NetFuzz – It's the fuzz-izzle

I ran across an interesting and eye opening article on The Consumerist regarding the current wave of Donate via Texting vehicles that have cropped up in the wake of the disaster in Haiti.  This is important information to get out to the people, so I am inserting a quote and providing a link to the source.  Thanks Consumerist for keeping us informed!

“It’s quick, easy, and convenient to donate to relief efforts for Haiti earthquake victims by sending a text message, but not such a great idea if you want to be sure that your donations reach people and organizations in need before sometime in April.  Mobile carriers don’t actually submit your donation to the charity until after you’ve paid your bill. Experts agree that the donations will take at least one billing cycle for pledges to reach their destination. Americans have pledged more than $9 million to Haiti relief efforts using their cell phones this week.”

Read the FULL ARTICLE and be sure to check out the rest of The Consumerist site as well, loads of great information can be found there.

Yo, in case you haven’t remembered, DST has changes and it’s here. So, don’t forget that you spring forward this weekend, Saturday night.

I predicted that it wouldn’t take long for Michael Phelps Olympic induced super stardom to go to his head, and I was hoping that he would stay the “nice guy” that he seemed to be.  I hate being right so often.  It appears that Phelps was caught at a party recently acting like a total jerk and even got his picture taken while it looks like he is toking from a bong.  Oh boy.  If that’s true and he tests positive, that will kill any Olympic plans he might have for 2012.  Ouch, that would hurt.  Wake up Mike and quit being stupid!

Read the article here …

I regularly get calls from organizations representing this charity and that asking for donations.  Now, I don’t mind donating to what I feel are worthy causes, and nowadays I usually do so directly to whatever charity I choose rather than going through one of these fund raising companies.

I am not saying that every front end to a charity is bad, but that vast majority of the ones that I have dealt with or been called by qualify as crooks and scam artists in my opinion.  Oh?  How can that be?  How can I be so cold?  I am going to explain, and you might be shocked by what you find out.

First thing, when someone calls you from one of these companies like the State Police fund, or the Fireman’s Charity League or even the one I received just tonight, the Sheriff’s Department taking donations for “Puppy Patrol” which is taking money for programs that teach kids to say no to drugs in school.  These all sound great, don’t they?  Yes they do, and that’s what they are counting on.

You see, it’s not the charities themselves that are the problem, at least not in most cases (there are some fraud charities out there, but they are rare).  No, the problem normally rests in these front end companies that do the soliciting and collection.  That problem is the amount of money, the percentage that gets passed on to the charity.  This is where it gets criminal in my opinion.

This “Puppy Patrol” charity that called me tonight, one thing I asked early in the phone call was how much actually got to the charity?  Most callers don’t like to answer that one.  In this case, it was 15% … yep, that’s it, only 15%.  For every dollar they collect from people, they keep $0.85 and give $0.15 to the charity.  OMG!!!  For every $100 they take in, they keep $85 and pass on $15, that’s it!  If they collect one million dollars ($1,000,000) in a year, they keep eight hundred fifty thousand ($850,000) and give only one hundred fifty thousand ($150,000).  Does it start to make sense now?

That’s right; these companies keep most of the money and only send bare minimums to the charity.  Now, they’ll claim that they have light bills to pay and employees to pay and more and that’s all true.  However, why can reputable charities accomplish all of this and keep only 20%?  They pass on 80% and not 15%, so what’s the big difference between these two types of companies other than one is legit and the other is run by greedy bastards that are exploiting people’s good nature for profit.

So, what’s my point in all this?  Before you give your hard earned money to some charity, make sure you ask them how much actually makes it to the charity.  If they only give 10% or 15% or something silly like that, don’t give them your money.  Instead give it to a local charity or directly to another to make sure that your entire donation goes where it should.  Personally, I don’t give to any company that passes on less than 70%, but that’s just me.

It’s rather unbelievable that the man that just became our new president told the San Francisco Chronicle he wants to put Coal plants, and any other non-carbon friendly (what a joke) industry out of business.  What’s even more telling is that the SF Chronicle did this interview in January of 2008, but didn’t report it!  No doubt because they knew it would damage Obama’s chances in the election.  Still think there is no liberal media bias?  Guess again skippy, this is one of many examples that are right in front of your face.  I wonder what else Hussein is gonna destroy in the name of green?

