Sounds like a great reason to turn social welfare entirely over to charity, right?
Exactly
With a government agency running things at least we have the ability to have some accountability.
I was in a flood, and didnât have water for two weeks. The Red Cross came every day to bring water. Maybe I was just lucky, it sure felt that way at the time.
The Red Cross is the new target of the conservative disinformation campaign and theyâre losing. The amount of negative Red Cross posts I saw on twitter and reddit following hurricane Harvey was incredible and immediate, unfortunately the only way to counter it is to be exemplary in your day to day business, no amount of PR or online news will change it.
I remember after Harvey a Red Cross PR person being interviewed on the local teevee machine. The reporter asked about the ~ahem~ past scandals of the Red Cross, and asked if money donated to Harvey would actually be spent on Harvey. The PR flak said âIF people designate âHarveyâ in the memo section of their check, 100% will go to Harvey relief.â
Interesting that their public appeal omitted that little instruction.
I had a bad personal experience with the Red Cross after Katrina, so I found local Houston charities to give to instead in the wake of Harvey.
Maybe these folks didnât get the memo from their new boss- âyouâre on your ownâ.
Expecting NGOâs and the government to show up and manage a huge regional crisis is so âObamaâ. Republicans donât do âsavingâ Americans.
Get with the program, Chief.
Under the nine-year tenure of McGovern, who came from the private sector, the group has had budget shortfalls and cut staff sharply. Local chapters, including in Texas, have been shuttered.
The cuts have stripped the charity of experienced disaster management personnel. Under McGovern, the number of paid employees has shrunk from 36,000 in 2008 to just over 21,000 in 2015, according to tax filings.
So the Republican politicians in Texas are complaining about the Red Cross response after a private sector administrator has run the Red Cross according to the dictates of GOP ideology for the last nine years. O irony, irony! Wherefore art thou irony?
Yeah but youâre a grey squirrel. If you were a red squirrelâŚ
They may not have gotten it, but the folks in Puerto Rico are getting that message loud and clear.
Itâs time for the Red Cross to be evaluated by an independent agency. The Red Cross has a great reputation, but if you look beyond the surface there are lots of problems.
Most of the people quoted in the story are emergency management officials, not politicos. This seems a crucial section to me (emphasis added):
"As disasters have gotten larger and more frequent, the Red Cross has gotten smaller. Under the nine-year tenure of McGovern, who came from the private sector, the group has had budget shortfalls and cut staff sharply. Local chapters, including in Texas, have been shuttered.
The cuts have stripped the charity of experienced disaster management personnel. Under McGovern, the number of paid employees has shrunk from 36,000 in 2008 to just over 21,000 in 2015, according to tax filings."
These people just want things done for them. Theyâre takers, not makers!
To what end? I thought RWNJs want the public to rely on private charitiesâŚNOT the government.
Weird isnât it, since Liddy Dole was the head of the charity all through the 1990s. Did it become a commie organization recently?
I think of these bad things that keep coming up lately when it seems like a lot of folks still suggest donating to the red cross. Not really sure whoâs telling it straight.
Pro Publica has been looking into problems with the ARC since at least 2014: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-red-cross-secret-disaster
This is not a right-wing hatchet job. This is a serious investigative journalism directed at problems with a major relief organization. The issues seem to pre-date Gail McGovern but she doesnât seem to have done much to correct them, either.
There is a mega-church (30K members) that I have to drive by to get home. They recently acquired some trucks and trailers and painted them âSouthern Baptist Disaster Reliefâ and parked them where they are most visible from the road. I always thought that it was a purchase to siphon money from the church (buy overpriced equipment from friends and family, get a kickback) as a church delivering itâs own stuff to disaster areas itâs pretty inefficient. Sure enough, Harvey and Irma came and those trucks havenât moved.