Bowlarama Fundraising Time!

I have just a few more weeks (until July 31st) to reach my fundraising goal. Please donate any amount you can - just as RESCUE saves one life at a time, we reach our goal one dollar at a time. If you are unable to make a donation, please reach out to another animal loving friend, family member or co-worker and ask them to support our efforts.

Just this morning Maricopa County Animal Care & Control announced that:

"there are more than 1,000 animals at [their] shelter. MCACC is doing everything we can to save as many lives as possible. Adoptable dogs and cats are stacked three+ deep in every available space."

Also today, RESCUE saved 6 dogs from MCACC. I've posted some of their pictures here. Helping RESCUE helps dogs and cats leave MCACC through the front door, not in a body bag.

As an incentive, a friend has made some cute dog & cat themed cards for me to give as a thank you for any donation of $25 or more. You'll get a four pack of cute cards you can use for any occasion! Please click here to donate and let me know if you'd like a pack of cards in the message section. Donations are 100% tax deductible and your donation goes directly to the animals!

Here's a few of the things your donation can do:

• $5 - will buy a martingale collar or a leash
• $10 - will buy a container of cat litter
• $20 - will buy a month supply of medication for RESCUE cat Nico
• $25 - will buy two cases of wet food for RESCUE cat Benny
• $30 - will buy a 30 lb. bag of dog food
• $60 - will buy five days of boarding for one RESCUE dog
• $100 - will pay for medications for RESCUE dog Zeke
• $150 - will pay for two weeks of boarding for one RESCUE dog

Bowlarama 2010

I have about 5 weeks to reach my fund-raising goal for this year's Bowlarama.

Please visit my donation page and make a donation, big or small. All money goes to the care and feeding of cats and dogs rescued from the euthanasia list at the county pound. Phoenix area people know that area shelters are taking in record numbers of animals so far this year. RESCUE helps reduce euthanasia rates at the county pound.

All three of our dogs were given a second change by RESCUE. I've attached pictures of a few others that are currently in RESCUE's care, waiting for their forever homes.

Did you know that the number one killer of healthy dogs in this country is "euthanasia?" RESCUE is the last voice for dogs and cats awaiting this terrible fate at Animal Control and the Humane Society. RESCUE is a "no kill" organization and animals stay with RESCUE for as long as it takes to find them a home that meets their needs. RESCUE has only one paid staff member and over 275 volunteers. Our veterinary, boarding and food expenses run about $9-12,000 a month.

RESCUE has saved and placed over 9,400+ dogs and cats, and for every animal we adopt, we are back to save another.

Bowl-a-Rama Fundraiser this Thursday

There are just 11 days left to raise money for Bowl-a-Rama. We have one more fundraising event this Thursday, July 23rd at Rosita’s in Tempe or Mesa. Please come out, enjoy a great meal and support RESCUE. 15% of your purchase is donated back to RESCUE!!! Pictured is the flyer for the event (you’ll need it in order for us to receive the proceeds). I can email the flyer to you if you are interested, just ask me in the comments. All are welcome for lunch, dinner, dine in or take out. Jim & I will be at the Tempe location around 6:00pm, please stop by.

Fundraising for Bowl-A-Rama

I have only one month to try to reach my fundraising goal for this year's Bowl-A-Rama. I know times are tight, but if you can spare a few dollars please visit my page and make a donation.

(Photo is of the Lippard household's latest adoptee from RESCUE, Buster.)

Happiness, charity, religiosity, and liberals vs. conservatives

In a recent paper, Jamie Napier and John Jost argue that the reason conservatives are happier than liberals is that they are, for ideological reasons, not pained by observing high levels of income inequality. They draw this conclusion on the basis of responses to a survey item about attitudes about meritocracy that ranges from a scale of "hard work generally doesn't bring success--it's more a matter of luck" to "hard work pays," which Will Wilkinson shows cannot do the job of supporting their explanation:

I strongly agree that success, understood as a significant upward move on a valued status dimension, is largely a matter of luck. But I also strongly agree that hard work (in a society with decent institutions) usually brings a better life. It’s possible to work hard and achieve a better life without ever winning anything you’d count as success. So I haven’t a clue how I’d answer this question. Do I believe in meritocracy or not?

He observes that there's also a much better explanation for the answers to that question than assuming a blindness or lack of care about inequality:

If one wants to see a meritocratic bent as a common cause of conservative leanings and higher happiness, here’s a less tendentious explanation. (1) Those with a greater sense of the efficacy of their behavior — with a greater sense of being in control — will tend to (a) think hard work brings a better life, (b) be happier, (c) see policies that seem to penalize hard work as unjust. (2) People likely to see high taxes as an unjust penalty on hard work tend to identify as “conservative.”

