Strange thoughts

Matt Deatherage — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:10:32 GMT

Am I the only one who thinks that Craig Ferguson does not want the 10:35 PM time slot, and since Letterman has been on the air for nearly 30 years, that his successor at CBS will be Conan?

Ironic sales page of the day

Matt Deatherage — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:42:38 GMT

Uh-huh.

Show some love for the dominant late-night host and his new gig with the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien Logo Unisex T-Shirt.

I take back some of the nice things I said about KFOR.

Matt Deatherage — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:52:21 GMT

More signs of the Lenocalypse

Matt Deatherage — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:16:25 GMT

Watch David Letterman's Tuesday night desk segment on the late night wars and you'll laugh your pants off. Then watch Leno's own clips from the same night (they're mercifully short) on the same page as he takes digs at Letterman and looks like he's about to take one at Conan O'Brien.

They're cold, they're not funny, and even Leno's own audience starts to boo as they see the Letterman/O'Brien punchlines coming. He's lost his own studio audience in this matter. And NBC still thinks he's going to return The Tonight Show to dominance?

American Red Cross redux

Matt Deatherage — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:25:33 GMT

Last week, I mentioned that the donation page at http://american.redcross.org/supporthaiti did not actually pledge to use any of the funds you donated in Haiti. Per long-standing ARC bait-and-switch tactics, those donations went to the general “international relief fund” that may have been spent in Haiti, or some other country, or not at all—a pattern the ARC has repeated with disasters for decades. Disaster strikes, collect money on it, spend very little of the money on relief for that disaster. As the official sister of this blog explained in 2004:

The September 11 scandal was not unique. Earlier that same year in San Diego, ARC spent only $7000 of over $400,000 donated for relief in the Alpine wildfires. Then in October, 2001, while collecting millions across the country for WTC relief, ARC spent less than 10 percent of earmarked money for wildfire relief as it should have been spent (and that may be generous, because there was almost no accounting done). ARC spent $3.9 million for wildfire relief efforts in 2003, and their accounting was better. But as late as October of last year, ARC refused to designate monies donated for wildfire relief to help the very people the money was supposed to help. It begs the question: How much money was actually donated for this relief in 2001, if so much more was accounted for in 2003? What kind of charity has administrative expenses of 33 percent?

Sadly, all three of the links involved are now not only dead, but not even in the Internet Wayback Machine. I read them at the time, though, and they support the points she made. ARC collects monies based on disasters, but puts them in general funds that then don’t get spent on those disasters. The language on the “Donate to Haiti” page last week was quite clear (to ARC’s benefit) that you were donating to the “International Disaster Relief Fund,” and that if you wanted it earmarked for Haiti, you had to either mail a check or walk it to your local Red Cross office and make sure they wrote down “Haiti earthquake relief only” to designate the funds. Otherwise, they’d spend (or not spend) it as they saw fit.

With today’s Indie+Relief effort from independent Mac software developers donating their proceeds today to various charities for Haiti disaster relief (including the ARC), I took another look at the Red Cross’s page. Lo and behold, the text has changed. It now says:

Your gift to the American Red Cross will support emergency relief and recovery efforts to help those people affected by the earthquake in Haiti. Assistance provided by the American Red Cross may include deploying personnel, sending relief supplies, and providing financial resources.

This still not saying that 100% of the money will go to Haiti, but it’s worlds ahead of last week’s statement that flat-out said the money might not go to Haiti relief at all. Similarly, I see that the Doctors Without Borders link in the earlier blog entry (and in this blog’s sidebar) now takes you to a page that says you’re donating to DWB’s “Emergency Relief Fund,” and it is similarly clear that the money might not be spent in Haiti. Last week at this time, the same link destination mentioned only Haiti.

To a degree, this is understandable: if the charities think they’ve already collected all they will need to spend to fulfill their mission in Haiti (like rebuilding hospitals and several months of emergency medical aid, in the case of DWB), it’s prudent but a bit off-putting to start directing donations into a “Haiti-Plus” fund in case something goes drastically wrong somewhere else tomorrow. And it makes more sense to do it in that order than to pull the what the ARC did, which is to direct it to the general fund first and only later start collecting Haiti-specific funds.

But the situation has reversed somewhat, and I should mention as much. Consider yourself informed.

Life and Deatherage

Strange thoughts

Ironic sales page of the day

I take back some of the nice things I said about KFOR.

More signs of the Lenocalypse

American Red Cross redux