when you talk about $250K

I guess that when some work folks make a bit more money than others, it causes envy. But when it comes to super rich, people admire them. When people talk about top 1%, they also include people who make over 250K. Those, not everyone, who make a bit above that borderline, are nothing to do with superrich. Those are working citizens usually dual earners or living in high cost living area. In order to make that much money, those people also have to be hard working...unlike spoiled brats whose parents can phone call to get temporary jobs in prestigious firms for the heck of experiences for instance. By the way, those spoiled brat taken jobs directly kill the opportunities of serious and talented students from no connection family. Those spoiled brats usually work under direct supervision of middle managers like other entry positions. But usually those managers are pressured to give a good grade on their performance. I have seen it. While those spoiled brats' parents go to public and speak for middle class and raising tax for top 1%. That hit those folks who have to work for the entire life to pay their bills. Super rich are not working to live. The majority of income comes from other than earned income. One is investment. Even if we increase the investment income tax, they will get around by establishing non-taxable entity or some kind of expense account they create. It will hit again those working folks who finally started putting aside some of their income for their own retirement other than tax protected retirement fund. Those folks without pension have to put aside the significant amount of money for their own retirement after tax. You cannot do that seriously. Those people are not even driving luxury cars you see on street. By the way, those luxury cars are owned by many under $250K, too. When you focus so much on the top% wage earners, you are killing those people's seoul. Many folks are coming from modest income. They worked hard without family connection. You got to look at those superrich whether what you are trying to do really taxing really rich, those who do not have to work for life. Those people don't need another marble bath in their castle. Those yacht should pay for basic medical care of citizens who cannot afford. Without taking those obviously unnecessary items of life, you cannot tax those folks who are just making $250K. By the way, there are many people who make less than the cut but living mortgage free because their parents can afford to do so. OR those folks whose parents are lucky enough to pay for college have better life with less hours of work.

tax super-rich not ordinary rich

Inequality: Mostly Among the 1% The super-rich are outstripping the merely wealthy -- but the rest of us are a lot more equal than you might think. By John Maggs, Senior Economics Editor, The Kiplinger Letter After a brief pause for the Great Recession, income inequality is rising again, with the highest-earning 1% getting the lion's share of added income and the other 99% dividing the remainder. But the picture of inequality that this paints is a little misleading. It turns out that there is a lot less inequality among the vast majority of Americans than there might seem, and it's not getting worse. The most common measure of inequality is the share of income earned by the top 1% -- the highest-earning 1.5 million individuals and couples. This was about 18% of all income in 2011, twice as much as when Ronald Reagan was reelected president in 1984. Because one-percenters get a large portion of their income from investments, their share of all income fell to 17% after the stock market plunged in 2008. Since then, the stock market's robust recovery and meager growth in the wages and salaries that the lower 99% rely on has meant that an overwhelming share of total income growth has gone to the wealthiest citizens. In 2010, $9 of every additional $10 earned went to the top 1%, and data due in a few months will show that the same happened in 2011. With stocks up better than 10% already this year and high unemployment holding down wages and salaries, that trend will continue in 2012. But probe a bit deeper and another picture emerges. The gap between most one-percenters and most of the 99% isn't that wide because the most extreme inequality is at the very top of the income scale. The chasm between the super-rich -- the highest-earning 15,000 tax filers -- and others in the top 1% is so large that it skews the overall result. Factor it out, and even inequality between the poor and the well-off is far less than 10-to-1. Though that's still too much inequality in the view of some people, it's not the extreme inequality that often makes the headlines. Consider how much inequality there is within the 1% richest. The average yearly income for this group is $418,000. The average income for the top 1% of them -- the 15,000 in "the 0.01%" -- is $23 million, or more than 50 times as much. Contrast that with the ratio between the $418,000 average income of the 1% and the average for all tax filers -- $68,000 in 2010. Even after accounting for the fact that this $68,000 is inflated a bit by the big earnings at the very top, the average top earner receives less than six times as much income as the average taxpayer. There's much less distance between the average American and the average rich person than there is between the merely rich and the super-rich. Sliced another way, there is a similar difference between the bottom of the 99% and the top of it. According to one study, when government subsidies and employer-funded health insurance are included, the ratio of well-off taxpayers at the 90th percentile of income and the poor at the 10th percentile is also about 6-to-1. And this measure of inequality isn't getting wider. That 6-to-1 ratio is unchanged since 1990s, and the ratio was roughly 5-to-1 in the 1980s. By contrast, inequality within the top 1% soared over that same period. In 1984, the super-rich 0.01% earned $1 out of every $9 pulled in by all of the richest 1%. By 2010, the super-rich were hauling in $1 of every $5 earned by one-percenters. In fact, the concentration of income among the super-rich is about as high as it has ever been, and much higher than it was for most of the 20th century. They collected about 3.3% of all income in 2011, a little below the record 3.5% in 2007 and triple the level in 1984. Between World Wars I and II, the average for the super-rich was 2% of income, and from 1946 to 1991, it was 1% of income. Then it started rising. Meanwhile, inequality among the vast majority of people isn't so wide, and it isn't getting wider. Even after a brutal recession that lowered living standards for most people, the average American isn't losing ground compared with most others, even if the gulf between average and very wealthy is growing broader. Cornell University economist Robert Frank, an expert on public attitudes about wealth, argues that perceptions about living standards are based as much on one's relative position compared with neighbors and coworkers than on actual dollars and cents. If, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's words, the very rich "are different from you and me," the super-rich are so different that their wealth prompts more curiosity than outrage. The wealth of Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg is beyond the aspirations or care of most people in today's challenging economy. What's another billion or two? Read more: http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/practical-economics/archives/inequality-growing-among-rich.html#ixzz27VgUCoYi Become a Fan of Kiplinger's on Facebook Read more at http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/practical-economics/archives/inequality-growing-among-rich.html#5fymBBBWuG8FxEZM.99

Crony Capitalism: $737 Million Green Jobs Loan Given to Nancy Pelosi's Brother-In-Law

Crony Capitalism: $737 Million Green Jobs Loan Given to Nancy Pelosi's Brother-In-Law Despite the growing Solyndra scandal, yesterday the Department of Energy approved $1 billion in new loans to green energy companies -- including a $737 million loan guarantee to a company known as SolarReserve: SolarReserve LLC, a closely held renewable energy developer, received a $737 million U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee to build a solar-thermal project in Nevada. The 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes project, near Tonopah, Nevada, will use the sun’s heat to create steam that drives a turbine, the agency said today in a e-mailed statement. SolarReserve is based in Santa Monica, California. On SolarReserve's website is a list of "investment partners," including the "PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (East) LLC." As blogger American Glob quickly discovered, PCG's number two is none other than "Ronald Pelosi, a San Francisco political insider and financial industry polymath who happens to be the brother-in-law of Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives." But wait... there's more! One of SolarReserve's other investment partners is Argonaut Private Equity: Steve Mitchell and Argonaut Private Equity might have a chance to recoup some of their losses in the Solyndra debacle now that the Department of Energy has given a $737 million dollar loan guarantee to a company backed by Argonaut that also lists Mitchell among its board of directors. Mitchell served on the Solyndra LLC Board of Directors. He also serves as Managing Director for Argonaut Private Equity, a company that invested in Solyndra through the LLCs parent company. After Solyndra declared bankruptcy, two Democratic members of the U.S. House asked that Mitchell testify about Solyndra. Though he has not appeared before Congress, he has "been asked to provide documents to Congress" pertaining to Solyndra. And for good measure, it's also noteworthy that Obama is about to hold a big money fundraiser at the home of Tom Carnahan in St. Louis: Carnahan, a member of the prominent Missouri Democratic family, has been tapped by the Obama campaign as its chief Missouri fundraiser. He is chairman of the board of Wind Capital Group, a wind energy company that makes it corporate headquarters in St. Louis. He formerly was president and CEO of the company. Last year, Wind Capital's Lost Creek Farm facility in northwest Missouri received a $107 million tax credit from the Treasury Department, among many such wind operations receiving support from from stimulus funds. Tom Carnahan is the son of former Missouri governor Mel Carnahan and former U.S. senator Jean Carnahan. He's also the brother of current Missouri secretary of state, Robin Carnahan. It's increasingly hard to tell the government's green jobs subsidies apart from the Democrats' friends and family rewards program.

when democrats win

Nancy Pelosi's brother-in-law is given $737m of taxpayers' money to build giant solar power plant in middle of the desert Obama administration approved $1bn in green energy loans days after failed Solyndra project due to be completed $737m handed to Crescent Dunes project in Tonopah, Nevada, for 110-megawatt desert solar power plant Investors include firm Minority leader's brother-in-law and major Solyndra stakeholder Republicans warn Ene Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2043282/Nancy-Pelosis-brother-law-given-loan-bigger-Solyndra-solar-plant.html#ixzz27UTdFu87 Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

'60 Minutes' Uncovers Pelosi's Insider Stock Trades

'60 Minutes' Uncovers Pelosi's Insider Stock Trades
Sunday, 13 Nov 2011 07:49 PM
By Newsmax Wires

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bought stock in initial public offerings (IPOs) that earned hefty returns while she had access to insider information that would have been illegal for an average citizen to trade with – even though it’s perfectly legal for elected officials, CBS’s "60 Minutes" reported Sunday night.

In a piece relying on data collected from the conservative Hoover Institution, "60 Minutes" revealed that elected officials like Pelosi are exempt from insider trading laws – regulations that carry hefty prison sentences and fines for any other citizen who trades stocks with private information on companies that can affect their stock price.

In the case of elected officials – this secret information ranges from timely details on lucrative federal contracts to legislation that can cause companies’ stocks to rise and fall dramatically.

How do they get away with it? Lawmakers have exempted themselves from the laws that govern every other citizen.

Pelosi, D-Calif., and her husband have participated in at least eight IPOs while having access to information directly relating to the companies involved. One of those came in 2008, from Visa, just as a troublesome piece of legislation that would have hurt credit card companies, began making its way through the House.

“Undisturbed by a potential conflict of interest the Pelosis purchased 5,000 shares of Visa at the initial price of $44 dollars. Two days later it was trading at $64. The credit card legislation never made it to the floor of the House,” Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes" reported.

Kroft confronted Pelosi at a regular press conference after she declined an interview.

Kroft: Madam Leader, I wanted to ask you why you and your husband back in March of 2008 accepted and participated in a very large IPO deal from Visa at a time there was major legislation affecting the credit card companies making its way through the —through the House.

Nancy Pelosi: But —

Kroft: And did you consider that to be a conflict of interest?

Pelosi: The — y — I — I don't know what your point is of your question. Is there some point that you want to make with that?

Kroft: Well, I — I — I guess what I'm asking is do you think it's all right for a speaker to accept a very preferential, favorable stock deal?

