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Irrelevant to the content of the article, but worth pointing out that this project is funded by the proceeds of crimes committed at Drexel Burnham in the 80s. M

Irrelevant to the content of the article, but worth pointing out that this project is funded by the proceeds of crimes committed at Drexel Burnham in the 80s. Michael Milken and his brother Lowell undoubtedly do good through their philanthrophy, but the cynic in me suspects that it is primarily an attempt to rehabilate their image and is treated as a business expense. Maybe it doesn't matter if you do good for the wrong reasons though.

myko 4y ago
> Maybe it doesn't matter if you do good for the wrong reasons though. There was an interesting discussion around this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32094798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32094798 (TikTok'er doing random acts of kindness for clout upset someone he used for his videos)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Intent is everything.
HoraceSchemer 4y ago
I'm not religious, but a particular legend has stuck with me: > A philanthropist once came to Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi to complain that he felt he was giving charity without sincerity. “Without sincerity? Nonsense!” replied the Rebbe. “There is plenty of sincerity. Perhaps you are not sincere in giving charity, but the poor are very sincere in receiving your charity. Even if you don't mean it, they do!” [source](https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1885183/jewish/Can-I-Bribe-G-d-with-Charity.htm https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1885183/jewis...)
dvt 4y ago
I live in Santa Monica and often walk past the Lowell Milken Family Foundation (which is close to the posh downtown). I always kind of smile and think about the story of how the Milken Family completely reinvented itself. Michael Milken, for context, was paid the highest yearly salary in the history of the world (~250M in one of his highest years if I remember correctly). He served 2 years in prison, his fine was 600M and the guy is still a billionaire (he also got pardoned by Trump in 2020). He's a self-admitted crook and liar[1]. How many lives were destroyed (or at least harmed) by hustling junk bonds? Is that okay now that he is donating money to cancer research? Forbes and CNN certainly think so[2] (even in 2004, for that matter). William K. Black put it well: "the best way to rob a bank is to own one." [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220428215122/https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/26/opinion/michael-milken-s-guilt.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220428215122/https://www.nytim... [2] https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/11/29/8192713/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004...
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  At some point punishment has to end and you move forward in life. The justice system would be a lot more fair if this was applied equally.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    That point has to be further away than the gain a person got from the crime.
  - tasty_freeze 4y ago
    > At some point punishment has to end and you move forward in life. The justice system would be a lot more fair if this was applied equally. I completely agree, but if I am reading your statement right, our conclusions are 180 degrees apart. It seems you are saying it is unfair that some people are forgiven and others aren't and that Milken is getting unjustly punished. My take is there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people who served more than 2 years for petty offenses, things like selling dime bags of weed. Their convictions follow them for life and make future gainful employment extremely difficult. Yet a highly educated, white collar guy can steal hundreds of millions and serve two years in a luxury prison, and then coast the rest of his life on his ill-gotten gains. That is no justice at all, and I don't feel the least bit sorry for hoping that Milken's reputation never recovers.
  - rocqua 4y ago
    Since this is a matter of ill-gotten gains, reparations instead of punishment should be in order. The process of: do crime - get rich - do minor prison time and pay a minor fine - spend 10% of your remaining riches to rehabilitate your image - be a rich and respected person That process should not be possible. As long as you are sitting on money gotten through crime, you shouldn't get respectability back. If you do want to turn over a new leaf, start giving back.
- vba616 4y ago
  >How many lives were destroyed (or at least harmed) by hustling junk bonds? I'm not familiar with the context of what Michael Milken did (although he's famous enough I know the name), but your (rhetorical?) question sounds very strange to me. An omniscient and omnipotent being that knew the right amount of junk bonds to issue could probably answer how many lives were destroyed or harmed by creating the wrong amount. But when a question like that is asked, you're asking human beings, not God, and it sounds rhetorical, which means that the answer is supposed to be obvious, I think. If you were asking about milk with melamine in it, then I would understand what you meant. But junk bonds aren't inherently useless or defective.
pessimizer 4y ago
Seems morally consistent. We were the bad guys in Vietnam and this is an article about a soldier who went above and beyond in extreme situations to further our rampage. Of course Milken was just a selfish criminal with powerful friends, and Hegdahl was fighting for a principle (even if that principle was to create a firebreak out of Korean, Vietnamese and Cambodian corpses to protect the world from Communism.)
- camillomiller 4y ago
  Nice to see that someone gets it
p1necone 4y ago
> it doesn't matter if you do good for the wrong reasons though My take on this is that no, it doesn't. Philanthropy is useful regardless of the source. But it also absolves you of no guilt, and the shitty things you did in the past are still shitty, and you shouldn't expect people to like you any more just because you're donating to charity. (Although maybe people who know you personally can judge better whether you've improved.)
- aaron695 4y ago
- stocknoob 4y ago
  I don’t think you can just draw a line in the timeline and say “the philanthropy after the crime is useful and therefore justified”. You have to look at the chain of causation.
camillomiller 4y ago
Not sure if spewing badly written propaganda about the bloodiest war of invasion America ever waged could be considered doing good
retcon 4y ago
Drexel was shut down by order of one certain ambitious NY Assistant AG by the name of Rudy Giuliani. The indictment? Criminal prosecution for statutory civil offences of two counts of failure to file stock transfer forms that by the letter of the law impose a fin e. Sentence: 12 years in federal. Appealed and won. Key witnesses for the prosecution included the convicted fraudster Ivan Boesky. RICO was the act abused to overnight shutter the single most critical liquidity provider to the savings and loans industry. American Thrifts to almost the last were bankrupted instantly. Cost to the taxpayer for the bailout? Cheap at four trillion. Edited extraneous adjectives and sp Oh and Lowell Milken, Mike's brother, was charged before anyone else by Giuliani in a overt and well documented hostage manipulation. Lowell never held operational executive office sufficient to have any involvement with the affair and his indictment was dropped. I should probably also note that Mike infamously never spent money on lifestyle and had to be brute forced into upgrading dress and toupee. Anyone on the street as successful as Mike and not spending money will have accumulated substantial wealth even if you don't count the Rodeo drive era. Much of which wealth went into settling civil suits. Edit2: Giuliani's correct job title at the time
- tedheath123 4y ago
  Regarding Giuliani and his handling of the case, you make a good point. The politicization of law enforcement is something we should all be concerned about. You're quite right that the charges were dropped against Lowell in return for a guilty plea from his brother. However, if Stewart's account in Den of Thieves is to be believed, then Lowell was intimately involved in the affair.

