Being "compassionate" with someone else's money

From Carpe Diem: Watching Obama and Biden on TV and hearing Obama talk proudly about their "leadership," I can't help but remember how relatively uncharitable and uncaring they have been in the past when it comes to spending their own money.

VH: This is not an unfair criticism of an administration that wants to take one group's money (usually groups that are branded as bad) to give to another group in an attempt to "spread the wealth" and which is supposed to then mean that government is therefore being "fair" or "compassionate." They want to be "compassionate" with other people's money. Ah, government.

Corporations That Donate

From Forbes.com here are the top ten corporations that make cash donations to charities. Note that some of these are companies Progressives/Liberals love to hate:

Walmart: 301 million

Bank Of America: 211 million

ExxonMobil: 173 million

Citigroup: 146 million

Johnson and Johnson: 127 million

Chevron: 122 million

AT&T: 119 million

General Electric: 114 million

Microsoft: 110 million

Wachovia: 103 million

Advice on Charity

I found an interesting article by Sudhir Venkatesh on charity in the New York Times. An excerpt:

I told the three people who came to me for advice that, in my opinion, prospective donors had two traits working against them.

First, they confused charity with commerce: that is, they uncritically applied the language of outcome-oriented investment to efforts to change human behavior in social settings. Humans, alas, don’t operate neatly according to market logic, though incentives can shift behavior.

Second, donors seem reluctant to talk about their own self interest. Instead of admitting their personal desires, they speak of selfless charity. Of course, donors can do whatever they want with their money, but this attitude doesn’t help them grow.