http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ 2009/feb/28/tax-avoidance-aid

The problem, I suspect will be one of ego. Each wanting to tie their brand to an act of giving, and thus none will collaborate with another – or any of us.

It is hard for people to believe in a cause when the people who run it take money from it, etc. It is also hard to run a Charity and help others with no donations.

Looking at blogs on all major news websites is depressing. Most of the comments from the American people on these blogs call for reductions in Social Security, medicare, deductions of benefits for the disabled and much more.

The American people do not view their neighbors as the 60′s generation did. There is no feeling of community anymore. This is a self serving generation that is quick to complain over losses of rights and feedoms but slow to unite and stand up for them, as their parents did.

Americans seem to view our country’s causes like they were still in High School. No one will support a cause if it is not the “In Thing To Do” Americans willdo as their ‘heros’ or ‘role models’ do.
I have NO complaint in helping other countries and their causes…but…

George Clooney was on ‘Larry king Live’ this week. He was trying to gain support for his very worthy cause DARFUR. I admit I cannot imagine what these brve people are going through. However, some statements made by Clooney during his interview with Larry King struck home. I could not help but to add to every statemet that Clooney made. The following are comments made y Clooney on Larry King Live about the people of DARFUR

“…hanging on by a thread…”
So are your own country men, sir and for some this thin thread has alreadybroken
“…I was never in jeopardy…”
Your fellow Americans are down the streets that you do not ever go near. Tents are going up by the hour.
“…We saw an awful lot of fear…”
Look around in yourown home state sir, the fear is almost as visible as a stone.
“…tremendous amount of hope…”
Your countrymen do not have the same hope as they did for they no longer believe inthemselves or their fellow Americans
“…these people are hanging on by the skin of their teeth…”
The elderly are having to make choices…buy life sustaining medications or food

There is nothing wrong in helping another country and it’s people. But until our ‘Role Models’ and ‘Heros’ UNITE and STAND UP for America and ITS causes. The people you need to take a stand for are the ones who promote you as fans. They are the ones suffering yet they still support you with ticket sales, sports, DVD’s, CD’s posters,pictures, and so much more. It is up to them to take the lead.

It is sad that a little 14 year old girl in the South works harder at trying to help others than most adults think about it. This girl has lost a leg yet she still feels that helping others is a blessing not a dreaded duty.

You know…the poor people who took loans out that they couldn’t repay….and started the entire crisis?

But why blame ourselves, when we can blame the fatcats? Speaking of that, which political party allowed the sub-prime loans anyway?

I pitched a pastiche of Capra’s ‘Meet John Doe’ at an ABC news reporter 5 years ago, about the fasting homeless blogger I mentioned earlier. Life failed to imitate art in her case, she was prepared to let him perish.

The subject told me afterwards that it was quite understandable. This was news that wealthy sponsors would not hear, and she’d be risking her job to follow it up.

Their Counter-Enlightenment is creating a world that would have been deemed a dystopia a century ago – something so pessimistic that no futurist dared depict a world run by venal and corrupt bankers, protecting as their prime customers the monopolies, real estate speculators and hedge funds whose economic rent, financial gambling and asset-price inflation is turned into a flow of interest in today’s rentier economy. Instead of industrial capitalism increasing capital formation we are seeing finance capitalism strip capital, and instead of the promised world of leisure we are being drawn into one of debt peonage.

the preceding was an excerpt from this article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c ontext=va&aid=12418

We’ve heard recently, in Europe at least, calls for a new model of capitalism from the like of France’s President Sakorzy, Tony Blair and at Davos British opposition leader David Cameron.

The concept of doing business dedicated to social outcome, you’ll be pleased to learn, didn’t come from any of them but from a homeless American who in the winter of 2003 blogged for economic rights in Chapel Hill NC and was heard by John Edwards, who opened the Center of Poverty, Work and Opportunity as a consequence. He was later heard by a soon to be President when delivering a microeconomic ‘Marshall Plan’ against poverty just recently.

Also, a few comments have at least mentioned or focused on the culture of philanthropy in itself. How many charities could sustain themselves were it not for the huge # of people who give whatever they can, whenever they can? This is prob un-American, but if you need the inducement of a tax deduction to donate to organizations that are helping people here and around the world, I don’t want to hear about it.

Governments and individuals alike have their obligations. The former takes $ out of my paycheck and is obligated to use it well & wisely; in turn, it is my duty to reflect upon what I have and what others lack, & ‘tax’ myself within my means on a regular basis. If this sounds Socialist or “European” or something equally foreign, sorry. We were never affluent, but my parents sort of led me to believe this was simply good citizenship.