The 'Generosity Index'

Icahn--"I take the same approach to education as I do to corporate boards."

Condé Nast Portfolio’s Magazine presents its Generosity Index of America’s billionaires and their giving (or not) habits.

The list, which includes profiles of power philanthropists like Bill Gates, Eli Broad and George Soros, as well as some of the billionaire tightwads, only scratches the surface and doesn’t even begin to tell us about how that giving is used, not just as a tax shelter, but to shape and influence politics and public education, free from public involvement.

You can learn a lot from what’s missing or misleading in the index. For example Broad’s profile lists his companies as SunAmerica and KB Homes. Broad sold SunAmerica years ago to recently bailed-out Wall Street giant AIG while KB Home was a lending partner which offered its mortgage services through failed sub-primed lender Countrywide.

Now Broad's foundation is second only to Gates in its unfettered influence over public education.

Some of the Portfolio portraits give us insights into how philanthropy is much more than “giving.” In a Q & A with venture capitalist Carl Icahn, who made his billions buying companies, breaking them up and then selling off the parts, he shares his broad-brush negative view of public education and his plan to leverage his business model onto public schools.

The whole education system in the country is close to dysfunctional. You’ve got a huge waste in education. I take the same approach to education as I do to corporate boards. Corporate governance is terrible. The same thing that is wrong in corporate America is what is wrong in education.

What Icahn won't admit, of course, is that he is a big part of what’s wrong with both.

Then there’s this from Eli Broad who helped manage AIG down the road to collapse:

Urban school districts are big businesses, and you don’t see any bright people with M.B.A.’s and several years’ experience there. The Broad Residency has placed more than 100 people with M.B.A.’s in urban districts. We’re creating an elite corps of managers, some of whom we think will end up running districts.

And they are.