I must be in a religious or spiritual moment. Last month I quoted a university Chaplain whose uplifting commencement words touched a nerve. Then, a couple of weeks ago, and please don’t take this as partisan, one of my prayers was answered when a courageous jury found our former President guilty of multiple felonies (I have a few more prayers on that subject, but we’ll just have to wait and see if those get answered). And last week a friend sent me a sermon by Edward Feinstein, a Los Angeles area Rabbi, from which I quote:
“Money has an important impact on the way we live in this world, and the Bible is concerned. The Bible is concerned about two effects of money on human beings. The first effect is poverty. What happens in an economic system when you have vast differences of economic wealth, when you have people who are very, very wealthy and people who have nothing? What do you do about that? Is that a spiritual problem? Can you pray? Can you believe in God? Can you observe commandments? Can you observe religious custom knowing that there are…people living on the streets of this city? Does it disturb your prayers? Does it have anything to do with your spirituality? The Bible says God isn’t going to live in a city with homeless people. You better do something about it.
“The second problem the Bible is worried about is the problem of wealth. What happens when people accumulate enormous amounts of wealth? What does that do to them? How does that affect our human relationships? How does it affect the way that we see each other? …the unholy horror of the prerogatives of wealth, of people who have so much wealth that they think that the rules don’t apply to them, that they don’t have to watch out for the other, that they’re not responsible for each other, that the state of the society, the state of the world, and the state of the people who work for them are not their problem anymore. They live on a different planet.”
A few weeks ago I went north of Ukiah, California, to the Avenue of the Giants, the redwoods. I’m not sure I had ever been there before, for sure not in the last 40 years, but OMG, they are so magnificent. But I realized I couldn’t leave “work” totally behind, because as I looked up hundreds of feet to the trees’ canopy, I imagined that must be where billionaires hang out–a different planet–so far removed from the ground below and indifferent to the fact that the canopy is only possible because of the roots below.
If one thought there were any exaggeration in the Rabbi’s concern about the ultra-rich, or any limit to how far removed these billionaires are from even respect for the law (as a reminder: Trump, whose job would be to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, was convicted of falsifying business records with intent to commit another crime), take a look at billionaire support for Trump after his conviction. One of the most powerful men in the world, Stephen A Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman and chief executive of the Blackstone Group, a company that owns just about everything, announced that he is supporting a convicted felon to be the next President of the United States! And Timothy Mellon, heir to a Gilded Age banking fortune, gave $50 million to Trump’s Super PAC one day after the conviction. Mellon also has been the largest donor to RFK Jr.’s Super PAC working to get Jr. in battleground states to spoil the election for Trump. As Robert Reich says, these “oligarchs….are hostile to American democracy itself.” In blackjack or craps tournaments, the winning strategy seems to be to hold back, save your money until the very end, and then make your big bets. But that is a losing strategy in philanthropy. Unlike those tournaments where the only goal is to make money, the stakes in our game are saving democracy, preventing climate disaster, protecting women’s rights, in fact, all civil rights, and [LO1] finally putting a stop to the needless gun violence. We have less than three months left for philanthropic dollars to make any difference in whether every eligible citizen has an opportunity to vote and the assurance that their vote counts. We have less than three months to invest in organizations that can lead us to restore sanity (and ethics) to the Supreme Court. If you haven’t already doubled down to defeat oligarchy, now is the time. And there are many effective nonprofit organizations deserving of your support (if you are looking for guidance, we can help). The icing on the cake for giving more now for individuals and foundations who are not already CCC members is the opportunity to join our distinguished group of philanthropic leaders. And we’ll even send you a “Charitable Commitment” baseball cap to thank you for stepping up to the plate!