Updates

SI Neg. 2003-12114. Date: 2003...Pacific Lions Paw shell on exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History
Credit: John Steiner (Smithsonian Institution)
flickr
News on some stories we've covered previously:

The Washington Post has an article on racist vote-suppressor Hans A. von Spakovsky and his nomination to the Federal Elections Commission; did you know that half the career lawyers in the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department left during his tenure there? He is a very bad man and must be stopped. Call your Senators; or call these Senators, on the Rules Committee.

Connecticut substitute teacher Julie Amero has been granted a new trial. Now that I think about it, I may not have covered this previously, but I should have; she was convicted for being in an elementary school classroom with a computer running Windows 98 that was filled with porn popups. If that was a crime, half of America would be in jail. If anyone should go to jail, it's Bill Gates or some other Microsoft honcho. Vive la Firefox. Or Safari. Anything but Windows.

Boston College has hired assistant Katie King (three-time Olympic medal winner) to replace sexual harasser Tom Mutch. From the Boston Globe article: "Two-thirds of the Division 1 head coaches in women's hockey are men and only three of Hockey East's are female."

Looks like Joe Scarborough "I-don't-know-nothing-about-that-dead-intern-in-my-office" is leading the pack to replace Don Imus. He's certainly qualified; why just this week, he said this about Fred Thompson's wife Jeri:

Scarborough asks Crawford, "Have you seen Fred Thompson's wife?" Crawford: "Oh yeah." Scarborough: "You think she works the pole?"

I can't believe he'd say such a thing about the shy, retiring Mrs. Thompson:

Paul Wolfowitz, recently shorn of girlfriend, checks out Fred Thompson's assets. He is not looking at her face.

Gates Foundation to Review Assets for Social Responsibility

Reacting to the series in the LATimes, the Gates Foundation has announced that it will conduct a review of its assets to assess whether they are socially responsibility. Hooray, investigative journalism!

Hat tip to the Technology, Health & Development blog, which left this news in comments.

More Questionable Investments By Gates Foundation Revealed

Part II of LATimes report on Gates Foundation's questionable investments:

Money clashes with mission
The Gates Foundation invests heavily in sub-prime lenders and other businesses that undercut its good works.

The conflict is one of many that a Times investigation has found between the foundation's investments and its good works. The Gates Foundation reaps vast profits every year from companies whose actions contradict its mission of improving society in the United States and around the world, particularly the lot of people afflicted by poverty and disease.

The Times has found that the Gates Foundation had major investments in:

• Mortgage companies that were accused in lawsuits or by government officials of making it easier for thousands of people to lose their homes.

• A healthcare firm that has agreed to pay more than $1.5 billion to settle lawsuits accusing it of medical lapses and fraud going back a decade.

• Chocolate companies said by the U.S. government to be profiting from the slave labor of children.

Critics fault the Gates Foundation most for failing to use the power of its immense wealth to improve the behavior of the companies in which it invests. At the end of 2005, the foundation's endowment stood at $35 billion. In June 2006, Warren E. Buffett, the world's second-richest man after Bill Gates, pledged to add about $31 billion.

That $66 billion will give the Gates Foundation more than 10% of the assets of all of the charitable foundations in the United States and provide it with unmatched muscle and potential moral authority. Though it does a vast amount of good with its grants, the foundation declines to use its influence in efforts to reform companies whose business practices flout its goals.

Bill Gates Needs Some Socially Responsible Investment Advice

LATimes finds that Gates Foundation investments are killing the very people it purports to help with its charitable works. Poor folks get free Gates Foundation vaccinations then spend the rest of their lives breathing fumes from the local oil company -- whose chief investor is the Gates Foundation. Left hand, right hand?

Bill: Try

Calvert

Domini

PaxWorld

Or just stop investing in oil companies. That would be a good start.

Dead Again

The bipolar computer is now catatonic. (It has a hard drive, it can't find the hard drive, it has a hard drive, it can't find the hard drive....whatever.) I'm at the local public library, posting from a computer supplied by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as the mousepad helpfully tells me.

The new computer is ordered, and most of it has arrived, but they've back-ordered one piece -- the keyboard.

So, maybe I'll be back in three days, or not until after Labor Day. It's catch as can for a few weeks here.