Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red Cros

[mrmom2]

Establishment charities have criminal history of stealing disaster funds

As the aftermath of hurricane Katrina continues to wreak mayhem and havoc amid reports of mass looting, shooting at rescue helicopters, rapes and murders, establishment media organs are promoting the Red Cross as a worthy organization to give donations to.

The biggest website in the world, Yahoo.com, displays a Red Cross donation link prominently on its front page.

Every time there is a major catastrophe the Red Cross and similar organizations like United Way are given all the media attention while other charities are left in the shadows. This is not to say that the vast majority of Red Cross workers are not decent people who simply want to help those in need.

But what the media fails consistently to remember in their promotion of the organization is that the American Red Cross have been caught time and time again withholding money in the wake of horrible disasters that require immediate release of funds.

The Red Cross, under the Liberty Fund, collected $564 million in donations after 9/11. Months after the event, the Red Cross had distributed only $154 million. The Red Cross' explanation for keeping the majority of the money was that it would be used to help 'fight the war on terror'. To the victims, this meant that the money was going towards bombing broken backed third world countries like Afghanistan and setting up surveillance cameras and expanding the police state in US cities, and not towards helping them rebuild their lives.

Then Red Cross President Dr. Bernadine Healy arrogantly responded when questioned about the withholding of funds by stating, "The Liberty Fund is a war fund. It has evolved into a war fund."

Despite the family members of victims of 9/11 complaining bitterly to a House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight panel, the issue seemed to be brushed under the carpet and the mud didn't stick.

The Red Cross' scandalous activities reach back far before 9/11.

After the devastating San Francisco earthquake in 1989, the Red Cross passed on only $10 million of the $50 million that had been raised, and banked the rest.
Similar donations after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the Red River flooding in 1997 were also greedily withheld.

Insight Magazine reported,

“The first days after the bombing,” says one family member, “people from all over the country were sending checks in lieu of flowers and we were getting a lot of checks and cash every day — hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. Then the Red Cross went down to the post office and made arrangements to collect the mail and they would deliver it to us in bulk. All the mail had been opened, and from that point on there never was a dime, even in letters that said money was enclosed.”

The Red Cross has been caught engaging in rampant corruption on an all too regular basis.

3,000 people died after thousands of Canadians were infected with HIV and hepatitis C from tainted blood supplies.The Canadian Red Cross pleaded guilty to the charges earlier this year after they had been directly caught knowlingly shipping out the infected blood.

Smaller charities that were involved with the 2004 Tsunami relief project went public to say that large charities like Red Cross and United Way were engaged in secret backroom negotiations with each other that meant a large portion of the donation money was purposefully restricted from reaching the most needy areas affected by the disaster.

The history is clear, the Red Cross and other large so-called charities are in actual fact front group collection agencies for the military industrial complex.

Many informed historians have even alleged that the Red Cross was used as a Skull and Bones cover to overthrow The Russian Czar and pave the way for the rise of the Bolsheviks.

Do not give any money to the Red Cross unless you support the expansion of empire abroad and police state at home. Find a smaller trustworthy organization in the local area of New Orleans and make your donation to them.

 

[Martin Le Acadien]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

Salvation Army or Catholic charities has a big presence down here,
Red Cross acts too little, too late.

 

[mrmom2]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

Thanks Martin anybody else you can think of that we can contribute to would be great . :wink:

 

[missile]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

Good to see that you are all right

 

[Martin Le Acadien]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

Good to see that you are all right

Thanks, read my dispatches scattered throughout, its been a rough 2 weeks.

 

[missile]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

I expect a mailing from The Salvation Army looking for donations to this cause..in fact,I'm looking forward to responding to it.The Red Cross is nothing but a business concern here & I'd bleed out in the streets before those bastards got one drop of my AB-

 

[Martin Le Acadien]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

Thanks Martin anybody else you can think of that we can contribute to would be great . :wink:

Scammers are all over, fake charities abound right now, the only TV broadcast station operating is WWL channel 4 and they have had a program running about this!

Red Cross is on the scene but their presence is heavy in some places, light in others! Salvation Army has the best rep followed by catholic charities. Most fund raisers eat up the money they raise and very little trickles down.

Salvation Army needs Tooneys quite bad, they are running a lot of kitchens in conjunction with the Texas Baptist Men's Union.

Investigate the Charity closely, like I said, scammers out in full force!

Red Cross wouldn't be bad if they only used the money locally instead of hoarding and banking it for a rainey day.

Right now FEMA is handing out $2000.00 credit cards to each head of household. My wife is talking about using ours to go to Canada!

 

[missile]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

A lot of us would love to have some of our Acadians return home We have sent 4 ships full of supplies your way..should be putting into port there tuesday.

