Tag Archives: Charitable Foundations

Now Just Five Men Own Almost as Much Wealth as Half the World’s Population

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By Paul Buchheit

Source: CommonDreams

Last year it was 8 men, then down to 6, and now almost 5.

While Americans fixate on Trump, the super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues to grow. An analysis of 2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion in total wealth. As of 06/08/17, the world’s richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average, each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people.

Why Do We Let a Few People Shift Great Portions of the World’s Wealth to Themselves? 

Most of the super-super-rich are Americans. We the American people created the Internet, developed and funded Artificial Intelligence, and built a massive transportation infrastructure, yet we let just a few individuals take almost all the credit, along with hundreds of billions of dollars.

Defenders of the out-of-control wealth gap insist that all is OK, because, after all, America is a ‘meritocracy’ in which the super-wealthy have ‘earned’ all they have. They heed the words of Warren Buffett: “The genius of the American economy, our emphasis on a meritocracy and a market system and a rule of law has enabled generation after generation to live better than their parents did.”

But it’s not a meritocracy. Children are no longer living better than their parents did. In the eight years since the recession the Wilshire Total Market valuation has more than TRIPLED, rising from a little over $8 trillion to nearly $25 trillion. The great majority of it has gone to the very richest Americans. In 2016 alone, the richest 1% effectively shifted nearly $4 trillion in wealth away from the rest of the nation to themselves, with nearly half of the wealth transfer ($1.94 trillion) coming from the nation’s poorest 90%—the middle and lower classes. That’s over $17,000 in housing and savings per lower-to-middle-class household lost to the super-rich.

A meritocracy? Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos have done little that wouldn’t have happened anyway. ALL modern U.S. technology started with—and to a great extent continues with—our tax dollars and our research institutes and our subsidies to corporations.

Why Do We Let Unqualified Rich People Tell Us How To Live? Especially Bill Gates! 

In 1975, at the age of 20, Bill Gates founded Microsoft with high school buddy Paul Allen. At the time Gary Kildall’s CP/M operating system was the industry standard. Even Gates’ company used it. But Kildall was an innovator, not a businessman, and when IBM came calling for an OS for the new IBM PC, his delays drove the big mainframe company to Gates. Even though the newly established Microsoft company couldn’t fill IBM’s needs, Gates and Allen saw an opportunity, and so they hurriedly bought the rights to another local company’s OS — which was based on Kildall’s CP/M system. Kildall wanted to sue, but intellectual property law for software had not yet been established. Kildall was a maker who got taken.

So Bill Gates took from others to become the richest man in the world. And now, because of his great wealth and the meritocracy myth, MANY PEOPLE LOOK TO HIM FOR SOLUTIONS IN VITAL AREAS OF HUMAN NEED, such as education and global food production.

—Gates on Education: He has promoted galvanic skin response monitors to measure the biological reactions of students, and the videotaping of teachers to evaluate their performances. About schools he said, “The best results have come in cities where the mayor is in charge of the school system. So you have one executive, and the school board isn’t as powerful.”

—Gates on Africa: With investments in or deals with Monsanto, Cargill, and Merck, Gates has demonstrated his preference for corporate control over poor countries deemed unable to help themselves. But no problem—according to Gates, “By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world.”

Warren Buffett: Demanding To Be Taxed at a Higher Rate (As Long As His Own Company Doesn’t Have To Pay) 

Warren Buffett has advocated for higher taxes on the rich and a reasonable estate tax. But his company Berkshire Hathaway has used “hypothetical amounts” to ‘pay’ its taxes while actually deferring $77 billion in real taxes.

Jeff Bezos: $50 Billion in Less Than Two Years, and Fighting Taxes All the Way 

Since the end of 2015 Jeff Bezos has accumulated enough wealth to cover the entire $50 billion U.S. housing budget, which serves five million Americans. Bezos, who has profited greatly from the Internet and the infrastructure built up over many years by many people with many of our tax dollars, has used tax havens and high-priced lobbyists to avoid the taxes owed by his company.