Pelosi: Well, we didn't.

Kroft: You participated in the IPO. And at the time you were speaker of the House. You don't think it was a conflict of interest or had the appearance--

Pelosi: No, it was not —

Kroft: — of a conflict of interest?

Pelosi: —it doesn't — it only has appearance if you decide that you're going to have — elaborate on a false premise. But it — it — it's not true and that's that.

Kroft: I don't understand what part's not true.

Pelosi: Yes sir. That — that I would act upon an investment.

The Hoover Institution’s Peter Schweizer stressed that what Pelosi did was completely legal.

“There are all sorts of forms of honest grafts that congressmen engage in that allow them to become very, very wealthy. So it's not illegal, but I think it's highly unethical, I think it's highly offensive, and wrong,” he told Kroft.

“… Insider trading on the stock market. If you are a member of Congress, those laws are deemed not to apply,” Schweizer added. “The fact is, if you sit on a healthcare committee and you know that Medicare, for example, is — is considering not reimbursing for a certain drug that's market moving information. And if you can trade stock on — off of that information and do so legally, that's a great profit making opportunity. And that sort of behavior goes on.”

Pelosi’s office issued a statement Sunday saying, “It is very troubling that ‘60 Minutes’ would base their reporting off of an already-discredited conservative author who has made a career out of attacking Democrats.”

Schweizer’s books include “Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy,” and “Architects of Ruin,” according to Schweizer’s page on the Hoover Institution website.


Read more on Newsmax.com: '60 Minutes' Uncovers Pelosi's Insider Stock Trades
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how very riches receive government subsidies

Jon Bon Jovi, the millionaire rock star cited in the report, took federal dollars to raise honeybees on his property. Together billionaire moguls David Rockefeller and Ted Turner have also accepted more than half a million dollars in farm payments. Basketball legend Scottie Pippen took $210,520 in agriculture subsidies while making his fortune playing for the Chicago Bulls. To make matters worse, the government disclosed to Coburn that some recipients of farm subsidies got it by mistake. Tax records show that more than three fourths of high earners collecting farming money list their primary residence in a city—land unsuitable for farming.

This is the reason why I don't donate celebrity endorsed charity

Now another of Madonna's charities is investigated amid claims of financial mismanagement
By Daniel Bates
Last updated at 11:41 PM on 4th April 2011


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1373417/Madonnas-charity-Success-Kids-iinvestigated-amid-claims-financial-mismanagement.html#ixzz1IeMwKDPv

A second of Madonna’s charities is being investigated over alleged financial mismanagement.
Educational charity Success for Kids, which the singer chairs, is being probed by the FBI for ‘several irregularities and suspicious activity’.
It is not clear the extent to which Madonna is involved in the investigation but she has donated $671,000 (£415,000) since it was founded in 2001.
She has also persuaded a string of celebrity friends to give generously.
The development comes a week after it emerged that the Material Girl had to scrap plans to build a school in Malawi due to financial mismanagement by another of her charities.
Raising Malawi abandoned the project because the £2.4million already spent had been frittered away on needless luxuries.
The latest blow will be another setback for Madonna and raises the prospect she could be drawn into a federal tax probe in the U.S.
It will doubtless add to her ‘frustration’ that the school project ran aground but experts claimed it raised serious questions over both charities and her involvement in them.
Success for Kids is an offshoot of Raising Malawi and has raised $33million (£20.4million) since 2001 with Madonna being by far its biggest cheerleader.
It describes itself as ‘the largest international social emotional learning organisation in the world’ with offices in eight countries, including Malawi.
Success for Kids and Raising Malawi split in 2008 but both appear to have got into financial difficulties some time afterwards.
A investigation initiated by Madonna found that at Raising Malawi there was a ‘startling lack of accountability’ with the management and a string of ‘outlandish expenditures’.
In one case, two cars were bought for employees that hadn't even been hired. Some of the £2.4million still hasn't been accounted for, said the audit.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1373417/Madonnas-charity-Success-Kids-iinvestigated-amid-claims-financial-mismanagement.html#ixzz1IeN1vVM8

Madonna, 52, who adopted a daughter, Mercy, from Malawi last year and a son, David, in 2008, was not implicated in the financial mismanagement.
A separate report last week claimed Madonna’s Kabbalah religion and Raising Malawi were also being investigated in the U.S for tax irregularities.
Members of a grand jury have supposedly been subpoenaed to ask questions of both organisations.
They will be looking into the Kabbalah Centre, Raising Malawi and the Berg family who own it.
Ken Berger, president of the U.S. charity watchdog Charity Navigator, said the developments were highly unusual.
‘First of all, most charities are not investigated,' he said.
‘Multiple investigations going on at once is quite extraordinary’.
Success for Kids, the Kabbalah Centre, Raising Malawi and Madonna all declined to comment.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1373417/Madonnas-charity-Success-Kids-iinvestigated-amid-claims-financial-mismanagement.html#ixzz1IeN6pgXk

A little info about Clinton Foundation

Clinton Foundation Refuses to Reveal Donors but Sells List to Friends
by Matthew Vadum and Deborah Corey Barnes

02/05/2008


Since leaving the White House in 2001, Bill Clinton has used philanthropy to stay in the public eye. His star power attracts widespread public attention and major donor contributions to the William J. Clinton Foundation, which supports his presidential library and funds many worthy charities. Drawing the very wealthy and the politically ambitious into his orbit, like moths to a flame, Clinton hopes to promote public policies he considers vital for America and the world—and his own new career as a philanthropic rainmaker.
And should Sen. Hillary Clinton become President, she will further boost the prospects of the Clinton Foundation. Bill Clinton’s “focus on humanitarian issues,” observes ABC News, “is in many ways the perfect balance to his wife’s political ambitions—and also repairs the damage done to his reputation by the Monica Lewinsky scandal during his presidency, helping to transform the former President’s legacy into one of an elder statesman dedicated to global issues” (“Bill Clinton’s Humanitarian Focus,” ABC News, Sept. 25, 2007).

Clinton is raising money to end poverty and create economic opportunity in poor countries. He wants to create awareness of threats to public health, whether from HIV/AIDS overseas or sugary soft drinks in local elementary schools. He has joined former Vice President Al Gore in the fight against global warming. Days after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Clinton and former President George H.W. Bush were everywhere on television, reassuring the world that philanthropy would provide relief.

Out of office, Clinton remains a faithful liberal who continues to believe in the blessings of government assistance. But he says he has discovered that personal philanthropy can also do wonders: “I felt obligated to do it because of the wonderful, improbable life I’d been given by the American people and because politics, which consumed so much of my life, is a ‘getting business.’ You have to get ... votes, over and over again,” Clinton writes in his 240-page book, Giving, which became a bestseller when it went on sale last September.

Unfortunately, Clinton’s idea of giving includes supporting advocacy organizations that promote more government spending. In his book, Clinton explains how lobbying campaigns can push lawmakers to increase government healthcare spending. He urges his readers to contact the group Families USA, whose executive director, Ron Pollack, coordinated lobbying by outside groups in support of the Clinton Administration’s failed healthcare proposals. If readers are aged 50 or over, Clinton urges them to join AARP.
He commends the work of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank headed by his former White House chief of staff, John Podesta, and notes that CAP created the “Better Healthcare Together” coalition, an unlikely alliance of labor unions and corporations that are eager to push employee healthcare costs onto the taxpayers.

While Clinton lauds private citizens for giving to their places of worship and local charities, he says it’s not enough. Big Government remains the solution: “Many of the problems that bedevil both rich and poor nations in the modern world cannot be adequately addressed without more enlightened government policies, more competent and honest public administration and more investment of tax dollars.”

Public interest in what Bill Clinton has to say is sustaining the market’s demand for his speeches. Touring the world giving talks and wagging his famous finger has made him a wealthy man. Clinton gets six-figure fees for his paid speaking engagements, earning him some $31 million from 2001 through 2005.

Where Does the Money Go?

The William J. Clinton Foundation states that its mission is “to strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence.” It focuses on four “critical areas”: “health security, economic empowerment, leadership development and citizen service, and racial, ethnic and religious reconciliation.” The foundation also runs the “Clinton Presidential Center” in Little Rock, Ark., which includes the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum and the Clinton School of Public Service.

The legal and financial relationships and responsibilities among these entities are complex. Like other presidential libraries, the Clinton Library is administered and funded by the National Archives. The Clinton School is a branch of the University of Arkansas. However, $165 million in privately-raised contributions funded construction costs for the Presidential Center—the library, museum, school and foundation offices—which was dedicated in November 2004.

Direct contributions are the source of almost all the foundation’s revenue, and they have risen rapidly each year. According to its Form 990 tax returns, the foundation took in a total of $49.5 million from 1998 to 2002. But in 2006 the yearly take was $135.8 million. As of Dec. 31, 2006, the total amount contributed to the foundation since 1998 was more than $367 million. Its net assets are $208.3 million.

Where does the money go? While the foundation paid the $165 million in construction costs for the library complex, it is now setting its sights on projects far beyond the Little Rock campus. The foundation reported $91.9 million in expenses in 2006 and $85.5 million of that was reported as spending on “program services” (with the remainder going to management and fundraising). In 2006, much of the foundation’s program consisted of grant-making, and most of that went to disaster relief. The foundation handed out $31.3 million in grants, of which $30.1 million went to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to help victims of the 2005 hurricane. Other grant recipients included ACORN, the radical poverty group that originated in Arkansas. It received $250,000 to help Katrina victims apply for the federal earned income tax credit. The City College of New York received $49,114 for a program on “ethnic reconciliation” and $192,200 went to the University of Virginia’s Miller Center for an oral history project on the Clinton presidency.

However, the Clinton Foundation’s future projects are even more ambitious. The foundation has established a series of international “initiatives” intended to tackle a variety of world problems. These initiatives do not directly fund overseas programs. Instead, they team up (“partner”) needy non-profits and government agency officials around the world with wealthy donors looking for projects to assist. Perhaps even more importantly, the Clinton Foundation links up wealthy donors to one another. This is a rather novel concept of what a foundation is for: Grantors are incentivized to do good deeds because they get to bask in the approval of Bill Clinton.

