2,909,547 Reasons To Ask Artists For Free Labor

(Part of a series in which I make up for not updating my blog recently.)

The CitiCenter's education department asked me to perform for free at a festival they were organizing.

I declined.

I then dug into their 2010 tax forms (perfectly legal, as the CitiCenter is a 501(c)3 non-profit and is required to make their tax returns public) and discovered that this same organization that was asking me for free labor had, in 2010, paid its top five most highly compensated officers and one bank executive a total of $2,909,547.

As I observe in my column at The Clyde Fitch Report:

Nathan Pusey, an officer at CitiBank, in 2010 received a total of $1,685,240 from the CitiCenter; more than the five highest compensated officers within the organization combined.

If one reads Pusey’s LinkedIn profile very carefully, one will see that he is so modest, that he (or the assistant who keeps his profile updated) doesn’t even hint at what it was he did for CitiCenter that warranted that $1,685,240 transaction to his person.