Dark Cloud Over Good Works of Gates Foundation

theodp writes "Justice Eta, a Nigerian infant, has an ink spot on his tiny thumb to show he was immunized against polio and measles thanks to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But Justice still faces respiratory trouble, which locals call 'the cough' and blame on fumes and soot spewing from 300-foot flames at a nearby oil plant owned by Itallian energy giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Part one of an L.A. Times investigation reports that the world's largest philanthropy pours money into investments that are hurting many of the people its grants aim to help. With the exception of tobacco companies, the foundation's asset managers do not avoid investments in firms whose activities conflict with the mission to do good."

The Price of Industry & Economics

This is "the dirty secret" of many large philanthropies, said Paul Hawken, an expert on socially beneficial investing who directs the Natural Capital Institute, an investment research group. "Foundations donate to groups trying to heal the future," Hawken said in an interview, "but with their investments, they steal from the future."

I'm sure that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had good intentions when supporting firms such as Eni. Some people might call this the price of industry. They might point at the industrial revolution that the west went through with mills and plants galore. But the key difference is that these people aren't suffering for their future. They aren't building an infrastructure or priming their economy. Because the firms running these plants are most likely foreign based. Meaning that the profits are probably shipped outside of the country. If the company was setting up jobs & providing services and money in the economy, then I'd almost be tempted to overlook the asthma & health problems associated with these companies. The problem is that I'm almost certain none of that wealth is returning to the local community.

Like most philanthropies, the Gates Foundation gives away at least 5% of its worth every year, to avoid paying most taxes. In 2005, it granted nearly $1.4 billion. It awards grants mainly in support of global health initiatives, for efforts to improve public education in the United States, and for social welfare programs in the Pacific Northwest.

And that's the problem. It's run like a business when it's supposed to be losing money. In today's world, it's easy to make money with more money. And certain foundations take advantage of that. I'm sure the Gates' foundation found it lucrative to invest in companies like Eni. After all, the company is avoiding environmental limitations imposed in its home country or the United States. And, in this manner, the foundation stays wealthy. Never losing money but always apparently "helping" people.

You still see the Gates Foundation doing good things [sundayvision.co.ug] but why is it that so many foundations of insurmountable wealth are somehow ignorant of the economic problems they persist for those they try to help?

Re:The Price of Industry & Economics

Also, I'd love to see you provide a modern example of people being dislocated from their farm-land in order to build an oil field (or any other kind of business), and then having no option but to work for that company. For some reason I get the distinct impression that you're just talking out of your ass.

Ok, let's try the Ijaw in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Those who live, have lived, there for generations, have had their land taken from them and given to multinational oil companies. In return they've had oil and chemical spills as well as constant gas flares. AllAfrica [allafrica.com] has a number of articles on the Nigeria oil delta [allafrica.com] and what those living there have to live through.

Falcon

Re:The Price of Industry & Economics

Actually, firms like that do hire (and train) a lot of locals; I know this is the case in Nigeria.

The main gist of the article seems to be "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invests in oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc., and those are all the font of evil..." and relying on the modern American's quasi-religious belief that this is the case to make their point. It has enough anecdotes to make it appear as if it's proved its point, but the plural of anecdote is not data.

Re:The Price of Industry & Economics

"... the font of evil..."

Verdana?

Re:The Price of Industry & Economics

Surely you jest. Verdana is not evil, merely overused. Comics Sans, now _that_ is the true face of evil.

Re:The Price of Industry & Economics

Lol.. Indeed. Mod me offtopic if you like (and granted, it's pretty off topic), but I despise people at work that make Comic Sans their default email font. How am I supposed to take anything they say seriously when every email from them looks like an excerpt from a Dilbert or Garfield strip? Sigh...

Re:The Price of Industry & Economics

I don't know about where you work, but my co-worker's e-mails look like Dilbert excerpts regardless of the font.

Re:The Costs of Charity

Parent post used the phrase "having good intentions", which triggered these thoughts.

BG is driving his new Hummer along a back road in the mountains, just for the pleasure of it. The only other traffic is a 1954 Chevy pickup truck driven slowly by a migrant worker with his wife and two kids crammed in the cab beside him and all their worldly possessions neatly bundled up under a tarp in the back. BG falls in behind them as they go into some tight curves, planning on passing when the road straightens out again. But a tire of the pickup blows out with a bang, the pickup swings wildly from side to side, and ends up in the ditch.

BG performs the duties of care expected of all drivers who come upon an accident. He stops and determines that everyone is okay. The pickup is wedged in the rocky ditch but safely off the road; it doesn't pose a hazard. He offers to call for assistance on his cell phone.

Then, with the best of intentions, he offers to use the winch on his brand new Hummer to pull the pickup out of the ditch, and the family is most grateful for that. After the truck is back on the pavement, he helps as best he can with changing the flat (without getting grease on his fine new clothes). The family beam in gratitude and drive off toward the railroad crossing a few hundred yards down the hill. He watches them go as he wipes the dust off the winch cable (so it will again be all bright and sparklely when he winds it back onto its spool).

The railroad warning lights come on; the pickup's brake lights come on; but the pickup doesn't slow down. It rolls right into the side of the second engine of the freight train, and is immediately spun around to slam broadside into the next car, and then is tumbled like a cartwheel across the road. The tarp rips open and pieces of simple chairs and a table, neat packages of clothes and torn bedding, fly everywhere. The roof pops off the cab, and migrant worker body parts sail through the air.