Read about it …

So, let us take a look at this, shall we?  Here is a man, who is portrayed by the media to be all but the second coming (and maybe even that too).  This man wants to be in charge of the most powerful nation in the free world.  This man, Barack Hussein Obama, who has less time in office than Sarah Palin who gets attacked left and right for her “inexperience”, wants us to trust him with everything that is America.  He claims to be knowlegable enough, and smart enough to handle the job of running a super power, but he doesn’t know that his own aunt is in this country illegally.  He knows that she is from Kenya, but claims he didn’t know that she was in fact not a citizen and that she had been ordered back to her home country some time ago.  Something doesn’t add up here.  Either he is hiding something and lied about it, or he is just that freakin’ clueless.  Either way, I don’t think I want him in my white house.

On another note, according to this article, she was living in public housing.  OK, there is nothing wrong with that, but does that mean that he cared so little for his own family that he couldn’t take some of his piles of cash and help her out by getting her into a better place?  Again, not the kind of thing that makes me want him deciding the future of the country I call home.  This whole thing sounds pretty darn lame if you ask me, and don’t get the impression I am just bashing Obama, cause I am not.  I don’t like McCain either, but this story about Obama’s aunt just had me flabbergasted, so I felt I had to share.

Read more …

The mainstream media has yet to report this, so I thought I would break the news. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that five million fraudulent home mortgages are in the hands of illegal aliens. That’s right, five million criminals (illegal aliens) have fraudulent mortgages.  Five freakin’ million.  Whoah!

I wonder how much that has contributed to the subprime mortgage meltdown.

Crackhead Comic Disses Bush

Crackhead Comic and self described “sex addict” British so-called comedian Russell Brand got picked to host the MTV Video Music Awards (VMA).  While doing so, as part of his “act” referred to our President as a “retard” and later a “retarded cowboy”.  It appears that even with Bush’s low numbers, someone coming here from another country and slamming ours along with our President, the remarks didn’t sit well with the celebrities in attendance.  At this time, Natalie Maines is not available for comment, although sources close to her have reported that she is outraged that Brand is stealing material from her.

In another part of his “act”, he made fun of the Jonas Brothers band for wanting to remain virgins until they get married, and for wearing promise rings.  Well, not everyone can be a crack smoking sex addict like you Brand, maybe your kids can get hooked, diseased and hated even quicker than you have.

From the picture posted with this article, I would think that Brand is the last person who should call anyone a retard.  It doesn’t sound like he is a good comedian, and he obviously needs to quit taking fashion advice from Pauly Shore.  I think we can now see why he is popular in Briton, and an unknown in the U.S.  Why don’t you go back to Briton Brand, and think about how you screwed up a great opportunity with the MTV awards show.  Let’s hope you don’t come back.  Retard.

There is “bipartisan” support for a new “economic stimulus” package coming out, big surprise.  But if you look at the details, it doesn’t make sense.  They are going to give “tax rebate” checks to all manner of people, couples get more and people with kids even more.  Nice huh?  I am all about helping people, but let’s use some brain matter if we have any left and call a spade a spade.  They are giving tax rebate checks to people who don’t pay taxes on one hand (how can it be a tax rebate when you don’t … pay … taxes …?), and on the other they are giving these “rebates” to people that make upwards of $150,000 and more.  WHAT!?  If you are making $150,000 … you aren’t going to break the bank over a couple hundred, and frankly you don’t need to get an economic stimuli, you are stimulated!

Probably worse yet, this package that is supposed to save the economy and stop the dreaded downturn everyone is predicting, is going to cost all of us taxpayers $150 billion or more dollars.  YIKES!  And they complain about the Iraq war funding.  This is going to drain the resources we already don’t have that much more, and make the economy worse!  Sure, in the short term you’ll have lots of people going to Wal-Mart to buy TV’s and fishing rods, but you will still end up with a huge chunk of money gone from the government’s pockets, or should I say our (the taxpayers) pockets.

The real problem here folks, is that the government can’t figure out how to work a budget and control their own darn spending.  Well, that’s not true.  They can figure out a budget, but they don’t want to.  If they did really use a budget they’d have to explain where all the money went.  Every year our government spends more money that it did the year before.  They pull neat tricks like inflating the budget by 50%, only to then cut it by 30% so they can go on CNN and tell the world they cut the budget by 30% when really it went up by 20%.  There is no economic stimulus package in the world that will fix the economy, the only thing that will fix the economy will be the government officials caring for the people more than money and power.  And friends, that ain’t gonna happen.  Republican, Democrat, Independent, Green, whatever … they are all still politicians.

Let me leave you with this little tidbit, Nancy Pelosi says that if this stimulus package isn’t enough, there “will be more”.  So she just told people to not worry about doing anything for themselves, if they wait a little while, they will get another check.  Unreal.

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