The foundation-as-networker for the good and the great is a new institutional form. But with living tycoons such as Bill Gates’ assuming the role of philanthropist to solve global health problems and Clinton’s own Vice President dedicated to saving the planet’s environment, it is hardly conceivable that Bill Clinton would settle for less. Here are the principal Clinton Foundation initiatives:

l Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) aims to increase the availability of AIDS care and treatment for the needy by “lowering the cost of treatment, providing strategic and targeted technical assistance where it is most needed.” The foundation’s first organized undertaking, CHAI serves as the model for the foundation’s signature style of linking donors to grantees. The initiative has successfully brokered price cuts by generic drug producers of AIDS drugs, organizing what is in effect a buying cooperative of more than 70 poor countries desperate to help those living with HIV/AIDS. CHAI’s management consultants are providing ill-equipped countries with the business strategies to create a more efficient healthcare market for HIV/AIDS treatment and education.
Ironically, the chairman of CHAI’s policy board is Ira Magaziner, who received poor notices in the 1990s when he was the organizer of Hillary Clinton’s healthcare task force.

l Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) was incorporated in 2005 as a separate 501(c)(3) non-profit. A self-described “catalyst for action,” it hosts yearly Clinton Global Summits that bring together left-leaning thinkers and activists with wealthy businesspeople and politicians to meet and mingle and ruminate on the world’s problems. The summit’s goal is to have wealthy CGI attendees “partner” with the leaders of aid and development groups by making financial pledges to their programs. During its last three meetings (2005-07) CGI has announced 600 pledges of more than $10 billion.

l Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) created in 2006, it is yet another promoter of “partnerships” among heads of business, government and politics. CGI’s initial partner is the C40 Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, an association of city officials organized by London Mayor Ken Livingston (a.k.a. “Red Ken”). Representing some 40 of the world’s largest cities, the group is committed to making cities more environmentally friendly by securing various city commitments to adapt their traffic signals, water systems and waste dumps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Clinton’s program has persuaded five banks to provide $1 billion in financing for these projects.

l Alliance for a Healthier Generation fights childhood obesity. It’s a partnership between the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association—co-chaired by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

l Clinton Hunter Development Initiative (CHDI) to encourage “sustainable economic growth in Africa” is a Clinton Foundation partnership with the Hunter Foundation. CHDI has a 10-year operating budget of $100 million, pledged by Sir Tom Hunter, the richest man in Scotland.

l Urban Enterprise Initiative (UEI) helps inner-city small business owners and entrepreneurs. It claims to have provided 65,000 hours of technical assistance (worth more than $14 million) to New York City entrepreneurs.

l Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative (CGSGI) is the latest foundation partnership, created in 2007. Pledge money comes from three principal sources: Lundin for Africa, the philanthropic arm of Vancouver, Canada’s Lundin Group of Companies ($100 million); Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, the third-richest man in the world according to Forbes Magazine ($100 million); and Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra ($100 million). In a separate gift, Giustra gave the Clinton Foundation $31.3 million in 2006 through his Radcliffe Foundation.

Clinton Library Donations:

Secrecy or Disclosure?

Federal law does not require non-profit charities to disclose the identities of their contributors, and that applies to presidential foundations. Typically these foundations support the unique entity known as the presidential library. Presidential libraries have two parts: The library’s document collections are maintained by the National Archives and are open to all researchers of whatever political persuasion. But most tourists visit the library’s exhibition halls, conference center and museum store, which are administered by the presidential foundation. They invariably glorify their particular President. Costs are divided. The National Archives pays to maintain the collection of documents and library salaries, while donors, including corporations and foreign governments, may give unlimited amounts of money—even while a President is in office—to the presidential library foundation.

When it opened in 1997, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library voluntarily disclosed the names of donors who gave more than $10,000. Only a few names were withheld at the request of individual donors. So when the drawing boards called for the Clinton Presidential Library to feature a wall naming its major donors, the move was applauded as an effort to bring greater transparency to the $165-million project.

The wall was never built. Last September, Clinton said his foundation doesn’t need to disclose its current and past donor identities, because, he said, “A lot of people gave me money with the understanding that they could give anonymously.”

But how anonymous is anonymous? ABCNews.com reported that a partial list of donors was sold to infoUSA, a direct marketing data company founded by major Clinton donor Vin Gupta. From June 2006 to May 2007, the company offered to sell a list of more than 38,000 Clinton presidential library donors to foundations and other non-profits. Perhaps it all depends on the meaning of the word “anonymous” (“Clinton Library Sells Secret Donor List,” Nov. 19, 2007). Under pressure, Clinton now promises to make public the names of all future donors to his foundation if his wife is elected to the White House.

Sheila Krumholz of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks the influence of money in politics, rejects this reasoning. “The fact that they’ve sold the list and then turned around and said that these names must be kept anonymous completely undercuts their argument,” she said. “The voters ought to have this information before the election, when it could still make a difference.… We really ought to find out who his donors are before the nomination is settled,” liberal commentator Matthew Yglesias wrote in an October 4 Los Angeles Times op-ed. “Because it’s presumed that big-dollar donors to the Clinton Foundation are gaining access to and some measure of influence with the foundation’s top dog, is it such a stretch to think that might extend to his White House-seeking wife as well?”

Asked to comment on the foundation’s policy at a presidential debate in September, Sen. Clinton punted. “Well, you’ll have to ask them,” she said, referring to Bill Clinton and his staff. In fact, the New York Times reported December 20 that the foundation’s first chief of staff, Karen Tramontano, has said Mrs. Clinton was deeply involved in deciding the foundation’s organization and scope of work: “She had a lot of ideas. All the papers that went to him went to her.”

Who’s on the donor list? Billionaires, Saudi royalty, Arab businessmen, the king of Morocco, the governments of Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, and Taiwan, and lots of Hollywood celebrities have donated to the Clinton Foundation. In 2004, the New York Sun reported on 57 donors who appear to have each given $1 million or more. The big donors included Gupta, former Mattel Inc. Chairman Bill Rollnick, Black Entertainment Television (BET) founder Robert L. Johnson (who is an outspoken supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s presidential candidacy), Hollywood director-producer Steven Spielberg and his actress wife Kate Capshaw, movie producer and Kerry 527 funder Stephen Bing, insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis, Gateway, Inc. co-founder Ted Waitt, shopping center developers Bren and Melvin Simon, and the Soros Foundation, which is the European arm of George Soros’s Open Society Institute. Denise Rich, ex-wife of Marc Rich, the fugitive whom Clinton granted a pardon hours before leaving office, gave the foundation $450,000 (“Saudis, Arabs Funneled Millions to President Clinton’s Library,” New York Sun, Nov. 22, 2004).

The New York Times also revealed that in the closing years of the Clinton Administration at least 97 donors donated or pledged a total of $69 million for the library. Although some of the $1-million donors were longstanding friends of the Clintons, others were pushing the Clinton Administration for policy changes. Two donors pledged $1 million each while they or their companies were undergoing Justice Department probes (“In Charity and Politics, Clinton Donors Overlap,” New York Times, Dec. 20, 2007).

Ties to Hillary’s Campaign?

The William J. Clinton Foundation proclaims that it is nonpartisan and denies coordinating its activities with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. But considering its extensive ties to Democratic Party fundraisers and placeholders, it’s hard to believe the foundation isn’t at the very least marketing the Clinton Foundation to Hillary-for-President supporters.

Legendary money-man Terry McAuliffe, a close personal friend of the Clintons, is on the Clinton Foundation’s board of directors and is one of its top fundraisers. McAuliffe, who used to head the Democratic National Committee (DNC), is also managing Sen. Clinton’s presidential campaign and is its chief fundraiser. Other major donors to the Clinton Foundation who are among Hillary Clinton’s top fundraisers include DNC Finance Director Philip Murphy and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, the former chairman of Goldman Sachs and a heavy-hitter in Democratic fundraising circles who was chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) from 2003 to 2005.

Then there’s Clinton Foundation CEO Bruce Lindsey, who was a senior advisor in the Clinton White House known for doggedly defending the President during the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals. The foundation paid him a salary of $254,000 in 2006. In November, after critics suggested Clinton was suppressing presidential documents to protect his wife, Lindsey said the former President “has not blocked the release of a single document.” But the New York Sun reported December 19 that the National Archives, which administers presidential libraries, is withholding about 2,600 pages of records at Bill Clinton’s request.

Another Clinton Foundation board member is lawyer Cheryl Mills. She also happens to be general counsel for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and previously served as deputy White House counsel in the Clinton Administration.

Lastly, there is the well-connected Washington, D.C.-based fundraising and communications firm, O’Brien McConnell Pearson (OMP). It does work both for the foundation and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. OMP’s other clients include the League of Conservation Voters, Southern Poverty Law Center, America Votes, ACLU, NAACP, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), DNC and Friends of Harry Reid.

The Clinton Global Initiative is studded with partisans who are sure to gain influence should Hillary Clinton win the White House. While its press releases proclaim CGI’s Global Summit a “nonpartisan event with an emphasis on results,” its agenda is prepared by committed advocates who are veterans of Washington’s trench warfare over public policy.

CGI’s Energy Working Group is chaired by Brookings Institution scholar David Sandalow, a senior environmental official in the Clinton Administration who was also executive vice president at the World Wildlife Fund. The working group’s advisory board includes: Frances Beinecke, president of the NRDC; Clinton-era EPA Administrator Carol Browner (also on the board of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection and John Podesta’s Center for American Progress); Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change; Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense; and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist heavily invested in ethanol and an outspoken backer of California’s failed Proposition 87, which would have imposed taxes on the state’s oil producers.

CGI’s other working groups are chaired by senior fellows at the Center for American Progress who previously served in the Clinton Administration. Gene Sperling chairs the education working group. He was Clinton’s national economic advisor and is the author of The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity. Gayle Smith chairs the working group on poverty alleviation. She served in the Clinton National Security Council and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Thomas Kalil chairs the global health group. He was deputy director of the White House National Economic Council.

The Clinton Global Summit

On Sept. 26, 2007, Bill Clinton opened the third annual Global Summit of his foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative. For three days, the summit’s 1,300 invited guests gathered at events in the Sheraton hotel, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City to discuss the state of the world. They pledged themselves and their money to solve the world’s problems. Bill Clinton rounded up numerous attendees from the corporate world, including Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, Duke Energy chairman Jim Rogers and now-deposed Starbucks CEO Jim Donald. Carnegie Corporation President Vartan Gregorian was there, as were NoVo Foundation Chairman Peter Buffett (Warren’s son), former Vice President Al Gore, UN climate change envoy Gro Harlem Brundtland, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rev. Jim Ball, president of the Evangelical Environmental Network and originator of the “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie turned heads. Britain’s Tony Blair, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and 50 other current or former heads of state greeted one another. Media magnate Rupert Murdoch and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.) also accepted Clinton’s invitation. Cost to attend the Summit: $15,000 per person.

A “major underwriter” for the summit was Rochester, N.Y., businessman Tom Golisano, billionaire founder of Paychex, the payroll processing corporation. An alternative-energy booster, Golisano supports electricity-producing wind farms and has started a company, Empire State Wind Energy LLC, to show New York municipalities how they can structure deals to extract more revenue from commercial wind development. Golisano fulfilled his CGI pledge “Commitment to Action” by promising $10 million to the Rochester Institute of Technology to create a sustainability institute.

