money into have happened to also generate mountainous
profits for Google.
For example, the One Laptop Per Child initiative's stated mission to get
$100 computers into the hands of "each and every one" of the world's poorest
children also captures lucrative data from millions of new computer users in
almost entirely untapped markets.
Similar to Google.org, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative chose a form that
would allow them to invest in profit-making initiatives, including ones that
could bring new profits to Facebook. Chan and Zuckerberg's pledge to give
everyone on earth access to the Internet, like the One Laptop Per Child
initiative, will both provide real services for a great many people while
simultaneously creating millions of new potential Facebook users (although
they do perhaps overstate with the claim, "If our generation connects them,
we can lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty").
At the same time, Chan Zuckerberg can take advantage of their status as a
tax-qualified charity to save huge sums of money. As Forbes observed:
This generosity is also incredibly tax efficient . . . Donating appreciated
stock is a much better tax move than selling it and donating the sales
proceeds. After all, by donating the stock, the gain he would have
experienced on selling it is never taxed . . . since [Chan Zuckerberg] is a
tax-qualified charity, if it sells the stock it pays no tax regardless of
how big the gain. And since Mr Zuckerberg will get credit on his tax return
for the market value of what he donates, he can use that to shelter billions
of other income.
Of course, sizable donations to charity frequently receive glowing press
coverage which is also quite valuable. The transformation of Bill Gates's
reputation - Zuckerberg's childhood hero - after creating the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation is instructive.
Throughout the 1990s Microsoft's hyperaggressive business practices resulted
in a 2000 Justice Department verdict that Microsoft was a monopoly. Several
billion dollars in fines from myriad US and European regulatory bodies
followed and Bill Gates was widely painted as a bully in the popular press.
The PR turnaround afforded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation might be
the most effective - and expensive - in history. Today Bill Gates is treated
by the media as an important thinker in the fight against disease and the
debates around education reform. He is regarded as a humanitarian with
something to say about making the world a better place, a regard that stands
in contrast to his actual commitments.
Since the early days of Microsoft, Gates has ardently supported patent law
and its enforcement, which puts medicines out of reach for most,
particularly in the Global South. He has also thrown millions at a host of
education initiatives that are so anti-teacher that the American Federation
of Teachers recently announced they would no longer take money from the
Gates Foundation.
Zuckerberg has already attempted to use a big donation to improve his
reputation and that of Facebook, which has repeatedly been caught capturing
private information with the intention to monetize it. His $100 million
donation to charter schools in Newark was timed just weeks after the release
of the Zuckerberg biopic The Social Network, and right before the release of
charter school booster documentary Waiting for Superman. Time will tell what
this latest attempt at reputation management does for Zuckerberg's public
standing.
Everyone has ideas about how the world should be different and those with
vast fortunes have an inordinate amount of power to realize those visions.
Sometimes the vision is for a cause like fighting malaria or providing
homeless shelters. Other times it's more self-interested, like when Bill and
Melinda Gates put Windows computers in high schools, keeping Macs out and
training a generation to use Windows machines.
More importantly, the concentration of so much power and reach in the hands
of billionaire philanthropists presents real problems for democracy. Every
dollar a billionaire realizes in "tax savings" is a dollar starved from the
public coffers. The tens of billions Zuckerberg would pay in taxes could go
a very long way to, say, enhancing the $69 billion budget allocated for
public education this year.
While the US government is certainly not a bastion of democracy, there are
at least formal mechanisms that put tax-based, public funding in the realm
of democratic decision-making. There are public budget proposals, hearings,
and votes, and elections through which we can attempt to hold politicians
accountable for their actions. We'll most likely only have a vague idea what
is happening with the money controlled by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative;
their LLC status will allow them to avoid making many tax documents public.
These sorts of charitable enterprises give even more control to capitalists
- who already have outsized influence in our society - putting them in
positions to make decisions that increasingly shape public life for all of
us. People like Zuckerberg and Gates are unelected and unaccountable to
anyone and face few, if any, repercussions for the negative consequences of
their social experiments.
Zuckerberg's education initiative exemplifies this outsized and damaging
role. Despite his limited personal experience with public school - he
attended the elite Phillips Exeter Academy and then Harvard - Zuckerberg has
begun to commit serious sums of money to reforming public education. His
signature donation was $100 million to replace Newark's public schools with
charters. Working with former Newark mayor Corey Booker and Republican
Governor Chris Christie, the goal was to completely transform Newark's
schools in five years, and turn them into a model for restructuring other
districts across the country.
In order to achieve reforms quickly, they had to bypass the process of
public engagement. Free from the constraints of government deliberation, the
plans of the nonprofit foundation were not made public until after key
decisions had been made. Newark residents first learned about the program
the afternoon Booker, Christie, and Zuckerberg announced it on Oprah.
