I found God today. He’s the guy who could not get a date in High School – or College!
https://gladstone.org/our-science/people/r-sanders-williams
I also found the future headquarters of the Gideon Institute and the Revised Order of the Poor Knights of Christ. That rusty Quonset hut is perfect for folks who actually care about poor people, which Beryl Buck did. She never dreamed her Foundation would be host to egghead elitist parasites with 20 degrees – and nowhere to roost! God came out of the Egypt with 634,567 poor homeless people. It is said The Chosen People found a new home, but, this is still in litigation.
I am a poor high school dropout who knows a con-job when he sees one. The Buck Institute On Aging joined forces with Gladstone, to offer – longer life! Not eternal life, just a life that lasts longer – in a secular scientific fashion. Thank God for Science and Big-brained people!
There is one major problem – the poor will not be able to afford any scientific solutions that arise – in the foreseeable future. Only THE RICH can buy what God Williams has to sell. If the rich manage to get rid of Obamacare (so they will have more money) then the poor will parish much faster from the face of earth. There is nothing scientific, or religious, about wanting more money! But, that will not stop them from trying!
“Mrs. Buck left stock in the Belridge Oil Company, with her will stipulating that the income was to be used exclusively for ”nonprofit charitable, religious or educational purposes in providing care for the needy in Marin County, Calif., and for other nonprofit, charitable, religious or education purposes in that county.”
Just look at Bill God! How many have gone online to look at their savings to see if they got enough to buy what this guy is selling? The very idea puts the poor out in the cold. What a friggen tease! This is White Privilege – PLUS!
The Bucks lived in Marin County most of their life, and thus had to be aware of Marin City.
http://www.blackpast.org/aaw/marin-city-california-1942
There might be a solution. The Buck Inst. is offering partial immortality by offering donors their name on a chair! Your name – will live on! But, how fair is that to a poor man or woman – who can not spare a $1,000 dollars? Isn’t this a real sarcastic slap in the face?
I have a solution! Why not have a rich donor pick a poor person’s name out of a hat – and apply that name to the bottom of the chair? The only problem is, has the Buck Foundation made a list of poor folks in Marin County? That could spell trouble!
“Out of sight, out of mind!”
I have a solution to this dilemma! Get the BIE to do a study of the Poor of Marin – for the good of the poor!
“At the Buck Institute for Education (BIE), our highest priority is to help teachers prepare students for successful lives. We do this by showing teachers how to use Project Based Learning in all grade levels and subject areas. As a mission-driven nonprofit organization, BIE creates, gathers, and shares high-quality PBL instructional practices and products and provides highly effective services to teachers, schools, and districts.”
However this might not solve the problem created by Rich Arabs who wanted to attache themselves to this All American Trust! What? Where did they come from?
“Buck insiders said the faculty balked when Kennedy floated the idea of naming a school of geroscience at the institute after King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in hopes of securing a $5 million donation. That idea was eventually abandoned.”
Isn’t Saudi Arabia the place where the 911 terrorists were born? They had a life after death plan. Lawyer Knights Templar of the New Scientific Banking Ethic can take care of this problem! In my proposal, I’ll show you how!
Note how THE POOR are being used as a holy smoke screen. It’s all O.K. if its FOR THE POOR. This king thing really freezes shit up. You don’t want to get caught doing something stupid like giving free stuff to the poor – without making them jump through ROYAL hoops, too! It is against sharia law for a wealthy Arab to hand money to a commoner, directly. It much pass through the hands of ten family members, first. Weird! This kind of shit will never sell in America!
Why not take fifty poor folks to McDonalds while you shoot the shit next door at the finest restaurant in Larkspur with members of the Royal Family? This has turned into a summer blockbuster! We need to get our minds off the Trump Family – for a little while!
“And, there they go in their limos! There will be no Arabic writing on our our walls to remind our homeless veterans what they fought against. To hell with foreign oil bucks!”
