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Okay, I’ll take the headshot. But only if you let me pay for the bullet…

fakecharities

Did you see this article today? “A well publicized report this week that an estimated 1.5 million American children experienced homelessness in 2005-06 did not use the federal definition of homelessness. Instead, it used a different definition that grossly inflated the actual number.”

The National Center on Family Homelessness put together the study in question using a definition of “homeless” that includes kids staying with relatives or temporarily relocated (e.g. after Katrina). By this definition, they spin the utter bullshit statistic that 1 in 50 children in the States is homeless in any given year.

Whatever. My question is, who the fuck is National Center on Family Homelessness? Not them specifically. I mean, half the news stories I read every day were generated by the American Council for Healthy Knees or the Coalition for a Gluten-Free Tomorrow or Americans United in Cotton Underpants…thousands of the bastards, staffed by high-level, full-time employees and supported by PR firms and websites. And maybe with offices and company cars and annual meetings in Aruba. That’s a hell of a lot of money going down the wishing well. WHO PAYS FOR THIS JUNK? And why?

The peppery proprietor of Devil’s Kitchen has started to poke around the British world of fake charities, with a site called…ummm…Fake Charities.

Turns out, many of these organizations get, like, 1% of their money from real people donations. The other 99% comes from government — either the British government or the European Union. These are groups lobbying for things like higher booze prices or lower speed limits or restrictions on the internet. Paid for with our money (because government has no money. It maketh not, neither doth it sell).

So. Government wants a law, government funds “charity”, charity recommends law. Plus, many useless lefties with junk degrees get sweet jobs. Bonus!

With their dying gasp, newspapers tell us we’ll miss them when they’re gone — them and their original reportage. Well. If they were doing any, we might. Instead, they lazily regurgitate the latest position paper from the Won’t Someone Think of the Children? Foundation without ever troubling to tell us who they are and why we should care.

Some days, it’s enough to make a conspiracy nutcake outta me.

March 13, 2009 — 6:37 pm
Comments: 29