I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate this (via HotAir). They (the Republican politicians) know this is stupid, know it makes no economic sense, know it's outright wrong, but they do it anyway - because they don't want to seem mean. God forbid they stand up for their principles and tell some charity off; no, they must embrace it, pander to it, in order to get some good press (which they aren't gonna get anyway) and the votes of a few bleeding hearts (who aren't gonna vote for Republicans anyway).
This issue came up at Harvard earlier this year, when the Harvard Republican Club (HRC) voted to endorse the STOP campaign (Students Taking on Poverty, your basic socialist nightmare). I don't want to repeat myself, so I figured I would just post an excerpt from an email I wrote to the Republican open list in response (The Salient, btw, is the campus conservative publication - real conservative, nothing to do with the gladhanders in the HRC):
"The HRC, just like the GOP, appears to be made up of a bunch of incredibly nice and polite individuals. The national republicans just grin wider whenever the dems attack them with lies, Bush and his White House never ever fight back and rebut even the most blatant slanders, the Republican leadership goes out of its way to pander to minority groups, and the HRC dutifully and kindly follows their example. I personally find this distateful and politically autistic, but attacking party republicans for gutlessness is like attacking birds for flying (i'm sorry i can't be more witty, i'm on day two of my hunger strike and feeling woozy). My only major problem with the HRC is that their desire to be all things to all people, their kindness towards their political opponents, and their willingness to join up with campaigns like STOP does not extend to some conservatives themselves. That is to say, there is apparently nothing on this campus they are willing to vociferously denounce except The Salient."
Shorter version: For God's sake, Republicans, grow a pair!
2 comments:
I see that Paul "Bono" Hewson is pushing this. He's like a comic book character with a secret identity. As "Bono" he champions the world's poor, demanding that everyone pay lots of money to fund lots of programs. He gets his picture taken with Presidents and Popes. As Paul Hewson, he's a centimillionaire capitalist, who will not detail any charitable donations of his own, and who has moved much of his business into a tax haven.
Bono may be celebrated for browbeating world leaders into funding debt relief for developing countries, but his Irish rock band is facing criticism for switching its financial affairs overseas to avoid paying higher taxes.
U2's move has been revealed as Bono's California-based venture capital firm, Elevation Partners, confirmed it had invested around $300m (£157m) in Forbes, the US business magazine frequently described as the "bible of capitalism". -- Found what you're looking for? U2 inspire Irish ire by avoiding tax
While Bono promotes charitable causes, he doesn't disclose whether he personally gives any money to them and, if so, how much. These include Amnesty International, the Burma Campaign U.K., DATA, which stands for Debt, AIDS, Trade and Africa, the environmental group Greenpeace and ONE.
"It's actually, I think, more honest to say we're rock stars, we're havin' it large, we're havin' a great time and don't focus on charity too much -- that's private; justice is public," he told the Dublin-based Sunday Independent newspaper in June 2005.
Bono's greatest value may be as a spokesman, not a donor. "Bono is the most extraordinarily talented lobbyist," says Jamie Drummond, DATA's executive director, who helps organize the ONE campaign.-- Bono, Who Preaches Charity, Profits From Buyouts, Tax Breaks
The notoriously corrupt UN would like nothing better than international taxing authority. Should they get it, I do not doubt that Bono will find a haven to shelter his megamillions.
Sorry about getting the metric prefixes mixed up. It should have been "hectomillionaire" and "hectomillions," for hundreds of millions. A centimillionaire would be someone who had $10,000, and a megamillionaire would be a quadrillionaire, in US measurement -- a million millions. I don't think there is anyone that rich in the world, though I have seen the word "megamillions" in the popular press. So much for the popular press! Now that I think about it, I wonder if the sum total of all the money in the world would add up to a quadrillion dollars.
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