The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: charity
Donations Help US Tornado Survivors Salvage Christmas

Donations Help US Tornado Survivors Salvage Christmas

Mayfield, Kentucky (AFP) - With the help of volunteers from around the country, families in western Kentucky will be able to celebrate Christmas on Saturday, two weeks after a string of tornadoes wrought a path of deadly destruction.

"We're just trying to provide Christmas," said Jimmy Finch, a volunteer from the neighboring state of Tennessee who came to Mayfield the day after the twisters hit.

"I haven't kept a total tally of how many people we have fed," Finch said. "We just encourage everybody to keep coming back."

Under a big yellow tent set up in a parking lot, the Scientology Volunteer Minister group also serves hot food and drink on a cold, windy Christmas Eve.

"It's a very difficult time for everybody," said Chad Adams, a member of the organization. "We're trying to make sure everybody eats."

He estimates that they have served over 30,000 meals since the disaster struck, and invites everyone around to keep coming back to have food and hot chocolate.

At other sites, organizations distributed toys to families who have lost everything, hoping to provide some joy amidst the tragedy.

In the nearby town of Benton, Shane Cornwell dressed up as Santa for his volunteer shift at a donation site, where boxes of toys and food lined the walls of the local Elk Lodge.

Outside, volunteers painted Christmas tree ornaments, while local families impacted by the storm collected toys from bins separated by age range.

At least 79 people lost their lives in the tornados, which passed over several states from the night of December 10 to the early morning of December 11.

"The scope and scale of this destruction is almost beyond belief," said President Joe Biden after touring the damage in Mayfield.

Again And Again, Trump Lied About How Much He Gave To Charity

Again And Again, Trump Lied About How Much He Gave To Charity

Don’t be fooled: Donald Trump is no philanthropist.

Although the real estate tycoon-cum-presidential candidate has boasted about his charitable efforts, a Washington Post investigation published Tuesday found that, over a 15-year period, Trump donated less than a third of the $8.5 million he pledged to give in that time.

From 2001 until his recent (and highly-publicized) donation to a veterans’ families group in May, Trump only contributed $2.8 million through a foundation created to manage his philanthropy. (His most recent proven donation to the foundation was in 2008.)

When BuzzFeed inquired about his donations, a spokeswoman for the campaign said that Trump’s charitable giving is “generous and frequent,” insisting that these donations are made privately and that “there’s no way for you to know or understand what those gifts are or when they are made.”

In fact, there is — but the campaign refuse to put out any documents that would support the claim that he donates privately. This set of files includes his tax returns, which he has repeatedly pledged to release.

So the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold painstakingly contacted over 160 charities with supposed connections to Trump, tracking progress on Twitter as he went along. As it turns out, only one of these groups, the Police Athletic League of New York, confirmed that it had received money from the candidate — a single donation of under $10,000 in 2009.

Fahrenthold also found that not-so noble causes like Trump’s daughter’s ballet school often received much larger sums than the causes he frequently name-dropped. For instance, though the Republican candidate has repeatedly spoken about donating profits from books and other ventures to fight homelessness, AIDS and multiple sclerosis, his son’s private school got more than all of those causes combined.

Stories like these are anything but rare. The BuzzFeed report notes that there is no proof that Trump followed through on promises to donate his profits from a Comedy Central special, a New Zealand lottery, and even a property rental to the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

In other cases, such as a lawsuit he won against the city of Palm Beach, or the sale of his vodka line,  the candidate donated significantly less than he pledged to initially, going from as much as a few million pledged to a few hundred dollars in actual donations.

Trump’s failure to give to charity also points to the likelihood that his ventures are less profitable than he makes them seem — and, therefore, that he is less wealthy than he claims to be. Or at least, much stingier. 

 

Photo: Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers a speech on his economic policy at the Alumisourse Building in Monessen, Pennsylvania, U.S., June 28, 2016. REUTERS/Louis Ruediger

Trump Donated To Vets Group Known For Being A Scam Operation

Trump Donated To Vets Group Known For Being A Scam Operation

Following a lengthy temper tantrum aimed at the media, Donald Trump released a list of veterans charities that were going to receive the money he claims to have raised back in January. One of those charities, Foundation for American Veterans, is known to be a scam operation.