This is most unfortunate. But there is no one blame here. Since BG is a "software engineer" and an entrepreneur, there is no reason to expect him to know that the brakelines should have been inspected after a vehicle is winched out of a ditch. If not for his action, the family would still be alive, but he did act with good intentions. He is blameless in the matter of their deaths.

Now what if this was the case instead:

BG is concerned with the plight of migrant workers who have to travel the difficult mountain roads. He decides that instead of getting that fun Hummer, he would buy a brand new tow truck so that he could help these poor people who are constantly getting stranded on life's back roads. If the same scenario played out while he was driving his tow truck, he would be culpable for the deaths of the migrant family.

When he bought the tow truck, he also bought into the expectation that he would have the same concerns for safety and the same basic knowledge expected of a tow truck operator. Therefore he should have known to inspect the underside of the pickup after winching it out of the ditch; he should have recognized the distinctive odor of leaking brake fluid; and in any event he should certainly have taken the basic precaution of pumping the brake pedal a few times before letting the pickup drive off. If he did not know to do those things, he would be negligent in the duty of care expected of the position he had chosen to put himself in, and he would be facing charges of negligent manslaughter or wrongful death.

When you intentionally spend your money to offer free assistance, you take on a higher duty of care wrt the consequences of all your associated actions. You are expected to have done your studies so that you can deliver what you are offering with the same degree of safety as the minimum expected of others who do the same work. That means more than knowing how to safely operate the tow truck winch; it means knowing how to evaluate your work so that you are not creating a greater crisis down the road.

I was expecting

I was expecting something about windows, but this is a valid "conflict of interest" I would contend. Maybe the foundation wouldn't get such a good rate of return going with "safer" companies, but it would help people in the long run. But then again, if these companies are providing employment, closing them down could be bad for the workers in the country. A bad double edged sword to have.

PR

Well I'll go to the top of our stairs. Something from Bill Gates was just hype and marketing spin.

Stephen Gates

How do they compare with the Stephen & Melinda Gates Foundation?

Look at your own 401K

If you look closely at all of the funds that you can choose from,
you may well find that most of them have big oil, or questionable companies like Microsoft or Walmart.

It is very difficult, on inspection to make good picks that really fit your morals.
But this is the key problem. When you look at stocks or funds you look at the profit to you, and often do not see or ignore the negative things that you may be contributing to.

Re:Look at your own 401K

That's why I use the The Co-operative Bank [co-operativebank.co.uk]

Bob

Re:Look at your own 401K

When you look at stocks or funds you look at the profit to you, and often do not see or ignore the negative things that you may be contributing to.

There's an entire class of funds that solves this problem. It's called SRI: socially responsible investing [wikipedia.org]. Funds in this category avoid companies involved in military weapons, gambling, tobacco, etc., and they invest more heavily in companies with good track records in dealing with the environment, fair treatment of employees, and so on. Because these funds are focused more on morals than on profit, they typically don't have returns as high as other funds, but that's a small price to pay for being a socially responsible investor.

If you're interested, start by checking out Domini [domini.com] and Pax World [paxworld.com]; they're two of the largest and oldest SRI funds.

WTF?

This looks like another "lets connect the dots" piece. Perhaps it will draw attention to the problem and a definitive study can be done and a cleanup will follow. Pieces like this inevitably come off looking like their saying the Gate Foundation would be better off not existing at all. Always with the negative vibes. Hey, I'm not a Gate fan and certainly not a Windows flag-waver, but the Gates Foundation to me is the only positive thing I can see Bill doing. I'm all for it.
As to the guy above who thinks charities should be losing money not making it, that is just idiotic.

Re:WTF?

I would rather not have to pay the exorbitant prices for Windows and Office

Then don't.

Oh yeah, providing jobs and industry is terrible!

The US never had any jobs or industries, and we did just fine!

Re:Oh yeah, providing jobs and industry is terribl

I think that Eni company is "evil" because it's a oil company.

Polio vaccines should be transported to Africa without the "evil" fossil fuels, via sailing ships, or perhaps tethered to a migratory bird -- like a swallow.

Shareholder's Power

The best place to be when you're trying to put pressure on a company is at the shareholders meeting. If you own millions of dollars of stock that's even better.

Always Doing good...

Always doing good, well, it depends on your definition of whats good I guess. Leading a country to be industrialized and within an overseeable number of years belong to the world economy is surely a definition of good that I'd be able to think Gates has.
I mean; its lead by the wealthiest man in the world, who grew up in America. What do you expect his position to be?

That's not how an economy works

Let's be clear; the market for equity capital in polluting, evil, nasty industries is a large one, and the Gates foundation is just a drop in the bucket. Therefore, from the perspective of companies like Eni, it makes no difference whatsoever whether the Gates foundation owns a chunk of stock or someone else does. However, if the Gates foundation owns that chunk of stock, the dividends and capital gains from Eni's profits will ultimately go to the causes that the Gates foundation supports. If YOU owned that chunk of stock, the dividends and capital gains would go to purchase that 100" plasma TV, which feeds that evil multinational corporation that makes it and pollutes a river in China somewhere. Remember, money is just circling around in the economy: profits made by companies go back to their shareholders, who use it to purchase goods, which makes profits for other companies. What the Gates foundation, etc., are taking money out of the cycle when they get their dividends. It doesn't make it any more "evil" for them to take the profits of a company like Eni, as opposed to directly taking the profits of Microsoft. It's just a question of when the money gets spent. You COULD argue that the Gates foundation should be spending it's money FASTER, that argument is orthogonal to the question of WHERE it's investing the money hasn't spent yet.

Proof of concept for...

the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" theory. And a chance for the anti-corporate kids in moms basement to write eloquent post today.

thumb, inkspot, Bill Gates (!?!)