Once the foundation was established, seats on its board were awarded to
those who contributed more than $5 million. "A local philanthropist offered
$1 million," reported Diane Ravitch, "but he was turned away because the
amount was too small."
The Newark experiment was a resounding failure and did little more than line
the pockets of consultants. Test scores didn't rise considerably, teachers
resisted merit pay, and the woman hired to run the district refuses to
attend School Board Advisory meetings because they are still too hostile.
The debacle still follows Zuckerberg. Last week, many of the most glowing
reports of his $45 billion donation had to mention his previous
philanthropic endeavor.
Zuckerberg has continued to make investments in education since Newark,
claiming he's learned from the experience and wants to improve. Still, he's
just one relatively new player in the education reform movement.
The Gates Foundation has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to
restructure the US public school system, with $200 million going to Common
Core - a curriculum initiative opposed by educators and parents across the
country. Eli Broad Foundation has also spent lavishly - including a nearly
$500 million plan to put half of Los Angeles students into 260 new charter
schools. The Walton Foundation has spent over $1 billion supporting charters
and vouchers.
The war on public education by the ultra wealthy - using tax-sheltered
dollars which otherwise might have gone to improve public education -
reveals a deep hostility to democracy.
We should demand better: Instead of waiting to see how his charity will
impact our lives, Zuckerberg's wealth should be put under democratic
control, so we can collectively decide how it can be used to improve
society.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg. (Photo: ABC)
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/facebook-zuckerbergs-charity-gates-philan
trophy/https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/facebook-zuckerbergs-charity-gates
-philantrophy/
We Don't Want Mark Zuckerberg's Charity
By Jason Farbman, Jacobin
09 December 15
he media-as-public-relations-machine was in full swing last week, abuzz
over Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's public letter to their daughter
that contained a $45 billion pledge to establish the Chan Zuckerberg
Initiative.
The mainstream media produced an avalanche of praise. "Mark Zuckerberg
Philanthropy Pledge Sets New Giving Standard," announced Bloomberg Business,
who declared that Zuckerberg and Chan were "setting a new philanthropic
benchmark by committing their massive fortune to charitable causes while
still in their early thirties." From the Wall Street Journal came more
praise: "Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan to Give 99% of Facebook Shares
to Charity."
But when BuzzFeed revealed the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was not a
nonprofit, but a for-profit Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), which has
no obligation to actually engage in charitable activity, the tenor of some
of the commentary became more negative. Was the donation to a Delaware-based
LLC nothing more than a way to duck California taxes?
The truth is that both nonprofit and for-profit charities can and do serve
as tax shelters for the obscenely wealthy. Non-profits themselves have few
restrictions around them, and only require that 5 percent of a foundation's
assets each year be spent towards its stated charitable goals, including
expenses and lobbying.
Still, in the last few years we've seen the growth of ventures like
Google.org, the charitable but largely for-profit division of Google created
in 2006 with $900 million worth of Google stock. Freed from the even the
limited guidelines to which nonprofits are held, some of the projects
Google.org has poured money into have happened to also generate mountainous
profits for Google.
For example, the One Laptop Per Child initiative's stated mission to get
$100 computers into the hands of "each and every one" of the world's poorest
children also captures lucrative data from millions of new computer users in
almost entirely untapped markets.
Similar to Google.org, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative chose a form that
would allow them to invest in profit-making initiatives, including ones that
could bring new profits to Facebook. Chan and Zuckerberg's pledge to give
everyone on earth access to the Internet, like the One Laptop Per Child
initiative, will both provide real services for a great many people while
simultaneously creating millions of new potential Facebook users (although
they do perhaps overstate with the claim, "If our generation connects them,
we can lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty").
At the same time, Chan Zuckerberg can take advantage of their status as a
tax-qualified charity to save huge sums of money. As Forbes observed:
This generosity is also incredibly tax efficient . . . Donating appreciated
stock is a much better tax move than selling it and donating the sales
proceeds. After all, by donating the stock, the gain he would have
experienced on selling it is never taxed . . . since [Chan Zuckerberg] is a
tax-qualified charity, if it sells the stock it pays no tax regardless of
how big the gain. And since Mr Zuckerberg will get credit on his tax return
for the market value of what he donates, he can use that to shelter billions
of other income.
Of course, sizable donations to charity frequently receive glowing press
coverage which is also quite valuable. The transformation of Bill Gates's
reputation - Zuckerberg's childhood hero - after creating the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation is instructive.
