In 2016, Carol Highsmith got a cease-and-desist letter from Getty Images threatening to take her to court if she didn’t take down a photograph (shown above) she’d put up on her website.

This was strange—because she’d taken the photograph herself, and she’d put it in the public domain.

A few years before, Highsmith had donated 100,000 of her photographs to the Library of Congress so that they could be used royalty-free by anyone who wanted.

The Library of Congress saw it as “one of the greatest acts of generosity in the history of the Library”…

… and Getty Images, it seems, saw it as one of the greatest acts of a total sucker in the history of getting rich off of somebody else’s work.

They copyrighted 18,755 of Highsmith’s public domain photographs and started sending people cease-and-desist letters for using them—including Highsmith herself. Highsmith, full of righteous fury, took them to court for $1 billion. But the truly messed up part of this story is that it doesn’t have a happy ending.

The court ruled in Getty’s favor, saying: “Public domain works are regularly commercialized, and the original authors hold no power to stop this.”^[REF] In other words, even though Highsmith’s donation had given everyone the legal right to use her photographs for free, it didn’t stop Getty from threatening people into paying them money for them, anyway. (They still conceded that the letter sent to Highsmith was a mistake, but they got off with a slap on the wrist at the most.)

Anyone who wants to can go around demanding that people pay them for things that are in the public domain all that they want. Nobody actually has to pay them—but they’re under no obligation to tell anyone that fact.

What the fuck is going on here?

Well, you probably guessed it. You see, when an American does something nice, and tries to make the world a better place by offering things for free, or cheaply, or giving destitute people free haircuts, there is some evil son-of-a-bitch that is going to either have it stopped, and / or try to profit from it.

America has become a land of the “dog eat dog”, and this single-minded selfish behavior has resulted in the terrible America that exists today.

I do wish that I could say that this is a singular instance, but it’s not.

It’s the norm.

Inefficiency or fraud?

When you give money to an agency, you know like “Save the Children”, or “The Salvation Army”, or “Toys for Tots” you believe that most of what you will give will go straight to the charity’s good works. If, for instance, you gave $100 to an agency that helped homeless people living on the street, you should reasonably expect at least $90 out of the $100 to go towards helping people.

Unfortunately that is not the case.

For all their nice commercials and “feel-good” slogans, many of today’s largest American nonprofit organizations are extremely inefficient.

In fact, I argue that they are so inefficient that it is suggestive of something else. I argue that they are for-profit organizations that use the cover of “helping the needy” to swindle millions of dollars from people like you and I.

They are inefficient simply because they dedicate the majority of their resources to other aspects of their organization. Leaving little left over in the way of resources for their actual causes.

I know, I know, every organization has overhead costs, but a staggering number of charities today are way, way off the “deep end” in this regard.

At one time, the American Cancer Society spent only 26 percent of its national multibillion-dollar budget on actual medical research, allotting the other three-fourths to “operating expenses.”

American Cancer Society

26% - Medical Research
74% - Salaries, overhead, office furniture, "training sessions" in Los Vegas.

In 2005, the Phoenix New Times reported that the Arizona branch of the organization spent a gasp-inducing 95 percent on overhead costs. Yes, that is correct, and that meant that they left actual cancer victims “only the crumbs.”

Phoenix Arizona branch - American Cancer Society - 2005

05% - Money to people with cancer.
95% - Salaries, offices, cars, and other "incidentals" of the owners.

At the Arizona branch, the nonprofit spends 22 times as much on paying employees, maintaining the offices, and keeping the coffee machine running than on the cancer victims they are supposedly aiming to save.

Consider another cancer support organization…

A peer organization of the American Cancer Society, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, is also a mechanism to swindle money for personal profit. Still, the foundation, which organizes the annual Breast Cancer 3-Day walking events nationally, can only manage to put forward 13 cents to its cause for every dollar it raises. Those 3-Day t-shirts must be some pretty high quality cotton.

Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation

13% - Helping people with cancer
87% - Salaries, bonuses, trips, office, coffee, etc.

Of course, inefficiency is hardly limited to cancer-fighting organizations. The Greenpeace Fund—widely known for its environmental and conservation goals—is among the least efficient of environmental charities. It commits upwards of 82 percent of its fundraising to overhead costs. Costly tree-hugging. 

The Greenpeace Fund

18% - Goes to helping the environment.
82% - Salaries, bonuses, office, trips, and nice furnishings.

Several groups assess and rate nonprofits’ efficiency, equipping donors with the tools to pick their charities. Charity Navigator, one such group, ranks charities based on a five-star rating scale of efficiency and publishes data on the breakdown of nonprofits’ organizational spending.

Charity Navigator bestows only one star upon the American Cancer Society, while the marginally more efficient Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation wins three stars. The popular March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation wins a two-star efficiency rating for spending 82 cents of every dollar it raises on overhead costs.

March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation

18% - Helps families with children that have birth defects.
82% - Salaries, bonuses, overhead, offices

Americans, for all their supposed generosity, are not discerning enough when it comes to giving. They pour money into organizations like the American Cancer Society and the March of Dimes, because these organizations appeal to people’s publicity sensitivities.

Too many worthy and efficient nonprofits are pushed aside by massive money-eating charities because wealthy donors prefer to go to galas than to actually do something noteworthy and good.