 

[damngrumpy]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

What shocked me most was how unprepared the government agencies were and then they tried to blame each other for the problems they faced. Those who most needed help didn't receive assistance for days, in fact those at the Convention Centre, were ignored for days, most thinking rescue people would naturally think the second largest facillity would house thousands of stranded people. If Federal, State and local agencies really cared, about the poor and ill and aged they would have bused them out days before the storm, and not after many had died.
What is really sad is that this never needed to happen. The budget for flood control has been cut year after year.
How is it that the government is will to build a two hundred and some million dollar bridge to a vacant island in Alaska, and not repair and upgrade flood control for a large urban area that is built below sea level on the coast. That raises questions as well, why would people build there in the first place?
As for relief, the world should come to the aid of these people as we should where ever such disaster takes place.
The Salvation Army is probably the best people to support as the Red Cross has come up short several times.
The most important action must be to help those who need it first and formost, but serious questions must be asked later, as to how the system broke down to such a degree.

 

[missile]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

I wish people would be offering to adopt all those parentless children with the speed that they are with the stray dogs left in the city

 

[gopher]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

The scheming Red Cross =

http://slate.msn.com/id/2058498


The American Red Cross
They took your blood and your money. Now it's payback time.
By David Plotz
Posted Friday, Nov. 9, 2001, at 10:30 AM PT







Outgoing American Red Cross President Bernadine Healy.


On Tuesday morning, those do-gooders at the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee decided to sponsor a Red Cross blood drive to benefit the victims of Sept. 11. Dr. Bernadine Healy, the American Red Cross' outgoing president, was the only donor. She was strapped down, jabbed with needles, and then methodically drained of her life fluids by a half-dozen enraged members of Congress.

The blood-letting of Healy was the chief goal of Tuesday's subcommittee hearing on "fraud, waste, and abuse" involving the Sept. 11 charities. Immediately after the terrorist attacks, Healy had established a special Red Cross "Liberty Fund" earmarked for Sept. 11 relief. It collected $564 million before it closed at the end of October—almost as much as all the other 9/11 charities combined. The Red Cross has already spent more than $150 million of that—orders of magnitude more than any other charity—including $70 million for immediate disaster relief and nearly $50 million parceled out to victims' families in checks of $20,000 and more.


Continue Article

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The members of Congress were driven into their vampiric frenzy by the American Red Cross' decision to sock away much of the $564 million rather than disburse it all to victims. The Red Cross diverted $50 million to establish a "strategic blood reserve" that will allow the organization to store large supplies of frozen blood. (In the next crisis, hospitals could draw down the iced blood rather than depend on blood drives.) And the organization planned to reserve at least $200 million for longer-term needs, including relief for victims of future terrorist attacks.

So when Healy showed up to testify, she took a bipartisan beating for what members viewed as a bait-and-switch. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., thundered that the Red Cross "took advantage of a very tragic situation." Another representative hinted that Congress should consider changing consumer regulations to forbid a charity from misleading solicitations. New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a witness on the same panel as Healy, called the Red Cross' decision to "sequester" money "anathema to the American public's expectations. … People believed victims were going to get this money." Spitzer has also threatened legal action against the Red Cross for violating consumer-protection laws. House members pounded on tables and shouted down Healy when she tried to defend herself. (They also walloped Healy for the Red Cross' reluctance to participate in a centralized database for Sept. 11 charities.)

There is something rich in the idea of members of the U.S. Congress—the grand champions of hiding pork—lecturing anyone for 1) collecting too much money from the American public; and 2) not spending funds exactly as promised. And it's perverse that virtually the only American institution that Congress has criticized since Sept. 11 is the one that has done the most to help victims of Sept. 11.

The American Red Cross' fundamental problem post-Sept. 11 is that it's been too American, not enough Red Cross.

The American Red Cross is one of the nation's great civic institutions. Founded in 1881, the American Red Cross boomed under the leadership of Clara Barton, who transformed it into the most important American charity. The American Red Cross is recognized by the original International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland and embraces its principles of neutral humanitarianism. (How does the American Red Cross connect to the international Red Cross? Click here to find out.)

Today, the American Red Cross boasts more than 1,000 chapters, tens of thousands of employees, and 1.2 million volunteers. It provides aid at nearly 70,000 disasters every year and collects half the nation's blood supply. Its last two leaders, Elizabeth Dole and Healy, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, have been among the most formidable women in American politics. The American Institute of Philanthropy considers the American Red Cross one of the best-run U.S. charities, spending $90 of every $100 raised on program services. The American Red Cross has maintained its largely stellar reputation by imitating its Swiss sponsors. By the standards of American nonprofits, the Red Cross has been exceptionally apolitical and self-effacing.

