Asshole It Is: Ellison Withdraws His Donation

To follow up our previous post about Larry Ellison, he has now officially withdrawn his proposed $115 million donation to Harvard, thus resolving our query.  He's not a flake, he's an asshole.

Ellison's people are trying to say that his donation was withdrawn due to the ouster of Harvard President Lawrence Summers.  If you think this is even a remotely plausible explanation, the implications suggest that Larry Ellison is an even bigger prick than anyone could have conceived.  Ellison is suggesting that he was more enamored of the Harvard President than he was devoted to the study of world health--or worse, Ellison is more interested in tweaking the Harvard faculty (who won't shed any tears over Summers' departure) than in finding solutions to the world's health crises.  How seriously should any thinking person take this?  About as seriously as anyone should take non-thinking people.

No, we're still of the opinion that Ellison simply doesn't have the money to pony up--certainly not in combination with his other obligations (see below).  Besides, his proposal already earned him much praise and adulation as a philanthropist; why bother writing a check when you can simply make proposals?

Not coincidentally, yesterday he settled his insider-trading lawsuit by agreeing to donate $100 million to his own Ellison Medical Foundation.  Get this, his punishment for betraying stock holders is to donate money to his own self-promoting foundation, where he can also reap the rewards of heavenly tax deductions--which inevitably means that we taxpayers subsidize his lawsuit as well as his self-promotion.  We suspect that Ellison wasn't expecting anyone to accept his "donating to my own foundation is punishment enough" crap and was stringing Harvard along as a contingency plan.  Never forget, it's a rich man's country.

Not to totally piss on the super rich, we congratulate Warren Buffett in his decision to use his money for good while he's alive rather than pass it on to his progeny who will inevitably use their riches to fight off estate taxes.  Naturally, Buffet's choice of charity makes him a target for the ultra-nuttiest white-ringers.

Comments

[thebizofknowledge]

Yeah, I didn't believe that Summers-is-leaving excuse for a second. There definitely aren't going to be too many Ellison fans left after a move like this...