One of the grad students in my lab notified me about a benefit concert that some big name musicians will be holding in Philadelphia in July. The roster had some good performers, so I thought it would be pretty cool to attend.

This got me thinking on the actual philosophy of charity. I believe that the point of charity is to give something that will benefit others without expectation of reciprocity. Some people donate their time and skills while others donate materials or money if time and/or skill is not appropriate.

When it comes to big celebrities, they sometimes have performances in the name of a certain beneficiary. Companies will sometimes profess that a certain percentage of your purchase price will go to a particular organization or cause. Smaller organizations will resort to programs like car washes, bake sales, and other forms of solicitation.

Does anybody see a problem with the charitable measures that I mentioned above and how it conflicts with how I actually defined “charity”? I think the most obvious (and maybe egregious?) thing is that they all revolve around capitalism. Now don’t get me wrong - I’m not one of those new-age down-with-commercialism people. Heck, I’m a capitalist to the core. But this is charity we’re talking about.

Like I mentioned in the beginning, charity should be about providing for others without expectation of reciprocity. But you will notice that reciprocity is the very foundation of capitalism. I give you something (money, services, provisions) and I get something in return (provisions, services, money). So I guess the whole point of this is to point out that a lot of people really don’t want to be nice unless they get something in return. Now that’s not very righteous, is it? Not like I can talk - I love buying from bake sales. Nothing like contributing to the marching band while getting my sugar fix.

I just wish that if celebrities or companies wanted to do real good, they would just do so without going through a whole circuitous process. When a company mentions that they will donate a portion of their profits, that helps drive up sales of their products, so it’s not just the donees that benefit. Same thing goes for musicians and their public profile, though I would believe that there are plenty of celebrities who are genuinely compassionate about their cause(s).

A fellow blogger also wrote a good entry on her views on charity. Although I would agree that it’s better to actually contribute work and energy to a cause rather than throw money at a situation, I believe that cash can also be a means of giving to a cause that you might not otherwise have been able to meaningfully contribute to. For example, if you have no manual skills, or are physically disabled, it would be better for you to make a monetary contribution to Habitat for Humanity than to attempt physical labor.

What I truly have respect for are those who donate their time, money, and expertise without any expectation of compensation or even recognition. To these people, I salute you.

Just watched it. Nothing more than a pep rally speech, and an ineffective one at that. No wonder why the networks were unsure of setting aside time for it.

With public support for the war slipping, President Bush seems desperate to convince people that this was a worthy cause. It won’t work! The speech provided no new information and people will see right through these shallow efforts. And yet he continues to sneak in insinuations of a connection between Iraq and 9/11:

They are trying to shake our will in Iraq - just as they tried to shake our will on September 11, 2001.

He’s talking about terrorists in general, you say? Not Iraqis? Maybe, but the intent is clear: Keep that connection alive in the minds of Americans.

The applause you heard during the speech was initiated by White House people (this was mentioned by Charles Gibson and other mainstream media people, so it’s not like I’m making this up). The list of accomplishments is pathetic in the face of constant reports of instability, the deaths of Iraqi government officials, and an insufficiency of basic services like electricity. He kept insisting that the insurgency consists of foreign fighters when it’s increasingly showing military sophistication that’s best attributed to former Iraqi soldiers.

The full text of the speech, thanks to Daily Kos. Lots of reader comments there and at Huffington Post.

The decision came not an hour ago. No 10 Commandments in courthouses unless they’re displayed neutrally as a tribute to history, which I have no problem with. They stuck to a more case-by-case ruling, but at least we’ve established some line. Injecting religion into law is not good. I think that’s pretty well established.

Huge wins for large media companies and cable companies, however. Grokster and other file-sharing companies are toast. It’ll be interesting to see how this affects BitTorrent, which is getting a lot of legitimate use (like distributing Linux releases). Consumers also lose with the overturning of a prior decision forcing cable companies to open their lines to other broadband providers.

Finally, journalism was dealt a blow when the court rejected appeals from Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller, who refuse to reveal their source on stories they wrote regarding the leak of a CIA officer’s identity. I’ve watched enough spy movies to know how critical it is to keep identities secret, and certainly the person who leaked the information should be punished (especially if it was reprisal against the CIA officer’s husband Joseph Wilson for speaking out against the Bush administration), but many important exposés would never happen without some guarantee of confidentiality. Imagine of Deep Throat had never talked to Bob Woodward.