But since Sept. 11, the American Red Cross has been acting more American than Swiss. Restraint, self-effacement, and modesty have been tossed. Its mistakes are mistakes of excess. The Red Cross raised too much money and collected too much blood. It started collecting as soon as the planes hit the towers, and it kept going. Healy, a camera hog, kept appearing on television to beseech donors to open their wallets and their veins. Red Cross ads appeared everywhere. The Red Cross kept collecting millions even when it had no idea what it would do with the cash. The Red Cross kept sucking blood even when it was apparent that there were few survivors who needed it. The rival blood agency stopped stockpiling days before the Red Cross.

The Red Cross treated Sept. 11 opportunistically—a chance to do good in the short term and to make plans for the long term. Healy and Co. kept banking blood because they saw the chance to increase the nation's blood reserve from a few days' worth to more than a week's. Like any self-respecting American business, the Red Cross figured it would use its boom time to break into new markets. Healy seized the moment to initiate the frozen blood reserve. She also proposed spending some of the $200 million reserve to prepare for a disaster caused by weapons of mass destruction, something the Red Cross has never before addressed. The Red Cross has expanded its traditional relief function beyond feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. It is spending millions on grief counseling for Sept. 11 victims.

Even its bait-and-switch advertising campaign, while unseemly for such a respected charity, fits comfortably in the tradition of American do-good fund raising. Charities always "parade around an example that is particularly gut-wrenching" in order to pry open wallets, says Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy. (And, to be fair, while the Red Cross implied that its relief efforts would help the Sept. 11 victims, it always left wiggle room. Healy incessantly talks about "Sept. 11 and its aftermath.")

Besides, it's hard to argue with the logic of the bait-and-switch. The Red Cross shouldn't simply hand over enormous checks to victims. It has a responsibility, in the cool light of day, to exercise good judgment by analyzing what our national disaster relief needs really are. To expect, as Congress seems to, that the Red Cross be simply a cash conduit between donors and victims is terribly shortsighted. One of the jobs of charities is creative deception: They trick donors with the most extreme and heart-rending stories because they know that that's the only way to open wallets. Then charities use their good sense (we hope) to spend the money wisely. The Red Cross raised far more than it needs to tide victims over until federal compensation starts flowing in the spring. It would be foolish for the Red Cross to give all that money to victims when 1) they don't need it; and 2) there are so many other good ways to use it. Would the Red Cross have raised $564 million if they told donors that the money would go to a blood reserve? Of course not. But will the nation be better off having a $50 million blood reserve? Probably. The Red Cross exploited the national broken heart to fill its coffers, but it did so for the right reasons.

But the Red Cross seems to be abandoning its sensible if politically obtuse policy. It announced yesterday that it will conduct a "top-to-bottom" review of its plan, signaling that it would reverse, or at least limit, its decision to reserve half the $564 million for future needs. Instead, it probably will give more of the cash immediately to indirect victims, folks who have lost jobs because of Sept. 11.

This change of heart comes too late to save Healy, who has paid for the Red Cross' excesses with her job. The board ousted her two weeks ago—officially she resigned—for unspecified reasons, but clearly they dumped her to dull their image. She had politicized the organization: She withheld the American payment to the International Red Cross Federation to protest the exclusion of Israel's Red Cross equivalent (Magen David Adom) from the Red Cross Movement. Click here for more on this tempest. She's also famously abrasive. (This is a woman whose own husband told the Washington Post, "I don't have a problem with her, but I could be in the minority.") Healy is the blood sacrifice for the Red Cross' forcefulness. The board replaced the telegenic, belligerent Healy with a bland and neutral figure: the Red Cross' lawyer, Harold Decker. The United States, replaced by Switzerland.



Related in Slate
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you missed the explanation of the Red Cross organization, click here. If you want to know about the fight over Israel's admission to the Red Cross movement, click here. In "Moneybox," Rob Walker raps companies for exploiting the Red Cross relief efforts in their own opportunistic marketing. Zac Unger describes doing Ground Zero rescue work of the sort supported by the Red Cross.

Related on the Web
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The American Red Cross site is incredibly defensive. A pop-up window immediately opens, listing how the organization has disbursed more than $150 million for relief. There are incredibly testy FAQs, press releases, and this "Myths and Facts" page about how the Red Cross collects and spends contributions. Here is Healy's biography and the press release about her departure. You can listen to the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee gut Healy. The International Committee of the Red Cross posts updates on its Afghanistan operations, which have now been exiled to Pakistan. It also offers this unspeakably complex, yet still incomplete, explanation of the relationships among the ICRC, national societies, and federations. The American Institute of Philanthropy's CharityWatch includes the American Red Cross among its top-rated groups.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


reader's comments follow:





What did you think of this article?
Join the Fray, our reader discussion forum
POST A MESSAGE READ MESSAGES

Fray Editor's Notes:

One whole set of posts can be summarized by Publius's "I wouldn't give 2c to the Red Cross." Jobs you wouldn't want right now might be PR for the Red Cross: we searched for posts in their favor, or even just a word of defense; we found Michael Murray, below, but they're thin on the ground. Many veterans (such as 1-2-Oscar here) had long-held grudges.


