Louis Auchincloss wrote a story about this once. The minute the guy died, the board of his foundation took hold of the money and did it their way.
Sometimes it’s the children, but its nearly always the guys who choose to spend their lives working for foundations. Almost all of them are libs.
Dave Packard was a great man with a great idea.
Because of his business model thousands of people were brought along in his success.
He was however, always left leaning outside of business.
My husband had a wonderful career at HP (then to Agilent, to Philips Lighting-called LumiLeds), which as we know was (HP) destroyed by Carly.
I don’t remember who said it, or if I will get the quote right, but if an organization is not explicitly conservative, it will become liberal.
I think the expression applies: “Enlightenment did not strike twice in the same place.”
However, in all fairness, liberals are masters in infiltrating, subverting and corrupting organizations, be they interest organizations, charities, foundations, and what all else.
Invariably they want three things: to expand the mission of the organization to embrace liberal causes; to mostly eliminate the original mission, or even reverse it; and finally, to personally profit by voting themselves funds.
For example, a hypothetical scholarship fund for abused poor children. When liberals take control of the board managing its funds, they would first expand the rationale of who is responsible for the abuse to things like “global warming abuses children.”
So then they would give money not to abused children themselves, the intent of the fund, but to liberal political organizations, because “electing Democrats is the best thing you can do for abused children”.
Then they would all vote to quintuple the pay of board members “because they work so hard for abused children.”
By then, the organization’s original purpose is dead, and any money going to it is wasted. As it withers, it is still used up by expending its credibility and good name.
It doesn’t surprise me at all. Nearly all of them go that way. Without moral conservatism, there will be no fiscal conservatism.
Packard was an idiot blinded by misplaced trust in the leftist progeny he failed to bring up properly. (throwing money at liberal adult children does not make up for not being there when they were kids. It simply facilitates evil.) Packard saw how Stanford was taken over by the left. Packard lived long enough to see what happened to the Ford Foundation and Annenberg Trust. He had no excuse, only the explanations of senility and misplaced trust. The author of this piece may wish to sugar coat reality. I do not.
Case in point is the Annenberg foundation and what William Ayers and his bud state Senator Obama did to Chicago education was well documented by Stanley Kurtz.
When Kurtz appeared on a local well respected talk show WGN’s Milt Rosenberg they tried to block the call in show while protesting outside the studio as well. This was a harbinger of today.
Often, it isn’t just the liberal children, siblings and grandkids, waiting like vultures to turn the organization, profit and non profit into a liberal hell hole.
Often, it is the old guys/gals turning liberal in their 70’s/80’s. So liberal, some of their children can’t believe what has happened to Dad/Mom/Grampa/Gramma.
My wife and I have broken off spending time or talking to these “new” liberals after decades of them pretending to be conservative.
I am convinced that many Foundations are populated by Liberals because they can award themselves HUGE salaries and they are giving away OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY.
David Packard is no conservative. In the 1980’s, he was a big supporter of Rep. Ed Zschau (R-Calif.), a flaming liberal who was stridently anti-defense—he even opposed building anti-satellite weapons. By the way, Zschau rhymes—appropriately—with Mao.
Not surprised....
Whether it is Free Trade (espoused by Marx, Keynes, Gore, and a lot of other leftists), government health care (notice how many multi-nat corps HAVE NOT been negative about ObamaCare?), or outright government subsidy of business...a lot of your wealthy and corp elites are quite socialist
Reality is a lot of rich folks today are just as addicted to the government teat as ShawNiqua in South Chicago
Here’s an interesting aside to the Packard story. I grew up in Los Altos, and one of my HS buddies was Packard’s neighbor in Los Altos Hills (his mom was pals with Lucille Packard).
I spent a lot of time up there, within spitting distance of Packard’s back yard, such as it was. My friend’s driveway was literally less than 50 feet from Packard’s rear windows.
The Packard family owns and lives on a large tract of apricot orchard in Los Altos Hills. Shortly after Dave Packard passed away, the entire property was ringed with steel or iron fencing. Prior to that, it looked like any other orchard/rural property in that area, with no fences or other security measures.
I was always curious about his lifestyle, as the house on the property was basically an old bungalow. It wasn’t ostentatious in the least.