Tarnishing a pretty penny
Amid Thursday's news of Bill Gates' stepping down from Microsoft to devote his full-time energies to giving away the obscene amount of money he's amassed, it was frequently mentioned how Gates has already tossed $10.5 billion at various causes across the globe, making that $1 billion in fraudulent FEMA hurricane payouts the GAO announced this week look downright paltry.
Indeed, $10.5 billion seems like an almost unfathomable heap of money, and it is. As ABC News pointed out, Gates' foundation has spent more to fight diseases in Africa than the annual operating budget of the United Nations' World Health Organization.
But for a bit of perspective, Gates' announcement came on the same day (probably happily for the White House) that Congress approved another $65.8 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to Reuters, Congress is also poised to consider a separate bill allotting another $50 billion to that noble cause yet this year.
To date, spending on Iraq alone is just shy of $320 billion. Spending on the broader "war on terror" is approaching half a trillion dollars. That's $500,000,000,000.
The Pentagon also announced Thursday that by its tally, the 2,500th American soldier has been killed in Iraq; to say nothing of the tens of thousands of Iraqis the most conservative estimates purport to have been killed since the invasion. (For more numbers, check this out.)
Next to all that, using FEMA debit cards for sex-change operations doesn't look quite so offensively wasteful as it did a few days ago.
Just a little something to think about in the background as Bill Gates is held up not merely as a successful, generous and decent man, but as a shining example of the potential free market capitalism holds to empower individuals to affect the good in the world that its wealthiest governments supposedly cannot afford.
Indeed, $10.5 billion seems like an almost unfathomable heap of money, and it is. As ABC News pointed out, Gates' foundation has spent more to fight diseases in Africa than the annual operating budget of the United Nations' World Health Organization.
But for a bit of perspective, Gates' announcement came on the same day (probably happily for the White House) that Congress approved another $65.8 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to Reuters, Congress is also poised to consider a separate bill allotting another $50 billion to that noble cause yet this year.
To date, spending on Iraq alone is just shy of $320 billion. Spending on the broader "war on terror" is approaching half a trillion dollars. That's $500,000,000,000.
The Pentagon also announced Thursday that by its tally, the 2,500th American soldier has been killed in Iraq; to say nothing of the tens of thousands of Iraqis the most conservative estimates purport to have been killed since the invasion. (For more numbers, check this out.)
Next to all that, using FEMA debit cards for sex-change operations doesn't look quite so offensively wasteful as it did a few days ago.
Just a little something to think about in the background as Bill Gates is held up not merely as a successful, generous and decent man, but as a shining example of the potential free market capitalism holds to empower individuals to affect the good in the world that its wealthiest governments supposedly cannot afford.
posted by Holly at 3:03 AM
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