And a further problem about attributing a blindness to inequality to conservatives is that conservatives give more to charity than liberals, as Wilkinson's commenter John Thacker points out (and I've previously observed at this blog). Thacker attributes the difference to religiosity; again, I've previously pointed out that he is apparently correct on this point (also see this post and the previous reference on conservatives vs. liberals), that the religious give far more to charity than the secular, even if you don't count donations to churches. (But apparently Christians are well-known in the service industry as lousy tippers.)

The same Napier and Jost paper is discussed at Marginal Revolution, where commenter DocMerlin points out that:

A rather simple answer follows with (A) and (B) being true statements that result in the same statistics without the rediculious "conservatives are happy with evil" result that the study got.
1)
A) Women are much more likely to self report depression and unhappiness than men are.
B) Men are more conservative than women.

2)
A) Divorced/unmarried women are on average more liberal than married women
B) Married people are happier.

3)
A) Conservatives are more likely to attend church regularly
B) People who attend church regularly are found to be happier and healthier than those who don't (on average).

4)
A) Liberals feel guilty for their own success.
B) Conservatives don't feel guilty for their own success.

Another possible explanation is that liberals and the secular value truth over happiness, but it seems to me that the Napier and Jost paper is an example of trying to explain away an unpalatable truth. It's better to dig deeper to understand the causes of these differences before offering public policy prescriptions (or even arguments for what is individually better to do). Wilkinson, who has done extensive review of the literature on happiness and proposed public policy prescriptions, seems to me to have the better psychological explanation for the happiness difference in terms of sense of control over outcomes. That explanation also comports well with a charitability difference--if you don't feel that your contribution could make much difference, you're probably less likely to make a contribution.

Candidate charitable contributions

USA Today reports that the Biden family has given $3,690 to charity over the last decade, an average of $369 per year, on "modest" income that has ranged from a low of $210,797 in 1999 to a high of over $320,000 in 2005. Last year, they gave $995 on income of $319,853 (0.3%), their highest giving rate of the decade.

A 2005 study of households with incomes from $200,000 to $500,000 per year shows average charitable giving of $40,746 per year.

John McCain has given $202,000 to charity in the last two years, about 25% of his income--but of course he is married to a very wealthy woman who earned more than $6 million in 2006. Last year he gave $105,467 (half of what he and his wife donated as a couple) on income of $405,409, which would be more impressive if it weren't just an even division of their reported expenses reported without the comparison figure of her income.

The Obamas gave $240,000 to charity last year on income of more than $4.2 million (5.7%). In 2000, they gave $2,350 to charity on income of $240,726 (1%).

Palin's tax data hasn't yet been released. There may be some tax problems lurking in her records.

John McCain's personal charitable giving appears quite generous, but it's somewhat less so considering his wife's much higher separate income and my suspicion that she effectively subsidized his charitable giving as the chief breadwinner and provider. The Obamas were very generous last year, but not so much in 2000. The Bidens, not at all generous. This seems to lend further support to the thesis that conservatives are more generous with their own money than liberals.

My feeling is that most professionals earning six-figure incomes should be able to give 5-10% of their gross income to charitable causes without much trouble. The average figures for those earning $200,000 to $500,000 strike me as just about right.

(UPDATE, 17 May 2021):  The Bidens' 2020 tax returns show much more generous charitable contributions:

The Bidens donated $30,704 to 10 charities last year. The largest gift was $10,000 to the Beau Biden Foundation, a nonprofit focused on child abuse that is named after the president's deceased son.

But that's on $607,336 in income, so it's just over 5%.  Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff gave just under 1.6%:

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, also released their 2020 tax filings. They paid a rate of 36.7% on income of $1,695,225 and contributed $27,006 to charity.

 

ApostAZ podcast #7

The latest ApostAZ podcast is out:

Episode 007 Atheism and Freethought in Phoenix- Go to atheists.meetup.com/157 for group events! Monthly Meetup Epilogue. Debate Tactics and Rhetoric. Sweden Rules Against Prayer as Truth: http://www.guardian.co.uk/. Prayer and Aggression. Obama and Faith Based Initiatives. Pickett Church? http://www.atheistrev.com/ Aggression study: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120083092/abstract. Greydon Square's Album 'The Compton Effect'

Funny analogy from Shannon: "Prayer is a homeless dude on your couch."

Charity Navigator is another site similar to CharityWatch.

