Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russell Sage Foundation Connection: Part 2

 

Russell Sage Foundation headquarters building at 112 East 64th Street in Manhattan

The Russell Sage Foundation, whose board of trustees Columbia Provost Katznelson chaired between 1999 and 2002, claims to be a “non-profit” institution (despite it having an endowment of over $350 million in assets). But, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2018, between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019, the Russell Sage Foundation collected over $15.5 million in total revenues, including over $11.5 million from its net investment income; and also including over $1.3 million from a “charitable” contribution it received from U.S. Multi-Billionaire Oligarch Bill Gates’s Gates Foundation, during this same time period.

In addition, according to a financial statement that’s posted on its website, in 2020 the Russell Sage Foundation had total revenues exceeding $52.5 million. Yet “the Foundation is exempt from federal taxes,” “is classified as a private foundation” and “the Foundation is further classified as an exempt operating foundation, and is therefore exempt from federal excise taxes;” although “the Foundation is subject to income taxes…on income derived from private equity partnership investments.”

According to the same 2020 financial statement, less than $27 million, of the over $350 million that the Russell Sage Foundation endowment has invested in stocks and bonds of corporations that exploit workers and consumers around the globe, is invested in “private equity partnership investments.” But over $328 million of the Russell Sage Foundation endowment is invested in either a domestic equities fund, an international equities fund, a commingled international equities trust fund or mutual funds--which produce dividends and interest income for the foundation, yet is apparently not subject to federal income or federal excise taxes.

So, for example, the “philanthropic” Columbia University-linked Russell Sage Foundation paid its president, Sheldon Danziger, a total annual compensation of between $594,000 and $623,000, and gave him an expense account of over $84,000, between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019; and, during the same period, it paid over $686,000 to firms like BlackRock and Silchester International Investors for “investment management services.” Yet the main tax that the “non-profit” Russell Sage Foundation (whose headquarters building is located at 112 East 64th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side) paid between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019 was a real estate tax of less than $30,000.

The Russell Sage Foundation, incidentally, “was started with a $10 million [equal to around $280 million in 2021]  bequest by Mrs. Sage in 1907,” as G. William Domhoff recalled in his 1970 book The Higher Circles: The Governing Class In America. But “philanthropist” Mrs. Sage was the second wife and widow of a long-time business partner of 19th-century U.S. Robber Baron Jay Gould:  Russell Sage. And, according to Gustavus Myers’s A History of the Great American Fortunes, Russell Sage “had the reputation among the knowing of being an old hand at political and financial corruption.”

 (end of part 2. To be continued.) (This article was initially posted on the Upper West Side Patch website.)

Who Profits From Columbia University's Teachers College?

"Non-Profit" Teachers College of Columbia University's 525 W. 120th St. building. (photo by Bohao Zhao (wikicommons))

 Since January 22, 2021, thousands of Columbia University students of the Upper West Side "non-profit" university have been withholding their tuition payments for the Spring 2021 semester, in support of the following 5 demands:

"1) Columbia must alleviate the economic burden on students by reducing the cost of attendance and increasing financial aid.

- Reduce the cost of attendance (including tuition, fees, and room & board) by at least 10%.

- Increase financial aid by at least 10%.

- Replace the "student responsibility" with grants.

- Offer financial aid for summer classes for all schools at Columbia

- Forgive all late fees and other forms of retaliation for unpaid bills for the duration of the pandemic.

- We also demand that this reduction and increased aid should not come at the expense of instructor or worker pay, but rather at the expense of bloated administrative salaries, expansion projects, and other expenses that don't benefit students and workers.

"2) Columbia must fulfill its responsibilities to the people of West Harlem by committing to provide employment, education & affordable housing, and to end expansion.

" 3) Columbia must defund Public Safety and invest in community safety solutions that prioritize the safety of Black students and West Harlem residents, and repair harm caused by prior racist practices of Public Safety.

" 4) Columbia must commit to complete transparency about the University's investments and respect the democratic votes of the student body regarding investment and divestment decisions. This includes respecting the referendums at Barnard and Columbia College to divest from companies involved in human rights violations, divesting fully from fossil fuels, and respecting the results of future referendums relating to investment decisions; and

"5) Columbia must bargain in good faith with unions on campus around their key demands for improved compensation, benefits, and protections. This includes guaranteeing protections to international students and granting union recognition for MA and undergrad student-workers."

According to the Columbia University students who initiated the 2021 tuition strike:, "these issues are united by a shared root cause: a flagrant disregard for initiatives democratically supported within the community" and the administration of Columbia University President Lee Bollinger's "unilateral decision-making process" which "has perpetuated the existence of these injustices in our community despite possessing ample resources to confront them with structural solutions."

In response to either the threat of a tuition strike or the tuition strike itself, Columbia University's Bollinger "administration announced it would freeze tuition, suspend fees on late payments, increase spring financial aid and provide a limited amount of summer grants to students," according to a Jan. 26, 2021 In These Times article, titled "Columbia Students Wage the Largest Tuition Strike in Nearly 50 Years," by Indigo Olivier. But "students who" were "withholding tuition were surprised when they learned of multiple cases in which $150 late fees appeared in students' accounts last weekend, though they have not been able to confirm whether they are expected to pay this fee," according to the same article.

In These Times also noted that, on Jan. 22, 2021, Columbia's Board of Trustees "finally formalized its commitment to divest from publicly traded oil and gas companies;" but on Jan. 20, 2021, "the Board of Trustees also quietly announced it was lifting its 2006 to 2020 policy of divestment and non-investment in `companies operating in Sudan.'"

Despite calling their Upper West Side-based private schools "non-profit" institutions, some of the administrators and professors of both Columbia University and Teachers College of Columbia University have, in recent years, apparently been pocketing total annual monetary compensations much higher than what most New York City workers who are still employed are paid; or what most Columbia students are likely to earn annually during the current decade.

