$2M to study ways of reducing poverty and preventing repeat of 9/11
From Wednesday, January 22, 2003
San Francisco multimillionaire and husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Richard Blum has made a $2 million donation to a leading thinktank to study how poverty can be reduced according to this San Francisco Chronicle story.
I am so glad someone gets it that the war on terrorism can only be won in the long term by starting to understand the reasons why young men (and women) can be convinced to become modern-day suicide-bombers etc. I believe it is the lack of opportunity and education, prevalence of poverty and disease, that makes so many young people across the Third World feel that they have no options.
Blum's gift to the Brookings Institution will fund research aimed at influencing the debate in Washington over America's foreign aid spending. President Bush has called for creating a Millennium Challenge Account that expands foreign aid by $10 billion over the next three years, but that idea faces a tough path as budget deficits widen and the public and Congress question overseas spending....
"We have to start dealing with the root causes of why we had 9/11," said Blum, chairman of Blum Capital Partners, a 28-year-old San Francisco-based merchant banking firm that has stakes in numerous companies, including Playtex Products and URS, an international engineering firm.