Beware vets orgs with lengthy mission statements
One of our readers sent this link to an article about the US Navy Veterans Association. According to the article, although it mentions veterans in the title, it really doesn’t help Navy Veterans, unless those veterans happen to be conservative.
Lt. Cmdr. Bobby Thompson was under the gun.
A newspaper was about to report that his charity, the U.S. Navy Veterans Association, which reported annual income of $22 million and tens of thousands of members, appeared to consist of just one person — him.
Thompson said the group’s members are real and doing good deeds.
Basically, all this “veterans organization” was doing was taking donations and handing them out to conservative politicians. None of it was going to help veterans, unless you think that financing conservative politics somehow helps veterans.
So I went to the US Navy Veterans Association to read their mission statement. It’s a long-winded dissertation of how they justify being a veterans’ organization, but not really benefiting veterans in any tangible way – but you have to read a lot of bullshit to get to the bottom line.
The support of legislative action to provide to our service personnel, veterans, and their dependents, widows and orphans, the remuneration and benefits they truly deserve;
The provision of social and recreational activities for Association members; and
The provision of nonpartisan education, news and analysis pertaining to the value of these goals, and other issues of interest to veterans, service members and the patriotic public.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I like conservative candidates getting funding, but hiding behind the Navy logo to do so seems a bit disingenuous (and I’m not sure that Charlie Crist is the kind of candidate I’d classify as a conservative). Yeah, I know Vote Vets does it, but that doesn’t make it right.
Category: Politics
Lemme jump in here before the liberal ri-tard contingent starts squawking about conservatives and hypocrisy. This guy is wrong, and his organization is bullshit. If he had come out and stated his purpose was to gather donations to give to conservative (or even liberal) candidates, that’s one thing–but this guy is (I think) purporting to support ALL Navy vets, which he’s clearly not.
To reiterate what Jonn said, it’s not right, regardless of who does it.
So; it’s the other side of the coin from IVAW?
These bastards got me a few months ago. I received a weekend call from a “representative” of the US Navy Veterans Association (read: telemarketer) asking for me by name. Being a good Soldier and supportive of my sister services, I pledged to donate $25. I forgot to mention that I am horrible at mailing things off and still have $0.37 stamps… Anyway, the envelope arrived a week later, another a few weeks after that as well as a couple more phone calls. I finally sent off the check. A couple of weeks after the donation was mailed off I received another call, this time from Cancer Fund of America. I again made a pledge of $10, then saw the first post about Navy Veterans on this site. Figuring there was some kind of link between my donation to them and the request from Cancer Fund, I did some research on the latter and found it to be another questionable “charity”, with its officers making salaries into the hundreds of thousands. Anyway, since then I’ve received a couple more letters, “friendly reminders” of my pledge. I’ve also received a number of phone calls, whether they are CFA or another “charity” I don’t know, as I merely tell them I am not home. They never want to leave a message or callback number and some of callers attempt to get tricky, instead of asking for me they assume I am who they are looking for and try to sound like a friend or acquaintance. As I rarely use my home phone number I immediately assume anyone calling for me is a telemarketer of some sort and deny everything. Maybe caller ID would be a wise investment. While I am glad my money may have helped fund a conservative as opposed to a liberal, it still pisses me off. I do everything I can to support veterans; politicians of any ilk are another matter. For better or worse, I will not be making any more pledges or donations to any group that contacts me without first finding out more about them. I’ll just… Read more »
Yup… this stiff pisses me off too. I pretty much reserve my limited funds for donations to “Soldiers Angels” and some local stuff. It’s because of groups like this that I am wary of all of them.
If I don’t have personal experience with a group, then they never see my checkbook.
What Gary and Tim said!
This is the main difference between the Left and Right. If a liberal group is pulling a fast one, the conservatives are the only ones crying foul. However, if a conservative group tries it, they get called out by BOTH sides.
Just for the record, the mission statement at Cooking with the Troops is just five lines long. An introduction and our four points.
Like AW1 Tim, I’ve gotten real picky about where I give my money because of groups like USNVA…
Looks like he up and disappeared, and now several states are in the process of investigating him and have shut down his ability to raise funds in those states…
http://www.wmur.com/news/24338008/detail.html
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