The son of immigrants from Lebanon, Ralph Nader founded or organized more than a hundred civic organizations across the United States. Over the last five decades he fought to protect Americans and played a key role in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Freedom of Information Act and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Tune in tonight at 7:30 to WGBH (Channel 2, Boston) or your local PBS affiliate to see the four-time presidential candidate talk candidly with Maria Hinojosa about inspiring lessons he learned from his parents, the next generation of civic leaders and his ideas about how the super rich can save us.
Please share widely!
about how he single-handedly brought us eight years of the worst administration ever to govern the United States?
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p>HA! Kidding, Naderites. Just couldn’t resist. đŸ˜‰
I’m not!
I’ll check it out. I like listening to Ralph Nader. I’m curious about how the super rich can save us. It’s interesting that Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are donating half their fortunes to charity. I think it would be more productive if they used those funds to creat non-profit wind and solar farms across the land, then sell the energy at a very low cost with a modest yearly profit margin and then give the profit to charity. This would have a threefold impact. It would reduce our dependence on oil, since the cost of the new energy would be low, people would flock to it in a heartbeat. It would create badly needed jobs across the country, and it would serve charitable purposes by the contributions made yearly and for the indefinite future.
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p>Let’s hear what Ralph Nader’s ideas are.
Buffet and Gates haven’t “donated” half their fortunes to “some charity.” They have both agreed to use about half their money to fund and operate the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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p>More to the point, they invested their billions in creating both a “Foundation” which distributes money to thousands of grantees (about $3 billion in 2009) and a “Trust” which manages the endowment considerable assets. The $35 billion Trust makes annual “contributions” to the Foundation to fund the Foundation’s grant making activities and its operating costs.
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p>The Foundation/Trust directly then employs 830 people, operates five headquarters around the world, and supports grantees (often focusing on world health problems but across a huge range of worthy causes) in all 50 states and in more than 100 countries. And most importantly, nearly all of the Trust assets (about $30 billion) is being as wisely invested as possible “for the indefinite future.”
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p>As you can probably tell, the presumptions you make in your post irritate me. You think you have a “better idea” for Gates/Buffet than they themselves have come up with or those of the hundreds of smart people who have helped establish by far the most important charitable effort in history? You think your wind/solar “threefold impact” is a superior plan when compared to the establishment of a $30 billion enterprise engaged in doing good works across the world?
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p>Please.
apparently you think Gates/Buffet = God. How dare anyone throw out other ideas. How many people down on the Gulf coast will eventually end up living by charity. Sometimes, fixing the problem has more value. I do presume that setting up wind/solar farms across the nation will have
a positive impact on all people in this country. If it can also be an investment that generates contributions to charity, well, BONUS! What’s wrong with getting that idea out there? I can’t believe you’re so irritated. Please.
Gates and Buffet are valuable examples of the good that people can do if they are “super-rich” and use that wealth wisely. They have proven that they don’t need “other ideas” about how best to use their money for good.
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p>I don’t believe in God. Or in the absurd idea that the creation of “non-profit wind and solar farms across the land” would have a greater “positive impact” than the careful stewardship of billions of dollars already provided by the Gates Foundation & Trust.
Even Gates and Buffet are asking for other ideas
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p>This is a stupid debate. Buffet even says a lot of his wealth is from luck, and that his contributions to society have not been more valuable than the contributions that ordinary people make. Neither has really proven anything more than they were able to make a ton of money at a given time in our history. So has Goldman Sachs and BP Oil.
Maybe you should believe in God, because the worshipping of the wealthy is really sickening.
Do a little research and you will discover that his foundation has pissed away millions of dollars on mosquito nets that Africans have not, do not, and will not use because of their impractibility. If you have ever tried to sleep in the tropics under one you would know that the holes in the net are so small that it is like sleeeping in a heated box. I think that the French company that makes these nets has made millions on this “charity” and people continue to die from malaria. Heaven forbid that they use DDT to actually save some lives. So, yes, indeed, Gates and probably the Sage, himself, could use some better suggestions. And as suspicious as I am of the efficacy of wind mills, I would rather see the money go there for all the reasons that “live and let live” mentioned.
tonight. So instead I watched NOVA Kings of Camouflage – featuring the cuttlefish. It was fascinating, for real. What a cool creature of the sea.
The cuttlefish is a bottom-feeder.
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p>So maybe it wasn’t the wrong program after all.