Notably, I don't think this change Obama has proposed includes the corporate tax deduction, but someone please let me know if I am wrong about that.
Here is an interesting footnote to the discussion.
http://philanthropy.com/news/updates/index.php?id=7244
But the proposals will not necessarily change giving patterns, says Giving Institute, an association of consultants in Glenview, Ill., and its research arm, Giving USA Foundation.
They noted in a statement that 53 percent of high-net-worth donors surveyed in a 2006 study for Bank of America said their giving would stay the same, or even increase, if the tax deduction for charitable gifts fell to zero.
Giving Institute members have found that “the most important factor in how much people give is how committed they are to the purpose of the request,” the statement said. Furthermore, giving will increase when wealth is created and “if the president’s plan generates more wealth for Americans then giving will go up.”
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
