by Benjamin Sarlin Info
Benjamin Sarlin is Washington correspondent for The Daily Beast. He previously covered New York City politics for The New York Sun and has worked for talkingpointsmemo.com.
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Some 40 philanthropists worth a combined $230 billion are publicly pledging to give away their fortunes. Donors talk to Benjamin Sarlin about the secret meeting that started the movement—and the pact’s surprising absences.
The origins of a pledge by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and 38 other billionaires to donate more than half their wealth to charity began last year in New York, at a clandestine meeting of the mega-rich.
The very existence of such an event, organized by Buffett, Gates, and David Rockefeller and featuring such names as Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, and George Soros, touched off a frenzy of speculation in the press when it was revealed almost two weeks after the fact by IrishCentral.com. Pete Peterson, who attended the meeting and has pledged his own fortune to raising awareness of America’s budget deficit, told The Daily Beast that it was there the group planted the seeds of Wednesday’s “Giving Pledge” announcement.
“Each of us went around the table and talked about our philanthropic experiences and why it was a very important part of our life,” Peterson said. “We reached a very interesting kind of conclusion in that most of the philanthropists there said that they enjoyed giving money away more than they had enjoyed making it, and that’s a pleasurable experience. At the end of that session, we went around the table and asked, given all the problems in this country, how we felt about trying to expand the list of major philanthropists, and there was a unanimity that we ought to do it—if we did it very quietly—which is what happened.”
Two of the meetings’ most famous attendees, Winfrey and Soros, were conspicuously absent from the initial roster of pledges announced this week despite a history of supporting charitable causes. Calls to their representatives for an explanation were not immediately returned. Peterson said he was surprised to see their names missing, given that the two “were very active participants” at the New York gathering.
Gates and Buffett took the lead in persuading others to join their cause, holding subsequent dinners to court donors. In June of this year, they finally unveiled details about the Giving Pledge to Fortune magazine, in effect publicly shaming the super-rich into joining their cause.
In an interview with The Daily Beast last week ahead of the group’s announcement Wednesday, Buffett spoke glowingly of the group he and Gates had assembled.
“They have convictions and they’re backing them up with their money as well as a lot of time and energy,” Buffett said.
Click Image to View Our Gallery of Billionaires Who Pledged
The group’s hope is that the initial announcement will go viral within ultra-rich social circles, gathering momentum as more donors pledge their fortune. Undoubtedly it’s an issue that will come up in interviews with many billionaires who didn’t make the cut; already news organizations are compiling lists of the pledge drives’ most glaring absences, which include corporate raider Carl Icahn and hedge-fund manager John Paulson in addition to Winfrey and Soros.
“I regard it as a repayment of a debt to the country that has been so generous to my family and me,” Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein, who signed on to the pledge, said in a statement. “I hope that the attention the pledge receives will encourage all Americans—not just a select few—to consider increasing their own giving to worthy organizations and causes. If that occurs, the pledge will have really achieved its most important aim.”
Benjamin Sarlin is Washington correspondent for The Daily Beast. He previously covered New York City politics for The New York Sun and has worked for talkingpointsmemo.com.
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I'm not surprised by the names of those billionaires who pledged to donate parts of their fortunes. Ted Turner gave $1 billion to UNICEF a few years ago. These billionaires understand that accumulating wealth doesn't mean much if the societies from which it came crumble and crack under the strain of poverty and lack of opportunity. It's too bad the Republican Party can't take a lesson from this and realize they should be representing "all the people," and not just the richest, greediest 5%.
This is as good a place as any to repost George Carlin's commentary, "The American Dream." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
Thanks for the Carlin link, sailaway! George was the best, and that clip is RIGHT ON about this country. If the econimsts are right, the currency will collapse by 2020, and the billionares will be dead. Food, water, shelter... health care might be a BIT of a problem. Time for the Age Of Consequences.
THE WEALTH IS MADE FROM THE PEOPLE, AND SHOULD HELP THE PEOPLE, AFTER ALL , HOW MUCH DO THEY NEED? THEY SHOULD HELP THE POOR AND NEEDY, IT WILL HELP THEM ON THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Any one of these guys - and it's always guys - could keep millions of Americans from losing their homes ... today ... in this country. (Just as they could've for the past 2 years.) Another couple of them could save millions of struggling middle class and dispirited, destitute low income people, bringing back jobs by bringing back their corporations to American shores permanently, instead of trying to perpetually screw over good, decent U.S. workers who only want a decent wage that lets them own a comfortable home in which to raise a family. It would go a long way toward restoring prosperity, while fixing a dragging economy that's set to become worse when commercial real estate soon goes belly up for al the same reasons residential did.
Absolute cant. Let's start with the billionaires wanting to donate their money. First, the track record is patchy: Turner never gave anything like the amount he pledged. He gave some, Time/AOL stock tanked and he went back to Montana. But here's the big one. These guys only want the money to go to causes and organizations they support. So what, you may muse. That's their privilege. But often as not they are monuments to egos.... the Allen Institute for Brain Science for example. The damage done by the Gates Foundation to locals communities is another. If these guys really want to rectum something to the people that made them wealthy, pay higher taxes. Don't go strutting their saintliness and building monuments to themselves. And try reading Ozymandias.
then make a billion dollars and give to causes YOU find worthy. People give to charity all the time, even non-billionaires, for all kinds of reasons.
I do. I just don't crow about it.
their money, they can choose where it goes but how much of this philanthropy is an attempt to avoid the state taking a huge portion of these guys' earnings? I see the wealth envy crowd is out in force, demanding its share of other people's money. Every one of these billionaires has more than satisfied any societal obligation that can be conjured - they have created jobs, opportunity, and wealth for others; they have paid hefty taxes; tehy have contributed to causes they deem worthy. The only downer here is the public nature of this "pledge", as though they seek approval in the court of public opinion for having made a lot of money.
And you'll recall that Buffett has excoriated a political system and economy that taxes him and his wealth at lower rates than it taxes his secretary. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/tax/article1996735.ece You'll also recall that he along with the Gates-Jr. and sr. see no reason to abolish the inheritance tax http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1170874.stm Belligerent buzzard is the typical wingnut here disbelieving they might have motives other than just the thought of helping someone less fortunate- that's a real no no in wingnut land.
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