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How to be a Charity Without Being Charitable
August 11, 2006
Sweet Charity for Mike Leavitt
US Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt and Family gave about $450,000 to a paper charity called the Dixie & Anne Leavitt Foundation and took a big tax credit for it. While never doing any actual charitable giving, the Dixie & Anne Leavitt Foundation gave the Leavitt money to the Southern Utah Foundation, on the condition that the money be funnelled to the Southern Utah University to be used to funnel students into housing which is owned by Mike Leavitt and family. A little under $600,000 was generated for Mike Leavitt and Co in the form of these forced rent payments.
All in all, a quarter of a million profit from a charitable gift ain't bad!
More charity...
Another Inconvenient Truth
August 4, 2006
Republican PR Firm Behind Global Warming Spoof
A tiny little movie making fun of Al Gore, supposedly made by an amateur filmmaker, recently appeared on the popular Web site YouTube.com.
At first blush, the spoof seemed like a scrappy little homemade film poking fun at Gore and his anti-global warming crusade....
But when the Wall Street Journal tried to find the guy who posted the film "Al Gore's Penguin Army" — listed on YouTube as a 29-year-old — they found the movie didn't come from an amateur working out of his basement.
The film actually came from a slick Republican public relations firm called DCI, which just happens to have oil giant Exxon as a client.
Exxon denies knowing anything about the film, and DCI says, "We do not disclose the names of our clients, nor do we discuss the work we do on behalf of our clients." --By Jake Tapper & Max Culhane, ABC News
More inconvenience...
Lost friends
April 13, 2006
Today, I discovered that an old friend of mine, Linda Adrian Gordan ("Lindago"), passed away. I thought she was traveling the world again, and that sort of explained why I hadn't heard from her and couldn't get in touch with her. Still, we'd always managed to email each other, even when she was in Thialand on her first world tour in the early '90s.
Today, I found her death announcement in the Chicago Sun Times. She'd died months ago, and only now do I grieve her loss. Linda was a gentle, generous, intelligent soul who gave of herself so freely. Linda loved many, and she left behind many who loved her, and I will miss her so much...
Do you realize that you have the most beautiful face
Do you realize we're floating in space
Do you realize that happiness makes you cry
Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes
Let them know you realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun don't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round