For the time being, give me a million dollars for my blog, and I will move my laptop into Rust Haven – as soon as possible. There’s real work to be done!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quonset_hut
Let me begin by presenting the BIG PROBLEM. Life is inherently evil, because you must die – and lose everything! How unfair (and evil) is this? The poor should be sacrificed, if that’s what it takes for a few to feel – less cheated!
“But there are pockets of poverty in Marin County, which has 250,000 residents, and 10,000 residents receive welfare benefits, according to county officials.”
Why not buy ‘The Ten Thousand’ Cadillacs so they can flaunt it all the way to Free Food Stamp&Welfare Church?
“Life is – good to me!”
Hey! Not bad! Instant results! People are getting suspicious.
Do you think God has a powerful Protestant Work Ethic thing going?
“There will be no FREE LUNCH in my house!”
Bill God claims he is 238 years of age! Could it be true?
There is no cure for the common cold, and, common greed! Beryl Buck now knows this as she looks down from heaven.
“Where’s my RELIGIOUS PROGRAM?”
My God! It is her billion! Couldn’t they have humored the old gal, put a little chapel, somewhere in the vortex?
Jon Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
Two men added to the institute’s board of trustees in particular raised concerns: Fouad Makhzoumi, a Lebanese native and CEO of Future Group, who joined the board in 2014; and Rubar Sandi, chairman of the Sandi Group, who joined the board in 2015. Sandi is an Iraqi from a wealthy Kurdish family who immigrated to the United States in the late 1970s
.The Sandi Group’s work with Texas-based DynCorp has been investigated by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, according to David Phinney, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance reporter whose work includes a series on contractors and private military companies working in Iraq.
http://www.thesandigroup.com/baghdadhousing.html
Mrs. Buck, a childless widow, died in 1975 when she was 75 years old. For many years she and her husband, a physician, lived quietly in Ross, a scenic, suburban community north of California’s Golden Gate in wealthy Marin County. But there are pockets of poverty in Marin County, which has 250,000 residents, and 10,000 residents receive welfare benefits, according to county officials.
Mrs. Buck left stock in the Belridge Oil Company, with her will stipulating that the income was to be used exclusively for ”nonprofit charitable, religious or educational purposes in providing care for the needy in Marin County, Calif., and for other nonprofit, charitable, religious or education purposes in that county.”
Name a Chair
We invite you to take advantage of a new opportunity to have your name or the name of a loved one become a permanent part of the Drexler Auditorium.
Named in honor of Fred Drexler, one of the Buck Institute’s first Board members, the Drexler Auditorium is a hub of activity at the Institute.Home to both scientific and community seminar, as well as many special events and presentations, the Drexler Auditorium is enjoyed daily by Institute faculty, staff and guests.
Each of the 227 seats in the Auditorium is available for sponsorship. Sponsors may chose any available seat.
With a gift of $1,000 an engraved nameplate will be prominently affixed to a seat in this unique venue in our beautiful I.M. Pei designed building.
This is a meaningful way to show your support of the nation’s first independent research institute dedicated to understanding the connection between aging and chronic disease.
For more information, please contact:
Attorney Mary McEachron appears at a meeting of the Marin Board of Supervisors in 2004. The chief administrative officer and general counsel for the Buck Institute for Research on Aging resigned. Robert Tong — Marin IJ
During the course of my life in medicine, science has provided wonderfully effective new therapies in some areas of medicine—but sadly not so in others. Relentless varieties of cardiovascular, viral and neurological diseases continue to confound patients and physicians—and here is where Gladstone focuses its efforts. A core belief in the ability of science to overcome such diseases, in fact, animates all of Gladstone. We are a community of scientists where our concern for patients and our curiosity about the fundamentals of biology are combined in a distinctive—and perhaps even unique—blend of motivation and drive. We value the best of scientific inquiry, including elegance of experimental design, leaps of creative genius and seminal discoveries that drive a deeper and more insightful understanding of biology. We value the imagination, innovation, perseverance and intellectual discipline that are the hallmarks of excellence in basic science. And in expressing these values, we are committed to providing new knowledge and inventions that empower the biomedical ecosystem to create and deliver new medicines, procedures and diagnostics to allay human suffering caused by illness. Science overcoming disease—Gladstone gathers together the talented professionals and the volunteers and philanthropists who together can make this happen.
