DELAWARE WATCH
Noam Chomsky - Real working class hero! (Not!)
http://www.hooverdigest.org/061/.../
schweizer.html
After all, Chomsky, with a net worth north of $2,000,000, decided to create one for himself. A few years back he went to Boston’s venerable white-shoe law firm, Palmer and Dodge, and, with the help of a tax attorney specializing in “income-tax planning,” set up an irrevocable trust to protect his assets from Uncle Sam. He named his tax attorney (every socialist radical needs one!) and a daughter as trustees. To the Diane Chomsky Irrevocable Trust (named for another daughter) he has assigned the copyright of several of his books, including multiple international editions.
Chomsky, for all of his moral dudgeon against American corporations, finds that they make a pretty good investment. When he made investment decisions for his retirement plan at MIT, he chose not to go with a money market fund or even a government bond fund. Instead, he threw the money into blue chips and invested in the TIAA-CREF stock fund. A look at the stock fund portfolio quickly reveals that it invests in all sorts of businesses that Chomsky says he finds abhorrent: oil companies, military contractors, pharmaceuticals, you name it.
Can you point to one place in Chomsky's writing where he says people should not leave money to their children?
I wonder where you obtained this information. Does this same source go into detail about how much time and money Dr. Chomsky has contributed to charitable organizations? Be clear that I am no Chomsky apologist, but to call him a both hipocritcal and phony is a strong accusation.
I'd also wager that you couldn't care less about Dr. Chomsky's personal finances, but for whatever reason (and I feel that doing actual research probably isn't one of them) you've decided you don't like him. So instead of slamming him, why don't you read a book or two and decide for yourself what about his writing you don't like, not one-sided financial slanders.
Is there some way to listen to or download the show?
I think the French would call him Gauche caviar.
Actually if you really read Chomsky closely he never says that ALL profit-making, privatisation is wrong. He is very specific about the degree of either and importantly the conteext, for example the context of corporate power relying on privatisation to galvanise its control over various socio-political institutions. If, on the other hand, you or I make an income from our line of work, that is surely acceptable provided your line of work is not predicated on making huge protis at teh expense of democracy, to put it simplistically. Chomsky is fully entitled to make a profit from what he does as long as it is within the realms of fair-paly and, as one has alluded to here, it does not contradict your expressed politcal point-of-view (if the rumour about his investements are true that would surely contradict his point of view. Let's see teh evidence first). But there is another dimension to all of this; namely, the capitalist world system. We are all, for better or worse, part of the captialist world system (see Wallerstein for an explantion). This means that to some extent we are confined to a certain set of day-to-day action which involves consumption, selling and profiteering from our services etc etc. We are not literally conmfined to this system. however, but it does appear to dominate. Now, some actors within the system have and do benefit greatly from it and have in the era of globalisation (but not especially) eroded a lot of what we would like to call our democratic system; the checks and balances if you will of the capitalist world system. It is not tehrefore contradictory to both criticise and to a degree contribute to the system since it has dominated thus far.
Sorry about my spelling. I didn't so a check, was in a rush...
Wallsy
sigh, I didn't do a check...again.
Seriously folks!
Do you really think that this discution is getting you anywhere? So what if a Troll tries to bring Chomsky down? Who cares? And even if "Chomsky is a fake" were not a Troll, it wouldn't make a difference. This is not about the creation of an idol, or about finding a hero, a perfect man. THIS IS NOT A MOVIE!
What you forget to do is to listen to the ideas vehiculated by Chomsky.
Nobody is perfect, but we can still try to make this world better any way we can.
Commenting by HaloScan