Traditionally, the reasons to contribute to the health of society were fairly banal: [1] general compassion for others; [2] feeling good about yourself as you lie in bed at night pondering your life; [3] political gains; and [4] the occasional tax deduction.

But now, the charity culture has taken on new form.

In the new fundraising world, the strategy is making amusements. Charitable organizations attract philanthropists through “fun” incentives. Nonprofits organize events throughout the year that are booked as good times: the American Cancer Society puts on the Relay for Life event, and the March of Dimes Foundation organizes its famed annual walk to save premature babies— with its measly 18 cents per dollar raised.

Few people ask whether their money is being used wisely, but these events are wildly successful: Americans from a wide variety of demographics and socioeconomic networks turn up in droves. People are attracted to organizations like the American Cancer Society because they are glamorous and glitzy. The nonprofits pull in donors with promises of celebrity appearances and festive awareness-raising parties.

Although this trend of glamorous charity seems fantastic for the world of nonprofits, or at least innocuous, it is actually calamitous, because insincere philanthropy enables quasi-fraudulent inefficient charities.

Insincere philanthropy enables quasi-fraudulent inefficient charities.

What is going on?

We have people who donate their belongings for public consumption, and some greedy SOB tries to profit from it. We have charities that are supposed to help people, and then they run up huge enormous expenses with little to show for the very people that they are supposed to help.

When I lived in Indiana, I used to walk among the few remaining strands of trees that were not taken over by farm fields, and housing developments. My wife and I would walk on these shallow paths up and down the ravines, in and out through the wooded glades, and up and down the various streams.

I will never forget this one event.

It is was in Marion, Indiana. There was a new housing complex going up, and they were bull-dozing all the trees and virginal forests to make way for flat spaces to build roads and single story wood-frame buildings upon. We had just gotten out of a particularly dense section of the forest, when suddenly we encountered a pile of dirt and up-rooted trees. We had to climb over the mess to continue in the woods…

…and there I saw it.

It was a bent metal sign, on a metal post that was partially standing when the bulldozer plowed into it.

The sign was telling.

This land is donated by the XXXXXXX family to the City of Marion, Indiana on 1972 so that it may remain pristine and virginal to the end of time. May you and your children and their children forever have access to this area. Remember that the Lord is everywhere and the best way to see his good works is to experience it first hand. These lands are for you and your children to enjoy forever.

We went back down the path two weeks later. The sign was gone, and a construction team was laying down some asphalt where it used to be.

Suckers!

In America today, you get the over all impression that if you are not “on the hustle” then you are a fool and a rube and that you deserved to be swindled. Ah. many a good person has fallen for this contemporaneous belief, and it is wrong. It is really, really wrong.

You are not a fool for trying to help others.

It’s not you.

You are a victim of someone else to misrepresented themselves, their organization and their role in society. They themselves, have created a for-profit model this is vacuuming up money from everyone so that they can maintain their nice and lavish lifestyles.

In 2014, the March of Dimes received $196 million in revenue, with the majority ($187 million) from contributions, fundraising events, and grants (the other $9 million came from investment income, program services and other sources).

$96 million (49%) was spent on salaries, pensions, employee benefits, and payroll taxes. 129 individuals received more than $100,000 in compensation. 60 independent contractors received more than $100,000 in compensation. 10 executives (President, Executive VP, Asst Secretary, Asst Treasurer, Medical Director and five Senior VP’s) received a collective $3.3 million (ranging from $255,000  to $510,000).

-Where does your $1 to March of Dimes go?

But, that is not all…

As I have ranted about this in other posts. I have argued that America is a nation where the common man dies a death by a million small paper-cuts. Whether it is an endless stream of taxes or fees, to all sorts of other “charges”, it is near impossible for the average American to save up any money at all.

Not that it matters to me. I don’t live there any longer.

But what about this comeuppance?

Ah.

Well, you see, our universe, and our reality is based upon thought. Right? And while we occupy a given particular world-line alone, it’s actually not an isolated world-line. It is instead connected to an “ocean” of other world-lines that are all inner-connected and wired up together.

And behaviors, and thoughts, and manifested emotions all tug on these interconnections in all sorts of ways.

You can call them as waves, as radiation, as fluxes within the universal void, as dark-matter or anything else you might want to refer them as. The point is that thoughts of others, not on your particular world-line, at any given moment, affects your world-line. It affects the templates. It affects the baseline. It affects how the paths, the arrows of time, are followed, and the rules for slides. It affects everything.

Well…

If you think good thoughts, and do good things, you can be assured that the universe will somehow bend to your advantage.

And..

If you think bad thoughts, and do bad hurtful and spiteful things, you can expect that the universe would also bend to your thoughts and create situations that would be very uncomfortable for you.

And…

If you use people, treat them as dupes all on the promise that you are "helping people" then you can be rest assured that this will have an equally hurtful effect upon your life. 

So, while I cannot predict what will happen in each individual case, I can pretty much confirm that bad people will get to experience some bad things. And good people, will get to experience some good things, and greedy people will get to experience A GREAT LOSS OF MONEY AND STANDARD OF LIVING.

It’s the way the universe works.

And the oligarchy…

Well you can run, and you can hide, but the universe has a way of sniffing you out. You will most certainly get your comeuppance.

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