Shannon incorrectly states that McCain is a creationist. He's not. And the Creation Museum is in Kentucky, not Tennessee.

Picketing churches on the basis of its beliefs and doctrines is a terrible idea that should be left to Fred Phelps and similar kooks. The picketing of the Church of Scientology has generally been based on its behavior, not its doctrines--to the extent the focus is on opposing criminal behavior, that's reasonable.

Bowl-a-Rama success

Yesterday we participated in the 6th Annual PACC911 Bowl-a-Rama on Arizona RESCUE's dog team. I bowled in the cat team's lane and brought down their average score, helping the dog team to another win--apparently Nintendo Wii bowling doesn't help train for the real thing. The event had a morning and afternoon session; RESCUE was in the morning session from 10-12:30. RESCUE came in second place for "loudest cheer," which added another $50 There were about 60 groups participating in the morning session which raised a total of about $122,000--of which RESCUE alone raised $42,000! Thanks to everyone who supported our efforts and to Lisa and Einzige for coming out to the event to cheer us on!

Bowl-A-Rama!!

There’s a saying in the non-profit world that people don’t donate to organizations, they donate to the individuals that represent them. Let me introduce you to two wonderful representatives of RESCUE:

Otto was saved from the euthanasia list in December 2001.

Fred was saved in August 2002.

Otto and Fred were both found on the streets of Phoenix and wound up on the kill list. They would not be with us if not for RESCUE. Otto and Fred are just two examples of the over 9,000 lives that RESCUE has saved thanks to donations. All of RESCUE’s cats and dogs are taken directly from the kill list at Maricopa County Animal Care and Control. If you have not donated to our largest fundraiser of the year – Bowl-A-Rama, PLEASE do so today! No donation is too large or too small.

If you are outside of Arizona and can spare $5, please make a donation, there is an informal competition to see who can get donations from the farthest place. Be sure to put Jim or Kat Lippard as the referrer.

Please help us help them!

Fox story on RESCUE

Fox 10 News in Phoenix did a story last night on how the mortgage crisis is resulting in more animals being turned in to the pound, and more animals being euthanized. The story featured Lisa Thomas from RESCUE, the organization we volunteer with, as well as the Corgi mix named Rascal (pictured) who we've taken out on weekends a few times. Check it out, and please consider donating to RESCUE's Bowl-a-Rama event. (Put Kat's or my name in for the bowler to encourage, and The Lippard Blog as the referrer.)

RESCUE Bowl-a-Rama

RESCUE's Bowl-a-Rama fundraising event is here again, and Kat and I will both be bowling for the "Leader of the Pack" team of volunteers who work with dogs. There's a competing "Rockin Bowlin Felines" team of volunteers who work with cats.

Our goal is to raise $3,000 between us for RESCUE, of which we've so far raised $220.

RESCUE is a group we've volunteered with since January 2002, which rescues dogs and cats from the euthanasia lists at the Maricopa County pound. It operates its own cat shelter, while dogs are kept in foster homes and boarded at Dog Days in Tempe, a boarding and doggie day care facility that has been a valued partner of RESCUE.

Two of our three dogs, Fred and Otto, were rescued from euthanasia by RESCUE.

Every donation helps save dogs and cats from unnecessary euthanasia--if you can give even $5, it will be greatly appreciated.

You can make donations through RESCUE's website, here. Specify "Leader of the Pack" as the team, and put Kat's or my name under "Encourage Your Bowler" or "Referrer."

The actual bowling will occur on August 2, 2008 at AMF Shea Village Lanes. In past years there have been more than 60 organizations participating, so the bowling gets divided into morning and evening shifts and the place gets packed.

Altria's departure from NYC means loss of arts funding

Altria Group's moving its headquarters from New York City means that it will cease supporting the arts in New York, to the tune of $7 million a year. Altria funded over 200 groups in the city and was "the most reliable source of corporate funds for the city's dance companies, art museums, and theaters for over 40 years, consistently ranking as the top giver each year," according to Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator, in a blog post titled "Arts Groups Addicted to Smoking."

Taner Edis on the generosity of the religious

Taner Edis at the Secular Outpost comments on a recent article by Jon Haight about the benefits of religion, including its impact on generosity.

I've previously offered some comments on evidence that conservatives and the religious are more generous than liberals and the secular and that believers are more generous than atheists. I'll add that I doubt that studies of charitable giving dig deep enough to uncover whether the giving is going to charities like these. Is it really being more generous if your charitable donations aren't being used to actually do good?

