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Bill Gates Donates $258 Million to Fight Malaria
klubar writes to tell us that Bill Gates has donated approximately $258 million to fight malaria. From the article: "Malaria research accounts for about one-third of 1 percent of the total amount of money spent on medical research and development, even though it accounts for 3 percent of all the productive years of life lost to diseases, according to a report released Sunday." Gates was quoted saying "The report confirms what has been clear, and that is that the world isn't investing nearly enough in malaria R&D."
Yeah, cleaning that off of my XP box was a royal pain in the ass.
Thanks, Bill.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Yes, it is.
Does he get a tax break for doing this?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
He has become a "philanthropist." Moral: it is OK to commit a lifetime of evil, as long as you give away one or two percent of your fortune when you are old.
we will end no whine before its time
Just bottle up a bunch of quinine and send it over to africa along with our western values. The increased commercial revenue pays for the tonic. Problem solved.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
We can't even kill a parasite that mosquitoes are immune to. Call me crazy, but I think the reason why we're so pathetic at medicine is because it is so low tech. We try lots of compounds until we find one that has some effect on a pathogen and we bottle it. Or we expose dead pathogens to an immune system, let it create antibodies, collect the antibodies and bottle it. There's no design, there's no engineering. It's just unscientific quackery.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You know, all this money he gives away is not coming out of his salary, or even the profits of his company. It comes directly out of the pockets of the shareholders of the company. It comes out of most of the pension plans in the country. It comes from his employees. It comes from everywhere but HIM.
Essentially continually depressing the stock price by dumping by the millions of shares, by the billions of dollars he is taking everyone ELSES money and deciding what to do with it. What makes him more qualified to do with the money than ME? Keep his voting shares, give him a big raise, or even a huge freakin' bonus that he can spend however he likes, but keep your freakin' hands out of my pocket.
We just need to allow third world countries to use the same solution we used before some trashy 60's book that cried about DDT softening eggshells.
Personally, I'd rather have more eagles than more niggers.
Yes, evil. What a legacy: a completely polluted Internet. The richest software company on Earth is completely unable to build a reliable, secure operating system. But it has been successful in destroying all manner of smaller companies, non-stop price gouging, and blocking customer choice. Lobbying for ever-worse laws that take away our rights and make the world more corporate-owned than ever. And bringing malware and spyware into your homes in ever-more inventive ways.
You guys really are pitiful- I hope your M$ stock options make it worthwhile for you.
we will end no whine before its time
WTF?!! We all know that this dollar amount is a schmizle of his yearly gross. HOW DARE HE?!!! This is just a way for him to look like he donates to the causes the left are sympathetic to. THINK ABOUT IT - Taking his income into conserderation, THIS IS LIKE A COMMON MAN DONATING A DIME!!! BG COMES FROM HOLLOW EARTH!!!
Yep, the icon is neccesary until he does enough good things to reach the break-even point.
While your joking, there is an ugly bit of truth to that. The Gates Foundation has been known to make donations that conveniently relate to areas where Microsoft is pushing to make inroads to to keep FOSS out. For example, when MS was dealing with India, they made a big deal that the Gates Foundation was donating some supposedly huge amount to some type of medical research in India. In another article it was announced Microsoft was spending 2x as much in advertising in the same geographic area.
So if they're donating roughly $.25 billion to Malaria research, my first question is what geographical areas deal with malaria, and is MS spending $.5 billion in advertising in the same area?
Yes and no. There is a limit to the amount of charitable donations you can deduct from your income. I believe it is a few thousand dollars. This likely comes from the Gates Foundation which has a different set of rules, but the foundation doesn't make money. Their purpose is to give money away. A handful of people probably get paychecks from it, but I have no doubt better than 99% of the money that goes in comes out in charitable giving.
On the other hand, let's go ahead and take the view that it is money he is giving directly out of his wallet. And let's say that he gets to write it all off from his income (which he wouldn't be able to do in the real world since this is a couple of hundred million over the limit.) Given his income he's in the 35% tax bracket. So if he was keeping that $250 million he would pay $87 million in taxes. So by writing it all of he won't have to pay $87 million in taxes. Of course he's out $250 million. Which is a net down of $163 million. Do you think he is getting a major hard on about not having to pay $87 million in taxes?
Here's a clue for you. There is no 100% tax bracket. Any amount donated will always result in less money in the pocket of the donator.
