I'm watching the evening news in real time tonight. One of the commercials was for the Wounded Warrior Project, a spot that seemed to be at least 60 seconds long. They wanted $19/month.
I looked them up on Charity Navigator. They don't seem to be too bad, other than the point that the founder is sucking down $375,000/year. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll find out that while they're not the worst charity for servicemen (that's the USO), they're not exactly stellar, and certainly better than the Komen folk.
No, the point that bugs me is that taking care of wounded warriors is a collective responsibility, a moral responsibility, that should not be left to the private sector running begathons. It belongs to all of us and the Federal government should be funding everything needed to take care of the veterans. Arguably, relying on the VA to deliver all of the care is a bad idea. And maybe we don't need the humanitarian version of LockMart to suck up huge profits while delivering shitty services.
But tin-cupping it is just wrong. If the Federal government can't afford to take care of the vets who need help, then we've got no business sending any more of them into harm's way.
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Seriously.
Maybe the politicians advocating these wars should go first. In the front lines. As grunts.
Ooops, my inner Hulk is waking...
Thank you! This commercial has been bugging me for similar reasons as well.
Perhaps passing one round of tax cuts for each war you start wasn't the wisest policy after all.
-Doug in Oakland
I used to do some fundraising for Wounded Warrior, but stopped when they decided not to take funds from gun-related groups or activities (I was organizing shoots). At that time, I also looked at them a bit more closely, and besides their top guy raking in the coin, they appear to be top-heavy with other highly-paid staff, all taking in six-figure salaries. And then there is the complaint from other veterans' organization that WW doesn't actually do anything for wounded vets other than take in money, pay themselves, and pass on the remainder to other already-existing and separate organizations that actually do the hands-on work with the wounded vets. If that's really true--and I didn't really prove or disprove it sufficiently to do a post about it--then it's really troubling.
The last group we raised money for was Soldiers' Angels, and they seem to be more in-line with what we were trying to do. Check them out.
Bravo. But this is representative of the key ideological question in any democracy - just exactly what is the government responsible for, and what is the private sector responsible for.
OBVIOUSLY, caring for veterans is a moral requirement for any government with armed forces in the field. Questions of infrastructure, education, health care and big ticket R&D must be answered also.
The tension is not with regular people I think, but rather this top 10% that has in recent years decided that they should not have to participate in funding government operations because to do so reduces their personal and corporate wealthy.
When I see the government fail to fully fund something as absolutely necessary as caring for veterans I tend to focus my anger on those who fund the political bribery that drives these immoral and undemocratic outcomes...
" If the Federal government can't afford to take care of the vets who need help, then we've got no business sending any more of them into harm's way."
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Malvina Reynolds' (She of Little Boxes on the Hillside) song about this:
Last night, I had the strangest dream,
I saw a big parade, with ticker-tape galore,
And men were marching there the like [in the ranks]
I'd never seen before:
1. Oh, the bankers and the diplomats are going in the army:
Oh, happy day, I'd spend my pay to see them on parade,
Their paunches at attention and their stri-ped pants at ease -
They've gotten patriotic and they're going overseas.
We'll have to do the best we can and bravely carry on,
So we'll just keep the laddies here to manage while they're gone.
There are more delicious verses:
http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiBANKDIP%3bttBANKDIP.html
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