Our dogs featured on RESCUE's new website

Arizona RESCUE has gone through a website redesign, and the new design now features photos of our dog Otto and our former foster dog Ollie. The front page cycles through photos of rescued dogs and cats at the top right; Otto is the black and white dog with the ball in his mouth and Ollie is the bassett hound. Both can be seen simultaneously on any of the other web pages, such as the "About RESCUE" page, where Otto's second from the left and Ollie is third from the right.

Kat previously blogged about Ollie almost a year ago.

Also check out RESCUE's donation page...

Phony faith healer is top-paid CEO of a religious charity

Charity Navigator has issued a report on salaries of CEOs of charities for 2007. While religious charities have the lowest average CEO compensation of any category (educational charities have the highest), at the top of the religion list is Peter Popoff Ministries, which pays Peter Popoff an annual salary of $628,732. His wife Elizabeth Popoff gets another $203,029.

Not bad for a phony faith healer who was exposed as a fake on the Tonight Show by James Randi two decades ago.

Atheists weak on charitable giving

A Christian blog reports on a Barna poll of believers and atheists:

Most atheists and agnostics (56 percent) agree with the idea that radical Christianity is just as threatening in America as is radical Islam. Two-thirds of active-faith Americans (63 percent) perceive that the nation is becoming more hostile and negative toward Christianity.

Atheists and agnostics were found to be largely more disengaged in many areas of life than believers. They are less likely to be registered to vote (78 percent) than active-faith Americans (89 percent); to volunteer to help a non-church-related non-profit (20 percent vs. 30 percent); to describe themselves as "active in the community" (41 percent vs. 68 percent); and to personally help or serve a homeless or poor person (41 percent vs. 61 percent).

Additionally, when the no-faith group does donate to charitable causes, their donation amount pales in comparison to those active in faith. In 2006, atheists and agnostics donated just $200 while believers contributed $1,500. The amount is still two times higher among believers when subtracting church-based giving.

The no-faith group is also more likely to be focused on living a comfortable, balanced lifestyle (12 percent) while only 4 percent of Christians say the same. And no-faith adults are also more focused on acquiring wealth (10 percent) than believers (2 percent). One-quarter of Christians identified their faith as the primary focus of their life.

Still, one-quarter of atheists and agnostics said "deeply spiritual" accurately describes them and three-quarters of them said they are clear about the meaning and purpose of their life.

When it came to being "at peace," however, researchers saw a significant gap with 67 percent of no-faith adults saying they felt "at peace" compared to 90 percent of believers. Atheists and agnostics are also less likely to say they are convinced they are right about things in life (38 percent vs. 55 percent) and more likely to feel stressed out (37 percent vs. 26 percent).

The results about "convinced they are right about things in life" is not surprising--that strikes me as the difference between arrogant dogmatism and open-mindedness and humility, and brings to mind studies which have shown that the highly competent believe themselves to be less competent than the incompetent believe themselves to be.

The lack of voter registration could also be a sign that atheists and agnostics don't think their vote makes a difference.

What I find contrary to my own personal experience are the results regarding charitable giving and assistance to the homeless. From my perspective, all of the charitable donation dollar amounts ($200/year for atheists/agnostics, $400/year for believers not counting church giving, $1500/year for believers including church giving) seem quite low.

I'd like to see more of the data, and see how income level and political affiliations are correlated with charitable contributions. (I previously commented on another study that found that conservatives were more generous than liberals, which also said that the religious were more generous than the secular.) I've found significant differences within secular groups when raising funds for RESCUE's Bowl-a-Rama two years ago (which Kat was a bowler for last year)--my requests for donations to groups of skeptics yielded absolutely nothing from people who have known me (at least online) for years, while my request to the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix yielded well over $1,000 in donations, many from people who didn't know me at all. (My target was to raise $3,500 for the event, which I surpassed.) I've heard, similarly, that more donations to the Center for Inquiry come from humanists than from skeptics, even though there are more skeptics subscribing to Skeptical Inquirer than there are humanists subscribing to Free Inquiry. HSGP, by the way, is a regular contributor to HomeBase Youth Services, a group that helps homeless youth in Arizona.

Another comparison from my own experience that is inconsistent with these results is that Kat and I know a couple of homeless people by name who we periodically help out in various ways (typically not by just giving them money), yet we're unaware of any similar activities by our extended families (who are all born-again Christians on my side). But perhaps the survey answerers were counting giving cash to panhandlers at freeway ramps or on the street, which is something I make a point of not doing, and don't consider to be an effective way of helping the truly needy (though I have, in the past, fallen for the occasional well-told sob story from a con artist about a lost wallet, dead battery, need for bus fare to a job, etc.).