The House of Representatives just passed the long-debated amendment that would give Congress the power to outlaw flag desecration. The amendment has passed the House before, but always died in the Senate. Now that the Republicans have a larger majority, passage looks possible by as close as one vote in the Senate, though state ratification is much more difficult (a 2/3 majority is required in both bodies of Congress, and then 3/4 of the states must ratify it).

I’ve seen polls with hugely different conclusions, some showing a clear unwillinginess to change the U.S. Constitution and others showing a clear desire for this amendment. I don’t know what to believe, but my personal experience tells me that this is one of those issues that makes you look like a jerk for not supporting it. Why my opposition?

One problem is that the amendment is too vague. What does “desecration” entail? Can Congress pass laws banning images of the flag with an X across it? What if it’s determined that showing the flag on a T-shirt isn’t reverent enough, and that’s outlawed? Will there be laws that punish patriotic but negligent people who allow outdoor flags to get faded and tattered? It’s simply far too dangerous.

More importantly, it’s simply not in the spirit of free speech. Now maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to set things on fire on the sidewalk (certainly I’d dislike it if someone waved a burning flag near my face) and you certainly shouldn’t be allowed to burn someone else’s belongings (there’s a case where someone burned the flags belonging to an American Legion post), but these are issues of safety and personal property.

It’s so cliché, but it needs to be said: Popular ideas never need protection; it’s the unpopular ones that do. This exact argument was made in 1989 when the Supreme Court was trying to decide if anti-flag burning laws were constitutional (it decided that those laws were not, and thus the fight for an amendment began). Rep. Jerrold Nadler (of the district containing the World Trade Center) says it best I think:

If the flag needs protection at all, it needs protection from members of Congress who value the symbol more than the freedoms that the flag represents.

If the flag is a symbol of all that’s great about America, stripping away freedoms is the worst desecration of all.

Meet Philip Cooney, lawyer, former chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and former lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute. Cooney made news back on June 9th when it was revealed that he made final edits to a report that deliberately played down scientific findings regarding climate change.

Initially I found it a little odd that a lawyer and former oil lobbyist was somehow qualified to be making changes to a scientific report. I would think that role would best be left to hmmmm, whats the word? Oh yea, scientists. I know the oil industry is one of the foremost leaders in the world when it comes to caring about the environment and all, and I’m sure that someone with ties to them would have the concerns of the public and not the coffers of ExxonMobil’s CEO’s in mind when altering a climate change report. And most definately, he surely wouldn’t be using this action as a way of sucking up to the world’s largest oil company because he might possibly be looking for a new job. Not a chance, not a chance at all.

Fast forward to yesterday, and this AP story. Here are some excerpts, just to highlight my point.

A former White House official and one-time oil industry lobbyist whose editing of government reports on climate change prompted criticism from environmentalists will join Exxon Mobil Corp., the oil company said Tuesday.

The White House announced over the weekend that Philip Cooney, chief of staff of its Council on Environmental Quality, had resigned, calling it a long-planned departure. He had been head of the climate program at the American Petroleum Institute, the trade group for large oil companies.

The White House made no mention of Cooney’s plans to join Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company. Its executives have been among the most skeptical in the oil industry about the prospects of climate change because of a growing concentration of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. The leading greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.

Yea, totally unrelated I am sure. Coincidence, absolutely.

Just this week, General Electric became the latest corporate convert in the “debate” over global warming.

GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt recently announced that his company, which reports $135 billion in annual revenue, will spend $1.5 billion a year to research conservation, pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases. Joining him for the announcement were executives from such mainline corporations as American Electric Power, Boeing and Cinergy.

I’m sure ExxonMobil will deny it until the bitter end, or at least until it becomes unprofitable, especially now that they have Cooney on board and his climate change expertise.

How long are we going to let our government and its financial backers in the oil business destroy our planet in the name of maximizing profits? How long are we going to keep plugging away in a system of life that is utterly unsustainable, destructive, and built on exploitation? What will it take for us to realize that if there is going to be any future for Western society it is going to have to be us, the ordinary people, who rise up from the magical world of dreams and illusions that the power elite has created for us to wallow around in like pigs in our own filth while they fill the family vault? Is it already too late? Questions that our media should be asking, yet they don’t.