Wait. We're missing something here. His thumb has been marked because he's been touched by a foundation headed by Bill Gates? Could this be the Mark of the Beast. Sorry, I couldn't resist. :-)

Tough Call

he was immunized against polio and measles

Let's take a look at what Polio actually is.

Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is a virally induced infectious disease which spreads via the fecal-oral route.

Now let's take a look at our options.

1) Accept help from someone funding somthing that is making it tough to breathe.
2) Eat shit and die.

Libertarians; this situation is different.

For those that are not familiar with Nigeria, this is not a standard case of industry versus activist.

The Niger delta is in serious trouble; the environmental contamination there is beyond anything you would believe. My company had been contracted by one of the large oil companies there to investigate cleanup of some of their contaminated sites. They gave us some project specs.

The sites were huge. Gigantic. The scale of the project was larger than anything we had ever considered, and we work on some pretty large projects. Our existing cleanup efforts include some of the largest contaminated sites in the U.S. and Europe. We went to the delta to do some investigating and preliminary tests, and were shocked with what we found. On average, each contaminated site was 10x larger than the specs we were provided.

The environmental "mess" there is huge, and terribly depressing. It's a beautiful region, but you cannot imagine the scale of the contamination. It would take decades upon decades of pouring billions of dollars into remediation to bring the delta region near the environmental standards of the U.S. or Europe, neither of which are particularly high.

Furthermore, in terms of economics; these giant oil companies are ugly, monopolistic ventures with high levels of foreign and domestic (Nigerian) government involvement. They do things no "sane" company would do.

Don't respond with the usual, "These people wouldn't be better off with no jobs" bullshit. These companies have literally destroyed the region, annihilating the local agriculture and local industry. Not through competition, but through force; the region is so polluted that nothing but a resource extraction company can survive there. As far as I'm concerned, this represents use of force; which should be prohibited under capitalist frameworks.

It's really sad what is going on over there.

Connection between philanthropy and IP

These ideas are ones that have been influenced by the book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy".

Most health professionals working in HIV/AIDS in third world countries regularly state that the only way to really tackle the AIDS epidemic is for drug companies to allow generic drugs to be made and given to people in third world countries, while allowing the expensive, patented, proprietary medications to continue to be sold in first world countries.

Of course, Merck et al haven't been too eager to open that intellectual property floodgate, and they've either said "No" outright, or volunteered to donate a small percentage of drugs (much less than addressing the epidemic would require).

Any other multinational corporation with substantial patents and IP concerns must wonder be aware that reducing the patent protection from big pharma could eventually affect them as well.

So, when Bill Gates donates large amounts of money to buy patented medications, he's equally protecting the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of international IP laws. Convenient way to look great, do good things, all while protect his own interests.

Sometimes "good" is the enemy of "best" and rich & powerful people using their money to buy drugs at ridiculous prices allows them to avoid pressuring our world governments to level the playing field a little for the poorest of the poorest.

Maybe the money is helping?

What if the investment is to make a dirty factory cleaner? But until a factory sprouts up that is completely funded by gates, it's dumb to critize the most generous person in the world. (Even though I disagree strongly about charity)

What else would you expect

the foundation's asset managers do not avoid investments in firms whose activities conflict with the mission to do good

This sounds a lot like MS. But then again what else would you expect from its founder, Bill Gates?

If i were bill gates...

... I would pull all funding for everything, Stick my middle finger up and say "fuck the lot of ya".
I'm no fan of bill gates, But this bashing he constantly recieves is petty and infantile.

Gates isnt all of the problem

...we SERFS are. By toeing the line, we stop real change. Why should Africans be pleased to have jobs, even when the outcome is a polluting mess on their doorstep? 'Jobs' (no not Steve), are a recent phenomenon - they arent the only way to get by, but any attempt to be self-sufficient is being marginalised by big capital.

Did it ever occur to anyone that having a 'job' is the same as being a serf? Did it ever occur to anyone that a man with 10 acres and some basic tools doesnt need a job at all? There is a lot of land in Africa, but an individual family cant get it and therefore has to work as a WAGE-SLAVE for people like the obnoxious Gates. Before all the white men came to Africa to steal its resources, the people survived. Now, magically, they need the very assholes who steal and stole all their stuff. Sad state of affairs. As for gates - he's just an ugly symptom of global capitalism and unawareness. Gates is a guy who follows the party line - he is INCAPABLE of change. His foundation is a self-aggrandising company that thinks that crumbs from the big table can feed all us little people. And you thought he was a good guy? Now thats funny.

Oh, come on, what's new?!

But Justice still faces respiratory trouble, which locals call 'the cough' and blame on fumes and soot spewing from 300-foot flames

So in other words, Gates is operating from Mount Doom in Mordor...
Come on, tell us something new here!

In perspective...

People here don't seem to realize that Gates' foundation has donated more money to AIDS research than some countries have. Those countries, I might add, contain numerous toxic waste spewing "plants", and probably in greater number than that one which is partially funded by Gates.

So, why don't we go whine about those countries as well? After all, they are doing less good and more harm.

Or, as always, is there a double standard here?

Now that that's out of the way:
Yes, I think that they should probably be more careful with exactly who they are funding.
However, I do not think that this single faltering is a reason to condemn their giving of free money which could otherwise be kept (mostly) to suit one's own greed.

Best way to help poor countries

...is through education. That, and protection of it's industries while they're still developing. Once multinational corporations start entering the picture, that industry is pretty much closed to the country which results in most poor countries selling bananas or catering to tourists.

Seriously?!