The Foundation for American Veterans received $75,000, according to a list published by the Trump campaign. However, the foundation is known for spending very little of its money on actually helping veterans, according to CharityWatch, a charity watchdog group, who gave the foundation an “F” rating. The Foundation for American Veterans failed to meet transparency or governance benchmarks and spends just 10 cents on veterans benefits, meaning that 90 cents of every dollar Trump paid the group will go towards “Fundraising and Management & General Expenses,” according to CharityWatch.

According to a 2010 press release from the Missouri Attorney General’s office, the foundation allocated only 9 percent of its expenditures for charitable causes. A report by the Oregon attorney general’s office the previous year found that the organization had disbursed a similar level of its expenditures on charitable activities at that time as well.

Making such a mistake says more about the so-called “vetting process” Trump used to choose his designated veterans charities than anything else. The group is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with the state of Minnesota over $930,000 it raked in from state residents since 2011. The group has also been accused of using pressure tactics and fake pledge reminders to coerce predominantly older and ex-military citizens to contribute money to the charity.

“By sending fake pledge reminders, we believe they were trying to guilt people into donating money they otherwise didn’t want to donate,” Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson told the Star Tribune.

This, of course, flies in the face of statements Trump made earlier today about the vigorous vetting process charities had undergone in order to qualify for the $5.6 million he now claims he will give them. “You have to go through a process. When you send checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars to people and to companies and to groups that you’ve never heard of, charitable organizations, you have to vet it,” Trump said at a press conference at Trump Tower. “You send people out, you do a lot of work.”

The donations also raise questions about the Donald J. Trump Foundation, Trump’s nonprofit charity that may have been involved in the fundraising operation. As noted by The Washington Post, it is illegal for nonprofit organizations to take part in any political campaigns.

Photo: U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds paperwork which states “Donald J. Trump, Veteran Fundraiser” during a news conference at Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York, U.S., May 31, 2016.  REUTERS/Carlo Allegri  

#EndorseThis: Trump Yells At Journalists For An Hour, Previews Presidential Press Conferences

#EndorseThis: Trump Yells At Journalists For An Hour, Previews Presidential Press Conferences

When Donald Trump announced that he would be giving a press conference today to discuss his misdealings with veterans’ groups, members of the media covering his remarks should have known they were in for a wild ride. Trump had lied about his donations to veterans’ groups for months: After skipping a Fox News debate because he was afraid of Megyn Kelly because, apparently, the network had treated him unfairly, Trump put together his own Celebrate-The-Troops fundraising spectacular, after which he claimed to have raised $6 million for various veterans’ groups, through an account maintained by his campaign.

Weeks later, many of the veterans’ groups he had claimed would receive money from him hadn’t even heard from Donald Trump at all. Investigations by various outlets into how much money Trump had cumulatively given to the groups all came up with figures in the $3-4 million range, nothing close to what Trump promised. There was also no evidence — until only a week ago — that Trump had given the $1 million he had promised to veterans’ groups.

All of that to say: The relentless investigations of the news media forced Trump to give the $1 million he promised, and they forced him to call up his rich friend who he had claimed donated a cumulative $6 million… to actually raise $6 million.

Donald Trump rarely holds press conferences to “clear the air” about anything, and to do so about millions of missing dollars that were supposedly donated to veterans’ groups cut especially deep, as Trump has painted himself as a champion of veterans causes.

I’ve included the entire press conference below to highlight to consistency and relentlessness of Donald Trump’s demonization of the press — the same press that exposed widespread problems with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The same press that dutifully reported Trump’s claims of having donated — to Trump’s great benefit — $6 million to veterans’ groups, including $1 million of his own money. The same press that, doing their job, badgered Trump for proof that such donations had been made, and the same press that, ultimately, pressured Trump into doing the right thing.

After Donald Trump lists some of the groups he’s given money to — the exact thing the press has asked for and failed to receive for months — he takes questions from journalists in attendance, starting at 13:54.

Photo and video: MSNBC.