myko 4y ago

> Maybe it doesn't matter if you do good for the wrong reasons though. There was an interesting discussion around this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32094798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32094798 (TikTok'er doing random acts of kindness for clout upset someone he used for his videos)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Intent is everything.

HoraceSchemer 4y ago

I'm not religious, but a particular legend has stuck with me: > A philanthropist once came to Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi to complain that he felt he was giving charity without sincerity. “Without sincerity? Nonsense!” replied the Rebbe. “There is plenty of sincerity. Perhaps you are not sincere in giving charity, but the poor are very sincere in receiving your charity. Even if you don't mean it, they do!” [source](https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1885183/jewish/Can-I-Bribe-G-d-with-Charity.htm https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1885183/jewis...)

dvt 4y ago

I live in Santa Monica and often walk past the Lowell Milken Family Foundation (which is close to the posh downtown). I always kind of smile and think about the story of how the Milken Family completely reinvented itself. Michael Milken, for context, was paid the highest yearly salary in the history of the world (~250M in one of his highest years if I remember correctly). He served 2 years in prison, his fine was 600M and the guy is still a billionaire (he also got pardoned by Trump in 2020). He's a self-admitted crook and liar[1]. How many lives were destroyed (or at least harmed) by hustling junk bonds? Is that okay now that he is donating money to cancer research? Forbes and CNN certainly think so[2] (even in 2004, for that matter). William K. Black put it well: "the best way to rob a bank is to own one." [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220428215122/https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/26/opinion/michael-milken-s-guilt.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220428215122/https://www.nytim... [2] https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/11/29/8192713/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004...