I'd love to see what Bill Gates could do that slashdotters wouldn't rip into him for. He's separating himself from his brainchild to spend more time with his family and devote more time to giving away his fortune for a good cause. The rest of the world can see how this is a good thing. Anybody reading this remember when Warren Buffet made the largest donation in history? Remember where it went? I guess he must just be ignorant to donate such a large sum to such an evil foundation, or perhaps he's also just as evil.

Humor me here and try to separate your feelings for Microsoft from your opinions of Bill Gates. It might help to ask yourself what you would do if you had more money than you could possibly spend. What tops your list? Vacation for the rest of your life? All kinds of cool new toys? Hot cars? Your own tropical island? Where does trying to solve some of the world's problems rank on your list?

Seriously folks...what could Bill Gates do that wouldn't result in some negative article or negative feedback under the Borg picture?

M$

The $ in MS in the subject line just makes it more classy. nice.

Retrain or fire the asset managers

So the asset managers are incompetent and don't know what the goals of the customer they work for are. The asset managers aren't serving their customer (the Foundation) in a manner consistent with their objectives.

People have been fired for lesser offenses. The Foundation needs to remind those managers who they work for, and inform them that their actions are not aligning with the goals of the Foundation...

No evil here (at least not intentionally). No, rather, this is more of the usual, more-mundane story that comes out of any sufficiently-large organization: the institution has a set of strategic priorities, but the upper management that make the strategic decisions (Bill and Melinda Gates, the management directly beneath them, etc.) aren't managing the lower management who manage the operational aspects (e.g. the asset managers who invest the Foundation's money).

It's just the usual story of incompetent management... Read Dilbert if you require further explanation.

I do wonder what Warren Buffet thinks though, now that he -- the America's 2nd-richest person -- has decided to pour 85% of his entire net worth into the Foundation over a period of several years, on the basis that it does good work and is managed well...

but the good PR and photo ops are priceless

Do you think Bill Gates is really thinking social responsibility when picking his investments? Look how he's run Microsoft for a clue to THAT question. He's looking for profits and ROI and it's doubtful he directs his investment managers to be concerned with social consequences of his investments. IMO.

LoB

Investors are rarely "in control"

The B&MG Foundation needs money. That's a given. So they invest money. In a lot of companies, presumably.

Some of these companies are now, of course, shadier than others. Some might have less reputable practices. Not surprisingly, those are also the ones that generate the most revenue. Which is a given. If you don't care about environment or the people around you, you can cut a lot of costs, save a lot of money and increase your profit. Welcome to capitalism, duh.

I doubt that B&MG had any idea just what exactly the company they invest in does. Simply because it's not their business. Their business is to generate money to help people. Yes, they should check what they invest in, but generally, I'm already happy that foundations like this exist at all in our world.

I'm easy to please, I know.

It's also not easy to withdraw an investment. So what should they do now? Bug out and accept the (presumably big) loss? Or keep the investment up and use the money instead to do some good?

Gates foundation

Seems like the real problem is that with the accumulation of such excess wealth. individuals rather than the citizenship get to set the agenda and the methods. If the money ws taxed appropriately, then "we, the people" would get to set the sganda and priorities (assuming a more honest congress!)

Donations...

I wonder if the foundation would consider donating to a few impoverished open source organizations?

Another "no surprise" story?

He's done the same thing to us for nearly 30 years; unified the computers (good) and allows us to be the unwitting host for millions of overseas bots (bad). Fixes holes (good) and then makes more (bad).

Nothin' new here.

Please explain socially responsible investing

I wonder if the people who unquestioningly accept that investments are good or evil actually understands the whole concept of investment. Here's what I mean:

Joe Customer buys a product from an evil company. The company receives this money as income, and uses it to expand the scope of its evil work. Because Joe and others buy so much of the product, the company files an impressive quarterly report and the price of its stock goes up. Since the company owns a lot of its own stock, the value of the company itself increases.

Joe Investor buys stock in the evil company. After the stock price goes up because the company is doing so much business, Joe sells the stock and makes a profit. These stock transactions are between Joe Investor, a stock broker, and other anonymous investors. The company receives none of the money.

Who is contributing more to this company's evil? Joe Customer or Joe Investor?
Who gets the blame for the evil? Joe Customer or Joe Investor?

I hate Bill Gates as much as the next /.-reader ..

.. but for professional and business ethical reasons. Although the story does expose a very sorry state of affairs, I really don't see what this Bill-bashing article is doing on Slashdot.

It's exactly this type of "news" that makes Slashdot lose all its credibility when criticizing Windows, Microsoft, Gates or Ballmer.

Sounds like a colossal tax dodge

Are these quotes correct — that Gates Foundation only gives away 5% of its worth?

At the end of 2005, the Gates Foundation endowment stood at $35 billion, making it the largest in the world. Then in June 2006, Warren E. Buffett, the world's second-richest man after Bill Gates, pledged to add about $31 billion in installments from his personal fortune. Not counting tens of billions of dollars more that Gates himself has promised, the total is higher than the gross domestic products of 70% of the world's nations.

Like most philanthropies, the Gates Foundation gives away at least 5% of its worth every year, to avoid paying most taxes. In 2005, it granted nearly $1.4 billion. It awards grants mainly in support of global health initiatives, for efforts to improve public education in the United States, and for social welfare programs in the Pacific Northwest.

It invests the other 95% of its worth. This endowment is managed by Bill Gates Investments, which handles Gates' personal fortune. Monica Harrington, a senior policy officer at the foundation, said the investment managers had one goal: returns "that will allow for the continued funding of foundation programs and grant making." Bill and Melinda Gates require the managers to keep a highly diversified portfolio, but make no specific directives.