Comments:

The thinking seems to be that it's OK if the Red Cross uses deceptive advertising and diverts money intended for one purpose to another if the ends are good. The point is that it is immoral to deceive and immoral to use peoples' money for purposes against their stated intention. The money should either have been returned to the donors or they should have asked the donors if it was all right with them to hold it in reserve for another emergency. Better yet, once they had enough money, they should have told people that they were asking for money for a future emergency. Lying, deception are morally wrong--period.

--Ishamel Yeager

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


Seems to me as long as the money is used to support efforts of the Red Cross for this and future disasters they are keeping faith. I don't feel particularly defended by the House on this. I trust social services (and emergency services) dispersed by groups like this to a greater degree than Government (which has no restrictions they do not place on themselves). Given a dollar slated for social services and a choice between the Red Cross and Washington the choice would be easy.

--Michael Murray

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


The bottom line is they blew it and deserve the chastisement they are now receiving. That their intentions are/were good is beyond repute. Everyone's intentions were good. That is not the point. If the Red Cross wanted to use the money for its own larger, long-term disaster relief purposes, they should never have set up the separate Liberty Fund to begin with. They should have made it clear that any donations were going into their general fund, to be used as they deemed best. Instead, they went in just the opposite direction and promoted themselves aggressively as (one of) the prime vehicle to donate directly to the September 11 victims.

Why did they do this? Because they knew very well that after the tragedy nobody wanted to give money to the Red Cross, they wanted to give money to the victims. Ms. Healy decided to use this outpouring of assistance to benefit her own organization but, in doing so, took on a responsibility to use the money as intended. She did not fulfill this trust and, as the article makes clear, never intended to fulfill it. That she had good intentions, that she probably had better uses for the money than those who contributed are moot points. Her responsibility was to spend the money in the ways in which she was advertising. This kind of practice by charitable concerns undercuts public trust in them and only hurts their overall ability to raise funds in the long run. Does the family of every victim need a check for $1 million, instead of $20,000? Probably not, but that was what the money was donated for and that is how the money should now be used.

I hope that this situation is a wake-up call to the American public about how even expressions of charity must be handled responsibly. Charitable concerns, like any other organization, work best with established, long-term budgets and goals. They cannot be totally reactive to unforeseen disasters and operate effectively. Unfortunately, I fear the efforts of Ms. Healy and the Red Cross following the September 11 disasters will only serve to convince most people that the fault lies totally in the administration of the money by third parties and not misplaced generosity on their parts. This will only result in hurting a many worthwhile organizations' ability to deal with disaster victims worldwide for years to come. That strikes me as tragic. However, it is unavoidable after what has passed, and the Red Cross is the villain here. A benevolent war profiteer is still a war profiteer.

--The Bell

 

[annabattler]

RE: Don't Give Your Hurri

Give your money to the Mennonites.
They swoop in,do all sorts of physical rebuilding,spending their own dollars, and then leave...no strings attached.

 

[missile]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

Another good one is The Habitat for Humanity folk,they help those who help themselves.

 

[moghrabi]

RE: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

How can we forget donations to the Iraqi children that Bush caused misery and devastation. Why do we always look at us instead at all of us.

The people of Iraq are in much needed help as those in New orleans but I did not see a Red Cross or anything trying to get them some help. Maybe they are not as humans as Americans are.

 

[Martin Le Acadien]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

A lot of us would love to have some of our Acadians return home We have sent 4 ships full of supplies your way..should be putting into port there tuesday.

Good Lord, mooning Bush as we leave for Acadie! People of Acadien Blood all, black , white, creole heading back to the TRUE NORTH! Paul Martin could sccop a coup on that one at election time if played right!

Look forward to their arrival on Tuesday, Mexican Navy in Port, their symphony played last night, simply wonderful!!!!

 

[Martin Le Acadien]

Re: Don't Give Your Hurricane Donations to the American Red

I wish people would be offering to adopt all those parentless children with the speed that they are with the stray dogs left in the city

TOP PRIORITY!!!!!

Several children have been separated from their families and it is being treated as a VIP case with Government and Private Planes being used to reunite Children and Parents. Last night, 3 children found in the Astrodome in the care of a friend were reunited with their parents when the mother was found to be in Lafayette, LA and the Father was in San Antonio, TX. Air traffic across Houston was notified that his was a top flight and Army Helicopters were dispatched to bring the parents to the children!

No too many stray kids, the govt & Red Cross are working this one real hard, a bright spot in an otherwise dismal picture.