Of course much of the talk at the summit was about global health, poverty, children and education. But global warming was a major topic on everyone’s lips. “I see New Orleans as a microcosm for the global problem,” said Brad Pitt. “If there’s anyone who understands the repercussions of climate change, it’s the people of the Gulf Coast.” Said philanthropist Ted Turner: “Outside of a nuclear exchange, global warming is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced.”

Bill Clinton called for the rapid expansion of carbon markets to create price incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This position finds favor with anyone who can profit from it. For instance, summit participant Jim Rogers, chairman of Duke Energy, which generates electricity from “clean” coal and nuclear power, announced that his company’s “Commitment to Action” would consist of working to “overcome regulatory barriers that may discourage utility investment in energy efficiency today.” He called it the “Save a Watt” program. Environmental groups cynically suggested that might be a euphemism for lobbying politicians to let Duke Power raise its rates and win public subsidies for nuclear plant construction.

When we contacted CGI Director of Development Scott McDonald, he refused to explain what the requirements are for being a donor for the CGI Summit. “Whilst we do have levels of sponsorship, the ultimate outcome of a sponsor’s tailored engagement with CGI is the result of a dialogue,” he said in an e-mail.

In his book, Bill Clinton reports that the first CGI summit in 2005 led to more than $2.5 billion in pledges, while the second in 2006 secured pledges of more than $7 billion.

Bill Clinton and Giving

Many CGI pledges are definitely charitable and appear very worthwhile, notably those to the poorest countries in Africa. When these donors combine money with management expertise, they can make a difference, creating new markets that supply goods and services to meet a potential demand. Such philanthropy can produce long-term social progress and immediate help to the needy.

But CGI—and Bill Clinton’s notion of giving—also accentuates style over substance. By promoting social networking among the very wealthy, who are encouraged to find a project they want to help, the Clinton initiatives depend on the donor’s yearning for recognition, esteem and fame. That can lead to little more than high-class socializing and publicity seeking. It can also produce occasions for hidden but profitable deal-making and influence-buying.

Is Obama Rewriting his Resume?

Is Obama Rewriting his Resume?
By: fflambeau Saturday January 2, 2010 8:31 pm


Looking for some information on President Obama’s holiday stay in Hawaii, I came across a special section of the Honolulu Advertiser (it’s one of Hawaii’s two main newspapers-websites) devoted to the Obamas.

It’s clear that the Obama administration had a major hand in putting together the biographical section of this section called "Obama Ohana Comes Home 2009, Hawaii Vacation, December 24-January 3". Before I discuss the substance of the diary, let me register my own bewilderment that a newspaper would put out what appears to be little more than a campaign document for Obama. It’s that bad. Our newspapers really have devolved into public relations arms for various causes; they long ago gave up the vital function our Founding Fathers saw them as providing: ceaseless questioning and vigilance, a check on our government. Instead, reporters/newspapers today just seem to hand out propaganda by various people, no questions asked.

Back to the issue at hand. Please have a look at the following biographical information at the Honolulu Advertiser website–with information, as the Advertiser indicates, provided by the Obama team–and see if you can spot what’s missing:

…Barack’s father eventually returned to Kenya, and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.

College Years
Barak (sic.) earned his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years. In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

If you said "the community organizer" stuff is missing, you go to the head of the class. Note that instead of that, we get this: "he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law."

I happen to think that this missing element–the "community organizer"–was very important in the 2008 campaign but is no longer something Obama wants any attention to be paid to. The "community organizer" hat sort of set off Obama from all of the other Democratic candidates running for the presidency.

Hillary and John Edwards, after all, had far more distinguished and accomplished legal careers than Obama. Edwards was a very prominent trial lawyer, one of the best; Hillary had been a state AG and had spent several years with major law firms.

So it looks like the Obama campaign played up the community organizer thing only to set him off from others. For the real difficulty for Obama was not the general election campaign, but for such an unknown (with a very vague record especially on progressive issues) getting the nomination of his party which generally goes to a liberal in the party.

It also turns out according to University of Pennsylvania political scientist, Adolph Reed, Jr. that Obama as a "community organizer" was really only involved in conventional voter registration drives, not, for instance, in efforts to get better housing for minorities, not in job retraining efforts, not in anything related to uplifting the social and economic positions of the poor. Here’s Reed writing on this subject in The Progressive:

It may be instructive to look at the outfit where he did his “community organizing,” the invocation of which makes so many lefties go weak in the knees. My understanding of the group, Developing Communities Project, at the time was that it was simply a church-based social service agency. What he pushed as his main political credential then, to an audience generally familiar with that organization, was his role in a youth-oriented voter registration drive.

That’s why the "community organizer" thing was always just floated and left out there by his team: ambiguity used again by those surrounding Obama.

What the "community organizer" thing also gave Obama was a certain cachet in liberal-progressive circles. With only a single vote against the Iraq war (and many others in favor of funding it in the Senate and with many others in favor of expanding defense department budgets), Obama had next to nothing to run on as a liberal or progressive. You could almost hear the Obama team invoking "community organizer" as a mantra: he’s not just another politician, he’s not just another lawyer wanting to get higher on the food chain, the man was a community organizer!

Well, now that "community organizer hat" seems to be in the process of being shed by Obama.

There are several likely reasons for this:

1) in Hawaii especially (and I lived there for 10 years) Blacks are not really popular at all (especially in the Asian communities) and their numbers are tiny (mostly confined to the military bases). "Community organizer" screams minority and especially Black American. That is being downplayed now especially in a state where racial harmony is very important and where mixed races are common and accepted.

2) Note the emergence in the biography of Obama as a "civil rights lawyer" even though he spent very little time as a lawyer and has never written a word on law anywhere. But I think that fits in with his much more conservative image now. Community organizer is the kind of title that allows GOP dinosaurs to label Obama a socialist so it has to go.

3) There’s no need for the "community organizer Obama" anymore since that image was essential to getting the Democratic nomination but now the guy is the President and he doesn’t have to worry about that. Indeed, if one looks at Obama’s career, it’s fairly obvious that he used a number of people (especially black ministers in Chicago) to advance his career but jettisoned them as soon as it became politically expedient to do so. In or around 2006, Obama was really pal’in around with Robert Rubin and Goldman Sachs. After all, he made the opening speech at the Goldman Sachs-Rubin funded Hamilton Project in April, 2006, and called for free trade, more NAFTA type agreements and cuts in entitlements. He wasn’t interested in building homes for the homeless, in helping the poor, in education for the poverty stricken, in health care for those without it, Obama wanted to make links to those with money because that’s how you win elections in America today.

Here’s how investigative journalist Ken Silverstein described Obama way back in 2006 in a devastating article called "Barack Obama Inc.: The Birth of a Washington Machine". He ends that article with this:

On condition of anonymity, one Washington lobbyist I spoke with was willing to point out the obvious: that big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn’t see him as a “player.” The lobbyist added: “What’s the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?”

Lot’s of truth in that remark but there WAS value in a "starry-eyed idealist" because Obama needed to sell himself as that to get the Democratic nomination in 2008. The idealism, of course, was dropped as the votes were being counted.

4) Obama’s core identity, very close to Rockefeller Republicanism with its emphasis on favorable treatment to Wall St. and big banks and on an expanding American Empire (and bread and circuses for the masses) has nothing to do with true community organizing. Obama, a closet Rockefeller Republican, mounted a stealth campaign in 2008 and the "community organizer" (along with his single vote against the Iraq War) provided him with convenient cover. Now that the election is over, he can drop this identify and assume a more traditional, and dignified one, of civil rights lawyer (even though that’s false too). I mean look at Obama: does this guy, dressed up to the t’s, without any concern for the poor and minorities look to you like a community organizer?

No way. Stealth campaign. Frank Rich pegged Obama perfectly: "Obama punked us".

Electing President

I was not a big fan of McCain, but neither Obama. His resume seemed to be a bit too thin without much substance. Now finding some articles about his inflating resume after more than 1 year after the elecion, I wonder if the primary for Democrat was after all hate toward Hillary rather than Obama himself.

As many people know, Hillary was not the most likable person on the earth. I don't know about her personally at all. But, we sometimes can tell that the person is really trustworthy even from the frist impression.

Hillary was actually my kind of hero when I was in college. She inspired me and other young women to be strong and independent. There is nothing wrong with being a bitch.

But of course, after more than a decade of experiencing a real life, I realize that I was brain-washed by her campaign. Still though, she inspired me when she was fighting the losing primary until the end. The way she fight remained me of something I was inspired as a college student.

As to Obama, he is likable and seems to be an easy-going. For someone easy going but very ambitious, the job of the presidency seems to be a bit stretch if the president job is really high stressed and high pressured as reported in general. At least, people surrounding the president are definitely highly-pressured and highly-demanded.

In either ways, without knowing that his resume was inflated, his resume was already not enough at all for such the top job. It is like someone who barely have management experiences in corporate life applying for a CEO job. The presidency seems to be a lottery.

With more information available, I wish that we could have more sophisticated process of electing a president. By the time of presidential election, we have two multiple choices. I personally feel that it is the better of two evil choices.

The audacity of resume-padding (or, why Obama makes things up)

The audacity of resume-padding (or, why Obama makes things up)
By ABRAHAM KATSMAN AND KORY BARDASH
A JPost.com exclusive blog


Obama, right, hugs McCain, at the Saddleback Forum in Lake Forrest, Calif. Saturday.
Photo: AP

SLIDESHOW: Israel & Region | World One of the knocks on Barack Obama is that his résumé is, so to speak, paper-thin. But that is not entirely accurate. Obama, in fact, has held some major job titles which are noteworthy all by themselves: United States Senator, Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Harvard Law Review President-each of these titles puts him in rarefied company. Tack on a few Illinois State Senate terms, and his resume actually appears solid. Yet, in spite of these prestigious positions, Obama has increasingly resorted to making claims of accomplishment that are so patently inflated that even his cheerleaders at CNN and the New York Times are taking notice. Why?

It seems that Obama recognizes that while his résumé titles are impressive, his actual accomplishments are weak. It's as if he were jockeying to be the next company CEO with little to show for his prior high-profile management positions. So, he does what anyone else does who has spent years coasting on charisma without doing any heavy work: he pads his résumé--stretching the truth here, stealing credit there, and creating the illusion of achievement during his lackadaisical, undistinguished tenure in previous jobs.

A few examples? Take Obama's first general election ad. We are told that Obama "passed laws" that "extended healthcare for wounded troops who'd been neglected," with a citation at the bottom to only one Senate bill: The 2008 Defense Authorization Bill, which passed the Senate by a 91-3 vote. Six Senators did not vote-including Obama. Nor is there evidence that he contributed to its passage in any material way. So, his claim to have "passed laws" amounts to citing a bill that was largely unopposed, that he didn't vote for, and whose passage he didn't impact. Even his hometown Chicago Tribune caught this false claim. It's classic résumé-padding--falsely taking credit for the work of others.