Mark Zuckerberg (6th Richest in World, 4th Richest in America) 

While Zuckerberg was developing his version of social networking at Harvard, Columbia University students Adam Goldberg and Wayne Ting built a system called Campus Network, which was much more sophisticated than the early versions of Facebook. But Zuckerberg had the Harvard name and better financial support. It was also alleged that Zuckerberg hacked into competitors’ computers to compromise user data.

Now with his billions he has created a ‘charitable’ foundation, which in reality is a tax-exempt limited liability company, leaving him free to make political donations or sell his holdings, all without paying taxes.

Everything has fallen into place for young Zuckerberg. Nothing left to do but run for president.

The False Promise of Philanthropy 

Many super-rich individuals have pledged the majority of their fortunes to philanthropic causes. That’s very generous, if they keep their promises. But that’s not really the point.

American billionaires all made their money because of the research and innovation and infrastructure that make up the foundation of our modern technologies. They have taken credit, along with their massive fortunes, for successes that derive from society rather than from a few individuals. It should not be any one person’s decision about the proper use of that wealth. Instead a significant portion of annual national wealth gains should be promised to education, housing, health research, and infrastructure. That is what Americans and their parents and grandparents have earned after a half-century of hard work and productivity.

Did the Clinton Foundation Steal from the Poor?

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clinton-foundation

By Dady Chery

Source: News Junkie Post

Introduction

The Clintons have many problems these days, but the worst of them is probably the information that Charles Ortel started to release from his website and Twitter account (@charlesortel) in early May 2016. Ortel is the financial analyst who exposed General Electric’s stock as being overvalued before it took a dive in 2008. After 15 months’ examination of the public records of the Clinton Foundation entities, he finds that huge sums of money cannot be accounted for, and he believes that it is a family affair for Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton to harm the victims of disasters and the desperately poor throughout the planet. Educated and privileged people like the Clintons should know better, yet they preen, even now, believing we will fall for the hype manufactured by their handlers. The true, damning facts, however, are out there for each of us to see. There is a special revulsion against charity fraud that we did not cover in an earlier interview. We discuss this with Charles Ortel.

Dady Chery: For you, this is a moral issue.

Charles Ortel: It is reprehensible to operate a supposed charity in gross violation of applicable laws and simultaneously seek adulation and the highest political office in the most powerful nation on earth. Such conduct needs to be fully exposed and then punished to set an example.

Charity, the notion of actually helping less fortunate and deserving souls, is an ancient practice prevalent in most cultures. In the United States, it happens that the poorest among us are also the most generous, if you measure their annual donations relative to their annual incomes. Much great work is done by the charitable sector and this important, generally selfless conduct, should be encouraged and admired.

That said, to corrupt a presidential charity under the glare of the publicity that surrounds celebrity followers of the Clinton Foundation is gross, indefensible conduct by educated persons who seem to have no moral compass and no shame.

DC: In your discussions of the Clinton Foundation on your website and elsewhere, Charles, you often bring up the absence of tax audits by the Clinton entities. What is the problem there?

CO: By audits, I mean detailed income statements, balance sheets, cash-flow statements, and footnotes that are double-checked, that is “audited,” by competent, informed and licensed accounting firms. Accounting firms understand the numerous detailed requirements that must be followed as these audits are completed. Furthermore, the management and trustees of large entities, like those of the Clintons, are required to certify that the information contained in these audits is true, accurate, and complete. This is different from the process by which the IRS might decide to audit a given tax return. All financial information provided to the IRS by charities whose revenues are above a low threshold must procure financial statements and supporting information that are audited and must make this work available to taxing authorities and to the general public.

The Clinton entities have repeatedly failed to get their financial statements properly audited. This is an ongoing abuse. I believe they got away with this probably because Lois Lerner was a key person in the IRS who oversaw tax-exempt charities, including the Clinton entities, from 2001 through 2013. She left her post in disgrace. She is alleged to have used the IRS to target conservative and Tea Party groups, and she might also have used her influence with regulators not to target charities of politically allies.

DC: A lot of funds were collected by Clinton entities for recovery from natural disasters.