vorpalhex 4y ago
At some point punishment has to end and you move forward in life. The justice system would be a lot more fair if this was applied equally.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  That point has to be further away than the gain a person got from the crime.
- tasty_freeze 4y ago
  > At some point punishment has to end and you move forward in life. The justice system would be a lot more fair if this was applied equally. I completely agree, but if I am reading your statement right, our conclusions are 180 degrees apart. It seems you are saying it is unfair that some people are forgiven and others aren't and that Milken is getting unjustly punished. My take is there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people who served more than 2 years for petty offenses, things like selling dime bags of weed. Their convictions follow them for life and make future gainful employment extremely difficult. Yet a highly educated, white collar guy can steal hundreds of millions and serve two years in a luxury prison, and then coast the rest of his life on his ill-gotten gains. That is no justice at all, and I don't feel the least bit sorry for hoping that Milken's reputation never recovers.
- rocqua 4y ago
  Since this is a matter of ill-gotten gains, reparations instead of punishment should be in order. The process of: do crime - get rich - do minor prison time and pay a minor fine - spend 10% of your remaining riches to rehabilitate your image - be a rich and respected person That process should not be possible. As long as you are sitting on money gotten through crime, you shouldn't get respectability back. If you do want to turn over a new leaf, start giving back.
vba616 4y ago
>How many lives were destroyed (or at least harmed) by hustling junk bonds? I'm not familiar with the context of what Michael Milken did (although he's famous enough I know the name), but your (rhetorical?) question sounds very strange to me. An omniscient and omnipotent being that knew the right amount of junk bonds to issue could probably answer how many lives were destroyed or harmed by creating the wrong amount. But when a question like that is asked, you're asking human beings, not God, and it sounds rhetorical, which means that the answer is supposed to be obvious, I think. If you were asking about milk with melamine in it, then I would understand what you meant. But junk bonds aren't inherently useless or defective.

pessimizer 4y ago

Seems morally consistent. We were the bad guys in Vietnam and this is an article about a soldier who went above and beyond in extreme situations to further our rampage. Of course Milken was just a selfish criminal with powerful friends, and Hegdahl was fighting for a principle (even if that principle was to create a firebreak out of Korean, Vietnamese and Cambodian corpses to protect the world from Communism.)

camillomiller 4y ago
Nice to see that someone gets it

p1necone 4y ago

> it doesn't matter if you do good for the wrong reasons though My take on this is that no, it doesn't. Philanthropy is useful regardless of the source. But it also absolves you of no guilt, and the shitty things you did in the past are still shitty, and you shouldn't expect people to like you any more just because you're donating to charity. (Although maybe people who know you personally can judge better whether you've improved.)

aaron695 4y ago
stocknoob 4y ago
I don’t think you can just draw a line in the timeline and say “the philanthropy after the crime is useful and therefore justified”. You have to look at the chain of causation.

camillomiller 4y ago

Not sure if spewing badly written propaganda about the bloodiest war of invasion America ever waged could be considered doing good

retcon 4y ago

Drexel was shut down by order of one certain ambitious NY Assistant AG by the name of Rudy Giuliani. The indictment? Criminal prosecution for statutory civil offences of two counts of failure to file stock transfer forms that by the letter of the law impose a fin e. Sentence: 12 years in federal. Appealed and won. Key witnesses for the prosecution included the convicted fraudster Ivan Boesky. RICO was the act abused to overnight shutter the single most critical liquidity provider to the savings and loans industry. American Thrifts to almost the last were bankrupted instantly. Cost to the taxpayer for the bailout? Cheap at four trillion. Edited extraneous adjectives and sp Oh and Lowell Milken, Mike's brother, was charged before anyone else by Giuliani in a overt and well documented hostage manipulation. Lowell never held operational executive office sufficient to have any involvement with the affair and his indictment was dropped. I should probably also note that Mike infamously never spent money on lifestyle and had to be brute forced into upgrading dress and toupee. Anyone on the street as successful as Mike and not spending money will have accumulated substantial wealth even if you don't count the Rodeo drive era. Much of which wealth went into settling civil suits. Edit2: Giuliani's correct job title at the time

tedheath123 4y ago
Regarding Giuliani and his handling of the case, you make a good point. The politicization of law enforcement is something we should all be concerned about. You're quite right that the charges were dropped against Lowell in return for a guilty plea from his brother. However, if Stewart's account in Den of Thieves is to be believed, then Lowell was intimately involved in the affair.