Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Vox Indicts Jeb Bush for Manslaughter
Jeb Bush has few defenders on the right. Both his family name and a number of ill-advised statements have left him on the outs with much of the Republican base. His defeat in the primaries will be lamented by few outside of a fairly small donor class in the GOP. As eager as I am to see his campaign left in smoking ruins, there are limits to the bounds of legitimate criticism.
As you may have guessed, the left’s best and brightest at Vox know no such boundaries. The world’s foremost explainers of things that require little-to-no explanation have published a piece by one Dylan Matthews that essentially accuses Jeb Bush of manslaughter because he doesn’t give enough money to charity. No, really.
Jeb Bush could be saving dozens of lives every year
According to the charity evaluator GiveWell, one of their top charities, the Against Malaria Foundation, spends about $5.30-$7.50 per bednet it distributes to children in Malawi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Given what we know about bednet effectiveness, that means Against Malaria spends $3,340 for every life it saves. Those kind of estimates are necessarily rough but it’s probably somewhere in that ballpark. If Jeb Bush had given 10 percent of his income ($727,476.40) to Against Malaria in 2013, he could’ve bought around 100,000 bednets, and saved about 218 lives.
The writ of execution issued by Chief Inquisitor Matthews reads like the work of a pouty child.
My annual income is two orders of magnitude smaller than Bush’s, and I’m still on track to give 11 percent to charity this year.
But dad! I did all of my chores and Jeb didn’t do any of his! I should be allowed to use the Playstation!
Consider Jason Trigg, or the couple Julia Wise and Jeff Kaufman, who give away half of their earnings to hyper-effective charities every year. That’s the saintly option.
If that’s the saintly option, then Dick Cheney must be the greatest man alive and a hero to Matthews. Strange that I cannot recall Matthews and his cohort praising the former vice president for his generosity. There’s also this oversight:
In 2008, Hillary Clinton revealed that she and Bill gave 9.5 percent of their income to charity between 2000 and 2007.
Matthews’s elite journalistic skills neglect to mention that vast majority of Hillary Clinton’s donations go to the Clinton Foundation. And while growing trees in Malawi in order to sequester carbon may be doing some kind of good, it is hardly the hyper-effective lifesaving charity work that Jeb is excoriated for not participating in.
The Clinton Foundation further complicates Hillary’s charitable giving by appearing to act primarily as a slush fund for Clintons:
The Clinton Foundation’s finances are so messy that the nation’s most influential charity watchdog put it on its “watch list” of problematic nonprofits last month.
The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.
So, they’re inefficient. Big deal. That’s no evidence of malfeasance.
The nonprofit came under fire last week following reports that Hillary Clinton, while she was secretary of state, signed off on a deal that allowed a Russian government enterprise to control one-fifth of all uranium producing capacity in the United States. Rosatom, the Russian company, acquired a Canadian firm controlled by Frank Giustra, a friend of Bill Clinton’s and member of the foundation board, who has pledged over $130 million to the Clinton family charity.
The group also failed to disclose millions of dollars it received in foreign donations from 2010 to 2012 and is hurriedly refiling five years’ worth of tax returns after reporters raised questions about the discrepancies in its filings last week.
Trading influence for donations to an organization that seems to exist primarily to enrich the friends and family of the Clintons would seem a worthy target for Dylan Matthew’s philanthropic rage. I expect his groundbreaking expose any day now.
Published in Politics
By the Vox standard, the Bidens and the Gores would be considered serial killers, I assume.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=5791846
I can’t stand Jeb, but this utterly ridiculous. I’d expect to see “Rich man sentencing children to death by not giving away his money” in the Onion. This is logic that you would expect from a grade school child, and even they would probably be persuaded otherwise fairly quickly. “Isn’t okay for you want to keep your art project and not give it someone who wants it? Is it your fault that they don’t have one?
This comes from a pair of fundamental principles that the article gets horribly wrong:
You could almost say this is the liberal argument in a nutshell.
Frank,
First, I don’t remember Dylan Mathews or anybody else at Vox endorsing Mitt because he gave twice the % of income that BHO did. Gosh what a surprise. Second, the Clinton Foundation ratio is so low that the word ‘inefficient’ to describe it is charity in itself. The Clintons need to be in Jail! Jeb! may be Scrooge McDuck but Hillary is Bernie Madoff in a pant suit (..wait for a minute..I’m going to be sick).
Regards,
Jim
Much like MSNBC, the only time I ever hear about Vox articles is when conservatives link to ’em.
Not to mention if the Environazis would call off their jihad against DDT, it could be used as an additive to paint interiors. More effective and much cheaper than bednets.
The environmental Left has massive blood on its hands for barring the proper use of DDT, Golden Rice, asbestos, refrigerants, etc.
I’m just familiar enough with Vox that I cannot quite ask “Vox who?” but it’s close, it’s close. This is the sort of recreational spit-balling that passes the time for them and their fart-sniffing audience. This is their version of freshman essays on Jung and Skinner.
