{"id":1097,"date":"2009-06-24T16:15:51","date_gmt":"2009-06-24T16:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newwf.benfredaconsulting.com\/?p=1097"},"modified":"2022-01-31T22:33:29","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T22:33:29","slug":"public-accountability-vs-private-privilege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newwf.org\/public-accountability-vs-private-privilege\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Accountability vs. Private Privilege"},"content":{"rendered":"
On NY1’s “Road to City Hall” the other day, I listened to former New\u00a0York senator Alfonse D’Amato, former mayor Ed Koch, and former\u00a0Comptroller Carl McCall, recently agreeing that there was no\u00a0difference between billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s use of personal money in his mayoral campaign in New York, and Obama’s use of private fundraising activity during his campaign.<\/p>\n
Who would have thought you could equate a billionaire’s multi-million dollar campaign in pursuit of his own political ambitions with a\u00a0 campaign that raised millions by mobilizing small donors across the country thanks to a man and a message that resonated with a very large public? As far as I can see the only similarity is that each opted out\u00a0 of public campaign funds.<\/p>\n
Unrelated directly<\/a>\u00a0to his political campaigning, Bloomberg is also a philanthropist. He has a foundation with an endowment that has been established through the exercise of tax exemption, which allows money to be stored privately in order to fund public good.<\/p>\n With the echo of that television conversation in mind, I’m reminded that this is no time to blur the lines between private goodwill and\u00a0 government accountability. Especially as we try to slog our way<\/a> out of a deep trough of government unaccountability in recent years.<\/p>\n Rather this is a time for great distinctions between public\u00a0accountability and private privilege. Especially as we witness the\u00a0 Gordian knot that ties bail-out, stimulus and recovery expenditures so tightly to the still very privately-determined financial sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On NY1’s “Road to City Hall” the other day, I listened to former New\u00a0York senator Alfonse D’Amato, former mayor Ed Koch, and former\u00a0Comptroller Carl McCall, recently agreeing that there was no\u00a0difference between billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s use of personal money in his mayoral campaign in New York, and Obama’s use of private fundraising activity during his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFor good and ill, foundations themselves chose whether or not – and to\u00a0whom – to be accountable in spending from their treasuries. Whether the accountability be to advocacy on issues, constituencies of grantees, or communities of<\/a> colleagues. So, it would be a mistake to think that because\u00a0 these private institutions are established for public purpose that they are democratic institutions like governments.<\/h3>\n