According to the 2017 Form 990 financial filing of Teachers College of Columbia University (on whose board of trustees Columbia University President Bollinger has sat next to Rockefeller Brothers Fund Chair of the Board of Trustees and former "confidential assistant" to Secretary Richard Riley at the U.S. Department of Education during the first Clinton administration, Valerie Rockefeller, in recent years), for example, between Sept. 1, 2017 and Aug. 31, 2018, "non-profit" Columbia's Teachers College paid total annual compensations that exceeded $198,000 to the following folks:

1. Teachers College President and later President Emerita Susan Fuhrman's total annual compensation was $1,059,181;

2. Teachers College VP Suzanne Murphy's total annual compensation was $533,206;

3. Teachers College's then-newly-installed President Thomas Bailey's total annual compensation was $468,469;

4. Teachers College VP Harvey Spector's total annual compensation was $465,600;

5. Teachers College Provost & Dean Thomas James's total annual compensation was $465,250;

6. Teachers College Professor Sharon Kagan's total annual compensation was $423,098;

7. Teachers College Enid & Lesk Morse Chair Ruth Vinz's total annual compensation was $373,390;

8. Teachers College Professor Andrew Gordon's total annual compensation was $362,407;

9. Teachers College Professor Jeanne Brooks-Gunn's total annual compensation was $356,392;

10. Teachers College VP Janice Robinson's total annual compensation was $350,941;

11. Teachers College's former Vice-Provost William Baldwin's total annual compensation was $334,607;

12. Teachers College Professor Anne Lin Goodwin's total annual compensation was $330,646;

13. Teachers College Assoc. VP Nancy Streim's total annual compensation was $318,679;

14. Teachers College Vice Provost Catherine Embree's total annual compensation was $279,550;

15. Teachers College Chief of Staff Katharine Conway's total annual compensation was $230,181;

16. Teachers College Vice Provost Steven Goss's total annual compensation was $225,955; and

17. Teachers College's former General Counsel Lori Fox's total annual compensation was $198,594.

In 2018 the "non-profit" Teachers College of Columbia University also had over $149 million invested in "non-public equity funds" and over $28 million invested in "private equity and real estate funds," according to its 2017 Form 990 financial filing.

Between Sept. 1, 2017 and Aug. 31, 2018, the total revenues of Columbia University's Teachers College exceeded $241 million, which included over $47 million that came from "contributions and grants" and over $4 million that came from its investment income. In addition, Teachers College of Columbia University spent $1 million on "lobbying" between Sept. 2017 and August 2018.

So, not surprisingly, in July 2020,the privately-controlled Teachers College of Columbia University was awarded $6.3 million in two publicly-funded U.S. federal government grants from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Science for a "study of the Federal Work-Study program." And in October and November 2020, Multi-Billionaire U.S. Oligarch Bill Gates's Gates Foundation also gave four "charitable" grants, totaling over $1.2 million, to the Teachers College of institutionally racist Columbia University; including, ironically, a $499,000 tax-exempt "charitable" grant "to advance knowledge of which advising reforms disproportionately benefit students of color and students experiencing poverty" and a $100,000 "charitable" grant "to support reporting on racial inequities in education."

Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Conclusion

Columbia U.'s Public Health School at 722 W. 168th St. in Manhattan: Failed to protect NYC's public health in 2020?

Time To Redistribute Columbia Public Health School’s “Charitable” Grants Directly To Families Of NYC’s COVID-19 Victims In 2020?

It may be too early to tell whether or not the initially predicted number of estimated deaths “from COVID-19” in 2020 in NYC, in the absence of federal, state and city government “mitigation” policy decisions to establish more “social distancing,” was an initially accurate prediction? And it may be too early to tell to what degree the “new normal” of a daily life shut-down that was established in NYC and elsewhere in the USA actually prevented more fatalities; or whether the “new normal” of daily life which, for example, might attempt to ban gatherings of more than 50 people, will become a permanent “new normal" in NYC and the USA?

But it’s probably not too early to assume that the “public health researchers” at Gates Foundation Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health will continue to receive a lot more money in “charitable grants” for their academic research projects during the next five years. Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health website, for example, indicates, on its “Grants and Gifts” page, that the following grants have been “awarded” to its academic “public health” researchers in recent years:

“Grants and Gifts

“Merlin Chowkwanyun and David Rosner received a $457,649 award from the National Science Foundation for a project titled “ToxicDocs Research Infrastructure Project,” for the period August 1, 2018 to July 31, 2021.

“Alwyn Cohall received a $10,300,000 award from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Criminal Justice Involvement Initiative for a project titled “Youth Opportunity Hub,” for the period July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2021.

“Mark Hatzenbuehler received a $3,068,202 award from the National Institute of Mental Health for a project titled “Structural Stigma and HIV Prevention Outcomes,” for the period July 19, 2017 to April 30, 2022.

“Mark Hatzenbuehler received a $955,143 award from the Centers for Disease Control for a project titled “Anti-Bullying Laws and Youth Violence in the United States: A Longitudinal Evaluation of Efficacy and Implementation,” for the period September 1, 2017 to August 31, 2020.

“Mark Hatzenbuehler received a $350,000 award from the William T. Grant Foundation for a project titled “Evaluating Strategies for Reducing Homophobic Bullying,” for the period July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2023.

“Matthew Lee received a $120,000 award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a project titled “Health Policy Research Scholars Cohort Two-2017,” for the period July 1, 2017 to August 31, 2022.

“Lisa Rosen Metsch received a $7,968,704 award from the National Institute for Drug Abuse for a project titled “A Multi-Setting RCT of Integrated HIV Prevention and HCV Care for PWID,” for the period September 30, 2017 to July 31, 2022.

“Marita Murrman received a $3,069,880 award from the Health Resources and Services Administration for a project titled “Public Health Training Centers,” for the period July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2022.

“Constance Nathanson received a $936,550 award from the National Institute for Child Health and Development for a project titled “Gender, Sexuality, and Health Training Grant,” for the period September 4, 2017 to April 30, 2022.

“Rachel Shelton received a $785,000 award from the American Cancer Society for a project titled “Sustainability of Lay Health Advisor Programs to Address Cancer Disparities,” for the period July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2022.

“Rachel Shelton (with Shakira Suglia of Emory University) received a $3,198,926 award from the National Institute on Aging for a project titled “Stress, Epigenetics, and Aging,” for the period July 1, 2018 to February 28, 2023.

“Karolynn Siegel and Eric Schrimshaw received an award from the National Institute for Minority Health Disparities for a project titled “Exchange Sex and HIV Risk Among MSM Online,” for the period September 25, 2017 to May 31, 2021.

“Hawi Teizazu received a $120,000 award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a project titled “Health Policy Research Scholars Cohort Three-2018,” for the period September 1, 2018 to August 31, 2023.”

Yet, instead of awarding future “charitable grants” to Columbia’s School of Public Health middle-class researchers, perhaps all this “public health” research grant money should now be redistributed to the families of those New Yorkers (disproportionately of African-American racial background or elderly) who lost their lives or their jobs in 2020? Because New York City’s public health system was apparently not adequately prepared by Columbia’s Public Health School to prevent the spread of 21st-century viruses like COVID-19 in NYC or to provide equal and effective medical care and treatment medication for all patients, with underlying health conditions or living in local nursing homes, who contracted COVID-19 during NYC’s “Corona-Gates” Scandal of 2020. (end of article)

Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Part 6

Columbia U.s Public Health School: Also funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Columbia U. School of Public Health’s Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Connection

Besides receiving millions of dollars in “charitable grant” money since 1998 from the Mailman Foundation and the Gates Foundation, Columbia University and its Mailman School of Public Health has also received a lot of “charitable grant” money from the Robert Wood Johnson [RWJ] Foundation.