CO: Shortly after leaving the White House in January 2001, Bill Clinton teamed with Rajat Gupta, then managing partner of consulting giant McKinsey, and since convicted of criminal misconduct, to, in theory, aid victims of an earthquake that struck on January 26, 2001 in Gujarat, India. Records available in the public domain for this charity, American India Foundation, show clearly that it was organized on the basis of a false and materially misleading application to the IRS, that it failed to provide compliant financial audits, and that it failed to make complete, truthful and regular filings in numerous US states where it continues to solicit donations using the mails, telephones, and digital media, in stark violation of applicable laws. Bill Clinton has served as Honorary Chairman for this entity since inception, a fact that is used prominently in fundraising campaigns. Nevertheless, his role with this illegally operated charity is not disclosed in Clinton Foundation filings with state, federal and foreign authorities.

Starting in January 2001, Bill Clinton became involved in international activities that he pursued invoking the name of the Clinton Foundation; these included disaster relief in India and fighting HIV/AIDS in many nations, including in Haiti starting in 2003. None of these international activities were validly authorized in advance by the IRS, US state governments, or foreign governments, as is legally required. Especially in the early period, Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation did not have adequate and sufficiently trained staff to exercise tight and effective controls over these international activities. As a result, it appears that substandard and even adulterated drugs manufactured by an Indian supplier then called Ranbaxy may have been distributed in numerous countries under the auspices of the Clinton Foundation.

Later, Bill Clinton became involved with George H. W. Bush, starting in 2005, in fundraising efforts to, in theory, aid victims of the Tsunami that devastated many Asian nations in the December 2004. Fundraising efforts in this case were also not documented properly or organized in full compliance with applicable state, federal, and foreign laws.

Beginning in August 2005, former presidents Clinton and George H.W. Bush mounted additional illegal and improperly organized efforts to, in theory, aid victims of Hurricane Katrina. Defective forms and filings related to this effort are available, following persistent digging, but omitted from the Clinton Foundation website, though some of the purported financial effects and other supposed accomplishments are covered in various materials found there, including press releases, annual reports and tax filings, that are riddled with accounting errors for 2005, in particular.

DC: What do you perceive as being the most serious problem with fund collection for disaster relief?

CO: When natural disasters strike, many of us are motivated to help however we may be able to do so. As we became more connected on the internet and more comfortable sending money using internet services, larger and larger sums started flowing towards those who represented they might be capable to aid victims of natural disasters. Unfortunately, this incoming money flow, in tiny bites is a perfect opportunity for fraud. Fraudsters realize that portions of this money might be picked off operating unregistered charities with names and websites that seem legitimate. This is why the FBI warns donors to be wary when it comes to making contributions after natural disasters.

DC: I often say: “What happens in Haiti doesn’t stay in Haiti.” Given the real prospect of another Clinton presidency, should Americans worry?

CO: It is more than ironic that the United Homeless Organization, which used to have seemingly poor people at tables all over New York with glass jars to collect money, was revealed as a fraud back in November 2009.

As it happens, the Clinton family was homeless and in severe financial distress back in 1998. Since then, public reports suggest they have acquired vast wealth during a period when most in America have struggled. It seems more than fair to ask exactly how one squares reaping massive financial gains with efforts supposedly led by the Clintons to engage in “charitable” work, particularly given rampant and material defects in all public filings of Clinton-related charities from inception to date.

When the Clintons last occupied the White House they were destitute, according to published reports, and America was in a far stronger position strategically and economically, compared to other nations, than now.

Absent controls, and a US president is difficult to stop, an enriched Hillary Clinton and her extended family are likely to run roughshod over political enemies and competitors in ways that are terrifying to contemplate.

DC: Could some good come from this?

CO: It is certainly possible that Hillary Clinton may win the presidency before the whole truth becomes known regarding operation of and fundraising for the Clinton Foundation and all its related entities.

Alternatively, if the general public digs into the facts and goes to the public record, justice may be administered to all those centrally involved in perpetrating what seems to be the largest and most far-reaching charity fraud ever attempted anywhere on earth.

The downfall of Hillary Clinton and of her family  for having, in my view, illegally used a charity to derive personal financial gains might then become an example not to follow: a cautionary tale useful, in future, to constrain others from even daring to consider such pursuits.

DC: Thank you Charles.

Related Podcast:

The Opperman Report – 5/27/16