LBO-talk's favorite charities?

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Jan 29 08:25:56 PST 2003


Brian:
>
> Looks like you've devised an excellent way to justify being a
> Scrooge while still being a leftist, Wojtek. What did Phil
> Ochs say? "I'm a liberal when it comes to how I insist others
> should act, but a right-winger when it comes to how I act"?
> Something like that.
>

Not at all. I simply think that the concept of charity is right wing bullshit. This is the right winger ways of saying "pay up and do not question how we spend the money." Or as Dom Helder Camara aptly observed "Whe In give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." Various charities collect money what elsewhere is paid for by government, except inthis country government extort taxes and funnels them into the pockets of the military-industrial complex, and then assorted private gencies, such as insurance companies, schools, hospitals, or chairities collect "charitable" donations to pay for public goods that the people who call themselves the government do not care to provide.

My preference is social movement, civic activism, civic participation on the part of citizenry - and a big fat progressive TAX on the part of the government to pay for public goods.

Wojtek



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