With assets then exceeding $9.6 billion, RWJ was the fifth–largest U.S. foundation in 2017; and, as long ago as 1980, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation controlled about 20 percent of the stock of the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson for-profit Big Pharma corporation, that had “a long history of secrecy” and preferred “to keep as low a profile as is humanly possible,” according to the 1980 edition of the Everybody’s Business Almanac: An Irreverent Guide To Corporate America. The same 1980 book also noted that “the Johnson Foundation funds programs in health care, thereby giving money,” coincidentally, “to institutions such as hospitals that are good J & J customers.”

But on July 30, 2008 the RWJ Foundation also gave a “charitable grant” of $4,446,132 to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism because “this project will brand the Columbia effort as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Program in Health and Science Journalism thus promoting our influence with health and health care journalists,” according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website. And between 2011 and 2013, three additional “charitable grants,” totaling over $3.6 million, were given to Columbia University by the RWJ Foundation.

Then, in 2014, yet another RWJ “charitable grant” of $1,465,000 was given to Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.

In 2020, New York City’s public health system apparently also had not been adequately prepared during the 21st-century by the administrations of either former NYC Mayor Bloomberg or current NYC Mayor De Blasio to provide effective medical care and treatment medication for the more than 22,000 New York City residents,  many with underlying health conditions or living in local nursing homes, who are estimated to have died after contracting COVID-19. Yet according to a press release, headlined “Health Policy Insiders Reveal Details Of The Data-Driven Process Behind The City’s Public Health Successes; Approach Can Be A Model For Other Cities,” about the results of a RWJ Foundation-funded “research study” at Columbia‘s Mailman School of Public Health that was posted on the school’s website on Dec. 19, 2013, academic researchers there then claimed:

“As Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s term comes to a close, the latest research conducted by the Mailman School of Public Health indicates that he leaves a legacy of ambitious public health policies…that have improved the health and increased the life expectancy of New Yorkers. The paper takes a behind-the-scenes look at the Bloomberg Administration to evaluate the evidence and build public support for improving health in the city—which also can serve as a blueprint for health policy in cities across the country…Support for the study was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.” (end of part 6)

Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Part 5

Columbia U./WHO Funder and Big Pharma Investor Bill Gates speaking at Columbia U. in 2005

Columbia U. School of Public Health’s Gates Foundation Connection
As Laurie Garrett noted in her 2000 book Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, “the World Health Organization, once the conscience of global health, lost its way in the 1990s;” and “demoralized, rife with rumors of corruption, and lacking in leadership, WHO floundered.” And between 2016 and 2017, around 14 percent of the annual budget of the WHO (that apparently failed to prevent COVID-19 from spreading to NYC in 2020) came from Microsoft Multi-Billionaire Bill Gates’s Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation [BLGF], whose “research and funding favor pharmaceutical multinationals like GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Roche, Sano, Gilead and Pfizer,” in which Gates and his foundation “hold shares in;” thus leading “to a clear conflict of interest,” according to a Nov. 19, 2017 Dandc.eu website article by Barbara Unmussig, titled “The Gates Foundation: Private-sector billionaires setting global agenda.” As the same 2017 article noted “the corporations profit from the Gates Foundation’s focus on pharmaceutical strategies, and the resulting corporate profits put dividends back into the donors’ pockets.”

Yet since 2019, the WHO still accepted over $200 million in “charitable grants” from Big Pharma Investor Bill Gates’s Gates Foundation.

As long ago as May 17, 2002, the Wall Street Journal, in an article titled “Gates Foundation Buys Stakes in Drug Makers” by David Bank and Rebecca Buckman, revealed that “the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has purchased shares in nine big pharmaceutical companies valued at nearly $205 million;” and in addition, the Los Angeles Times, in a Jan. 7, 2007 article by Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, reported that:

“…The Times found that the Gates Foundation has holdings in many companies that have failed tests of social responsibility because of environmental lapses, employment discrimination, disregard for worker rights, or unethical practices…In addition, The Times found the Gates Foundation endowment had major holdings in...pharmaceutical companies that price drugs beyond the reach of AIDS patients...As of this September [2007], the Gates Foundation held $169 million in Abbott stock. In 2005, the foundation held nearly $1.5 billion worth of stock in drug companies whose practices have been widely criticized as restricting the flow of key medicines to poor people in developing nations.

“On average, shares in those companies have increased in value about 54 per cent since 2002. Investments in Abbott and other drug makers probably have gained the foundation hundreds of millions of dollars….Microsoft monopolies in computer operating systems and business software depend upon the same intellectual-property and trade-law approaches favored by drug companies…”

So, not surprisingly, in a June, 2013 News Junkie blog post, titled “Bill Gates, Big Pharma, Bogus Philanthropy,” Ruben Rosenberg Corlorn noted that “as an investor in Merck & Co., Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson and others, the Gates foundation shares financial interests with the makers of AIDS drugs, diagnostic tools, vaccines and other drugs;” and he characterized the foundation that funds the WHO in the following way:

“The Bill & Melinda Gates `Foundation’ is essentially a huge tax-avoidance scheme for enormously-wealthy capitalists who have made billions from exploiting the world’s people. The foundation invests, tax free, money from Gates and the `donations’ from others, in the very companies in which Gates owns millions in stocks, thus guaranteeing returns through both sales as well as intellectual-property rights. To add insult to injury, the system perpetuates the spread of disease rather than aids in their eradication, thus perpetually justifying his endeavors to `eradicate’ them (solving a problem they are creating)….It is almost certain that if enormously wealthy individuals and firms were held accountable for their actions instead of being allowed to `whitewash’ them in misleading and dishonest philanthropy, the world would be better. It is almost certain that if philanthropy was genuine, and not designed as a tax-avoidance scheme and one in which `donations’ serve as investments into the very firms in which the donors have enormous stakes, the world would be better….”

In his March 17, 2020 article in The Nation magazine about WHO Funder Bill Gates’s foundation, titled “Bill Gates’s Charity Paradox,” Tim Schwab also reported that “The Nation found close to $250 million in charitable grants from the Gates Foundation to companies in which the foundation holds corporate stocks and bonds: Merck, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone, Sanofi, Ericsson, LG, Medtronic, Teva, and numerous start-ups—with the grants directed at projects like developing new drugs and health monitoring systems and creating mobile banking services;” and noted that “a foundation giving a charitable grant to a company that it partly owns—and stands to benefit from financially—would seem like an obvious conflict of interest.” So, not surprisingly, the “non-profit” Gates Foundation’s “$50 billion endowment has generated $28.5 billion in investment income over the last five years,” yet “during the same period, the foundation has given away only $23.5 billion in charitable grants,” according to The Nation magazine’s March 17, 2020 article.