By comparing these investments with information from for-profit services that analyze corporate behavior for mutual funds, pension managers, government agencies and other foundations, The Times found that the Gates Foundation has holdings in many companies that have failed tests of social responsibility because of environmental lapses, employment discrimination, disregard for worker rights, or unethical practices.

What the foundation is about...

.. is preservation and expansion of power. I do not dispute that Gates has an interest in helping people. I do not dispute that on the balance the foundation could be a extraordinary positive agent of change in the world. However nearly all such foundations have a common trait due to the laws that support their existence.
By giving away 5% of the wealth they avoid a tax rate that would most likely be higher than 5%. The reinvestment of the 95% remaining wealth should yield a average return of much better than 5%. From the basic facts in should be obvious that not only is the foundation perpetually self replenishing it is actually growing in wealth and thus power. Additionally the wealth it controls, it controls itself, not the representatives of the people via the tax man. So the power stays within the executors of the foundation perpetually, or at least as long as the laws allow it to do so. As to whether an individual foundation turns out to be a beast or a angel will be for future historians to decide. In this specific case I can only note that due to the level of initial holdings it has the potential to be one of the greatest agents of change in human history.

Wabi-Sabi
Matthew

Re:WTF

Umm. Bit different from being bitched at for not fixing all problems, and being bitched at for inadequately fixing problems caused by you.

Re:Bill Gates

Did anyone really think he was turning over a new leaf?

Yeah, can't they be like the rest of us who are consistently only good and never do anything with direct or indirect effects that are mixed or outright bad?

Re:Bill Gates

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have given away their life savings to causes that are undeniably wonderful. Every day their money saves thousands of lives. You sit at home and rant at Slashdot. It reminds me of a William Shatner tune (if that isn't a contradiction in terms)

Riding on their armchairs
They dream of wealth and fame
Fear is their companion
Nintendo is their game
They'll laugh at others failings
Though they have not done shit

(slightly edited for context)

I find posts like yours profoundly depressing. You hold the Gates foundation to an impossible standard, far beyond what you would hold the MacArthur foundation, or your favourite charity or yourself. In doing so, you attempt to rob the Gates of any credit for their good works and in doing so, you reduce a major motivation for doing good works. Have you thought through the end result if we all demonzized philanthropists? Do you have any idea how important robber-baron philanthropy has been over the last few centuries?

Reading the Gates Foundation website, it would appear that all is hunky-dory.

Can you point me to a charity or foundation website that does not promote their work as hunky-dory? If they thought that they had problems, don't you think that they would spend more effort fixing them rather than updating their website to list them?

Yet their guiding principles leave a lot to be desired. For example, "philanthropy" is only part of their aim, and they report only those parts of their operation that *are philanthopic.

No, you completely misunderstand. Their goal is entirely philanthropic. Their guiding principles merely state the FACT that philanthropy is necessarily limited in its results. Therefore it is not an alternative to economic development. Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish, etc.

they report only those parts of their operation that *are philanthopic.

Oh really? Do you have evidence that either their annual report or their website misstates how they spend their money?

What have they got to hide?

Please take off your fucking tin-foil hat. What are they hiding? You are acting as if you know of something evil they are doing secretly but not reporting. Go ahead, please tell us what their nefarious other activities are.

Even ENRON gave a better account of their operations than this.

Enron (note the capitalization) needs to be added to Godwin's law.

FWIW. I don't particularly mind investment in big multinationals - my morals aren't that high-minded and occasionally they do good - but don't multinationals receive enough Gubmint aid already? The long list includes Aribus, British Aerospace, ELF, Boeing etc etc etc etc. Each sit at the tax-trough day-in-day-out. The only reason for the Gates Foundation to invest in these big companies *is* profit.

Yes, the reason that the Gates foundation invests in big companies is in order to maximize the profit available for their philanthropic work. Given this fact, why do you mention the fact that "Aribus" gets government money. What does it have to do with the price of tea in China? When you select your own investments are you biased against companies that have got government contracts, customers, loans or bail-outs? Do your mutual funds exclude such organizations?

Currently, it looks like to me that the Foundation is their to make the Gates and Buffet look good. Nothing more.

I'm sorry, I'm boiling over. You're acting like a total asshole.

First, nothing in your post substantiates the claim you make at the end. Don't you think that there are easier ways to buy positive press than to give away your life savings?

Second, Warren Buffet was already widely loved and praised. Giving away his life savings barely moves the needle of his reputation. As far as Bill Gates: I think that if he gave a flying fuck what people like you think of him then he would have

Re:WTF

No, they are being bitched about for owning part of a company which is harming people.

Re:Bill Gates

Once an asshole, always an asshole.

Did you buy any gasoline recently? Had anything delivered by truck? Bought anything in plastic packaging? Used any electricity in the last, oh, 2 minutes?

Get off your high horse.

Re:it's strange

I disagree with most of what you said, but I want to commend you on your $100 figure, I just did the calculation, and you are right.

Re:Something I've been saying all along

There's a problem. If he simply signed a $100 million check to help some starving people in, let's say, an African country, the local government would say: "Nice! Please hand us the check and we'll take care of the details!". Then the money would simply disappear. This, by the way, also happens each and every time the rich countries forgive loans made to poor countries.

Any good charity towards these people must be done in such a way as to minimize governmental robbery. Simply giving away a big amount of money is the worst way to accomplish any goal whatsoever.