Or take one of Obama's standard lines: his claim of "twenty years of public service." As pundit Michael Medved has pointed out, the numbers don't add up. Shall we count? Three years in the US Senate (two of which he's spent running for President), plus seven years in the Illinois State Senate (a part-time gig, during which time he also served as a law professor) equals, at most, ten. Even if we generously throw in his three years as a "community organizer" (whatever that means, let's count it as public service), that still adds up to just thirteen.

Obama's other activities since 1985 have included Harvard Law School, writing two autobiographies (including several months writing in Bali), prestigious summer law firm jobs, three years as an associate at a Chicago law firm, and twelve years part-time on the University of Chicago Law School faculty. As Medved notes, it takes quite the ego to consider any of those stints "public service." Which of them is Obama including?


Obama made yet another inflated boast last month during his visit to Israel. At his press conference in Hamas rocket-bombarded Sderot, Obama talked up "his" efforts to protect Israel from Iran:

"Just this past week, we passed out of the US Senate Banking Committee - which is my committee - a bill to call for divestment from Iran as way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon." (Emphasis added.)

Nice try. But as even CNN noted, Obama is not even on that committee. That is one peculiar "mistake" to simply have made by accident. Again, his claiming credit for the work of others just looks like clumsy, transparent résumé embellishment.

Would someone with Obama's stellar list of job titles resort to making stuff up? He seems to think he has to. In spite of the many impressive positions he's held, he's done almost nothing with them. If he wants to claim specific, relevant accomplishments, his only resort is to stretching the truth.

Look at his record: he's now completed over half of a Senate term; yet, is there even one signature issue he has taken hold of, other than his own presidential run? Similarly, as the New York Times recently pointed out, Obama spent twelve years on the University of Chicago Law School faculty--singularly famous for its intellectual ferment and incubator of scholarship--and produced not even a single scholarly paper. He was President of Harvard Law Review, but wrote nothing himself. Even as a state legislator for seven years-or community organizer for three years, there is little that shows his imprint. OK, to be fair, he did write two books. About himself.

For all his glowing job titles, Obama has never gotten much done. Is it any wonder that his spokesmen respond with sweeping generalities when asked what Obama has actually accomplished relevant to the presidency?

Obama has held several serious positions from which a serious man could have made a serious impact. But Obama made none. He remains a man of proven charisma, but unproven skill--and not for lack of opportunity. He's treated his offices as if they were high school student council positions-fun to run for, fun to win, affirmations of popularity, heady recognition from superiors, good resume-builders for stepping up to the next position of power, and…well, that's about it-actual accomplishments are not expected; heavy lifting is never on the agenda.

Obama's record of accomplishment is thin not because of lack of opportunity, but in spite of it. For twenty years, Obama has walked the floors of the most prestigious institutions in the nation, but has left no footprints other than those from his runs for whatever office came next.

It's been said that some people want to be President so they can do something; and some want to be President so they can be something. Obama has accomplished nothing noteworthy despite the golden opportunities and positions he's had; why should we believe he'd be a different man in the White House?

No company would hire anyone with Obama's empty track record, pattern of underachievement and padded résumé to be CEO. Is America really ready to hire him as President?

Co-Workers: Obama Inflated His Resume

Despite the inflated resume, I always thought that his resume was like a joke considering the job he was appealing for. But, now I found the followings from this site. A GOOD JOB!!!

Co-Workers: Obama Inflated His Resume


It has been noted by Charles Krauthammer and others that very few people have stepped forward to vouch for Barack Obama.

Indeed, there would seem to be an especially conspicuous absence of witnesses to the years after graduated from Columbia and before he moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer.

Well, it turns out that one of his co-workers, Dan Armstrong, has in fact written about Mr. Obama during those days. And while he is an admitted fan of Obama’s, he claims that he has inflated his resume considerably.

Others who worked with Obama at Business International have subsequently chimed in.

First, Mr. Obama’s version as presented in from Dreams From My Father, pp 55-6:


CHAPTER SEVEN

… And so, in the months leading up to graduation, I wrote to every civil rights organization I could think of, to any black elected official in the country with a progressive agenda, to neighborhood councils and tenant rights groups. When no one wrote back, I wasn’t discouraged. I decided to find more conventional work for a year, to pay off my student loans and maybe even save a little bit. I would need the money later, I told myself. Organizers didn’t make any money; their poverty was proof of their integrity.

Eventually a consulting house to multinational corporations agreed to hire me as a research assistant. Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe. As far as I could tell I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me but a source of considerable pride for the company’s secretarial pool. They treated me like a son, those black ladies; they told me how they expected me to run the company one day…

Nevertheless, as the months passed, I felt the idea of becoming an organizer slipping away from me. The company promoted me to the position of financial writer. I had my own office, my own secretary, money in the bank. Sometimes, coming out of an interview with Japanese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors-see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand-and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve.

Then one day, as I sat down at my computer to write an article on interest-rate swaps, something unexpected happened. Auma called. I had never met this half sister; we had written only intermittently…

[A] few months after Auma called, I turned in my resignation at the consulting firm and began looking in earnest for an organizing job…

We are supposed to believe that “something happened” and the rest is history.

Here, however, is a somewhat different perspective on Obama’s halcyon days as a “spy behind enemy lines,” from a site called Analyze This:


Barack Obama Embellishes His Resume
July 9th, 2005

[by Dan Armstrong]

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big fan of Barack Obama, the Illinois freshman senator and hot young Democratic Party star. But after reading his autobiography, I have to say that Barack engages in some serious exaggeration when he describes a job that he held in the mid-1980s. I know because I sat down the hall from him, in the same department, and worked closely with his boss. I can’t say I was particularly close to Barack – he was reserved and distant towards all of his co-workers – but I was probably as close to him as anyone. I certainly know what he did there, and it bears only a loose resemblance to what he wrote in his book.

Here’s Barack’s account:

Eventually a consulting house to multinational corporations agreed to hire me as a research assistant. Like a spy behind enemy lines, I arrived every day at my mid-Manhattan office and sat at my computer terminal, checking the Reuters machine that blinked bright emerald messages from across the globe. As far as I could tell I was the only black man in the company, a source of shame for me but a source of considerable pride for the company’s secretarial pool.

First, it wasn’t a consulting house; it was a small company that published newsletters on international business. Like most newsletter publishers, it was a bit of a sweatshop. I’m sure we all wished that we were high-priced consultants to multinational corporations. But we also enjoyed coming in at ten, wearing jeans to work, flirting with our co-workers, partying when we stayed late, and bonding over the low salaries and heavy workload.

Barack worked on one of the company’s reference publications. Each month customers got a new set of pages on business conditions in a particular country, punched to fit into a three-ring binder. Barack’s job was to get copy from the country correspondents and edit it so that it fit into a standard outline. There was probably some research involved as well, since correspondents usually don’t send exactly what you ask for, and you can’t always decipher their copy. But essentially the job was copyediting.

It’s also not true that Barack was the only black man in the company. He was the only black professional man. Fred was an African-American who worked in the mailroom with his son. My boss and I used to join them on Friday afternoons to drink beer behind the stacks of office supplies. That’s not the kind of thing that Barack would do. Like I said, he was somewhat aloof.

… as the months passed, I felt the idea of becoming an organizer slipping away from me. The company promoted me to the position of financial writer. I had my own office, my own secretary; money in the bank. Sometimes, coming out of an interview with Japanese financiers or German bond traders, I would catch my reflection in the elevator doors—see myself in a suit and tie, a briefcase in my hand—and for a split second I would imagine myself as a captain of industry, barking out orders, closing the deal, before I remembered who it was that I had told myself I wanted to be and felt pangs of guilt for my lack of resolve.

If Barack was promoted, his new job responsibilities were more of the same – rewriting other people’s copy. As far as I know, he always had a small office, and the idea that he had a secretary is laughable. Only the company president had a secretary. Barack never left the office, never wore a tie, and had neither reason nor opportunity to interview Japanese financiers or German bond traders.

Then one day, as I sat down at my computer to write an article on interest-rate swaps, something unexpected happened…. I had never met this half sister; we had written only intermittently. …[several pages on his suffering half-sister] …a few months after Auma called, I turned in my resignation at the consulting firm and began looking in earnest for an organizing job.

What Barack means here is that he got copy from a correspondent who didn’t understand interest rate swaps, and he was trying to make sense out of it.

All of Barack’s embellishment serves a larger narrative purpose: to retell the story of the Christ’s temptation. The young, idealistic, would-be community organizer gets a nice suit, joins a consulting house, starts hanging out with investment bankers, and barely escapes moving into the big mansion with the white folks. Luckily, an angel calls, awakens his conscience, and helps him choose instead to fight for the people.

Like I said, I’m a fan. His famous keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention moved me to tears. The Democrats – not to mention America – need a mixed-race spokesperson who can connect to both urban blacks and rural whites, who has the credibility to challenge the status quo on issues ranging from misogynistic rap to unfair school funding.

And yet I’m disappointed. Barack’s story may be true, but many of the facts are not. His larger narrative purpose requires him to embellish his role. I don’t buy it. Just as I can’t be inspired by Steve Jobs now that I know how dishonest he is, I can’t listen uncritically to Barack Obama now that I know he’s willing to bend the facts to his purpose.

Once, when I applied for a marketing job at a big accounting firm, my then-supervisor called HR to say that I had exaggerated something on my resume. I didn’t agree, but I also didn’t get the job. But when Barack Obama invents facts in a book ranked No. 8 on the NY Times nonfiction list, it not only fails to be noticed but it helps elevate him into the national political pantheon.

As Mr. Armstrong suggests, if Obama would exaggerate about such things as this, what else has he exaggerated or made up out of whole cloth?

The comments to this post are also quite intriguing, such as:


Comment from Bill Millar
Time: October 30, 2007, 8:17 am

Cathy Lazere [another commentor] calls Barack self-assured? That’s putting a nice spin on it. I found him arrogant and condescending.

The thing is, I worked next to Barack nearly every day he was at Business International –- on many days angling for possession of the best Wang word processing terminal.

I had MANY discussions with Barack.

I can tell you this: even though I was an assistant editor (big doings at this “consulting firm”) and he was, well, he was doing something there, he certainly treated me like something less than an equal.

Funny thing… A journalism/political science major… Writing about finance… Pretending in his book to be an expert on interest rate swaps.

I remember trying to explain the nuance of these instruments to him in the cramped three Wang terminal space we called the bull pen. In contrast to his his liberal arts background, I had a degree in finance and Wall Street experience, so I knew what I was talking about.