According to an article by Jacob Levich, titled “The Real Agenda of the Gates Foundation,” that appeared in the May 2014 issue of Aspects of India’s Economy:

“The Gates Foundation exercises power not only via its own spending, but more broadly through an elaborate network of `partner organizations’ including non-profits, government agencies, and private corporations. As the third largest donor to the UN's World Health Organization (WHO), it is a dominant player in the formation of global health policy….Such arrangements allow BMGF to leverage its stake in allied enterprises, much as private businesses enhance power and profits through strategic investment schemes….At the same time the Foundation supports NGOs that lobby governments to increase spending on the initiatives it sponsors.

“The Gates operation resembles…a massive, vertically integrated multinational corporation (MNC), controlling every step in a supply chain that reaches from its Seattle-based boardroom...Emulating his own strategies for cornering the software market, Gates has created a virtual monopoly in the field of public health… Vastly endowed, essentially unaccountable, unencumbered by respect for democracy…, it is ideally positioned to intervene swiftly and decisively on behalf of the interests it represents. As Bill Gates remarked, `I’m not gonna get voted out of office.’…

“In the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis…the super-rich experienced popular anger more directly than at any time since the Great Depression….The avowedly anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street movement received extensive…press coverage... Particularly worrisome to the mega-rich was the extent to which they themselves, rather than vague complaints about `the system,’ became the focus of discontent….BMGF’s publicity operation was quick to respond. The Foundation exploited `multiple messaging avenues for influencing the public narrative’ including the creation of `strategic media partners’ – ostensibly independent news organizations whose cooperation was ensured via the distribution of $25 million in annual grant money….At the same time BMGF expanded its online operations, using Twitter and Facebook to disseminate pseudo-scientific... images to millions of `followers’ worldwide…. Apart from the promotion of specific corporate interests and imperialist strategic aims, BMGF’s expertly publicized activities have the effect of laundering the enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of a few supremely powerful oligarchs….Thus the Gates Foundation, like the MNCs it so closely resembles, seeks to manufacture consent for its activities through the manipulation of public opinion.”

Coincidentally, the same foundation of Bill Gates that funds in a big way the WHO, which apparently failed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to New York City in 2020, also has funded Columbia’s School of Public Health and Columbia University in a big way during the last two decades with tax-deductible “charitable grants.” In May 1999, for example, “Columbia University's Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health” was “awarded $50 million from Bill and Melinda Gates,” according to a May 19, 1999 Columbia University Record website article. And although the $50 million “charitable grant” from Bill Gates’s foundation that Columbia’s School of Public Health received apparently did not improve New York City’s public health system’s capacity to prepare for expected 21st-century viruses like COVID-19, the same article quotes then-Columbia University president George Rupp as claiming that “the he Gates Foundation gift is of critical importance” and “with the combined efforts of a private foundation, a research university and government and community-based assistance organizations, we have the best chance of improving health care in areas of the world where the need is greatest."

Then, on Feb. 14, 2003, the Gates Foundation gave another tax-exempt “charitable grant” of $488,200 to Columbia University “to support a forum and broadcast production of a global health dialogue between Bill Gates and Bill Moyer at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health,” according to the Gates Foundation’s website. And on July 1, 2006, another $10 million in “charitable grant” money was given to Columbia University by the Gates Foundation “to support the Mailman School of Public Health Building Campaign.,” according to the Gates Foundation’s website.

In addition, between 1998 and Sept. 17, 2019, Gates’s Gates Foundation gave Columbia University and the Teachers College of Columbia University the following other “charitable grants:”

1. An April 1998 grant of $160,000 to Columbia University;

2. An April 10, 1998 grant of $610,000 to Columbia University;

3. A Sept. 1, 2002 grant of $4,746,533 to Columbia University “to support a randomized trial of male circumcision;”

4. A Nov. 2002 grant of $10 million to Columbia University;

5. A Nov. 15, 2006 grant of $240,687 to Teachers College of Columbia University “to carry out activities aimed at helping a national audience of journalists report on issues;”

6. A Nov. 2008 grant of $5,182,505 to Columbia University “to determine the causes of pediatric pneumonia…to inform prioritization of microbial targets for vaccine development;”

7. A March 23, 2012 grant of $2,502,000 to Teachers College of Columbia University “for general operating support;”

8. A July 2, 2013 grant of $273,083 to Columbia University “to examine key aspects of fecal sludge treatment;”

9. An April 1, 2016 grant of $1.3 million to Teachers College of Columbia University “for general operating support;”

10. A July 2016 grant of $7,905,046 to Columbia University “to support development of the Columbia Tutoring and Learning Center as a state of the art technology enabling tutoring program;”

11. A Nov. 2, 2016 grant of $1 million to Columbia University “to provide general operating support;”

12. A Jan. 29, 2018 grant of $1.5 million to Columbia University “for general operating support;”

13. A March 14, 2018 grant of $1.5 million to Columbia University “to support the development of computational methods for optimization of antibodies and vaccines and the application of these methods to important problems in global health;”

14. A March 16, 2018 grant of $1,911,540 to Columbia University;

15. An Aug. 2015 grant of $1,625,009 to Teachers College of Columbia University;

16. A Sept. 5, 2018 grant of $328,850 to Columbia University;

17. An Oct. 22, 2018 grant of $100,000 to Teachers College of Columbia University;

18. A Nov. 2018 grant of $250,000 to Columbia University; and

19. A Sept. 17, 2019 grant of $1.3 million to Teachers College of Columbia University “to provide general operating support.” (end of part 5)

Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Part 4

Columbia U.'s Mailman School of Public Health: Renamed in exchange for $33 million from Mailman Foundation

Columbia U. School of Public Health’s Historical Mailman Foundation Connection

One reason Columbia University’s School of Public Health was re-named the “Mailman School of Public Health” in 1998 was that, in the words of a Sept. 4, 1998 Columbia University Record website article, “the largest single gift ever made to a school of public health,” as of that year (prior to the Gates Foundation's subsequent "charity grant" of $50 million in 1999 [equal to over $78 million in 2020]), of $33 million [equal to over $52 million in 2020], “was received” that “summer by the Columbia School of Public Health (CSPH) from the New York City-based Mailman Foundation, Inc.” According to the same 1998 article:

“The family-run Mailman Foundation, founded by the late Joseph Lawrence Mailman,…was made possible by his business success. He and his brother, Abraham, formed the Utica Knife and Razor Company, the Pal Blade Company, and later the Mailman Corporation, one of the earliest conglomerates in North America. In the course of his enterprising career, Mailman was president of the Persona Blade Company and the British Rubber Company and chairman of the board of Air Express International.”

