The Gates Foundation's Leveraged Philanthropy

[annabanana]

Corporate Profit Versus Humanity on Three Fronts
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/07/the_gates_foundations_leverage.html

Gates' leveraged philanthropy model is a public-private partnership
to improve the world, partly through targeted research support but principally through public advocacy and tax-free lobbying to influence government policy. The goal of these policies is often to explicitly support profitability for corporate investors, whose enterprises are seen by the Gates Foundation as advancing human good. However, maximum corporate profit and public good often clash when its projects are implemented.

For example, chemical giant Monsanto has partnered with the Gates Foundation, which reportedly works to suppress local seed exchanges and environmentally sustainable agricultural practices through its global agricultural charity work. Fraud-prone drug giant GlaxoSmithKline
is a partner in the Foundation's work to leverage its own relatively fractional contribution to vaccination efforts, so that it centrally controls enormous world funds for purchase, pricing, and delivery of vaccines for world public health. And in its U.S. education reform charity work, the Gates Foundation has increasingly shifted its funding to promote market domination by its British corporate education services partner, Pearson Education.

The Gates Foundation, and Gates personally, also own stock and reap profits from many of these same partner corporations. In addition, the Foundation owns a profit-generating portfolio of stocks which would seem to work against the Foundation's declared missions, such as the Latin American Coca-Cola FEMSA distributorship and five multinational oil giants operating in Nigeria. These corporate investments, now moved to a blind trust whose trustees are Bill and Melinda Gates, are collaterally supported by the Foundation's tax-free lobbying and advocacy activities.

This is the evil. This man is just "enlightened self-interest" on steroids.

[DCKit]

1. But you've got to hand it to Bill - making people think he's the best thing since Jesus...

all the while taking the food from their mouths, destabilizing their societies and enslaving them to his corporate sponsors. Fucking brilliant.

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[OneGrassRoot]

3. These huge foundations created by the wealthiest individuals....

drive me crazy.

At times it seems they actually DO GOOD. I mean, they have to achieve some good along the way. But, on balance, the damage they're perpetuating -- and the devious way in which they operate -- far outweighs any good.

It's just another tentacle of vulture capitalism.

[annabanana]

4. Philanthropy should stand on its own.

AS soon as one gets financial dividends, it is no longer philanthropy.

[OneGrassRoot]

5. Absolutely. n/t