Diane Feinstein's husband, the defense contractor Richard Blum, has donated $15 million to U.C. Berkeley to fund a Department named after him that will be dedicated to studying ways to alleviate global poverty.
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Personally, I think it might help the poor a lot more if we stopped bombing and killing them. And stopped globalization policies that further impoverish them.
Just imagine what a micro-bank that sets poor people in poor countries up in their own businesses, at an average cost of $50 to $100 each (which they repay from their business profits so that the money can be reused), could do with $15 million to help end global poverty, instead of just studying it.
But I suppose he needed the tax write-off, and it makes him and wifey-poo look good without actually doing anything.
According to the article, Blum has been funding anti-poverty programs for 25 years. So maybe the purpose of this new academic department is to study why global poverty has continued to increase despite his efforts?
Well, if I was pro-globalization and part of the military-industrial complex, and therefore complicit in creating more and more poverty all the time, I guess I'd rather fight poverty than stop causing it. That way I could keep making lots of money from wars and the exploitation of cheap labor, and still look good to people who didn't look too closely.