You might hate microsoft, but the reality is that Bill and Melinda Gates have done more to make the world a better place than the entirety of the Free Software and Open Source communities combined.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation did NOT donate one red cent to any charity. They NEVER do. They only give "grants" which are always complicated deals involving stock options that can be borrowed against but never sold, and do not actually transfer cash to charities. The deals always involve Bill or Melinda getting a seat on the board of the charity, and the ability to direct how his "donation" is used. And the "donation" is always used for purchasing expensive pharmaceuticals from companies like Merck, Schering-Plough, etc. which coincidentally happen to have Bill Gates as a major stockholder.
Bill Gates does not give money to charities, he assimilates them. He uses the charities to get third world countries hooked on Big Pharma products that he profits from. Bill Gates is a druglord.
He's not trying to be truly generous and nice, give me a break. With the market penetration he has in the westernized/1st world countries, his only room for expansion of revenue happens to be to open up new markets in places that happen to have serious malaria problems. Throwing some chump change at malaria research and making some PR announcements about it helps win hearts, minds, contracts, and pocketbooks in those countries.
11*43+456^2
Utter nonsense. How much better might the world be if all the excess money they had had to pay for software produced by a monopoly was back in their pocket? Forget wealthy westerners, consider how much a dollar buys in an impoverished Third World country, and consider how many of those dollars badly needed for local development, health, etc. just went to line Bill G's wallet instead.$250 million isn't philanthropy, it's a small pittance of what he owes the world back!
here is something I'm sure you care about..... PORN
http://ravenriley.com/content/
Bill Gates's campaign contributions: http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_don
His "Linux attack money": http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/38971/
Prices gouged on laptops when you buy them without Windows: http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/originalCo
Some other dirty deeds: http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit006.html
Corporate Malfeasance of Microsoft: http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/malfy.html#ms
You DID know charitable contributions count towards tax breaks in the US, didn't you? Out of all Gates' billions stolen from you and me and every poor person on the planet, he donates a penny (to him) to get himself some extra tax-dodging ammo, and everybody fawns all over him like he was a Saint. PS, I installed a rootkit with this post, which writes the word "gullible" in your Windows system registry. Go look.
No, see, you just don't get it. This can't be simply philanthropy. It's Bill Gates!! Bill Gates M$ (lol)! He makes money! There has to beo some guarantee of a return on his $258 million investment, which he clearly only made because at this precise moment in time, him and his evil sidekick Ballmer and all the other evil execs at Micro$haft (lol) agreed that this was the best possible use for $258m at this time. Otherwise he wouldn't have made it, because he has no compassion because he's involved with Meecro$hit (lol).
Malaria is a bug. There are bugs in WindoZZZZe (LOOOL). Don't you see the connection?
There is a cheap cure for the malaria problem, it's called DDT. EU regulations, however, penalise any government that attempts to use that solution, condeming 50 million people a year.
He throws a few bucks (to him) at some charities, and everyone here is fawning over what a saint he is, with not a word about the anti-social, anti-competitive and downright illegal things his company did to get that money. I've got to go puke now.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
There have been numerous articles posted to slashdot on how Bill has attempted to "donate" PCs to schools and other places. While making straight cash donations is fine, the Gates foundation has done some things that make anti-trust advocates cringe. Donating PCs seems like a good thing, but it's anti-competitive. A monopoly giving away it's product (in this case the OS and office/student software made by microsoft) is illegal and should not be allowed. Bill is not above trying this sleazy tactic and he knows what he's doing, even if Melissa does not acknowledge it.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Halliburton, Bechtel and Exxon have "caused" nothing. They are contractors. They do what the government tells them to do, and they get paid public money for it.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's dead
Absolute bullshit.
There already is a cure for Malaria and it's called DDT. Meanwhile we taxpayers spend 1.2 billion on fighting it with treatment in Africa.
Malaria used to be here in the states before we eradicated it then that hippie book Silent Spring evoked emotional response that had absolutely NO scientific data to have DDT banned.
You can believe what you want from the propaganda against DDT bt remember that it isn't backed up with scientific data.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Figures some hippie would mark this as a troll.
Here Ucklak http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm
You should probably read the entry before posting the link as it pretty much states what I've said. No scientific evidence for not using DDT to combat Malaria.
Not using DDT causes more deaths.
Or should I say that there is more scientific evidence to use DDT vs not to use it.
"Since the ban, two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. The ban has caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler."
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
It's all well and good to care about people but at some point you have to start taking responsibility for the environmental consequences of the additional population pressures you create.
I don't see Gates doing that. He's not doing anything to really increase the carrying capacity.
Seastead this.