Throughout the 1990s Microsoft's hyperaggressive business practices resulted
in a 2000 Justice Department verdict that Microsoft was a monopoly. Several
billion dollars in fines from myriad US and European regulatory bodies
followed and Bill Gates was widely painted as a bully in the popular press.
The PR turnaround afforded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation might be
the most effective - and expensive - in history. Today Bill Gates is treated
by the media as an important thinker in the fight against disease and the
debates around education reform. He is regarded as a humanitarian with
something to say about making the world a better place, a regard that stands
in contrast to his actual commitments.
Since the early days of Microsoft, Gates has ardently supported patent law
and its enforcement, which puts medicines out of reach for most,
particularly in the Global South. He has also thrown millions at a host of
education initiatives that are so anti-teacher that the American Federation
of Teachers recently announced they would no longer take money from the
Gates Foundation.
Zuckerberg has already attempted to use a big donation to improve his
reputation and that of Facebook, which has repeatedly been caught capturing
private information with the intention to monetize it. His $100 million
donation to charter schools in Newark was timed just weeks after the release
of the Zuckerberg biopic The Social Network, and right before the release of
charter school booster documentary Waiting for Superman. Time will tell what
this latest attempt at reputation management does for Zuckerberg's public
standing.
Everyone has ideas about how the world should be different and those with
vast fortunes have an inordinate amount of power to realize those visions.
Sometimes the vision is for a cause like fighting malaria or providing
homeless shelters. Other times it's more self-interested, like when Bill and
Melinda Gates put Windows computers in high schools, keeping Macs out and
training a generation to use Windows machines.
More importantly, the concentration of so much power and reach in the hands
of billionaire philanthropists presents real problems for democracy. Every
dollar a billionaire realizes in "tax savings" is a dollar starved from the
public coffers. The tens of billions Zuckerberg would pay in taxes could go
a very long way to, say, enhancing the $69 billion budget allocated for
public education this year.
While the US government is certainly not a bastion of democracy, there are
at least formal mechanisms that put tax-based, public funding in the realm
of democratic decision-making. There are public budget proposals, hearings,
and votes, and elections through which we can attempt to hold politicians
accountable for their actions. We'll most likely only have a vague idea what
is happening with the money controlled by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative;
their LLC status will allow them to avoid making many tax documents public.
These sorts of charitable enterprises give even more control to capitalists
- who already have outsized influence in our society - putting them in
positions to make decisions that increasingly shape public life for all of
us. People like Zuckerberg and Gates are unelected and unaccountable to
anyone and face few, if any, repercussions for the negative consequences of
their social experiments.
Zuckerberg's education initiative exemplifies this outsized and damaging
role. Despite his limited personal experience with public school - he
attended the elite Phillips Exeter Academy and then Harvard - Zuckerberg has
begun to commit serious sums of money to reforming public education. His
signature donation was $100 million to replace Newark's public schools with
charters. Working with former Newark mayor Corey Booker and Republican
Governor Chris Christie, the goal was to completely transform Newark's
schools in five years, and turn them into a model for restructuring other
districts across the country.
In order to achieve reforms quickly, they had to bypass the process of
public engagement. Free from the constraints of government deliberation, the
plans of the nonprofit foundation were not made public until after key
decisions had been made. Newark residents first learned about the program
the afternoon Booker, Christie, and Zuckerberg announced it on Oprah.
Once the foundation was established, seats on its board were awarded to
those who contributed more than $5 million. "A local philanthropist offered
$1 million," reported Diane Ravitch, "but he was turned away because the
amount was too small."
The Newark experiment was a resounding failure and did little more than line
the pockets of consultants. Test scores didn't rise considerably, teachers
resisted merit pay, and the woman hired to run the district refuses to
attend School Board Advisory meetings because they are still too hostile.
The debacle still follows Zuckerberg. Last week, many of the most glowing
reports of his $45 billion donation had to mention his previous
philanthropic endeavor.
Zuckerberg has continued to make investments in education since Newark,
claiming he's learned from the experience and wants to improve. Still, he's
just one relatively new player in the education reform movement.
The Gates Foundation has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to
restructure the US public school system, with $200 million going to Common
Core - a curriculum initiative opposed by educators and parents across the
country. Eli Broad Foundation has also spent lavishly - including a nearly
$500 million plan to put half of Los Angeles students into 260 new charter
schools. The Walton Foundation has spent over $1 billion supporting charters
and vouchers.
The war on public education by the ultra wealthy - using tax-sheltered
dollars which otherwise might have gone to improve public education -
reveals a deep hostility to democracy.
We should demand better: Instead of waiting to see how his charity will
impact our lives, Zuckerberg's wealth should be put under democratic
control, so we can collectively decide how it can be used to improve
society.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize