My wife and I give to a number of charitable organizations, including many police charities that provide community support, like the Virginia State Police Association’s program that gives teddy bears to children involved in domestic abuse situations, and provides for families of officers killed or injured in the line of duty. So it’s not surprising we get calls from other “related” charities — some related in name only. Tonight I got a call from this group. When I looked up their report, I found they were associated with a number of other charities we have asked to put us on the do-not-call list. (See the link for the list; we’ve received calls from at least three of the others there.) Of course, they’ve never filed a disclosure to the Better Business Bureau in all that time. (Whenever I get a charity call, if it’s a firm I don’t already know, I always look them up at give.org to verify they are legit.)
Hmm, Gig Harbor, Washington is the address listed for the firm, but they were incorporated in California in 2001. Turns out that this firm (actually “Tomorrow’s Abundance”) is the brainchild of a low-life by the name of Robert M. Friend, who basically pockets as salary just about all the money collected by this charity after paying for the telemarketers and mailing costs. Oh yeah, and for his wife’s salary, since she’s also employed by the company. I guess we can tell whose abundance we’re supposed to be providing.
This name looks familiar (“Friend”). Gotta love the irony of that name. Anyhow – I saw a piece on… “Dateline”, I think it was wherein 2 half-a-men were running exactly this sort of “charity” from Northern VA.
Add to this the myriad stories one can read about ill doings in NoVA – the Al Qaeda cell broken there, the fellow who was convicted of plotting to murder the President, the hasty slide to the left of the political spectrum, Leslie Byrne. And add to this the 2 half-a-men charged with the murders of 7 (and soon to be 8) people in Richmond were not from the Richmond area at all… but Arlington County (the most northern of Northern VA, for those who aren’t locals).
I commented to my Dad recently about how one of the reasons I left NoVA was that I sensed it had no, for lack of a better term, soul. There is no cohesive culture and thus a concomitant morality to the area. Thus, it has descended into “every man for himself” – sort of like Southern California without the nice weather.
As a short-term solution, I suggest we cede the land originally designated as Virginia’s gift to Washington, DC (Arlington County), cede that land back to DC. It already looks and behaves like DC.
I realize this has little bearing on your original post, so thanks for letting me rant. 🙂
In my last comment, your emoticon graphicalizer interpreted and eight followed by a closing parenthesis as 8) . So no, they are not “soon to be happy people in Richmond”!
🙂
I hate when I do that… write “and” when I mean “an”. I do it far more than I’d like!
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