WHERE HAVE YOU GONE ANDREW CARNEGIE? (via MarkV)

Giving Until It Hurts: Pampered chefs revolt against population control. (THOMAS STROBHAR, August 1, 2003, Wall Street Journal)

Berkshire Hathaway, the hugely successful, Nebraska-based company led by Warren Buffett, recently announced an end to its program for charitable giving, and in a way that is big news.

The program was an object of adoration for years, not least because it allowed Class A shareholders to designate where they wanted their portion of the company's charity to go. It seemed so democratic, so enlightened compared with the usual corporate-charity model: allowing an executive committee to pick a few charities on behalf of all shareholders. And yet we should be glad that Berkshire's program has ended. It was a bad idea in the first place. [...]

As it turned out, Pampered Chef customers, not to mention the kitchen consultants themselves, weren't keen on the charities to which Berkshire's biggest shareholder--Mr. Buffett--was giving his money, and they let their unhappy feelings be known. (Because the program was open to only Class A shareholders holding physical certificates, Mr. Buffett controlled well over half the contributions even though he owns only about a third of the company.) Berkshire's press release acknowledged this unhappiness: "Certain donations, including some made by Berkshire's chairman, Warren Buffett, have caused harmful criticism to be directed at . . . The Pampered Chef."

Millions of dollars a year were going to Mr. Buffett's favorite charity, The Buffett Foundation, whose philanthropic interests are heavily weighted toward population control and family planning. Among other things, the Buffett Foundation has helped to finance trials of the abortion pill RU-486; it has purchased suction machines used for abortions around the world; and it has funded the deployment of the controversial sterilization pellet Quinicrine in Third World countries.

They used to say that two things in life were inevitable: death and taxes. But, as a general rule, people didn't say that because they thought those were good things. Mr. Buffett, on the other hand, not only seems to think they're good, but actually lobbies Congress to keep taxes high and uses his foundation to deal death. Anybody have enough Greek to know the opposite of "philanthropy"? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 3, 2003 12:21 AM