Everything is fine, there is nothing here to see.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0516-25.htm

Thanks to Dennis on the forum for bringing this up. I have nothing to add, the article sums it up nicely.

Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo stations.
And tell your friends.

Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation’s oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The President is Hugo Chavez. Call him “the Anti-Bush.”

Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela — not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US. (Click here http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp to find one near you.) By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela’s democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.

Instead of using government to help the rich and the corporate, as Bush does, Chavez is using the resources and oil revenue of his government to help the poor in Venezuela. A country with so much oil wealth shouldn’t have 60 percent of its people living in poverty, earning less than $2 per day. With a mass movement behind him, Chavez is confronting poverty in Venezuela. That’s why large majorities have consistently backed him in democratic elections. And why the Bush administration supported an attempted military coup in 2002 that sought to overthrow Chavez.

So this is the opposite of a boycott. Call it a BUYcott. Spread the word.

Of course, if you can take mass transit or bike or walk to your job, you should do so. And we should all work for political changes that move our country toward a cleaner environment based on renewable energy. The BUYcott is for those of us who don’t have a practical alternative to filling up our cars.

So get your gas at Citgo. And help fuel a democratic revolution in Venezuela.

Despite efforts from liberals and conservatives to gut the Patriot Act, it looks like it will actually be expanded if the Senate Intelligence Committee has its way. It aims to give the FBI broader powers to subpoena documents from financial institutions, libraries, hospitals, et al without judicial oversight! Worse, the subpoenas can be designated secret and revealing the existence of one can lead to jail time. Also worse, it will be easier for the FBI to monitor someone’s mail during a terror investigation.

I think it goes without saying that Americans have a right to expect to have the details of their financial transactions, health records, the books they read, and the mail they receive private without some serious probable cause of a crime being committed. The arguments have been made a million times already, which makes it all the more shocking that the committee would so audaciously recommend such expanded powers. Even Democrats like Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia were no help, supporting the bill in the committee while publicly calling for revisions. The committee, where the GOP is only the majority by 1, voted 11 to 4 in favor of the measure.

Just a quick post to say Happy World Environment Day! Why not take a few minutes to learn more, calculate and reduce your CO2 load, examine your consumerism, or just do some clicking to protect some habitats.

I have always believed that abortion is one of the worst topics to debate because it is one on which people’s feelings are almost entirely immutable, but here I am wandering into this dangerous territory.

My feelings on abortion are very complicated, but the argument I currently favor is stolen almost entirely from Judith Thompson and runs as follows: if you have the option to support the life of another human being, but it requires considerable sacrifices (medical, economic, personal, and professional), are you therefore required to do so? Well it seems like, under this argument, abortion wouldn’t be an especially nice thing to do, but it would not be approximately equivalent to murder. Certainly people of different faiths (and certainly of my own faith, with whom I am currently in crisis) will disagree with this assessment, and I am not sure . Is abortion a sin? I’m pretty sure it is. Does that mean it should be a crime? Absolutely not. I can sense the hate mail coming already.

Since college, when I heard speakers from both Right to Life and Planned Parenthood, it has been my belief that Pro-Choice people were easier to get along with because at the base of our argument is the fact that we don’t want to argue with you. Get an abortion or don’t, it’s your decision. Believe what you want, I understand. Just stay the heck off the law books. The difference, I asserted, was that for Pro-Choice activists this is a social issue. For Pro-Life activists, this is a moral issue.

I’ve changed my mind.

Choice is absolutely a moral issue. All these years, I’ve believed that the “Pro” titles were ridiculous propaganda on the part of everyone involved. Everyone has to be in favor of something, rather than against. No one mentions abortion. Now I see, however, that the titles are so different because the movements are based on entirely different moral principles. For some, the issue is life or death. For me, the issue is choice.

What is feminism, what is liberalism, what is democracy about if not choice? I have the choice to work or not, to raise children or not. I have the choice to speak in public about whatever is on my mind, be it politics, religion, or sexuality. I have the choice to worship whoever or whatever I want, in whatever way I choose. I have the choice to pursue happiness in whatever way I see fit. As my theory of morality has evolved I have come to realize that choice is necessarily at the center of any moral theory.

The 2004 election was decided more than any election prior on the subject of “values.” Liberals see this as cause for concern, which I believe is hogwash. We have values. These are our values. We are the choices we make.