Re:Something I've been saying all along

We've tried cutting checks for hundreds of millions to fight hunger. It all ends up in the pockets of warlords and terrorists. Today hunger is a political problem, not an economic one.

Gates is spending billions to fight malaria. Is that not a worthwhile endeavor? How about you go out and build a $30 billion fortune and then you can direct how it's spent.

Re:Something I've been saying all along

The fact the the Gates foundation invests into questionable industries is perfect.

ALL multinational industriess are 'questionable. Every single one. It is near impossible to invest on a large scale without bumping against these corps.

Bill Gates could, if he were REALLY concerned with good works, spend 100 million dollars (That's like a $100 to you and me) and feed them all.

Wrong. Cutting a check for $100M will NOT do it. VArious countries have tried that all over Africa. The result? Food left rotting on the dock, because the local chump in charge of the trucks isn't getting his cut.
Simply sending $100M to Somalia/Ethiopia/Chad does nothing except for make a few warlords richer.

How many people are dying because of no health care?

And that is one of the main things the Foundation is trying to address. Fixing some of the less popularized, but still debilitating/deadly illnesses and diseases.

The investment arm and the charitable arm are two distinct entities within the Foundation. The investment arm gathers as much money as possible, and the charitable arm spreads it around where it will (supposedly) do the most good. Neither side has influence over the other.

You think it's easy? Get hired on their board and change the way they do business.

Re:WTF

The foundation does a good job and vaccinates people against diseases and lots of other things and they are being bitched about because they can't fix *all* the problems.

No, they are bitched about because they actively contribute to the problems. Plenty of charities do good without doing the kind of harm that is described here, either because they manage any investments consistently with their charitable mission rather than largely independently of it, or because they simply operate on their current donations and don't have large investment portfolios in the first place.

Re:WTF

Has it occurred to anyone that just maybe they invested in a plant that was about to close thus putting everyone out of a job? Fat good it does to keep the air clean while not to being able to eat. Or do you suggest that not only to we solve their health problem but at the same time introduce a brand new industry all on the same day? After all if god can do it in 7 days so can we right? What do you suggest, have them all sit around and knit woolen scarves for us? Oh no then kids have to help that would be child labor.

Arm chair geniuses here underestimate the complexities involved in this matter. Maybe the soul of Bill Gates is as black as the soot from that oil refinery but maybe just maybe there are so many more factors involved. It may well be possible that the link between their money and the oil refinery goes though several layers thus obscuring visibility on what really is invested in. There will alway be some jealous pisshead to dig up obscure links that were not intended.

How is THAT insightful??

It took me 5 seconds to ask a simple question:
When the oil runs out, then what?

They'll be unemployed again, that's what. Plus, on top of that, they'll have more diseases than they had before, and the land will be even more useless because of pollution, too.

Let us recap the supporting facts, shall we?

Oil workers, for example, and soldiers protecting them are a magnet for prostitution, contributing to a surge in HIV and teenage pregnancy, both targets in the Gates Foundation's efforts to ease the ills of society, especially among the poor. Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria, one of the diseases the foundation is fighting.

Investigators for Dr. Nonyenim Solomon Enyidah, health commissioner for Rivers State, where Ebocha is located, cite an oil spill clogging rivers as a cause of cholera, another scourge the foundation is battling. The rivers, Enyidah said, "became breeding grounds for all kinds of waterborne diseases."

The bright, sooty gas flares -- which contain toxic byproducts such as benzene, mercury and chromium -- lower immunity, Enyidah said, and make children such as Justice Eta more susceptible to polio and measles -- the diseases that the Gates Foundation has helped to inoculate him against.

Trading in your health for a job never works out for the better in the end.

Corporations don't engage in charitable acts for anyone's good. They do this to avoid paying taxes.

Like most philanthropies, the Gates Foundation gives away at least 5% of its worth every year, to avoid paying most taxes. In 2005, it granted nearly $1.4 billion. It awards grants mainly in support of global health initiatives, for efforts to improve public education in the United States, and for social welfare programs in the Pacific Northwest.

Again, how can that parent post be insightful, in light of the glaringly obvious and contradictory facts?

Re:WTF

As a non-investor, it's very hard to change the practices of outside companies. Try it: go up to your local gas station and start yelling at them that the oil and gasoline runoff from their parking lot is killing local wildlife. You won't get far.

Now try again, but first buy a few hundred thousand shares of the company, and instead of complaining to the local gas station, complain to the company and use your shares to help influence the behavior and movement of the company. It won't be a quick change, but some change is better than no change.

Someone is going to profit off of investing in that power plant. Would you rather it be a non-profit who is helping people, or a filthy rich investment banker? Do you think that investment banker would try to alter the company or raise issues with a polluting plant? Aside from a few philanthropist investors, most are blood-sucking fiends (and even active philanthropists are fiends).

Re:Oil Plant?

Is there really any proof that 'the cough' is caused by the oil plant, besides 'the locals' saying it is?

"Dr. Elekwachi Okey, a local physician, says hundreds of flares at oil plants in the Niger Delta have caused an epidemic of bronchitis in adults, and asthma and blurred vision in children"

"The oil plants in the region surrounding Ebocha find it cheaper to burn nearly 1 billion cubic feet of gas each day and contribute to global warming than to sell it"

Re:Something I've been saying all along

The fact the the Gates foundation invests into questionable industries is perfect. The "good" that they supposedly do, is nothing more than a mask for what they are really about. In the case of the gates foundation, Bill has been actively recruiting billionaires to invest. Now, why would these cut-throat billionaires invest? To make money, of course.

