Given the minimal news coverage it's received, you might think that a $7 million donation is an everyday occurrence, something so common it hardly merits comment.
And yet it's a fact that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has just donated $7.1 million to Oxfam America , an international relief and development organization that provides grant money to local community groups.
Now why, you might ask, is the Gates Foundation giving away so much money? And what is Oxfam America?
When last we left off with New Orleans it was recovering from Katrina, the killer hurricane that inundated much of the city in 2005. The devastation in New Orleans and along the Gulf has been immense and recovery has naturally been difficult.
While there has been considerable debate regarding why New Orleans was so badly damaged, there's no debate concerning the need faced by hurricane victims and local communities impacted by hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. It's generally estimated that at least $100 billion in federal funds has been devoted to disaster relief, a huge sum but not enough.
The Gates Foundation is usually associated with gifts that involve health, education and poverty reduction. To this point the Foundation has given away $13.6 billion and has still holds assets worth $33.4 billion. Contributions from Warren Buffett, who has already donated $1.6 billion, will add billions more to the Foundation's endowment.
Oxfam America, according to its2004 tax return , says its mission is to promote self-sustaining programs for the poor and needy. For tax year 2004 it had revenues of $29.8 million.
The Oxfam grant is huge by every possible standard and it represents a significant commitment by the Gates Foundation. But the Gates money is necessary and will surely be welcomed for several reasons.
First, the enormity of the Katrina damage goes far beyond $100 billion.
Second, the destruction of 300,000 residences has created a near-impossibility: Communities need to be re-built but they cannot be re-built until people have places to live.
There's another issue as well. Oxfam says the Gates money "will be used over a three-year period to provide support, technical assistance, and information to organizations working to ensure affordable housing is available for those who have been displaced and to protect workers' rights for those participating in the rebuilding effort, including many migrant, minority, and low-income laborers."
Huh? How did worker rights get into the picture?
It's sometimes forgotten -- sometimes conveniently forgotten -- that one of the first steps taken by the Bush Administration after Katrina hit was to suspend the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act in areas impacted by the storm. This federal law requires that government construction projects pay the locally-prevailing wage. In the case of New Orleans, the prevailing wage rate was $9 an hour before Katrina but after the presidential declaration those with federal contracts were suddenly welcome to take government money and pay hurricane-area workers less than $9 an hour to re-build the Gulf area.
In other words, one of the reasons among many that Gulf re-development stalled was because workers can count. Why get less than $9 an hour when better wages are available elsewhere?
In contrast, there was no presidential edict limiting corporate profits. No-bid contracts were just fine with FEMA, and some of those contracts were in excess of $100 million each. If you think the FEMA program worked well, just look at the "surplus" FEMA trailers that are still for sale at discount.
The Gates contribution should be welcomed as a decent and honorable thing to do. If it supports both the construction of more local housing and a drive toward living wages, that's fine -- it's tough to have one without the other.
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