Sincerely,
R. Sanders “Sandy” Williams, MD
Turmoil at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging continued Tuesday with the resignation of Mary McEachron, the institute’s chief administrative officer and general counsel.
The Buck Institute’s president and CEO, Brian Kennedy, resigned on Friday. Kennedy hasn’t commented on his resignation, but former Marin supervisor Gary Giacomini, who played a key role in the formation of the institute and has contacts within the organization, has said Kennedy was forced out because he opposed a possible merger or alliance with Gladstone Institutes, based in San Francisco.
In response to questions from the Independent Journal, Larry Rosenberger, chairman of the Buck Institute’s board of trustees, said Friday that it had been determined that an alliance with Gladstone “would not be mutually beneficial at this time.”
Kennedy was replaced by Edward Lanphier, a member of the Buck Institute’s board since 2012.
Giacomini said McEachron decided to reject Lanphier’s offer because she believes a merger with Gladstone Institutes would break confidence with the 1986 court decision that created both the Marin Community Foundation and the Buck Institute using Buck Trust money.
Giacomini doesn’t expect McEachron to remain silent for long. He said when he spoke with her Tuesday she said her passion for the mission of the Buck Institute continues and now she could “express it without restraint.”
“She’s a tigress, a force majeure,” Giacomini said. “The Furies are really going to be unleashed.”
http://www.marinij.com/article/zz/20071201/NEWS/712019947
The Marin Community Foundation oversees the Buck Trust’s $923 million in assets, which began with the estate of Marin resident Beryl Buck.
The trust was valued at $7 million at the time of Buck’s death in 1975.
In 1986, the San Francisco Foundation, which initially managed the trust, lost a lengthy legal battle to distribute the money throughout the Bay Area. As a result, the Marin Community Foundation was established to distribute the money only in Marin County, in accordance with Buck’s will.
Each year, the foundation contributes about 4 percent of the Buck Trust’s assets to Marin County organizations.
Another 1 percent of the assets funds three major projects: the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato; the Buck Institute for Education, an organization that researches the practice of teaching and process of learning; and the Marin Institute, which attempts to reduce alcohol abuse.
At the Buck Institute for Education (BIE), our highest priority is to help teachers prepare students for successful lives. We do this by showing teachers how to use Project Based Learning in all grade levels and subject areas. As a mission-driven nonprofit organization, BIE creates, gathers, and shares high-quality PBL instructional practices and products and provides highly effective services to teachers, schools, and districts.
For teachers, BIE offers professional development on how to design, assess, and manage projects that engage and motivate students. For schools, BIE helps bring coherence to PBL practices across grade levels and subject areas, and supports the creation of school-wide processes and structures to support PBL. For districts, BIE offers unrivaled service and expertise in creating and sustaining district-wide PBL initiatives. The exponential increase in demand for its services and products speak to BIE’s ability to help educators around the world provide a better education for all students.
http://www.bie.org/about/what_pbl
http://www.bie.org/blog/gold_standard_pbl_essential_project_design_element
Sustained Inquiry
To inquire is to seek information or to investigate – it’s a more active, in-depth process than just “looking something up” in a book or online. The inquiry process takes time, which means a Gold Standard project lasts more than a few days. In PBL, inquiry is iterative; when confronted with a challenging problem or question, students ask questions, find resources to help answer them, then ask deeper questions – and the process repeats until a satisfactory solution or answer is developed. Projects can incorporate different information sources, mixing the traditional idea of “research” – reading a book or searching a website – with more real-world, field-based interviews with experts, service providers and users. Students also might inquire into the needs of the users of a product they’re creating in a project, or the audience for a piece of writing or multimedia.
