Who Is Holding the Red Cross Accountable?
Don't mean to be a spoilsport, but the American Red Cross is a bogus organization, with zero accountability and a track record of greed, misrepresentation, and waste bordering on criminal behavior. It cannot manage even something as basic as the blood supply, even mismanaging it to the point of compromising the nations' ability to ensure we have enough uncontaminated blood. Then there's the 9-11 debacle, where they were busted so badly that they had to issue retractions, denials, and move millions out of dubious bank accounts and actually give to the cause they touted so brazenly while they profited off of their lies. Do you really think they have instituted the accountability structures that need to be in place in an organization of that size and responsibility? Read more about my personal experience with this duplicitous organization.
I had my first run-in with the American Red Cross weasels just after the Mexico City earthquake of September 19, 1985. I had created and coordinated the field hospital operation for Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Picnics (thank you, Saint Willie!) back in 1979-80 and had a ton or two (literally!) of supplies, ranging from US Army GP tents, dozens of stretchers, a suction machine, field supplies, ace bandages, and all manner of other stuff. I had them in storage, and when the earthquake hit, I called the American Red Cross to donate all of it for the relief effort.
Imagine my surprise when I was told they don't take donations like that, nor do they coordinate with any other agency to make sure such donations get where they are most needed by those who suffer. Instead, I was told they only take cash donations. What was I told these donations go for? Why, PHONE CALLS. Phone calls from those who are disconnected from their loved ones.
Great use of donations. Suck it up and pay the phone company, or some other similar "helpful" parasite. So much goes to the bureaucracy, it doesn't seem to matter anyway. It's mostly going to things other than what people believe they are donating to. There is zero accountability unless someone puts the hairy eyeball on them. Then, and only then, do they even partially do the right thing.
When I spoke with someone with the "Green Cross," the Mexican version of something like a relief agency, I was told that the American Red Cross is seen as a joke at best, and a useless vacuum cleaner of donations that would better go elsewhere, to REAL relief necessities. I just wonder how much of the present donations so generously offered by the open-hearted American public will actually go to the victims of this horrible, horrible disaster? If you recall, they were busted for misappropriating donations to the 9-11 fund, and after a lot of mealy-mouthing, had to give a LOT of money to the people who actually needed relief.
I hope the American Red Cross has learned from its past duplicitous behavior and is actually going to give those who suffer impossible afflictions in New Orleans what they deserve in the way of relief. I would hate to think that one more time, the generosity of the American public will be mismanaged and misappropriated by the deceitful American Red Cross.
I want to know just who IS holding the American Red Cross accountable for making sure that ALL funds donated for this relief effort actually wind up going to disaster relief, instead of going into some "fund" of spurious necessity?
Links:
New Jersey, Louisiana, Pennsylvania scandals here
From The Catbird Seat, The American Red Double Cross
Then there's "Scandal of a WTC benefit" here.
And of course there are more. Go find `em.