Do you have any evidence of this? Organizations like the Gates foundation have to publicly document where their money is and where it is going. And it isn't going back into the pockets of the Gates family; on the contrary the Gates family is pushing more of their money into it and have declared an intention of donating virtually all of their wealth into the foundation, and not pass it on to their children.

For all the bluster of charitable works, Bill Gates could personally solve many of the problems in the U.S.A. or the world with a personal check. Obviously, not all of them, but a lot of them. Anywhere people are starving, Bill Gates could, if he were REALLY concerned with good works, spend 100 million dollars (That's like a $100 to you and me) and feed them all.

You obviously don't know much about economics; you simply cannot spend 100 million dollars and have hunger go away. Feeding the starving people of Niger is not just a question of calling up Domino's pizza and sending a big order to Niamey.

How many cities and towns need schools? How many people are dying because of no health care? How much real suffering is there that he could fix?

Not as much as you apparently believe. The population of the USA is 300 million, and Gates' net worth is $25 billion. If he just distributed his wealth evenly to every citizen of the USA, that would only be about $80 per person. In the grand scheme of things, that isn't that much money.

Philanthropy is difficult - thats why you have groups like the United Way that waste millions of dollars on "administration".

Re:Tax Write off

Bill Gates does not make $40 billion per year. He "only" has a net worth of around $50 billion [forbes.com]. Around $29 billion of that will go to his charitable foundation, and the rest to other charities upon his death. Your $40 billion income / $2 million donation per year figures are way off scale.

I also challenge your view that you are some kind of superhero because you donate a bigger percentage of your income than Gates does (and YOU don't donate a bigger percentage FYI). It's not the thought that counts, it's the results. Bill Gates has donated more money than you will ever see in your lifetime. Your donation, while commendable, is nothing more than a pittance. The fact that you donate some large portion of your middle class income does not magically make more ill people well. It may make you feel better about yourself however.

Re:Something I've been saying all along

Um, nice piece of completely unfounded conjecture. Also, it doesn't make logical sense even from a circumstantial point of view. The billionaires are investing in their foundations to "make money?" You do realize that they can't get it back out, right? The foundation makes money, true...which is good, as it allows it to spend way, way more money fixing problems. Assuming a fairly normal rate of return, the foundation should be able to spend its entire (current) endowment over the next 7 years and yet still have the same amount of money at the end of that time...meaning it can keep doing it. And this idea that Gates should just be sending us all a $100 check? Are you brain dead? First, since he is clearly more interested in third-world disease and poverty than he is with the home-grown (and comparatively less miserable) variety, we'd be talking about a few billion checks, not a couple hundred million. Which means the foundation's endowment would only be like $20 per recipient. But even if it was a hundred...you think everybody having a small bit of cash (which won't last) would be better than curing HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, and working on better ways to get clean water and food to the third world? That's dumb as hell; the value of the foundation is having such a big pile of cash in one place where it can be spent in really big chunks on research and large-scale health projects. The benefit of these initiatives to the people they serve are many, many times greater than the per-capita amount spent to pursue them.

You seem to think that the foundation doesn't do anything important. This suggests you simply haven't made any attempt to find out what they are about. Add to this your complete lack of logic and your unfounded conclusions, and it comes off sounding really ignorant.

Re:smoke&mirrors, unprecedented evile wears ch

some of US should consider ourselves very fortunate

Just some? I didn't get on the list through any special qualifications/certifications I attained, don't know about you.

Re:Oil Plant?

In 2002, a study found that more than half of the children at a school in nearby Merebank suffered asthma -- one of the highest rates in scientific literature. A second study, published last year, found serious respiratory problems throughout the region: More than half of children aged 2 to 5 had asthma, largely attributed to sulfur dioxide and other industrial pollutants. Much of it was produced by companies in which the Gates Foundation was invested.

On the other hand, that last line (if not the whole article) is a rather awkward slant. Saying that the Bill and Melinda gates Foundation is killing children by making a (relatively, compared to the industry) small investment in oil is ludicrous. The existence of room for moral improvement in investments does not equate to the current investments being pure evil.

Re:Tax Write off

BS.

The Gates foundation has an endowment of over $30 Billion dollars(granted Bill only donated a small amount of that, most of it was from Warren Buffet).

Bill Gates also doesn't make anywhere near $40 billion a year. His net worth is $53 billion, but his salary is less than a million. Of course he still probably makes a few billion per year just off interest and investments, but that's a whole other topic.

According to Forbes Bill gave away about $30 billion just in the period from 2000-2004, the Gates foundation is just a small part of that. So he gave away $30 billion, and has a net worth of $53 billion, that means he's given away more than 1/3rd of his total net worth. Sure that doesn't put him in the poor house, but there is absolutely no reason to minimize what he has done.

So please don't make up crap saying 'but it's only 1/20,000th of his money' when that is clearly BS, and 5 seconds of looking up the numbers, which are fairly publicly available, would show that's not the case.

Looking at this another way

If the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made a positive decision to invest in ENI, it could have been that the company is (apart from pumping oil & gas) spending lots of its own money looking at alternative energy sources.
Many Oil companies spend significant amounts of money looking at Alternative sources of Energy and also, cleaning up the environment around their plants.
Now Nigeria is a difficult place to do business at the best of times. You have heavily armed rebels out to kidnap and hold for ransom any westerner they can get their hands on. Then you have the endemic corruption in Government.
If you add this lot together, it could be that cleaning up the possibly offending refinery is just plain silly in economic terms. However the company will have many such places where $$$, Euros(lira) or whatever may give a far better overall return on its investment and without the inhereent risks to its own staff.
Don't get me wrong though. I think the oil companies have a lot of work to do to clean up their act. Its just that picking on this one place that is owned by a multinational may give the wrong idea about the overall policy of that company towards the environment.
There are many, many more questions that have to be asked and answered before you can point the finger at the foundation and get angry(or whatever)
Remember, there is always at least two sides to any story. (With a politician, the answer is at least 360.)