Authenticity
When people say something is authentic, they generally mean it is real or genuine, not fake. In education, the concept has to do with how “real-world” the learning or the task is. Authenticity increases student motivation and learning. A project can be authentic in several ways, often in combination. It can have an authentic context, such as when students solve problems like those faced by people in the world outside of school (e.g., entrepreneurs developing a business plan, engineers designing a bridge, or advisors to the President recommending policy). It can involve the use of real-world processes, tasks and tools, and performance standards, such as when students plan an experimental investigation or use digital editing software to produce videos approaching professional quality. It can have a real impact on others, such as when students address a need in their school or community (e.g., designing and building a school garden, improving a community park, helping local immigrants) or create something that will be used or experienced by others. Finally, a project can have personal authenticity when it speaks to students’ own concerns, interests, cultures, identities, and issues in their lives.
McEachron, a graduate of Harvard Law School, was one of the lawyers who successfully defended the Buck Trust’s provision to keep its funds in Marin. As a legacy of that legal battle, the Buck Institute is guaranteed to receive about 15 percent of the trust’s yearly net income, which in 2015 amounted to $5.7 million.
Interviewed early last month when news of talks with Gladstone Institues first became public, McEachron said, “The continued receipt of the Buck Trust money is dependent on maintenance of our research campus here in Marin and on continuation of our mission of research and education on aging.”
https://www.marinhhs.org/affordable-care-act-aca-marin-county
http://www.marinij.com/article/zz/20131114/NEWS/131118686
http://www.buckinstitute.org/healthyaging
http://www.buckinstitute.org/name-a-chair
We invite you to take advantage of a new opportunity to have your name or the name of a loved one become a permanent part of the Drexler Auditorium.
Named in honor of Fred Drexler, one of the Buck Institute’s first Board members, the Drexler Auditorium is a hub of activity at the Institute.Home to both scientific and community seminar, as well as many special events and presentations, the Drexler Auditorium is enjoyed daily by Institute faculty, staff and guests.
Each of the 227 seats in the Auditorium is available for sponsorship. Sponsors may chose any available seat.
With a gift of $1,000 an engraved nameplate will be prominently affixed to a seat in this unique venue in our beautiful I.M. Pei designed building.
This is a meaningful way to show your support of the nation’s first independent research institute dedicated to understanding the connection between aging and chronic disease.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Eric M. Verdin, an expert on aging research and a former associate director and senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute for Virology and Immunology — the same institution with which Buck was considering a merger — was appointed president and CEO of the Novato institute, the Board of Trustees announced Friday.
The move comes just weeks after the resignations of Mary McEachron, the institute’s chief administrative officer and general counsel, and former president and CEO Brian Kennedy, who hasn’t commented on his resignation.
“Today marks a true milestone at the Buck and an incredible investment in our future,” Chairman Larry Rosenberger said in a statement. “The appointment of Eric to head this Institute reinforces our position as a leading player on the world’s scientific stage, and will enable us to expand upon the Buck’s global leadership in Geroscience.”
The $10 million pledge from board members is the largest single collective donation the institute has received since its inception in 1999.
http://www.marinij.com/article/NO/20161101/NEWS/161109985
According to institute insiders who requested anonymity, some faculty members expressed unease about a few of the associations made during this period.
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Two men added to the institute’s board of trustees in particular raised concerns: Fouad Makhzoumi, a Lebanese native and CEO of Future Group, who joined the board in 2014; and Rubar Sandi, chairman of the Sandi Group, who joined the board in 2015. Sandi is an Iraqi from a wealthy Kurdish family who immigrated to the United States in the late 1970s.
The Sandi Group’s work with Texas-based DynCorp has been investigated by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, according to David Phinney, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance reporter whose work includes a series on contractors and private military companies working in Iraq.
Phinney said the Sandi Group teamed with DynCorp on a massive multi-year U.S. State Department contract to train more than 100,000 Iraqi police officers, as well as dozens of other projects.
CNN reported in 2007 that the “State Department had been unable to account for most of $1.2 billion in funding that it gave to DynCorp International to train Iraqi police.”
Phinney said the matter has never been fully resolved.