But rather than learn from a City College kid, the Ivy Leaguer just sort of rolled his eyes. Condescendingly. I’ll never forget it. God forbid he leave the impression that a mere editor like myself knew more about something than did Barack.

He was like that…

But know what? I can forgive him for being immature–which is probably all that was at the time. Don’t we all believe we know everything at just around that age?

That said…he was a lot older when he wrote his book. Mature enough by this time to realize that his account of his time at Business International could be described as embellishment…

By the way, there should be no doubt as to Mr. Armstrong’s bona fides on this subject. Even the New York Times has cited him as an authority for an article on this period of Mr. Obama’s storied life.

Little People have to pay after all

U.S. House lawmakers may agree to pay for the nation’s health-care overhaul by adopting versions of Senate proposals to raise Medicare payroll taxes and tax health benefits for the first time, Democratic aides said.

House leaders may also discard a plan to impose a surtax on the wealthiest Americans, which has come under fire from some Senate Democrats, aides said.

Of course, any billionair or millionair friends among Senate Democrats? Or they themselves qualify in those subjected to the excercise tax? I think the both cases.

Should House members agree to drop their proposed surtax on high-income Americans, that would leave a funding gap. The measure, which would impose an additional 5.4 percent levy on people with incomes of at least $500,000 and couples earning more than $1 million, would raise $460.5 billion over 10 years.

To make up the lost revenue, negotiators are considering boosting the Medicare payroll tax increase beyond the 0.9 percent contained in the Senate legislation.

The Senate tax would apply to individuals earning at least $200,000 and joint filers earning at least $250,000. Negotiators are considering applying any expansion of the increase to a higher income group, the aides said.

Tiger Woods’ charities raised $50 million. What now?

Tiger Woods’ charities raised $50 million. What now?
December 23rd, 2009, 5:00 am · Post a Comment · posted by Teri Sforza, Register staff writer
Say what you will about Tiger Woods and his latest antics.

The golf star’s OC-based nonprofit foundations raised more than $50 million and spent more than $40 million last year, and got high marks from charity watchdogs (despite criticism that glitzy golf tournaments with millions in prize booty aren’t traditional nonprofit endeavors).

Executive Greg McLaughlin’s compensation totaled $503,138, which eclipses than the average charity CEO compensation of $150,000 - but is not necessarily out of line for this sort of operation. (The No. 2 guy at the National Boy Scout Council, for example, made more than $722,000 last year.)

There are actually three nonprofits bearing Woods’ name, as far as the Internal Revenue Service is concerned, though they are perceived as one by the masses. Two have piled up assets worth more than $70 million - far exceeding what they spend in a year - but officials say there are good reasons for piling up cash, including the requirements of repaying tax-exempt bonds.

See detailed charts of finances (and copies of tax returns) below. And, without further ado, let us introduce you to:

Nonprofit No. 1: The Tiger Woods Charity Event Corp. It’s not the one you’ve heard of, but it’s the Iron Giant that raises (and spends) the most money on those glitzy events that cost tens of millions to mount. In 2008, revenues were $36.2 million, and it spent $32.7 million mounting the star-studded AT&T National Golf Tournament, Chevron World Challenge Golf Tournament, Tiger Jam Benefit Concert and Tiger Woods Learning Center Block Party. At first glance, things look good: 95 percent of spending was on programs - considered the charity’s core mission - far more than the 75 percent charity watchdogs look for here. But that’s because the cost of throwing these expensive events were counted as core program spending - part of the charity’s main mission - and there are critics of that approach.

In 2008, Tiger’s events cost $31.2 million to mount (including millions in purses for the winning golfers), and brought in $34.9 million - leaving about $3.5 million for good works. “You can certainly question the validity of calling something a charitable event when so much money goes to individuals,” Sandra Miniutti of nonprofit watchdog Charity Navigator told The Washington Post when Tiger’s tour went to Bethesda in 2007.

Foundation executive McLaughlin responded thusly: “It’s a very expensive business. If you don’t put on a nice event, you don’t get the people to come back. The goal is to run a great experience . . . and raise as much money for charity as possible.” (Peruse a tax return: tiger-woods-events-08)



Nonprofit No. 2: The Tiger Woods Foundation. This is the one you hear about, which gives out grants and scholarships seeking “to empower young people to reach their highest potential by initiating and supporting community-based programs that promote the health, education and welfare of all of America’s children,” say its tax returns.

It reported revenues of $10.6 million in 2008; expenses of $6 million; and has a nice cushy nest egg of - get this! - $45.5 million. Eighty-two percent of spending was programs, and it gets four of four possible stars from Charity Navigator. (Peruse a tax return: tw-foundation-08)



Nonprofit No. 3: The Tiger Woods Learning Center. “The proudest moment in Foundation history took place on February 10, 2006, as Tiger Woods was joined by former President Bill Clinton, First Lady of California Maria Shriver, and Southern California students, teachers and community leaders for the dedication of the Tiger Woods Learning Center (TWLC), an innovative youth-education facility located in Anaheim, California,” says the organization’s tax returns. “The much anticipated event served as the culmination of a four-year, $25 million campaign to transform Woods’ dream of creating an educational center to inspire and support the career exploration of young people.” Revenues in 2008 were $4.4 million, expenses were $3.9 million, and net assets were $25 million. It funneled 86 percent of spending into programs. (Peruse a tax return: tw-learning-center-08pdf)

Tiger Woods Foundation spokesperson Rachel Rees told us in an email that, although there are three nonprofit organizations, they are all considered support organizations of the Tiger Woods Foundation and viewed as one entity.

By the foundation’s own computations, 88 percent, 92 percent and 92 percent of spending went directly to charity over the past three fiscal years. ”To put that in perspective .92 of every $1.00 we spent went to programs,” the email says. “We are proud of the Foundation’s accomplishments and our ability to provide support to our programs through fundraising efforts. Our programs have allowed us to positively impact the lives of more than 10 million young people.”

One of the reasons net assets are so high - more than $70 million - is due to the value of hard assets (such as buildings) and cash that must be set aside as a condition of borrowing. When the Tiger Woods Learning Center was built, the Foundation sold $11 million in tax exempt bonds. As a result of covenants associated with these bonds, they are required to maintain net assets of at least $12.5 million. The rest represents event profits, short & longer term investments and future pledges. All of these funds are directed for the long-term growth of the foundation and its programs, according to McLaughlin.

And those who would quarrel with McLaughlin’s compensation, the Foundation says this: It relies on competitive market data when determining compensation for all of its employees. “We are extremely proud of all of our staff members and their commitment to furthering our mission to provide educational opportunities to youth worldwide,” the email said.

Woods announced last week that he would temporarily step away from his duties with the foundations. A message on his web site said, “Since my Dad and I created the Foundation, this work has been extremely important to me. I started the organization because I sincerely believe in giving back. There are millions of young people who have truly changed their lives through the Foundation’s programs, and millions more still counting on us for help. I am committed to them and to the Foundation’s excellent work, and I know my staff will continue these efforts during my absence.”

Family Foundation Trick

According to "How Tiger Protected His Image " by By REED ALBERGOTTI, VANESSA O'CONNELL and RUSSELL ADAMS in Wall Street Journal, under Golf Digest's contract with Mr. Woods, the monthly, which is owned by Condé Nast Publications Inc., spent as much as $1 million annually on donations to the Tiger Woods Foundation, printing the charity's annual report and sponsoring many of Mr. Woods's preferred tournaments, according to a person familiar with the terms. In return, Mr. Woods agreed to contribute monthly articles on golf techniques and limit his appearances in competing publications.

The question is whether it was taxed as ordinary income as to this monetary compensation. My guess is that it is tax deductable for the both parties. Conde Nast could deduct this payment as the donation. The Foundation is probably non-profit and required to spend about 5% of the total asset on charitable activities. That 5% may count the expenses incurred in the foundation. For instance, if the foundation owns the private jet How do they distinguish such the expenses between private and non-profit purpose uses in such the small organization where probably the key employees are the family members. By the way, their salary and benefits are probably counted as that part of 5%.

If so, what about people who goes to work everyday and make themselves available to work 24/7? Those who are on the payroll and making more than $400K are payting the tax at 35% while someone like Tiger or the former president of the U.S. Bill Clinton are flying on the jet possibly owned by their own founation??? I don't know for sure whether it is true. I am a bit on the hypothetical term since I do not know and will personally not know.

But the trick could be ordinary for those super-stars. After all, how can we believe that those people are really intending to give back their success to the society???

The following is a brief explanation about private family foundation according to Save Wealth Estate:

A Private Family Foundation (PFF) is a separate entity, privately funded by you. It is created with the specific purpose of contributing to various charitable causes.

As a distinct, legal entity, The Private Family Foundation:

1. Contributes to a charitable cause and takes a tax deduction, while relinquishing personal control over your gift.

2. Minimizes your estate tax liability.


3. Avoids capital gains tax on the sale of appreciated property contributed to the charity of your choice.


4. Provides continuing employment and activity for your family members.


5. Identifies and preserves your family name for years to come.

Special Tax Advantages

Private Family Foundations have special tax advantages, because they are considered "charitable organizations" themselves. Because of this classification, any earnings on Foundation assets are tax-exempt, and can be distribute to the charities you choose.

If established properly, a private family foundation can often avoid capital gains taxes on highly-appreciated assets (see below). In addition, interest and investment earnings that are not slapped with an income tax can instead be used to help the charities or causes you support.

Immediate Tax Benefits for You

If you have highly-appreciated assets that you're holding to avoid steep capital gains taxes, a Private Family Foundation could help. Any appreciated assets that you transfer to a Private Family Foundation can be sold by the Foundation with no capital gains taxes. This is because of the Foundation's charitable status.

Second, you can get an immediate tax deduction for any money or property to grant to the Foundation. This deduction can equal up to 30% of your adjusted gross income (20% for appreciated property). Any income tax deduction not used in your contribution year may be carried forward over the next five years.

The valuation of these deductions depends on a number of things, including original cost and the type of property being transferred. (For more information on valuation, please request the PFF Special Report.)

Estate Tax Benefits

Every dollar that you contribute to your Private Family Foundation means one less dollar that is included in your estate. Gifts that are regularly made to charities can instead be used to fund your PFF. And if you are in a higher tax bracket, that could ultimately save up to 46% in estate taxes.

Best of all, you can make such contributions to a Private Family Foundation without affecting the $12,000 annual gift tax exclusion or the current $1 million Gift Tax Credit .




Required Distributions to Charities

Private Family Foundations have certain laws they must abide by, because they are a legal entity. For instance, by law, a Private Family Foundation must distribute at least five percent (5%) of its assets each year to public charities.