I see they’ve evolved rule #4 to
“Hold your enemies to whatever standards you make up for them.”
The amount one gives does say something about a persons character. Jeb, I believe, is marketing himself as some sort of caring conservative. This comes after bros “compassionate” and dads’ “kinder gentler”. This recurring Bush mantra suggests to me they believe that real conservatives are selfish and that Bushes are hypocritical and tight. Could it be that Grandpa really did get a good deal of the family fortune form the Nazis and they feel guilty about it?
The story is ridiculous, but he deserves it and more.
Vox.com is simply what you would get if The Onion were written by people with no sense of humor and a desire to shock and annoy grownups. Refuting a Vox.com piece is about as useful as arguing with a sidewalk turd when you could just walk around it and move on.
I give a bulk of my income to the Vance Foundation. The money is used to provide food, housing, and clothing to a woman and her two small children.
Now if only I can find a way to convince the Russian government to kick in a few million to this worthy cause. . .
Jordan,
Ahhh..I love it when something can be reduced to an exact formula.
Regards,
Jim
In 2007, Fred Barnes described Jeb Bush this way: “After two terms in office, Bush was not only the best governor in America but also the most conservative.”
Why is he so hated by people on this site? It is just Common Core and Immigration? I mean, the list of other issues as important or more important must be a dozen items long, and he nails most of those, including “competence.”
Look, I wish his name wasn’t Bush as much as the next guy. I still think that it probably disqualifies him because it will be a negative with the low info voters, but he seems extremely well qualified IMHO.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/education-jeb-bush_892790.html?page=1
Inwar,
I don’t hate him. The negative name is especially dangerous depending on what kind of campaign he runs. If he differentiates himself by moving to the center early and clubbing his Republican rivals with his war chest this is a disaster. He will do immense damage to the cause and then if he should get the nomination he has set himself up to be attacked by the virulent left-wing media in the general. In the general the name will haunt him and he will have already destroyed those who could defend him.
On the other hand his most recent speech was an improvement. He used all of his sound bite to go after BHO on his incompetent protection of our data with the Chinese hack attack. He slammed them hard as the BHO gov knew about the security vulnerability and did nothing. This helps Jeb with his chosen theme of competence. If Jeb stays with attacking Obama and promotes himself that way no one can criticize. However, if he still has negatives and isn’t clicking with the voters then he must accept this and not then try to destroy the base to get the nomination.
Regards,
Jim
Like many others here, I’m not sold on Jeb.
But this is one of the dumbest things ever published by Vox, which says a lot.
Others have pointed out the utter hypocrisy of all this (see, e.g., Biden and Gore).
There’s a reason we often refer to charitable giving as a “free will offering.” The person who owns the property exercises his “free will” to decide whether to give, what to give, and who to give it to. “Offering” means it’s something the giver gives if the giver chooses to give. I’m quite certain Mr. Matthews would have fawn over this chestnut from Ralph Nader in the 2000 campaign:
In other words, just turn over your money to men like Nader (or, better yet, compel it through taxation), and you can rest easy: you’ve outsourced your charity to politicians and bureaucrats. What could go wrong?
This approach has a bit of a design flaw: how do we promote virtue in a people when private giving is replaced by government in the form compulsory taking and redistributing?
You need to have the disposition of some uranium mines in your control.
They must listen to Mark Levin and use Breitbart as their main source of news, both being and epic fail in being truthful and complete.
Don’t care. No more Bushes.
If you like, you may address all of your Levin-bashing, Bush-boosting slurs toward me. I am “they”.
Drooling neanderthal here who despises Bush. No talk radio but I read Breitbart, less so since he passed. RIP Andrew.
The hubris of a man who wants power so much that he will buy the primary only to be destroyed in the main by any decent contender, because his name is Bush. He cannot win. Cannot. Can Not. Can’t. What amazing arrogance.
Try awarding the liberty medal to Hilary right after she overtly lied about Benghazi and American deaths. Real patriot that man. Try stooge.
Try elite dynasties doing the will of the ultra wealthy first instead of the people. That will work out just great.
People die every year for lack of available marrow, kidney, and liver transplants. Are we murderers for refusing to fork over one of our kidneys and function with the other? Livers regenerate. Marrow regenerates. Why isn’t Dylan Matthews going under the knife?
To be less sarcastic, we don’t condemn people for inaction, especially where strangers are involved.
Are we murderers for not allowing a free market in organs, for that matter?
The Obamas were in the upper 2% in the early 2000s, making about a quarter-million per year. They gave less than 1% to charity. That percentage grew to 5% only after Oprah made him a millionaire by hawking his book on her show and after his political ambitions placed him in the limelight.
On the other hand, his charity with other people’s money knows no bounds.
Are you trying to say that that doesn’t count?