Democrats in Congress guilty of abuse of nonprofits

Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator points out that, rather than distinguishing themselves from Republicans Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, and Tom DeLay, each of whom played fast and loose with the rules on nonprofits, prominent Democrats in Congress are doing the same.

Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, and Evan Bayh are each officers in their family charities; their failure to disclose this makes them guilty of felonies. Pelosi calls her failure an "oversight" and promises to file amended annual disclosure statements.

Charitable giving: conservatives vs. liberals, religious vs. secular

Matt S. at The Only Republican in San Francisco quotes from a Scientific American column by Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society to argue that conservatives are more generous than liberals:

Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks argues in Who Really Cares (Basic Books, 2006) that when it comes to charitable giving and volunteering, numerous quantitative measures debunk the myth of "bleeding heart liberals" and "heartless conservatives." Conservatives donate 30 percent more money than liberals (even when controlled for income), give more blood and log more volunteer hours. In general, religious people are more than three times more generous than secularists to all charities, 14 percent more munificent to nonreligious charities and 57 percent more likely than a secularist to help a homeless person. In terms of societal health, charitable givers are 43 percent more likely to say they are "very happy" than nongivers and 25 percent more likely than nongivers to say their health is excellent or very good.

Matt says that, even though he's not religious, he admires people of faith because of their morals, their value for community, and that "they walk the talk when it comes to generosity and tolerance." Further, he concludes, "Faith, ultimately, is about optimism. Perhaps this is why I think it's worth defending."

He's got a point, but Shermer's piece is somewhat more equivocal about the evidence, observing that "Religious social capital leads to charitable generosity and group membership but does comparatively worse than secular social capital for such ills as homicides, STDs, abortions and teen pregnancies."

I don't think there's any disputing the value of community and mutual aid, nor that the secular have had a harder time promoting those values, in part due to the fact that we are fewer in number and widely dispersed. But the nonreligious have made some very dramatic philanthropic contributions which are likely to have a much greater beneficial effect than any church tithing will ever have.

Eminent domain extortion

Radley Balko describes an outrageous case of eminent domain extortion in Port Chester, NY:

With the blessing of officials from the Village of Port Chester, the Village's chosen developer approached [entrepreneur Bart] Didden and his partner with an offer they couldn't refuse. Because Didden planned to build a CVS on his property--land the developer coveted for a Walgreens--the developer demanded $800,000 from Didden to make him "go away" or ordered Didden to give him an unearned 50 percent stake in the CVS development. If Didden refused, the developer would have the Village of Port Chester condemn the land for his private use. Didden rejected the bold-faced extortion. The very next day the Village of Port Chester condemned Didden's property through eminent domain so it could hand it over to the developer who made the threat.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this extortion under last year's Kelo eminent domain decision. The court ruled that because this is taking place in a "redevelopment zone" they couldn't stop what the Village is doing.

The case will be considered for review by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 5, 2007, and Didden's side is being supported by the Institute for Justice.

By the way, if you are considering any last minute end-of-year charitable donations, I highly recommend giving support to the Institute for Justice. They have received 4-star ratings from Charity Navigator for five years straight, they regularly win critical civil liberties cases in the courts, they do a great job of keeping donors informed of what is being done with their money, they don't continually pester you for more, and they have a strong record of acting in a principled manner. IJ holds regular entrepreneurship workshops, and operates state chapters in Arizona (the first IJ state chapter), Minnesota, and Washington.

AzCLU wrong on school choice

Ed Brayton rightly criticizes the Arizona Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit to try to prevent Arizona from giving corporate tax credits for donations to organizations that provide private school tuition for students from low-income families. The AzCLU has previously failed in two lawsuits to eliminate the state income tax credit for individual donations to private school tuition organizations. There is no reason to believe this third lawsuit will be anything but a waste of money.

As Ed points out, this is not a violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution (or the Arizona Constitution's prohibition on state funds being used to promote religion) because no state funds are going directly to any religious organization.

I support the Institute for Justice on this issue, and this is a reason I've never given funds to the AzCLU (though I support the ACLU Foundation).

I am a beneficiary of the individual state tax credit--I annually make the maximum qualifying contribution to the Arizona School Choice Trust, which is the single most efficient charity I donate to (100% of donations are distributed as tuition payments for students from low-income families; salaries for employees and administrative overhead are paid by another private organization).

UPDATE (June 7, 2007): Judge Janet Barton granted the Institute for Justice's motion to dismiss this case, back in March.

UPDATE (March 12, 2009): The Institute for Justice won this case again today in the Arizona Court of Appeals.