An American Lion

Panic!

The American Civil Liberties Union has lost a quarter of its yearly donations after a major donor cut off $19 million in annual donations because of economic difficulties.

David Gelbaum, a wealthy California conservationist, said he was indefinitely stopping the donations that had made him the New York-based group’s largest anonymous donor.

“For a number of years, your organization has received very substantial charitable contributions from me,” Gelbaum said in a statement. “My investments in alternative, clean energy companies have placed me in a highly illiquid position as a result of the general credit crisis in the American and world financial systems.”

Gelbaum also announced he was halting some $12 million in yearly gifts to the Sierra Club Foundation and about $50 million a year that he’s been giving to an organization serving veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gelbaum has given a total of $389 million to the groups from 2005 to 2009.

Gelbaum says he hopes others will step forward and replace his donations.

Mr. Gelbaum is a generous man, certainly, but THREE HUNDRED and EIGHTY-NINE MILLION DOLLARS?!? I just about choked on that sum. He would have been better off starting his own foundation to actually do what the ACLU, the Sierra Club, and the veterans service organization have been doing. I’m sorry, but what the hell was the ACLU doing with all of that money? And if the Sierra Club has been given that much money, why the hell aren’t all of the endangered animals living safe and sound in their own private habitats by now? Were they spending the money on office space, trinkets to hand out at conventions, and catering?

Goodness.

Oh, and kids, when a man with that kind of money says that he’s in a “highly illiquid” position, it means he’s selling everything in order to keep a roof over his head. I hope that he makes it, and can return himself to Sugar Daddy status, but, brother, highly illiquid means holy hell and a man with a shopping cart full of repossession papers is coming down the driveway.