Prior to resigning in 1984 as chairman of the then-biggest cargo forwarder at the JFK airport in NYC, Air Express International (whose annual revenues exceeded $250 million in 1983), Joseph Mailman and his family owned around 30 percent of Air Express International [AEI]’s stock. But on Oct. 19, 1981, Circuit Court Judges Godbold, Morgan and Henderson issued a decision in Air Express International’s appeal of a National Labor Relations Board decision which stated:

“We enforce the Board's order as relevant to the remainder of miscellaneous violations of the Act. Based on substantial evidence, the Board found that AEI discriminatorily threatened to withhold raises from some employees while granting and promising raises to others all in order to discourage union activity and weaken the pro-union majority, that AEI threatened employees with various other reprisals because of their support of the union, and that AEI created the impression of surveillance and otherwise interfered with the freedom of employee's union activities by interrogating employees about such activities, by warning of `harassment’ from Board agents, and by soliciting employees not to testify before the Board.”

According to a July 10, 1990 New York Times obituary, Joseph Mailman and Abraham Mailman also later “acquired substantial interests” in “Diamond T Motors, Gulfstream Land and Development and Republic Aviation.” As a result of his special economic interest in the Gulfstream Land and Development real estate firm in Florida, the wealthy businessman for whom Columbia’s “School of Public Health” was renamed in 1998, ironically, also sat next to Canadian liquor mogul Edgar M. Bronfman, the then-chairman of both Seagram Company Ltd. and Joseph E. Seagram and Sons Inc.--whose corporations apparently profited, in part, from the sale of liquor to some folks whose health declined due to excessive drinking. (end of part 4)

Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Part 2

Columbia University Public Health School: Spent 2009-2011 working for `Contagion' filmmakers

Columbia University Public Health School’s Hollywood Connection Revisited

One reason the Center for Infection and Immunity of Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health may have neglected to spend enough of its time between 2009 and 2011 focused on preparing New York City’s public health system to respond more effectively to the spread of expected 21st-century viruses like COVID-19 is that the Center for Infection and Immunity’s director, John Snow Professor of Epidemiology W. Ian Lipkin (whose lab was then on the 18th floor of the Rosenfield Building at 722 West 168th Street), apparently also worked during those years as a scientific consultant for the producers of the Hollywood movie Contagion-- which cost $60 million to make, but eventually grossed $135.5 million after the film was released in September 2011.

According to an Aug. 27, 2011 Columbia Mailman School of Public Health website article, Hollywood movie director Steven Soderbergh and Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns “sought out” Columbia Professor Lipkin “to tap his scientific expertise” for use in their commercially-oriented Hollywood movie project; and “after early conversations about the movie concept, Lipkin signed on as technical adviser to Contagion in March, 2009 and played an active role throughout production,” suggesting “the movie’s plot might be triggered by an outbreak of a virus similar to Nipah, a deadly virus that has, on occasion, migrated from animals to people.”

The same Aug. 27, 2011 article also noted:

“Dr. Lipkin also coached Contagion actors on the practices and process of scientific research. Kate Winslet and Jennifer Ehle visited the Center for Infection and Immunity to learn the mechanics of being a bench scientist, working with the lab’s equipment to do technical procedures. And Elliott Gould, who plays a research scientist named `Ian,’ talked to Dr. Lipkin about the intellectual process of making a scientific breakthrough. Suggesting to the actor how to look through a microscope and reflect on what it reveals, `I told Elliott it’s important that you get this right, because you are playing me,’ Dr. Lipkin recalls.

“The laboratory at the Center for Infection and Immunity, where Dr. Lipkin and his team of 65 conduct their research, also has an invisible role in the movie….Contagion’s production crew traveled to the lab to record centrifuges whirring, liquid nitrogen hissing, and even the squeaky noise of opening animal cage doors for the film’s soundtrack.”

In a Sept. 10, 2011 interview with Wired magazine, Columbia Professor of Epidemiology Lipkin also described his School of Public Health department’s role in helping to make the Hollywood movie in the following way:

“Actors met with people whose work they represented in laboratories and the field. Where feasible we used bona fide equipment in lab scenes. My colleagues and I were on set for critical scenes to address questions from Soderbergh, actors and other artists, or to help with dialogue or makeup on the fly….”

Then, on the eve of Contagion’s film premiere in late September 2011, Columbia School of Public Health Professor of Epidemiology Lipkin announced that a tax-exempt $500,000 endowment--named after the Hollywood director and screenwriter with whom he and his Center for Infection and Immunity had collaborated with in making the commercially-oriented Contagion movie--the “Scott Z. Burns and Steven Soderbergh Fellowship in Emerging Infectious Diseases,” was being set-up; to purportedly “support postdoctoral research in global infectious diseases at the center for Infection and Immunity at the Mailman School of Public Health.”

But neither the research work nor the work for the Hollywood’s Contagion filmmakers that the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia’s School of Public Health did between 2009 and 2011 apparently did much to prevent the deaths of the over 21,000 New York City residents, many with underlying health conditions or local elderly nursing home residents, who are estimated to have lost their lives since COVID-19 reached the Big Apple in 2020—although Columbia’s Center for Infection and Immunity claims to be “establishing and implementing programs for diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of acute outbreaks of infectious disease.” (end of part 2)

Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Part 1

Columbia University's Public Health School at 722 W. 168th St. in Manhattan

“…What is this medical Columbia all about? It is a medical teaching, research, and service complex concentrated in the Washington Heights-Harlem-Upper West Side area in Manhattan…It is one of the richest medical centers in the world…The medical center has vast real estate holdings in the Washington Heights area…When the School of Public Health’s reputation began to skid in the early 1960s, it was commented that much of the faculty was doing consulting work or was active somewhere else in the nation or world…and was not spending the time doing…service…in the immediate environs…”
--from a 1970 report of the Health Policy Advisory Center, titled The American Health Empire: Power, Profits and Politics

“Columbia University's Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health has been awarded $50 million from Bill and Melinda Gates…”
--from a May 19, 1999 Columbia University Record website article, headlined “GATES FOUNDATION GIVES $50 MILLION TO PUBLIC HEALTH “

Did Columbia’s School of Public Health Fail To Protect NYC’s Public Health?

