Guest blog: Larry Ottinger
Large monied interests are corrupting and destroying our democracy as extreme wealth literally skyrockets. Elon Musk gave $288 million to elect Donald Trump last year, including an illegal vote buying scam in Pennsylvania. And Musk groups are dumping nearly $20 million right now to buy a pivotal seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
As Americans for Tax Fairness reported last October, billionaire families of all stripes had spent nearly $2 billion on the 2024 Congressional and Presidential elections. While astounding, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Just think that Musk, currently with more than $327 billion, could easily give well more than the entire $16 billion spent on all federal elections in 2024, as reported by Open Secrets, and still have more than $300 billion.
The second part of this corruption is just as outrageous. According to a Bloomberg report, Musk’s companies gained more than $600 billion in value after the election – a return of more than 2000 percent on his $288 million investment. As Musk leads efforts to cut Social Security, Medicaid and food assistance for regular American families (without Senate confirmation), he is using his insider position to receive billions in government contracts and undermine regulatory actions affecting his companies.
Again, it’s not just Musk. Please watch this video clip posted by FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya talking about the FTC’s current public interest actions against Amazon, Meta and X: “The president is trying to illegally fire me. Who does this help? Does it help you? Or does it help the billionaires over the president’s shoulder at the inauguration?”
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, philanthropy, with a few exceptions, is not stepping up to lead the fight against this corruption and to counter the devastating impact of the ultra-rich on our democracy, economy and civil society. Like money in politics and sometimes an accomplice to it, money in philanthropy distorts and corrupts, starting with the fact that its money and views on that money come from the rich and ultra-rich themselves and proceeding from there to a strong aversion to addressing the harms of excessive wealth on society.
For example, it didn’t take long for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) – after Zuckerberg provided financial support to and prominently attended Trump’s inauguration – to do away with its DEI commitments and programs, including eliminating its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility team, its Science Diversity Leadership awards and all “social advocacy funding” including on racial equity and immigration reform. This is textbook money in philanthropy.
More broadly, a study last year by the Democracy Fund estimated that democracy funding accounted for only .7% of all institutional philanthropy. And within that tiny percentage, money in politics hardly registered. The Piper Fund (“he who pays the piper calls the tune”) has only a $1.7 million budget for its money in politics regranting program and has seen funding for the ecosystem decline. (Personal aside – Meg Gage, a philanthropy Hall of Famer, founded the Piper Fund in 1994 while serving as Executive Director of the Ottinger Foundation, which gave the Fund its first grant. Alan’s foundation is a member today.)
How about philanthropy supporting efforts to tax the ultra-wealthy or simply to stop giving them trillions more to be paid for by cutting literally hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid, food assistance and other programs for seniors, low-income families and touching most Americans? Where are the leading philanthropy voices and funding to defend the IRS as this Congress just stripped it further of the capacity to stop massive tax evasion by the nation’s millionaires and billionaires, which former IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel estimated at more than $150 billion per year?
With the notable exceptions of donors like those with Better Taxes for a Better America and Patriotic Millionaires, philanthropy is largely absent and the work woefully underfunded. With support from Alan, a leader in this space, Tax the Greedy Billionaires successfully launched in late February with People’s Action members and a message to Congress from 90 organizations to not slash programs for people and to tax the greedy billionaires now.
Finally, money in philanthropy also harms in ways discussed previously here, including whitewashing reputations of bad actors and providing vehicles to launder and hoard wealth that should be going to the public good.
CCC recognizes donors who have stood up to meet responsible charitable giving standards to address current crises. I honor these and all donors and doers who are standing up now.
As the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail: “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
This month’s letter is by Larry Ottinger, civil rights attorney and WhyNot Initiative senior advisor. The letter reflects the personal views of its author and not of any organization.