~fyi ping~
BTT. I don't think anything touched by George Soros can pose as above politics anymore. That would include Moveon.org as well as his less obviously political foundations - it posed as "bipartisan" at one time. Hilarious.
bump
For more on the foundations, check out Heather MacDonald's book, The Burden of Bad Ideas. A great read that includes
a chapter on the influence of leftist foundations
("The Billions of Dollars that Made Things Worse").
ping
Don't forget that foundations are really a form of artificial person like a corporation that Congress has given tax exempt status to. When it is formed, it has no assets. Donations are tax deductable. The founder starts things off with a big and "generous" donation, and recruits his like-minded pals to be on the Board. If this donation is handled correctly, this donation will be tax-advantaged with respect to estate tax.
The important fact to remember is that as the law presently reads, if a foundation has a sufficient level of assets, in effect it has eternal life. A foundation must give away 5% of its assets each year, but according to several sources, it appears the average foundation portfolio has enjoyed a 7.5% rate of return.
So, the foundation may even grow in assets over the years. As time passes, the Board always drifts away from the founder's intent, and frequently the drift is to the left.
Part of the blame for the influence of foundations can be found in the death and gift tax law- where if you have a lot of assets, particularly (like Bill Gates) in the form of stock that has increased greatly in value, you really must give it away to a tax exempt cause or see the government seize more than half its value. Give it away or give it to Hillary.
As such, this means that the portion of US wealth in the hands of foundations will grow. All they have to do is not spend money faster than they are making it, and as long as they spend enough to retain their tax-advantaged status.
One simple solution would be to increase the 5% to 8%. This would flush more grants and donations out of the foundations into the hands of people they normally donate to, and would boost leftist causes in the short run, but in the long run it would force them into a slow death.
At the turn of the last century, we had a great public debate about the Big Trusts such as the oil companies. Some politicians were elected to 'bust the trusts'. The time has come to bust the foundations, at least bust them from having eternal life down to just having normal mortality, like the rest of us.