Charities

Gambling halls and arts education may make strange bedfellows. But over the last three years, five Los Angeles-area card clubs have showered more than $100,000 on a Bay Area school for the arts some 400 miles away. The gifts offered more than a chance to help inner-city kids. They were an opportunity to please the state official who asked for the money, directly oversees the clubs and is widely viewed as the front-runner to be California's next governor: state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown.

The Knights of Columbus gave more that $75 million to charities and benevolent activities in 1987, up $12 illion from 1986, the Roman Catholic fraternal organization reports.

Despite success in shutting down the financing of terrorist groups within its borders, Saudi Arabia remains a top source of funding for Al Qaeda elsewhere and Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, the Government Accountability Office said in a report to Congress. The report does not name individuals or estimate how much money might be flowing to the terrorists. Since 2003, the Saudis have barred charities from transferring money outside the kingdom, but the GAO said that this hasn't prevented Saudi-based charities with branches abroad from serving as funding sources for terrorist groups.

Among the many proposals to raise taxes and cut and reallocate government spending to regain our country's economic health, one of the most sensitive is decreasing the tax deductibility of charitable contributions. The independent Congressional Budget Office recently reviewed 11 options for revising the income tax treatment of charitable giving, and it grouped them into four categories. All establish a floor below which contributions would not be deductible. One proposal retained tax deductibility only for donations exceeding $1,000 per couple or, alternatively, 2% of a person's adjusted gross income.

President Bush said Saturday that religious charities partly financed with federal money have helped reduce homelessness, found jobs for former inmates and helped combat malaria and HIV/AIDS overseas. Bush used his weekly radio address to trumpet the "remarkable difference these groups have made over the past eight years." The president said he wanted religious and secular charities to compete for government money on an equal footing.

The final installment of "Star Wars" opens in theaters May 19, but Lucasfilm and Twentieth Century Fox are planning special screenings in L.A. and nine other cities May 12 to benefit an assortment of charities. Tickets available to the public are priced at $500 and $1,000.

Americans gave a record $295 billion to charitable causes last year, exceeding the 2005 total that had been boosted by a surge in aid to victims of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma and the Asian tsunami, said a report released today. According to the Giving USA Foundation at Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy, contributions for 2006 increased 1%, from about $283 billion in 2005. Excluding donations for disaster relief, the total rose about 3%.

Re "Is L.A.'s middle class coming back?" Current, April 8 United Way's Bill Pitkin rightfully questions the newly released UCLA Anderson Forecast, which reports that income inequality in Los Angeles declined from 2000 to 2005. Pitkin points out that L.A. vastly lags the rest of country in some important personal wealth measurements. He also states that the loss of aerospace jobs in the 1990s precipitated the loss of many middle-class jobs. Thankfully, I left the aerospace industry before the downturn.

If you're unsure whether an organization is a legitimate tax-exempt charity, you can look it up on the Internal Revenue Service's Web site at http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/cgi/eosearch . The search prompt will ask for the group's name, city and state.

This time around he's bringing only six pairs of shoes. A year ago, his first time running the length of California, Tom Jones, 36, burned through 14 pairs. But the Huntington Beach man is hoping experience will make the difference, both in his run and his fund-raising efforts. With a goal of raising $250,000 for children's charities, Jones plans to make the 1,080-mile trek from the Oregon line to the Mexican border in 49 days.