One reason over 21,000 New York City residents, many with underlying health conditions or living in local nursing homes, are estimated to have died from COVID-19 in 2020 is that New York City’s public health system in the 21st-century was apparently unprepared to either prevent the virus from spreading rapidly or to provide adequate medical care and effective treatment medication for many New Yorkers who contracted the virus.

Yet according to a Sept. 4, 1998 Columbia University Record article, titled “Mailman Foundation Gives $33 Million to Public Health,” then-Columbia University President George Rupp “said that this landmark gift will help the School of Public Health continue to play a leadership role in influencing and defining health care well into the next century;” and the then-Columbia University president was also quoted as claiming that “`Over the years, the School has made many important contributions to our nation's health and is widely considered one of the country's leading schools of public health.’”

In addition, the same 1998 Columbia University Record article quoted Columbia’s then-vice president for the health sciences and dean of the faculty of medicine, Herbert Pardes, as also claiming that “`the School of Public Health is taking the lead in the development of a Medical Center-wide program of research on quality of care, use of technological innovation, cost effectiveness studies and many other important health services research questions of concern to the health and well-being of the American people.’”

But if tax-exempt Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health was purportedly developing since 1998, at its 722 West 168th Street location in Manhattan, “a Medical Center-wide program of research on quality of care” and “many other important health services research questions of concern to the health and well-being of the American people,” why did it apparently fail to prepare New York City’s public health system in the 21st-century to more adequately prevent COVID-19 from spreading so rapidly in 2020? And why did Columbia’s School of Public Health apparently fail to create and provide more effective treatment medication for the thousands of New Yorkers with underlying health conditions or living in nursing homes, who are estimated to have died after becoming infected during the last few months? (end of part 1)

Time To Limit Life Of Billionaire Oligarch Bill Gates's Foundation?

Obama Awarding  Medal To Billionaire Oligarch Bill Gates  In November 2016

As University of Virginia Commonwealth Professor of History  Oliver Zunz observed in his 2011 Philanthropy In America book, "the foundation that Bill and Melinda Gates created in 2000 with their Microsoft fortune, reinforced by investor Warren Buffett's gift of part of his own fortune to it, is the world's largest...foundation, today's counterpart of the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1970's and the Ford Foundation in the 1960's.

But as the Philanthropy In America book also recalled:

"In drafting...tax legislation in the Senate Finance Committee [in 1969], Senator [Albert] Gore [Sr.] introduced...clause that limited the life of foundations to 40 years. `The record shows,' Gore argued, `that in overwhelming proportions and instances foundations are created for the purpose of tax avoidance, to extend economic benefits to members of the creator's family and to continue family ownership and control of property.'...

"...There was also some support on the left for putting a legal limit on a foundation's life...But...liberal philanthropists were opposed...The foundations countered [Gore's] charges against them...and the amendment to defeat the death sentence [proposed by Gore Sr. to put a legal limit on a foundation's life] passed the Senate 53 to 35 [in 1969]..."

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 18

Democracy Now! foundation funder: Owns Microsoft/RealNetworks stock

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 18

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.

Randall Rothenberg’s Aug.1,1999 Wired magazine article indicated that longtime Democracy Now! funder Glaser developed a “strategic alliance” between his RealNetworks Inc. and Bill Gates’s Microsoft in 1997:

“Bill Gates…eventually came to understand that his former protégé was on to something - something he wanted….In 1997,…Microsoft was becoming a… competitive threat. .Glaser quickly arranged a Friday evening meeting with two Microsoft senior executives, Paul Maritz and Greg Maffei…A strategic alliance was quickly cemented, which allowed Microsoft to license, for $30 million, Real's version 4.0 source code and bundle the client with Internet Explorer. The source code would enable Microsoft to make software capable of playing and serving the enormous amount of Web content available in Real's format. Microsoft spent another $30 million for a 10 percent stake in Real….”

DemocracyNow! funder's firm formed "strategic alliance" with Microsoft monopoly in 1997

As Amy Kover’s 2000 Fortune magazine article noted, in 1997 “Glaser's most richly layered relationship” was “with Microsoft;” and “his relationship with Microsoft seemed fine--the software giant even bought a 10% stake in Real in 1997.”

But after Microsoft “delivered a killing blow” to RealNetworks Inc.’s “main revenue source” by releasing “its own, free version of the Real server,” according to the 1999 Wired magazine article, former Microsoft VP Glaser then testified before a U.S. Senate Committee on July 23, 1998 that “I believe Microsoft is taking actions that create obstacles to the freedom and openness of the Internet” and that “What Microsoft is doing is wrong and must be stopped.” And “a few months later, Microsoft withdrew its investment” in RealNetworks, according to the 2000 Fortune magazine article.

Yet despite Glaser’s 1998 assertion that “What Microsoft is doing is wrong and must be stopped,” his Glaser Progress Foundation was still willing to own 107,520 shares of Microsoft stock, worth $7,123,200 [equal to over $10 million in 2018] in 2001, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2001, when the Glaser Progress Foundation gave the Institute for Media Analysis a $40,000 [equal to over $56,000 in 2018] grant to help fund “Democracy Now! `War and Peace Report.’

And from its 2.107,545 shares of RealNetworks stock that was worth $12,518,817 [equal to over $17.7 million in 2018] and its investment in Microsoft monopoly stock--his Glaser Progress Foundation received $764,356 [equal to over $1 million in 2018] in dividends in 2001.

Since Gates’ Microsoft monopoly was apparently still now threatening the ability of Glaser’s RealNetworks firm to make big money from the digital media market in the early 21st-century, in late 2003 Glaser’s RealNetworks lawyers filed a lawsuit against Microsoft. As Joris Evers and Robert McMillan observed in a Dec.18, 2003 IDG News Service article that was reposted on the PC World magazine’s website:

“RealNetworks has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging the software giant has illegally used its power as a monopoly to control the digital media market.…RealNetworks accuses Microsoft of unlawful tactics including product bundling, restrictive licensing, exclusive dealing, predatory pricing, refusing to sell unbundled operating systems and discriminatory disclosure and withholding of information needed to interoperate with the Windows operating system, according to a copy of the complaint. The lawsuit seeks to recover damages lost because of `Microsoft's illegal conduct,’ according to statement attributed to Rob Glaser, RealNetworks' chair and CEO. He is a former Microsoft official… In 1997, Microsoft had virtually no presence in the digital media space, but by 2002, Microsoft's `anticompetitive conduct’ enabled it to surpass RealNetworks' market share for media players and usage in the U.S., RealNetworks says in its complaint…” 

In response to RealNetworks’ lawsuit, however, Microsoft agreed to pay Democray Now! show funder Glaser’s RealNetworks media firm a settlement of $761 million in 2005 and, according to Elizabeth Montalbano’s Oct. 11, 2005 IDG News Service article that PC World reposted on its website,  Microsoft and RealNetworks then “forged a partnership to promote digital music and games in three agreements.” As the same 2005 article also observed:

“Microsoft will pay RealNetworks $460 million up front to resolve all damages and claims in the suit, and the companies will agree to a series of technology licenses and commitments that will give RealNetworks long-term access to Windows Media technologies to enhance its own media software, according to the companies. Under the terms of the deals, the companies…will jointly promote and market RealNetworks' music subscription service, Rhapsody, on Microsoft MSN. In addition, Microsoft will offer RealNetworks' digital games through MSN Games and Xbox Live Arcade for XBox 360…Microsoft Chairman and Chief Architect Bill Gates said that the settlement spells an opportunity for Microsoft and RealNetworks to collaborate on innovative ways to deliver digital media to consumers on a variety of devices….

