Hurricane Sandy and charity

100 Million Pennies NYC (Photo credit: Photo Gallery)

Mitt Romney and some of his wealthy supporters want to downsize the Federal government, reducing the safety net for others than themselves, return some programs to the states, privatize other programs and then rely on charity to take up the slack. I think that NOW is a good time for them to demonstrate how that would work from the standpoint of their charitable giving, and I am talking about minimum donations in the $50 to $100 million range. Small change to them, but $50 million here and $100 million there adds up to real money.

Mitt Romney, Michael Bloomberg, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, Peter G. Peterson, Karl Rove’s front organizations, the US Chamber of Commerce, corporate people like GE that pay no Federal income tax, and the private equity and hedge fund billionaires of Wall Street are the possible donors I am thinking about. Wall Street is located in the portion of lower Manhattan that was affected by the hurricane with loss of power and some flooding. If charity begins at home, then the banks that are too big to fail and other firms that benefited from taxpayer bailouts should be among the first to donate. Karl Rove’s front organizations enjoy tax-free status as charitable organizations. They should immediately stop their political attack ads and donate all remaining funds to real charity.