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: ...
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.
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.
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.)
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: ...
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%: ...
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.
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! ...
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. ...
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.)