Let's suppose you leave $2,000,000 to your Private Family Foundation. The IRS says you must distribute at least $100,000 (or 5%) to recognized charities in order for the Foundation to qualify for its special tax advantages. Of course, you can select a higher payout if you choose. But five percent is the absolute minimum.

The annual payout is established when you first sit down with a qualified estate attorney who has experience working with large estates. And the difference between what the assets earn (e.g. 6% per year) and the mandatory payout can be put back into the Foundation.




Employment for the Family

You may arrange for your heirs and descendants to receive salaries as "employees" of your Foundation. Simply name family members as replacement trustees to succeed you after death or resignation.

Many Foundations pay their directors using the difference between their required distributions and their annual income. If your Foundation is earning 10% annually on its assets, but only paying 5% annually to charities, the difference can be distribute for legitimate expenses, including salaries for the directors of the Foundation.




Ensuring Kids Don't Lose Out

While charities will definitely benefit from your Foundation, your children are deprived of the donated assets, after estate taxes are accounted for. To remedy this situation, some individuals also choose to establish a generation-skipping dynasty trust (like The Legacy Trust) to avoid estate taxes for up to three generations.

The Legacy Trust, which is an advanced type of dynasty trust, also acts as a shield for assets (subject to variations in state law). When properly drafted and implemented, the Legacy Trust can also help place assets outside your estate, outside the reach of creditors, judgments, malpractice and divorce.

The Legacy Trust can also provide a substantial benefit for your heirs, particularly through the use of cash-rich life insurance. After funding The Legacy Trust with annual gifts, it can purchase insurance payable to your heirs (as beneficiaries of The Legacy Trust). The children would then receive a lump-sum when you pass away, or you could have The Legacy Trust support grandchildren (or even great-grandchildren). All of these benefits are usually 100% estate tax- and income tax-free if structured properly.




Foundations and Charitable Trusts

Private Family Foundations can also be combined with Charitable Remainder and Charitable Lead Trusts. By doing so, you may able to draw a significant income for your lifetimes and earn significant tax savings, while still maintaining a large degree of control of your assets.

Celebrity's no taxable lavish lifestyle.

Gwyneth Paltrow is on the news.

I do not have any personal connection with her. But, I hate that spoiled brat.

According to the news "Gwyneth Paltrow: Will the FTC Call About Her 'Ridiculously Lavish' Vacation?" by JEFF BERCOVICI, Goop, Paltrow's lifestyle newsletter, lavishly praises the newly-reopened La Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech, Morocco. "The Jacques Garcia designed interiors are splendid to say the least, and the hotel's gardens are out of this world, almost from a fairy tale," she writes. "The food and drinks here are elegant and delicious and with all the choices, it's easy to stay in the hotel for an entire weekend of relaxation."

Paltrow apparently acquired her familiarity with La Mamounia over Thanksgiving weekend, when she was one of several celebrity VIPs in attendance at the hotel's grand reopening festivities. (Jennifer Aniston, Salma Hayek, and Orlando Bloom were also there.)

Do Celebrities Pay?

A hotel representative declined to comment on the arrangements it made for the celebrity guests, and Paltrow's spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. But celebrity wranglers and publicists who work with A-list Hollywood talent say it's inconceivable that stars of Paltrow and Aniston's magnitude would have paid their own way on such an excursion.

"Not a chance in hell," says one booker, who asked not to be identified. "I'm sure they were comped the entire thing. If you're going to go on a holiday over Thanksgiving, you don't go somewhere you know there are going to be photographers if you're paying."

In fact, the booker adds, the real question is whether Paltrow and her friends were paid in cash, or merely received free luxury accommodations, travel, and services, such as the daily hammam treatment Paltrow enjoyed "5 minutes in a steam room, a full-body lather in Black Soap, an exfoliating rub down, a Ghassoul (Moroccan clay) body masque, and then a warm shower...Ridiculously lavish!"

Rooms at La Mamounia reportedly start at $800 per night. It's a safe bet Paltrow's room didn't overlook the parking lot.

Potential Violations

Here's the problem. Under the guidelines published last month by the FTC, a celebrity who endorses a product or service has to disclose any "material connection" to the provider -- a designation that covers not only cash compensation but also free merchandise or services. The new rules specifically target new media like e-newsletters and websites, the two formats in which Goop is published.

The guidelines read: "Although disclosure of compensation may not be required when a celebrity or expert appears in a conventional television advertisement, endorsements by these individuals in other media might warrant such disclosure."

Under the strictest reading of the new rules, bloggers or celebrities who make endorsements without disclosing material compensation are subject to fines of up to $11,000. FTC officials, however, have made it clear that such fines would be targeted mainly at advertisers and would be levied only in serious cases.

This is the example that I cannot stand celebrities especially when they do not only endorse products but also send the message and image that they care about all those little people!

Once the former president, Bill Clinton, spoke in DNC that when we become successfule and make more money, why don't we pay more tax. Yeah, President, it is easy to say that when you make millions just by engaing speeches for a few hours at a time. It is a different success story from making just hundred thousands dollar before tax by working like dogs for 24 hours and 7 days being treated not as VIP but as everybody else.

While those top of the cream don't mind raising tax on people who make just more than $350K per year, there is no talk of creating more tax brackets beyond $350K.

People who make 1 million and people who make just over $350K pay the same tax rate.

For instance, I overheard that Anderson Cooper in CNN who are definetely on the little people's sides from this public image make about $4 million per year over the contract with CNN.

What does the contract mean???

The contract means to create a company where he can expense the part of his lifesytle like those A-list celebrities???

I personally like Anderson. However, the government is about increasing tax on our household income of a few hundred thousands by working 24/7 like dogs as ordinary citizens. Meanwhile, those celebrities being treated as VIP and making not only millions but also shelting their income from tax by incorporating themselves loudly speak to support for paying more tax.

Those celeblities pretend as if they care about those little people. However, I do not feel in that way. Maybe the fastest to help those poor people might be for those top of the cream to give up their wealth to those under-priveledge??? Instead, in order to avoid paying their really equal share, they propose to increase tax on those who make just more than $350K. Those who make more than $350K and just below that amount are spending their most time at work. They might go vacation. But, they pay their vacation on their own after they pay tax.

I am also talking about those charitable foundation pretending that they are giving back to the society by expensing their lavish lifestyle as the part of tax deduction.

Here is the story I would love to distribute to as many people as we can as to this charitable trust.

This story was reported by Globe Spotlight Team reporters Beth Healy, Francie Latour, Sacha Pfeiffer, and Michael Rezendes, and editor Walter V. Robinson. It was written by Healy. Second in a series of occasional articles.

It looked like a high-end corporate jet, the luxurious, long-range Bombardier that landed at the Lynchburg, Va., airport on a sunny Thursday afternoon in September. But no corporate executive disembarked.

Instead, out stepped Nancy



Leigh DeMoss. She is a trustee of the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, a private charitable foundation whose mission is to support Christian organizations. The Globe Spotlight Team determined the foundation spent $36 million in 2001 to buy the 12-seat, transoceanic jet -- and millions more over the last two decades to own and operate two prior jets. It is the kind of extravagance that has infuriated shareholders of public companies during the corporate scandals of the past two years. Yet private planes and other big-ticket expenses go virtually unnoticed in the world of philanthropy, even though foundations are publicly subsidized through huge tax breaks for the wealthy donors who set them up. A Globe review of foundation tax returns revealed numerous instances of money earmarked for charity being used to fund travel and lavish perks for foundation trustees -- the people charged with protecting foundation assets.

In Dallas, two officers of the Carl B. and Florence E. King Foundation, established by a Texas oil man to fund educational programs, used foundation credit cards to pay for family vacations to Australia and at least six European countries.

In New York, 14 part-time paid trustees of the Herman Goldman Foundation stand to collect a total of $1.8 million in retirement benefits, thanks to a 1993 vote by the board. And at the largest foundation in Oklahoma, a $5.7 million jet has been used to ferry trustees to meetings and to shuttle a part-time consultant 43 times in the last two years from Athens, Ga., to foundation headquarters.

Larry A. Pulliam, executive vice president of the $900 million Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation in Ardmore, Okla., mused during an interview, ``Maybe the homeless people in Dallas need their soup more than our trustees need their plane.'' But, he added, ``I don't think it's valid.''

Beyond the enormous paychecks some foundation trustees take, excesses documented in a Spotlight report last month, the Globe has uncovered evidence of charitable assets being used to pay rent for plush office space and health club dues and to buy luxury cars, Persian rugs, and fine art.

Some examples:

At the King Foundation, president Carl L. Yeckel arranged for himself and his top aide to receive pensions totaling more than $1 million a year, creating an unfunded future liability that experts say could drive the $41 million foundation into insolvency, according to lawyers involved in a lawsuit against the foundation.

Oklahoma City's Kerr Foundation, established to fund local social and cultural causes, bought a $44,000 Jaguar for the personal use of foundation officials. The $28 million foundation, which also spent $616,000 to buy a headquarters building, spends twice as much money on salaries and expenses as it donates to charities.

The John & Mary R. Markle Foundation paid $837,291 in rent last year for offices at Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan, where it funds research on health care and national security. And the $53 million Pollock-Krasner Foundation, started by the widow of artist Jackson Pollock to support artists, bought a $2.3 million co-op apartment on Park Avenue in New York's exclusive upper East Side for its office.

In an interview, Pollock Foundation chairman Charles C. Bergman said the co-op purchase was a bargain compared to the $156,000 in annual rent the foundation had been paying. The foundation also spent $187,000 to renovate the new office, according to its tax returns.

At the Markle Foundation, spokesman Todd Glass said the board is looking to reduce the rent by subletting some space to other nonprofits. ``We expect to cut our rent by 50 percent in the next six months,'' he said.

Extravagant spending

Although extravagant spending is not uncommon, the vast majority of private foundations do not drain their assets this way, the Globe review found. Similarly, most foundations do not overpay trustees and foundation managers.

The exceptions, however, are many and striking. Last month, the Globe disclosed cases in which foundation executives who claimed to be working full time were taking annual salaries approaching or exceeding $1 million, while many part-time trustees were being paid tens of thousands of dollars, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, for attending a handful of meetings each year.

After the report, attorneys general in California, New York, and Massachusetts opened inquiries into the apparent abuses. In the most egregious case reported by the Globe, Paul D. Cabot Jr. of Needham paid himself $1.4 million in 2001 and $1.3 million in 2002 for overseeing a family foundation whose assets have dwindled from $14 million in the mid-1990's to $4.9 million early this year. Cabot told the Globe he gave himself a $400,000 raise in 2001 to help defray the cost of a daughter's wedding.

In exchange for the tax breaks given to people who establish private philanthropies, the law requires foundations to donate at least five percent of their assets to charity each year. ``Reasonable'' expenses are allowed, and may be deducted from the mandated 5 percent.