“There is a DynCorp fraud case that has been reintroduced after a five-year hiatus that involves Sandi,” Phinney said in an interview.
According to The Guardian newspaper, Makhzoumi “was involved in the scandal which brought down the disgraced Conservative politician Jonathan Aitken.”
Aitken served as Minister of State for Defense Procurement under former Conservative British Prime Minister John Major.
The Guardian reported that Makhzoumi “recruited Aitken to the board of one of his companies in the 1980s. But Aitken failed to declare the directorship and, as the arms sales minister, promoted a military equipment deal for his friend in the 1990s.”
But McEachron, who spoke to the Independent Journal soon after her resignation, said, “I don’t know anything like that about him. He runs the largest charity in Lebanon. To my knowledge, there was never any controversy about any members of the board.”
In May 2014, the Buck Advisory Council awarded Makhzoumi’s wife, May, its Global Humanitarian Award. The council was created in 2010 in an effort to cultivate international donors. The award came a year after May Makhzoumi made headlines when it became known that she had contributed over 1 million British pounds to Britain’s Conservative Party since 2010.
Saudi honor scuttled
Buck insiders said the faculty balked when Kennedy floated the idea of naming a school of geroscience at the institute after King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in hopes of securing a $5 million donation. That idea was eventually abandoned.
Insiders also said that Sandi and Jostein Eikeland, a Norwegian-born entrepreneur, each pledged $5 million to the institute, but Sandi reneged on his pledge and Eikeland ultimately limited his contribution to $1 million.
Lanphier confirmed that the pledges fell short of what had been promised.
“These were new board members that were brought on, mostly of an international background,” Lanphier said.
Regarding the $10 million in new pledges, Lanphier declined to say which board members had made them, but he said they were solid and would be redeemed over the next three to five years.
“Everybody who is involved in this particular gift and these pledges is both local as well as having a long and serious dedicated history of giving to the Buck,” Lanphier said.
Interviewed in early October, when news of merger talks between the Buck Institute and Gladstone Institutes became public, McEachron said the institute was “doing better financially than in our entire history.”
She rejected the notion that the overture to Gladstone came due to any financial crisis within the institute.
“There has been borrowing in the past; it’s now pay as you go,” McEachron said. “We’re making all our loan payments as they come due, and we’re nevertheless experiencing a significant surplus from operations.”
‘Weathered the worst’
After her resignation, McEachron shared a copy of a PowerPoint presentation that Kennedy made to the institute’s board prior to his resignation. The presentation was titled, “Financially, we have already weathered the worst.” It detailed how the institute had coped with the loss of $10 million in revenue over the past five years.
The presentation stated that the institute spent $450,000 on legal expenses related to a $12 million lawsuit filed against it by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2014.
The Buck Institute paid $2 million to terminate an interest rate swap with Lehman Brothers soon after the firm filed for bankruptcy in September 2008. The swap was designed to reduce the risk on floating rate bonds the institute was holding.
Lehman Brothers sued, asserting that the institute underpaid by more than $12 million when it canceled the swap. The two parties settled the matter out of court in February for an undisclosed sum.
“I can’t give you an exact number; that is part of the settlement,” Lanphier said.
Kennedy’s PowerPoint presentation stated that between fiscal 2012 and fiscal 2016 two of the institute’s major grant programs concluded — a $5 million geroscience grant from the National Institutes of Health and a $2 million stem cell shared research and training grant from California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
The PowerPoint presentation recalled that after sequestration of federal funds began in March 2013, the institute experienced budgetary reductions in previously awarded grants ranging from 3 to 5 percent — requiring a 5 percent cut in the fiscal 2013 budget.
The presentation also cited $1.5 million in increased debt payments, and showed that the number of faculty members declined from 23 in fiscal 2015 to 21 in fiscal 2016. It projected 18 faculty members in fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2018.
Leasing revenue
McEachron, however, said the institute had benefited from significant revenue growth over the past two years from leasing space at the institute and corporate-sponsored research. Revenue from these two sources grew from $1.2 million in fiscal 2014 to $2.5 million in fiscal 2015.
