Career Charity Hustlers

[Flanders]

Nobody ever discusses coerced charity in relation to the economy. That’s odd because a welfare state economy is all about coerced charity.

Let me begin by pointing out that charity is a career choice like the law and medicine. A degree from one of the many Divinity Schools is basically a degree in charity hustling. Such a degree is also the oldest form of institutional charity.

As far as I know, a revokable license to practice charity is not required of individual charity hustlers the same way one needs a license to practice medicine or the law.

I’ve always known that the top executives do okay in just about every charity:

The 50 worst charities in America devote less than 4 percent of donations raised to direct cash aid. Some charities give even less. Over a decade, one diabetes charity raised nearly $14 million and gave about $10,000 to patients. Six spent nothing at all on direct cash aid.

Even as they plead for financial support, operators at many of the 50 worst charities have lied to donors about where their money goes, taken multiple salaries, secretly paid themselves consulting fees or arranged fundraising contracts with friends. One cancer charity paid a company owned by the president's son nearly $18 million over eight years to solicit funds. A medical charity paid its biggest research grant to its president's own for-profit company.

America's 50 worst charities rake in nearly $1 billion for corporate fundraisers
By Kris Hundley and Kendall Taggart, Times/CIR special report
Thursday, June 6, 2013 1:30pm

America's 50 worst charities rake in nearly $1 billion for corporate fundraisers Dirty secrets of the worst charities | Tampa Bay Times​

Coerced charity is relatively new in the US if you start the clock with the tax on income in 1913. It’s fair to say that the tax collector is a charity hustler.

United Nations charity hustlers are worse than the domestic kind. Every tax dollar the UN gets leaves this country. Not one American benefits. So if charities in this country are a huge ripoff just imagine how little the poor get from the billions of tax dollars that go through the United Nations every year.

This one is so ridiculous it has United Nations charity hustlers green with envy:

As the Super Bowl approaches New York much like a blizzard, here are some things to think about: in 2012, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was paid $29.5 million to run the organization. And that’s not all. The NFL, if you didn’t realize it, exists as a 501 c 6 organization. It’s not for profit!

In order to have that status, the NFL must be run as a charitable foundation.

NFL Commish Makes $29.5 Mil a Year– 15 Times More Than Tax Free Org Gives to Charity, More than CEOs of Ford, Heinz, FedEx
by Roger Friedman - January 21, 2014 12:30 pm

NFL Commish Makes $29.5 Mil a Year? 15 Times More Than Tax Free Org Gives to Charity, More than CEOs of Ford, Heinz, FedEx | Showbiz411​

Notice that sports and Hollywood sell tickets to events. That’s unique. I cannot think of any other charity hustle that stages an event.

I don’t know how it works, but I’m willing to bet that Hollywood movies are produced by charitable foundations of one kind or another. If not direct subsidies then this:

The people of New York may think one of last year's biggest films only cost them a $15 ticket, but they'd be wrong.

Thanks to state law, The Wolf of Wall Street received a 30-percent tax credit from New York State, which means taxpayers paid for $30 million of the movie's $100 million budget, according to the Manhattan Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan economic research and policy group.

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. . . footing the bill for movie production doesn't pay off for states as much as their leaders would hope.

Film production may create jobs in a given state, but they usually disappear by the time filming wraps up, marking only a blip in long-term employment efforts. The lure of a movie set and its stars may boost tourism, but that economic benefit is temporary too. Bigger specialized tax breaks also usually mean reduced revenue, which means "states have less money spend on teachers, roads and police," the Manhattan Institute report explains.

How Leonardo DiCaprio Cost New York Taxpayers $30 Million
Special tax incentives for filmmakers mean moviegoers shell out more than they think to see popular films.

How Leonardo DiCaprio Cost New York Taxpayers $30 Million - NationalJournal.com​

In that way Hollywood gets it coming and going. Tax dollars to make a movie, and no tax liabilities on the profits. I know I’m right about this because nobody would pay money out of their own pocket to produce the garbage Hollywood produces year after year. I just wonder if all of those movie theaters are not charities, too. One thing is certain. If all of the Hollywood ripoffs were eliminated every theater in the country would close.

On top of everything else Hollywood is heavily subsidized by tax dollars funding industry training programs. I never understood why the movie industry did not pay to train future filmmakers, actors, technicians, and so on. You can bet that so-called independent movie producers don’t kick in a penny to train anyone.

And have you ever watched the credits roll at the end of every movie? Nobody can tell me that a producer would put that many people on the payroll if the dough came out of his own pocket. The list is endless; especially when you compare it to the old black & white studio-made movies. I always wondered how the studios made so many entertaining movies with so few people, while contemporary movies make so many lousy movies with so many people. The joke is that the list is just as endless for the stinkers (99 percent of all films) as it is for the blockbusters.

Finally, taxing a private residence is the most destructive form of coerced charity because it taxes your income as well as the roof over your head. Doing away with all property taxes on all private residences has been my primary battle cry for as long as I’ve been posting messages although I have not talked about it much in the past few years.

A terrific article on the evils of property taxation by Michael Bargo Jr. rekindled my first love. Note that the parasites benefit from property taxes while the homeowner is taxed for the privilege of living in a private residence; more and more they are taxed right out of their homes:

Under the feudal system of the middle ages, a serf was an agricultural laborer who was bound to work on his lord's estate. The lord owned the land, and the laborer had no choice but to live on the lord's property and hand a significant amount of the fruits of his/her labor over to the lord.

A similar, but more subtle, system exists today in counties throughout the United States. Homeowners and owners of farmland are bound to pay property taxes to the County Assessor. And if they don't pay the property taxes, the assessor has the legal right -- which they essentially gave themselves -- to take the property away. The names of the local officials may not be on the deed to your house, but since they have the legal authority to seize it from you, the result is the same.

This seemed reasonable as long as the property taxes were reasonable. But as Americans have had their wages and benefits reduced, the public sector workers, whether they are unionized or not, continue to enjoy the privilege of raising property and other taxes so that their benefits, salaries, and pensions are not reduced. Teachers' unions, SEIU workers, and AFSCME workers make all or much of their income through property tax assessments. And interestingly, all give most of their money to the Democratic Party, who, since they run most urban areas of the U.S. and receive this money, are then largely responsible for the high property taxes forced upon middle class Americans.

The taxpayers, who are the voters and theoretically run the government, are left paying for the privileged few who have managed to work themselves -- or a members of a family -- into positions of political power. And incredibly, this issue of the political control of property taxes is kept hidden from voters: they are just sent an annual bill.

January 22, 2014
Property Taxes Pave the Road to Serfdom
By Michael Bargo Jr.

Articles: Property Taxes Pave the Road to Serfdom​

Bottom line: Every form of coerced charity orders you to put the well-being of strangers before yourself and your loved ones.