Such expenses can put a considerable dent in what foundations give to charity. For example, at the Kerr Foundation, endowed by a former Oklahoma senator who made his fortune in oil, nearly half the 5 percent distribution in 2001 was eaten up by administrative expenses, travel, and salaries.

Alan L. Feld, A Boston University law professor and an expert in nonprofit law, said that the pattern of spending reported by the Globe goes ``way beyond what any reasonable person would think was appropriate.''

Said Feld: ``For foundation officials to behave as if a private foundation is another pocket of their own is wrong, and it deprives the intended beneficiaries of charities what they are entitled to.... This is part of a pattern where people are treating foundation assets as a pot of money they can dip into as they wish.''

Feld, in a view echoed by other experts, said that foundation spending now goes almost unregulated, with the Internal Revenue Service and state attorneys general providing little oversight. Each year the IRS audits only about 100 of the nation's 60,000 private foundations. State regulators complain that they don't have the budget or staff to audit foundation filings.

In the rare cases when they are discovered, abuses of foundation spending rules can result in stiff penalties. If the IRS finds that foundation executives are ``self dealing,'' or taking perks that ought to be counted as part of their personal compensation, those executives can be forced to repay the funds, plus a penalty that can range from 5 to 200 percent. Foundation managers or trustees who know of abuses can also be penalized. And, in egregious cases, foundations can lose their tax-exempt status.

Public perception

If Cabot represents the extreme in compensation, then the DeMoss Foundation's jet is its match in the perks category.

Bruce Hopkins, a lawyer at the Kansas City law firm Polsinelli Shalton & Welte and an expert on foundations, said he would advise his clients not to buy a jet because it is nearly impossible to justify the cost as reasonable under IRS rules.

``It just doesn't wash,'' Hopkins said of the DeMoss jet. ``I'm confident if the IRS or a court looked at this, it simply would not hold up.''

Often, however, the IRS has no way of knowing about such purchases. Foundation assets are supposed to be listed on a depreciation schedule included with each tax return, but the Globe found that many foundations do not file the schedules.

The $444 million DeMoss foundation did file its depreciation schedule, which shows that the Bombardier - nicknamed the ``Gold Star II'' - was purchased in 2001 to replace a more modest jet. The foundation spends more than $1.5 million a year to pay the salaries of two pilots and to operate and maintain the aircraft, which the manufacturer calls an ``ultra long-range, high-speed business jet.''

According to a former foundation pilot, who asked that he not be identified, the aircraft was purchased at the request of chairman Nancy S. DeMoss, the widow of Arthur S. DeMoss, who founded a Pennsylvania mail-order life insurance company. Mrs. DeMoss wanted to make flights to remote destinations in Asia and Africa, where the foundation supports missionary work, with fewer fuel stops, the pilot said.

Larry R. Nelson, the foundation's chief financial officer, sidestepped most of the Globe's questions about the jet. But in an e-mail, he said the foundation supports many causes and projects, ``most of which are overseas, many in the third world.'' The foundation's latest available tax filing, covering 2001, shows that two-thirds of its $36 million in grants went to domestic Christian ministries and churches.

Two former foundation executives said the foundation uses the jet mainly ``for charitable purposes.'' But not always: Since July, flight records tracked by the Globe show the DeMoss jet being flown routinely in and out of Palm Beach International Airport, near the foundation's headquarters, often to places where the foundation doesn't make grants. The jet has also flown to Washington, D.C., New York, Atlanta, and Scottsdale, Ariz., among other cities, and to Little Rock, where daughter Nancy Leigh DeMoss tapes a religious radio program.

In September, the daughter's trip to Lynchburg was for a speaking engagement. The jet picked her up that morning in South Bend, Ind., 20 miles from her home. In July, her mother took the jet to Orlando, Fla., a three-hour drive from her $10 million home in Palm Beach, to attend a friend's funeral. And the DeMoss grandchildren have occasionally flown on the jet, the former pilot said.

DeMoss family members - the mother and four others are trustees - refused to be interviewed for this story.

As for the Noble Foundation, Pulliam said it received an OK from its attorneys before buying its seven-seat Cessna Bravo jet. ``We talked about the public perception of this before we went ahead, that some people would say, `You're a charitable organization and you've got a plane,''' he said. ``It is a public relations issue.''

Pulliam said the foundation uses the plane to help Noble's scientists travel more efficiently from rural Ardmore to remote sites in Texas, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado, where it funds agricultural and biotechnology programs.

After the Globe raised questions about the more than 40 flights back and forth to Athens, Ga., Pulliam said that a foundation consultant, Joe Bouton, a professor of crop and soil sciences at the University of Georgia, has been shuttling back and forth to Oklahoma on the jet twice a month over the last two years. Bouton, he said, plans to move to Oklahoma next spring.

``Using commercial airlines, it takes Dr. Bouton about 8 hours to get to Ardmore from Athens,'' including two hours driving time on each end of the trip, plus waiting time in airports, Pulliam wrote in an e-mail to the Globe. ``Using our aircraft, it takes less than three hours.''

Pulliam said buying the jet, with its annual operating costs of about $600,000, was the brainchild of the foundation's trustees. Nine of the 15 trustees are descendants of Oklahoma oil man Lloyd Noble, who started the foundation in 1945. Pulliam said the trustees, especially those who live in Atlanta, use the jet to travel to Oklahoma for trustee meetings and to monitor the foundation's farflung projects.

The use of the aircraft, both for Bouton's commuting and the trustees' flights, is ``quite appropriate,'' Pulliam said. He said the plane has never been used for nonfoundation business.

Nonetheless, in the post-Enron era, corporate executives have found it increasingly difficult to justify the purchase of aircraft, much less long-range jets like the DeMoss Bombardier, according to people who sell and lease business jets

``A big piece of owning a jet is ego,'' said Mark Stone, chief executive of Sentient Jet Inc., a Norwell company that leases jets to customers on short notice. ``A lot of corporations have sold their aircraft, because they just didn't feel that it was giving the right image to their shareholders.'' At many other foundations, executives are given luxury cars for their use. When the president of the M. B. and Edna Zale Foundation in Dallas was ready to retire in 2001, the foundation let him keep his company vehicle - a 1999 Lexus.

The sedan was part of a $325,000 retirement package given to Michael Romaine, who worked for the Zale family's jewelry company before heading their foundation, according to the foundation's current president, Leonard Krasnow. With Romaine driving off in the Lexus, the foundation bought Krasnow a 2001 Infiniti.

Reached at his retirement home in North Carolina, Romaine, 64, at first said he bought the Lexus from the foundation for $24,000. But when told what Krasnow had said, Romaine asked, ``Did they give it to me? I'd have to look it up. ... I can't remember if I bought it or not.''

The foundation's original purchase of the Lexus for him was justified, Romaine said, calling it ``a very basic car.''

A lawsuit in Texas

At the King Foundation in Dallas, Yeckel, 67, and his deputy, Thomas W. Vett, used foundation credit cards to take at least one foreign vacation a year. But it took years for anyone to discover the excessive spending. In early 2002, Yeckel's sister, Dorothy Yeckel, became suspicious of her brother's lifestyle, including his $1.5 million home and the exotic vacations he took.

Todd Amacher, the sister's lawyer, looked over the foundation's tax returns and alerted the Texas attorney general to the $1 million in compensation Yeckel was taking. Assistant Attorney General John Vinson filed suit, and ultimately a new board took control of the foundation. The suit became public last year, but the details of Yeckel and Vett's free-spending ways had not been disclosed.

During an October 24 deposition, Vett testified that he and Yeckel each used King Foundation credit cards to travel with their wives and other family members to England, Scotland, Australia, Russia, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Italy. There were also numerous trips to San Francisco and New York, according to a lawyer familiar with Vett's testimony.

The globetrotting cost the foundation an estimated $200,000 over five years, according to one person who is involved in the case. That money came straight out of the pockets of charities the foundation might otherwise have funded, because the executives counted the travel on foundation tax returns as a charitable expense.

And their foundation-subsidized lifestyle went well beyond vacations. The foundation maintained three memberships at a private downtown Dallas dining club, at a cost of more than $5,000 a year. In 2001, according to the attorney's general's lawsuit, the foundation credit cards were billed for $6,442 for restaurant bills; $23,000 for purchases in retail stores and $6,531 for health-club memberships.

Yeckel, in a brief telephone interview, declined to answer questions. An attorney for Vett said he could not discuss his client's testimony.

In other cases, relatives of those who established foundations spend the assets as if they were their own personal funds. At the $43 million Roy F. & Joann Cole Mitte Foundation in Austin, Texas, Scott Mitte began to run up personal expenses almost as soon as he took the helm of the foundation his parents founded.

Since 1999, the foundation has purchased Tony Bennett concert tickets worth $4,003, a $4,037 custom tuxedo, and six doors totaling $6,090 that were delivered to Mitte's home, according to an audit of foundation expenses. During Mitte's tenure, the foundation's spending on travel and meetings rocketed from about $50 a year in the late 1990s to $183,000 in 2001, while his compensation also leapt from $31,000 in 1999 to $220,000 in 2001.

And it paid $368,000 in legal fees last year, up from $6,689 the year before, in part to cover a legal battle between the foundation and Roy Mitte's company. Also last year, the foundation footed the bill for an out-of-court settlement with a woman who sued Mitte for alleged sexual harrassment. The foundation disclosed a $139,000 ``legal settlement'' on its 2002 tax return.

The foundation's lawyer, Jeffrey T. Knebel, declined to discuss the settlement or answer questions about other foundation spending. Mitte resigned as executive director in August, 2002, when the harassment charge became public, but remains on the foundation's board of directors and serves as its senior vice president. He did not return calls from the Globe.

In a statement, the foundation said it believed its expenses were ``reasonable, appropriate, and have been greatly justified.''

Some large foundation expenses are tucked into a category on tax filings called, ``travel, conferences, and meetings.'' The IRS does not require detailed accounting for such costs. At several foundations, officials refused to provide the Globe with documentation to justify the costs, or declined to answer questions.

The $13.5 million Chiles Foundation of Portland, Ore., for example, reported spending $591,415 on travel, conferences, and meetings from 1998 through 2002, according to its tax returns. Another $128,115 was reported for ``autos and parking'' during that period, while the foundation paid $300,000 in rent for its offices. The largest beneficiary of the foundation is Boston University, where foundation chief Earle M. Chiles, 83, is a trustee.

Foundation officials turned aside Globe efforts to interview Chiles, the son of the founder. In a written note, the foundation attributed its spending to ``grant-related work'' and to periodic meetings with its investment advisers. One foundation official, Sharron D. Mathews, said in a brief telephone interview: ``If our spending is out of line, it is only the Internal Revenue Service we need to account to.''