ALAN'S LETTER

It is college graduation season, and it is hard to think of the occasion as anything but a mixed bag: On the one hand it is a supremely joyous occasion; on the other hand, one can’t help worrying about the future that awaits these graduates.

The most disappointing aspect of my sabbatical, and I suspect most sabbaticals, is that one leaves with the hope that upon return some of the problems one was dealing with were somehow resolved.  When I left, a former President had not yet been convicted for his crimes , war was raging in the Middle East, Congress was dysfunctional, wealth inequality was increasing, and the philanthropy-industrial complex wasn’t interested in changing. Regrettably, “was” is “is.”

Guest blog: Larry Ottinger

This month we are tilting at the windmill that is the broken and extreme MAGA Supreme Court, created over decades through an unholy alliance of the religious right (which is neither) and their billionaire partisans.

Guest blog: Gabriela Sandoval

We are coming up on the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the COVID-19 global pandemic and while I’d like to say we’ve come out the other side of it, the treads of the pandemic’s impact remain. They remain vividly on our communal health–physical, mental and emotional, and they remain on our economic, democracy, racial justice, and other societal structures.

The difference between the haves and have-nots in 2023 would be enough to make Charles Dickens’ head spin.

As is frequently reported, charitable giving by the ultra-rich has remained at a constant 1% of wealth, which as I’ll point out, that fails the generosity test.

When the law regulating private foundations was enacted, Congress established a 5% minimum payout … As has been reported over and over again, that minimum has been translated by the vast majority of the foundation community doling out just at or slightly above 5 percent.

The sad truth is that we’re not going to get money out of politics until we philanthropists put more money into politics (aka voter engagement for private foundation funders).

The United States still has close to thirty million people without health insurance. Disasters have become commonplace, but there is insufficient funding to either ameliorate the tragedies or, better yet, prevent them.