Fungibility of Money

Radley Balko:

Does anyone know if you can earmark a donation to the ACLU? I’d probably give money to the work they do on the drug war or on the PATRIOT Act, but frankly, I’d rather it didn’t go to, say, affirmative action advoacacy or, bizarrely, the “right” to a well-funded education.

Unless Radley is being more sardonic than usual, he should ask one of his colleagues at the Cato Institute to explain the fungibility of money to him.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. carpeicthus says:

    He may be thinking of the traidional University system, where you can earmark money so that it isn’t very fungible at all. You could fully fund a chair in a program that wasn’t on the university’s priority list and they couldn’t move it even if the general endowment was empty. I sincerely doubt the ACLU has similar constraints, though.