Your tax dollars:
I assume readers are up on the news about the Obama Administration’s plans to cap salaries and bonuses of any “fat cat” CEO’s whose businesses get federal taxpayer money. I propose that he do the same for Leftwing non-profit groups that to a very large degree are now funded by you! Remember ACORN and Planned Parenthood are largely funded by you too!
This subject tops my list of subjects that get my blood boiling. I started to call it a pet peeve, but it is more than that. If one wonders how the Left and leftwing policies are being so widely implemented (no matter who is in the White House!), it is here, through the non-profits, NGOs, or whatever you want to call them, that are really arms of government and are changing America and the world without any accountability to elected officials; and adding insult to injury, they are using your money to do it.
What prompted this little bit of research (below) was an article in the Washington Examiner on December 18th. It’s entitled, ‘Federal salaries targeted as private-sector pay stagnates,’ and I encourage you to read it all here. In the article and in its sidebar, here, we learn the pay levels for a variety of federal employees.
These are some of the federal salaries we learned from the Washington Examiner:
President Obama: $400,000
Robert Gibbs, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod: $172,000
VP Joe Biden: $227,300
Nancy Pelosi: $223,500
Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts: $217,400
I don’t see it in the article, but I assume the average Member of Congress is under $200,000.
Now, let’s have a look at some Non-profit group salaries largely also paid by you! And, let me be clear! If these groups were entirely privately funded it would be none of my business, or anyone’s business, what the salaries are. Members of these organizations then might have some say, but not the general public.
The ones I have chosen were chosen simply by how easy it was to get at their Form 990s. Some groups are so hard to find that one must be a forensic accountant to figure them out.
The Nature Conservancy (received $110,616,412 of federal money reported in its 2008 Form 990): Five directors make over $200,000 a year (more than Chief Justice Roberts) and the CEO makes $349,373 in salary and benefits. What on earth does TNC’s CEO do that is worthy of an annual salary more than $122,000 higher than the Vice President of the US (no Biden jokes, please!)?
The World Wildlife Fund got $26,142,042 from taxpayers reported in its 2008 Form 990. Its CEO made $272,404 in that year.
So Obama can make a big show of capping government salaries in the White House, while people in the NGO community are robbing the taxpayers and setting major policies by the actions and positions they take, and no one says a word largely because there exists this presumption of good intentions on the part of the organization. They get to wear a white hat and roll in the federal dough (unlike those evil bankers and auto executives whose hats are black).
Here now are a couple of Voluntary organizations (VOLAGs)* that are contracted by the federal government to resettle refugees. For regular readers you’ve heard this before, but we get new people visiting RRW all the time.
‘Reader,’ a commenter at this post may not know how much pay CEO’s of resettlement agencies make, while the schlubs work at the ground level with poor refugees often donating hours of time, money and supplying basic needs to the refugees. Think about this the next time you hear of refugees living in squalor or being evicted and wanting to return to camps in the third world.
International Rescue Committee (from its Form 990 for 2008, they got $104,622,578 from taxpayers): They have two officers of the Board of Directors over $200,000 salaries and 5 employees in the 6-figure range. But, the big guy, CEO Charles Rupp, got $428,864 in salary and benefits! Now, what on earth is Rupp doing that warrants a salary larger than the President of the United States?
US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (from its Form 990 for 2008) got $22,136,680 from the federal taxpayer out of a total income of $23,138,072—that is 96% of their funding comes from YOU. So where is the public-private partnership here??? CEO Lavinia Limon made $198,466 that year in salary and benefits. (I see Ms. Limon is getting cost of living raises, here.)
Now revisit some of those government salaries above and consider whether the salaries at quasi-government agencies shouldn’t be brought into line with government salaries.
Besides setting the direction for your towns and cities with the refugees they resettle, these NGOs (including the environmental ones above) are also running around the world and dealing with our foreign policy with virtually no accountability to you who pay their salaries.
The average taxpayer—plumbers, janitors, nurses and teachers—are paying the salaries of fat cats at supposed do-gooder non-profits. It stinks!
* Volag is such a misnomer, they are far from “voluntary” they are well-paid federal contractors. Here for new readers are the Top Ten.