Re:Something I've been saying all along

The "foundation" is a scam. It always has been. All the "charitable" foundations by the various robber barons are. They are intended to create positive press for otherwise horrible and cut-throat people or organizations.

Capitalist hardball is the American national sport, not baseball, always has been.

Hatred of the entrepreneur may drive some needed reforms, but is notoriously confined and short-lived in the states.

One reason for this, of course, is that the American entrepreneurial capitalist is one of the most civil and responsible examples of the breed, any European with a sense of history will understand this perfectly.

The foundation is a karma-buying scam

The main purpose is to vaccinate Microsoft against bad press. The Buffett docation announcement was made on a stadium draped in Microsoft logos.

They think they will cure AIDS. Ha! Developing a vaccine is only part of the cure. There's been a vaccine for TB for 50+ years and still many people die of TB every day.

Re:The foundation is a karma-buying scam

Oh, come off it. Bill Gates donated tens of billions of dollars of his OWN money so that the company he started could get a little positive PR? Even if we ignore the fact that it's Bill's money and not Microsoft's, the company would have to sell an extra copy of XP to everyone in THE WORLD for this to be a positive return on their investment.

Re:WTF

Gates might be good, but he isn't a fucking superhero.

Gates might be good? WTF indeed.

Glad to see that ye old "do a flamboyant good deed to hide countless misdeeds" still pulls the wool over the eyes of the sheeple.

Re:Missed the point

FYI: "People in southern Nigeria, who live among 3,100 miles of pipelines, are often so poor that it is a fact of life that vandals puncture holes in the pipelines and residents fill buckets with oil to sell in an underground economy."

http://www.commondreams.org/views/071900-105.htm [commondreams.org]

As is typical in our current economy, the abundance of natural resources typically translates into the abuse and impoverishment of the people who live near the resources.

Back on topic, if you had read the original article it goes into great detail on how the Gates Foundation annually gives away 5% of its value towards certain causes, only to directly counter those causes with the investments it makes with the remaining 95%. This isn't Gates hating, this is the Gates Foundation being hypocritical.

New Moderation Needed!

(Score: P, Wacky Wacky Insane Nut)

Re: vaccines are a nightmare

Yeah, yeah, we all know that the Aschen vaccines are making everybody infertile.

Re:WTF

The foundation does a good job and vaccinates people against diseases and lots of other things and they are being bitched about because they can't fix *all* the problems.

No Shit Sherlock - Gates might be good, but he isn't a fucking superhero.

C'mon, guys, is it really THAT hard to see that this guy is just trolling? His post needs to be moderated appropriately.

Re:Killing Africans for Profit and PR

I'm having some difficulty following the logic here:

The article complains that Gates spends only 2% of his net worth - US$ 6 Billions - directly on the Gates foundation.

And then claims that "the game" is given away by an investment by the foundation of US$ 200 Million.
What's that, 0.66% of his net worth? 3% of the foundation? Aggregated over different drug companies?

Heck, I hope those 200 million pay off to catch up to the 6 billions.
They must have a better ROI than the similar investments almost every 401K, or any form of diversified investment for that matter, has on the same area.

Ah, well... some people spend 2% of their net worth giving to charity. Some people spend it on aluminion foil hats.

Re:Missed the point

The problem isn't that the Gates Foundation is investing in energy companies, the problem is that the companies they're investing in aren't taking steps they could to prevent people getting hurt. The example from the article is a village where people are sick because of fumes from the flare-off towers at an adjacent petroleum facility owned by a company the Gates Foundation has invested in. If they were bottling and selling the natural gas (or even just sequestering it underground), the people in the village would have cleaner air.

Re:Peace Corps Syndrome

This is Peace Corps Syndrome. Rich people trying to 'help make the world a better place' and only making it worse because the changes that they made unbalanced the political ecology that held the undeveloped society together. This is why all the rich foundations that want to spend so much ill-gotten money to 'help humanity' will eventually fail. If Gates were serious about making world a better place then he would give $100 to all the people who bought his companie's operating system and then lost hours or weeks of work when the OS crashed and destroyed all their work. I know that this has happened to everyone at some time.

So we have a college educated poor young adult instead of a poor dead baby. Well unless your advocating killing the poor, I say we did some good there. Now the next generation of peace corps members should go and build a factory or irrigate the farmland to get these people money.

As far as one of these people growing up to become a suicide bomber, well they would have gotten someone else to do the task if he died as an infant.

Now, personally I don't think that building wells and factories is the answer. However, I think the problem is people need to work hard for and earn everything they have. If stuff is given to you you will expect it to be given to you.

Now charities do things that have unexpected consequences. However, so do for profit companies, governments and individuals. There is a need to better understand these things via sociology, economic forecasting, etc, but that doesn't mean we should stop doing everything until we know everything.

Re:What a Friggin' Surprise!

Wow, I hope that's sarcasm. The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation gives $800million a year towards world health initiatives. It provides 17% of the world budget for the eradication of polio, which is still a major problem in some developing countries. Inside the US it has given 277million to various education foundations. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_&_Melinda_G ates_Foundation#Global_Health_Program[/url]

Re:Gates foundation gives away blood money

Since the power plant is killing people, shouldn't you be supporting Gates and his depopulation efforts? I guess some people are never satisfied.