The institute is currently leasing 27,000 square feet of its 245,000-square-foot campus to for-profit businesses. These include BioMarin, Ultragenyx, Cellular Dynamics, An2H Discovery Limited and Excel Venture Management.
In fiscal 2017, leasing and corporate-sponsored research are each expected to account for about 9 percent of the Buck’s revenue.
Lanphier said he expects corporate-sponsored research and leasing to continue to be important revenue sources for the institute. Regarding the leased space, however, he added, “Ultimately we’d love to have that space occupied by faculty doing research.”
The San Francisco Foundation, which is supposed to distribute all income from a $400 million charitable trust within affluent Marin County, will ask a court Monday to be allowed to spend some of the money in poorer Bay area communities.
But the request faces formidable opposition from Marin County officials and leaders of local organizations, who have been joined by California’s Attorney General and the family and the lawyer of the Beryl H. Buck. They want to maintain the provision in Mrs. Buck’s will giving the money to Marin County only. Some critics of the foundation also want to end its control over the trust.
A coalition of 46 nonprofit groups supports the foundation’s petition.
Both sides have lined up scores of witnesses for the case, to be heard in Marin Superior Court by a judge from outside the county, Homer Thompson of Santa Clara, and it is expected to drag on for months. The dispute could also have wide-reaching impact, affecting both the ways charitable trusts are created and the way they are administered.
Mrs. Buck, a childless widow, died in 1975 when she was 75 years old. For many years she and her husband, a physician, lived quietly in Ross, a scenic, suburban community north of California’s Golden Gate in wealthy Marin County. But there are pockets of poverty in Marin County, which has 250,000 residents, and 10,000 residents receive welfare benefits, according to county officials.
Mrs. Buck left stock in the Belridge Oil Company, with her will stipulating that the income was to be used exclusively for ”nonprofit charitable, religious or educational purposes in providing care for the needy in Marin County, Calif., and for other nonprofit, charitable, religious or education purposes in that county.”
The distribution of income was left to the San Francisco Foundation, which manages a number of charitable legacies in five Bay Area counties. When Mrs. Buck died, the estate was valued at $10 million, but in 1979, Belridge was bought by the Shell Oil Company and the Buck Trust received $250 million.
In its petition, the foundation said the trust’s assets totaled $400 million and the $30 million it receives in income annually is too much to spend each year in the county, adding: ”Such a requirement encourages indolence, artificiality and triviality in philanthropy, while ignoring crying needs elsewhere.”
Martin Paley, the foundation’s director, said the request to drop the restriction was voted by the group’s distribution committee, 4 to 2, with one member abstaining.
Mr. Paley said the foundation had been responsive to the Marin community, scheduling group meetings with residents to shape programs. The Foundation has distributed $120 million in Marin County since 1979 and said it would continue to give preference to Marin organizations.
In support of its request, the foundation cited an ancient doctrine that it argued would permit the court, facing changed circumstances, to modify the terms of a charitable trust while remaining in harmony with the donor’s intent.
That doctrine of ”cy pres,” comes from the Norman French phrase ”cy pres comme possible,” meaning ”as near as possible.” It is applicable, insisted Stephen V. Bomse, a foundation lawyer, because Mrs. Buck’s charitable intentions would be maintained while making appropriate use of the vastly increased resources, which she could not have anticipated. Will Writer Is Opposed
The foundation’s request is opposed, among others, by John Elliott Cook, the Buck family attorney for 50 years, who drew the will.
Ronald Hayes Malone, a lawyer representing Mr. Cook, argued the foundation accepted the distribution responsibility in 1979, signing the stipulation limiting aid to Marin County, when it was ”well aware” the assets had grown to at least $260 million.
He also said foundation was attempting to stretch the meaning of the ”cy pres” doctrine, adding that if the foundation was successful in overturning the Marin County stipulation it could discourage new charitable trusts. Potential donors would fear their wishes would not be followed, he said.
Rosamond Press 
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