The Giving Pledge has as its goal:

The Giving Pledge is an effort to invite the wealthiest individuals and families in America to commit to giving the majority of their wealth to the philanthropic causes and charitable organizations of their choice either during their lifetime or after their death.

  Take a moment to peruse the list of billionaires. Let’s see: there are the monopolists like Bill Gates who made his fortune by engaging in predatory capitalism, destroying smaller competitors for the sake of piling up profit (not to mention making the god-awful Windows products–but, admittedly, as a Mac convert, that is a disputable point).

  There is Sandy Weill. Among Weill’s many achievements in life was a leading role, when he served as the CEO and chair of Citigroup, in attacking the Glass-Steagall Act. In fact, in his office, he had an etching of himself (of course) with the inscription "The Shatterer of Glass Steagall". Weill, like his fellow Glass-Steagall opponents (Robert Rubin was a leading figure in the anti-Glass-Steagall campaign, along with, among many legislators, Chuck Schumer), continue to lamely defend their role in campaigning to repeal a law that arguably, had it survived, could have prevented the financial crisis of the past several years.

  There is New York’s own Mike Bloomberg. Among Bloomberg’s accomplishments–having complete disregard for the people of New York’s democratic decision to impose term limits on city officeholders. I happen to be against term limits–but the voters of New York City twice voted for term limits. With Bloomberg engineering the move behind the scenes (using, subtly or not so subtly, his massive wealth, as a carrot and as a stick), the self-serving City Council overturned the voters’ will.

  What strikes me about the people on the list is that, with few, if any, exceptions, they are vehemently anti-union. They made their fortunes on the back of the millions of people who passed through the doors of their businesses–refusing to even take a neutral position in union representation efforts.

  As a result, collectively, they contributed to the downward slide of the American Dream–the flattening of wages, the shipping of jobs overseas because of so-called free trade agreements (I doubt there is a single individual on the list who did not support, and continues to support, so-called "free trade"), the reduction in benefits, the evisceration of real pensions (in favor of far less secure 401ks–as millions of retirees now bitterly understand).

  Now, it would be one thing if this group collectively said: you know, we now understand that the fortunes we have made came by us being Big Dogs and lording over the planet because of a system that thrived, and continues to thrive, on poverty and a whole-scale robbery of the people, that malaria and diseases that ravage hundreds of millions of people are, in essence, the logical outcome of this economic system, that the planet is in critical condition because of the system we fostered–and, so, we are turning over this money not just to build monuments to ourselves but to throw out the economic system that made us rich in favor of a system that, as our Constitution says, promotes the general welfare.

  But, that isn’t what is happening.

  In fact, in one specific case, the opposite is happening. Consider Pete Peterson, a man who has been on a mission: to destroy Social Security and Medicare and is perhaps the prime funder and mover behind the entirely bogus "deficit scare." As Dean Baker writes:

Emboldened by the fact that none of them have gone to jail for their role in the financial crisis, the Wall Street gang is now gunning for Social Security and Medicare, the country’s most important safety net programs. Led by investment banker Pete Peterson, this crew is spending more than a billion dollars to convince the public that slashing these programs is the only way to protect our children and grandchildren from poverty.

  Here is what Peterson’s pledge declares:

When I enjoyed a most surprising billion dollar plus windfall from the public offering of The Blackstone Group, a firm co-founded, I pondered, what should I do with all of this money?…

I am also much concerned about domestic threats that I also consider transcendent. I refer to several such threats as undeniable, unsustainable and yet, politically speaking, untouchable.  For example, our unfunded entitlement promises that so many depend upon, our ballooning debts to foreign lenders, which combined with our very low savings, leaves us very vulnerable and even threaten our national sovereignty.  Then, of course, there are our mushrooming healthcare costs that threaten to bankrupt our economy…

Given the serious political challenges and our country’s apparent reluctance to accept the required shared sacrifice, no doubt many are saying my Foundation is not only a presumptuous mission, but a foolhardy one…

  My friends, this is one of the most eye-popping, self-serving and dishonest declarations in recent times (and, indeed, there is a lot of competition for that title). Aside from the fact that it is entire nonsense that Peterson was caught by surprise by the windfall when Blackstone went private (look back at the lead up to the public offering and you can see that it was obvious he would make a killing), he is, in the guise of this Pledge, continuing to promote a dangerous and false agenda.

  First, the facts are wrong. The fiscal problems we are facing come from very identifiable problems, all fixable: an $8 trillion real estate bubble (enhanced by the Blackstone-Sandy Weill et al. construction of a trading regime that was about profits, not about economic stability), a massive employment crisis, an unwillingness to deal with the health care crisis by knee-capping the insurance and drug industries, and a give-to-the-rich tax policy that blew a hole in the government’s revenues. By the way, one of the problems is NOT as Peterson likes to tell people Social Security, which is fully funded through 2039.

  Peterson, whipping up the threat of foreign enemies, also falsely connects the debt to some "national sovereignty" crisis. Nonsense. The real issue–if you even care that "foreigners" (read: multi-national companies) own U.S. assets–is the price of the dollar (which I have argued is too high–it benefits Wal-Mart and other companies exploiting cheap labor abroad but not the rest of the country), not the federal debt.

  Peterson, of course, does not mention, either in his pledge or in his public drivel about the threat to future generations, the true causes of the threat to future generations: our failure to enact a single-payer, "Medicare for All" health care system (which would have made Peterson’s peers in the insurance and drug industry have to look for new work), the political leadership’s cowardice in denouncing the robbery by a few of the country’s wealth and a lack of spine to impose a serious progressive tax system again and, finally, the acceptance of a system that thrives and reaps profits because poverty and long-term unemployment are acceptable to those who rule our markets.

 Indeed, when Peterson talks about a reluctance to sacrifice, he is effectively saying that the people who have been robbed for 30 years should pay for the robbery, while the few people who walked off with unimaginable riches should continue to lord over us.

  This is truly trickle-down philanthropy.