“Microsoft also will pay RealNetworks $301 million in cash and provide services over 18 months to support RealNetworks' product development, distribution, and marketing under the music and game agreements. At the same time, RealNetworks will support MSN Search, and the two companies together will promote the use of Windows Media technologies with RealNetworks' Rhapsody to Go service, according to the companies. In addition, RealNetworks also will support Microsoft's Windows Media DRM (digital rights management) format in its RealPlayer media software, a move that helps Microsoft evolve Windows as the platform for a digital media hub, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft.”

And despite his firm’s 2003 lawsuit and his 2003 assertion that Microsoft was still engaging in “illegal conduct” in the early 21st-century, in 2004—when Democracy Now! Productions was given a grant of $100,000 [equal to over $133,000 in 2018] by the Glaser Progress Foundation—Glaser’s foundation still owned 215,000 shares of Microsoft stock, worth $5,745,869 [equal to over $7.6 million in 2018], from which it received a net investment income of $744,197 [equal to over $995,000 in 2018], according to the Glaser Progress Foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for 2004.

DemocracyNow! funder: Received $761 Million from/Partnered with Microsoft in 2005

Thus, after helping to fund  Democracy Now! between 2001 and 2004 with 4 grants, totaling $300,000, former Microsoft VP Glaser’s Glaser Progress Foundation, continued to own millions of dollars worth of Microsoft monopoly corporate stock at the same time it funded Democracy Now!; and Glaser's RealNetworks firm continue to collaborate on a business level with Gates' Microsoft monopoly.. Yet, not surprisingly, Democracy Now! did not air many news segments between 2005 and 2018 that examined how Glaser obtained his personal wealth or how his Glaser Progress Foundation obtained its grant money.  (end of part 18)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 16

Democracy Now! Funder/Ex-Microsoft VP Glaser Partnered With IBM

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 16

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers. 

Multi-billionaire Bill Gates and Democracy Now! Productions funder Rob Glaser’s Microsoft had personally enriched both businessmen during the 1980s period, when Microsoft partnered with the transnational corporation, IBM, for 9 years; and when Microsoft apparently also engaged in monopolistic business practices. According to Gary Rivlin’s 1999 The Plot To Get Bill Gates book:

“IBM and Microsoft weren’t that different. At Microsoft they were still company men…IBM…had taken Gates’s measure and deemed him…its kind of man…The chairman of IBM knew Gates’s mother because both served on the national board of United Way…So eager was Gates to remain on good terms with IBM that in 1985 or 1987 he offered Big Blue a 30 percent stake in Microsoft. Executives at IBM brushed aside the offer…”

James Wallace and Jim Erickson’s 1992 book, Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire also recalled: 

“…IBM chief executive John Opel…knew Mary Gates, having served with her on the national board of United Way…Whether this United Way connection helped Microsoft get the IBM deal is not clear. Opel…won’t talk…In early November of 1980, the corporate…couple officially signed the paperwork. Microsoft would develop the `software for IBM’s first personal computer and supply the vital disk operating system or DOS…Chairman Bill sold 5 percent of Microsoft for a million dollars to Technology Venture Investors, a venture capital firm in Menlo, California…David Marquardt, a general partner in TVI, was made a director of Microsoft’s new board…The company went public…in 1986…As the IBM PC gained in popularity, more and more programmers wrote software for that machine and for the operating system Gates had acquired…”

And according to Randall E. Stross’s 1996 The Microsoft Way book:

“The great stroke of luck that provided Microsoft with 10 very good years came in 1980 when it signed a contract with IBM to provide the operating system that would be used on the IBM Personal Computer, introduced the next year…Microsoft, which itself did not have an operating system to offer, bought another, still smaller company’s operating system software to adapt for the project. The contract…worked greatly in Microsoft’s favor. The terms permitted Microsoft to sell the operating system to other companies and to consumers, but IBM, effectively could not…Microsoft’s rivals have raised questions of monopoly that staff members of the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department have largely accepted…Gates is remembered as the precociously outspoken advocate for commercializing the distribution of software.”

James Wallace’s Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race To Control Cyberspace book also noted in 1997:

“…Microsoft and IBM…in August of 1985…signed a long-term joint agreement that guaranteed the continuation of DOS and IBM…At the time, Gates said it was `the biggest contract’ Microsoft had ever signed…Microsoft had become the computer industry’s Standard Oil in the late 20th century…During…November 1989…Microsoft and IBM had jointly issued a…news release, titled `IBM and Microsoft expand partnership…’…FTC staff believed that the agreement between IBM and Microsoft smacked of anti-competitive collusion, and the investigation was on…”

The Microsoft Way book provided an example of how Democracy Now! Productions funder Glaser worked with IBM during his 10 years as a Microsoft “company man” and as Multi-Billionaire Gates’ “trusted lieutenant” during the 1980s:

“In late 1988, IBM executives told Microsoft they wanted to try once again to crack the home personal computer market…Gates suggested that the machine be equipped with an integrated CD-ROM drive and sound card…IBM accepted the suggestion…Gates assigned a team of Microsoft software engineers to work with IBM…Gates had assigned Rob Glaser to be his principal multimedia advisor…He was given senior responsibility by Gates soon after joining the company…Glaser suggested to Gates that Microsoft should launch what Glaser called a `virtual standard’ for multimedia that could be used in all-IBM compatible personal computers…Gates gave his approval…Gates…sent Rob Glaser…off on assignments to learn about new strategic problems--go figure it out’ was the injunction Gates would use—and then report back to him…”

Charles Ferguson’s 1999 book, High Stakes, No Prisoners, described how Microsoft had apparently increased its profitability and power during the 1980s and early 1990s, when Democracy Now! funder Glaser was a Microsoft vice-president:

“The ultimate source of Microsoft power is its monopoly control of the software platform used by PC applications—Windows… Microsoft even owns an equity stake in Apple, has rights to all of Apple’s intellectual property…and holds at least 50 percent market share in application software for the MAC…Microsoft…exploits its monopoly positions ruthlessly…Microsoft’s predatory behavior…, false dealings, and strategic use of monopoly power are integral to its ability to create further monopolies…”

And James Wallace and Jim Erickson’s Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire book had noted in 1992:

“…By mid-April of 1991, Microsoft was forced to acknowledge…that the FTC was looking into allegations that the company `has monopolized or attempted to monopolize the market for operating systems, operating environment, computer software and consumer peripherals for personal computers’…Microsoft has become notorious…not just for capitalizing on the technological advances of others, but, as some claim, for predatory pilfering. They complain that Microsoft repeatedly approaches small companies promising new products, ostensibly to talk about a partnership. After Microsoft is given a glimpse of how the software works, it suddenly loses interest in the deal—only to announce later that it has been working on surprisingly similar, but competing software…At the heart of the FTC probe is…whether or not Microsoft’s dominant position has chilled competition and thus hurt consumers…” (end of part 16)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 15

Microsoft Founder Gates and Ex-Microsoft VP/Democracy Now! Funder Rob Glaser 

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 15 

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.

In his 2012 book Philanthropy In America: A History, University of Virginia Commonwealth Professor of History Oliver Zunz indicated why politically progressive people in the United States have, historically, been reluctant to accept U.S. power elite foundation funding of their politically left Movement projects and public libraries:

“…Muckrakers frequently denounced those who gave money away as hypocrites and their philanthropies as fronts to distract the public from illegal corporate strategies…In the 1890s, many communities…were reluctant to accept Carnegie libraries. Twenty of the 46 solicited towns in Pennsylvania turned down the offer…Social gospel minister Washington Gladden denounced `tainted money’…

“The [Rockefeller] foundation was denounced…as a `Trojan Horse’ ready to undo democracy. U.S. Attorney General George W. Wickersham criticized it as `an indefinite scheme for perpetuating vast wealth, ` believing it to be `entirely inconsistent with the public interest.’ Attorney Frank Walsh—who was pro-labor, denounced the Rockefeller family’s `huge philanthropic trusts as a menace to the welfare of society’…”

But between 2001 and 2016, fifteen “charitable grants”, totaling $1.1 million, were accepted from the Glaser Progress Foundation of Seattle-based RealNetworks/Progressive Networks Inc. founder, chairman of the Board and CEO Rob Glaser by the "parallel left" Democracy Now! show producers-hosts.
. 
Yet according to the RealNetworks website, before establishing his Glaser Progress Foundation in 1993 and “prior to founding RealNetworks, Inc.” in 1994 ”Mr. Glaser worked for” Multi-billionaire Bill Gates’s “Microsoft for 10 years in a number of executive positions, including Vice President of Multimedia and Consumer Systems.” As Robert H. Reid’s 1997 book, Architects of the Web, recalled:

“…A lot about Rob said Microsoft, where he had spent …10 years of his career…College was Yale…During Rob’s senior year, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen came to town…Rob…signed up to interview and was soon offered a job…

“He started out by managing the company’s relationships with some outside engineering teams that were helping it develop products. After about a year of that he was staffed to relaunch Microsoft Word…By 1987, Rob’s responsibilities were touching on product planning for all of the company’s application software.

“Around that time…he was invited to join Microsoft’s networking group…He spent 2 years there. Then in the summer of 1989 CEO Bill Gates put him onto a project in the then-new area of multimedia computing…Rob’s task was to help IBM develop the specification of an MPC [Multimedia-enabled Personal Computer]…By the time it was over, Rob was Microsoft’s vice president of multimedia and consumer systems, and a de facto direct report to Gates himself…”

According to James Wallace’s 1997 book Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race To Control Cyberspace:

“…In mid-September 1993, Gates called Glaser, who at the time was on a leave of absence and arranged a meeting at which he asked Glaser to prepare an analysis of how the Internet might affect the Marvel project, Microsoft’s…effort headed by Russ Siegelman to develop an online service…

“Glaser…had arrived at Microsoft in 1983, at age 21…He quickly became one of the key people in the organization who advised Gates...It was Glaser who pioneered Microsoft’s push into multimedia and oversaw Microsoft’s transformation from a software company focused primarily on Windows and DOS to one where content became increasingly important.

“`One of my jobs at Microsoft was to be something of an advance scout,’ said Glaser. `And one of the reasons that I had so much fun at Microsoft was there was a…role to play for being…one of the people who figured out how to get there from here.’

“…After a decade at Microsoft, Glaser…took his millions in stock options…A year earlier, Glaser…dipped into those stock options to buy a multimillion-dollar percentage of the [Seattle] Mariners baseball team…”

Besides using some of the big money he obtained, from his 1980s and early 1990s involvement in helping Bill Gates build his for-profit Microsoft business empire, to buy part of a baseball team and start his RealNetworks/ProgressiveNetworks Inc. for-profit company in 1990s, former Microsoft VP Glaser also used some of his Microsoft-obtained wealth to establish the Glaser Progress Foundation that has helped fund Democracy Now! Productions since 2001. And, not surprisingly, not many news segments letting listeners and viewers know how either Glaser, Bill Gates or Microsoft acquired their personal or corporate wealth during the 1980s and 1990s have been aired or broadcast by Democracy Now! since 2001.

Yet as Gary Rivlin’s 1999 book, The Plot To Get Bill Gates, observed:

“…Rob Glaser, a trusted lieutenant of Gates until he left to start his own company…described [in a 1993 Business Week interview] what he labeled the `Machiavellian poker games he had played as Gate’s designated negotiator on many a deal. `You hid things even if it would blindside people you were working with,’ he confessed.” (end of part 15)

The `New York Times'' Mexican Billionaire Connection Revisited: Part 10

New York Times Owner Slim’s Historic Microsoft-Bill Gates Connection

Besides owning a lot of New York Times stock and sitting next to former U.S. Secretary of Defense and Trilateral Commission member Harold Brown on the Philip Morris International corporate board in recent years, Mexican Billionaire Slim has also historically had a business relationship with U.S. Billionaire Bill Gates’ Microsoft Corporation and its Prodgy MSN subsidiary. And on Mar. 21, 2000, a Microsoft press release stated:

“Telmex and Microsoft Corp. today announced the formation of T1msn, the result of a joint venture agreement signed last year between the two companies. T1msn will create and operate a leading Spanish-language Internet portal, launched today…

“`Telmex and Microsoft…share a common business vision,’
said Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman…

“`This joint venture draws on the skills and strengths of both companies,’ said Carlos Slim, chairman of the board of Telmex…”

(end of part 10)