Sean Hannity's Freedom CONcert Scam: Almost None of Charity's $ Went to Injured Troops, Kids of Fall

Originally posted by whaaa

Originally posted by Rephaim
I hope you all find this interesting.

Source: www.freedomalliance.org...

If I can't believe Sean H. or Fox as they play fast and loose with the truth; how can I believe the freedom alliance? I think the term is "covering your ass"

[edit on 19-3-2010 by whaaa]

I guess we'll just have to wait and see if they sue her.

We only make this information public because of the outrageous slander against him.

reply to post by David9176


Yes. Things that might seem selfish are sometimes best for the collective. It's why some people label Ron Paul a liberal. He has liberal intentions, for the good of everyone, but with historically conservative strategies to get there. Pointing out an almost Zen perspective on the relationship between state and individual. That when the state loses power, the individual gains it and vice versa.

Typical liberals think government welfare is what makes life better for the lower and middle class even. True thinkers understand that government is not the provider or source of value (and that it can only take and redistribute), and that something else must occur on an economic level for true change and positive change to take place.

Sorry but you guys are failing to think critically and are letting this blogger do it for you. You all fail to think about or mention that the vast vast majority of the kids of these fallen soldiers are either infants or very small children. Hence they cannot receive the money for the scholarships yet. You can also look at the Scholarship Trust Funds that have been set up from this fundraising, of which more than $15 million is currently in and legally only able to be dispersed to colleges for scholarships. There is no smoke, there is no fire.

Do not let your hatred of Republicans cloud your intellectual honesty. The money is still there, its not in Sean Hannity's pocket. As you can see in the same tax returns, of the money that left the charity each year, over 75% of the money went to the programs charitable purposes. Of course most of that money was not given in scholarships yet, MOST OF THE CHILDREN ARE NOT COLLEGE AGE.

I have no doubt that those around Mr. Hannity know what is going on. The fact that Mr. Hannity is doing absolutely nothing to address this fraud says quite a bit about where he stands. Besides, its just about money and making money that they can keep to continue living the life they think they are entitled to as elites of America.

These criminals could care less about anything decent or moral. They flat do not know what right is and what wrong is. They are devoid of moral compasses and as such, any anger that Mr. Hannity has to face is justifiable and further more, Mr. Hannity should be hounded and confronted until he himself takes action against those that defrauded the public and for those for which the money was stolen from.

We see this same fraud and scam whenever there is a tsunami or some disaster where funds are requested instead of clothing or food. It's all about making money and the more they can make the happier they are. They are scum bags with no decency.

Mr. Hannity is partially responsible and if he cant accept accountability and if he will not take action to address this wrong then every person that listens to Mr. Hannity needs to turn him off and then millions should flood the network with demands to get rid of him. We don't need any more liars. We already have a full plate of liars and deceivers and I for one am tired of picking my teeth for liar residue. This crap has to end and so does the corruption and lack of accountability. Mr. Hannity needs to know how the public feels and if its a touchy subject I flat don't care how Mr. Hannity views it. It is flat wrong. End of discussion.

Thanks for the posting.

reply to post by Rephaim


Why not post up the tax returns to prove they are a legit charity? If the other site is lying about the tax returns, then show us Sean and prove you are legit.

If this is true then it should show up in the driveby media (aka MSNBC). Until there are substantiated claims, i'm not really going to pay attention to....what's the name...debby does dallas? Whats the name of the blog this piece was taken from?

Originally posted by schrodingers dog

Originally posted by vkey08

S-Dog: not to try and get into an argument, I like ya too much for that outside of the debate forum

, but that image/pdf is from the same bloggers site, is there an independent source for that return?

Yes there is, and for more than one year:

www.eri-nonprofit-salaries.com...

Gratzi

Second line because it was a thank you

Oliver North, founder of Freedom Alliance. The same Mr. North who scammed America with his Iran-Contra scam.

Back in the 1980's there sprang up "nonprofit entrepreneurs", such as Roger Chapin. Combine an era of dwindling money for charities, a "greed is good" culture, "God luvs ya!...by giving you wealth, and you get people thinking about how to make money off of religion, charity, and causes. Little wonder Americans have become so cynical about institutions they once trusted.

So many organizations sprang up to create wealth for their leaders, by taking in dollars and handing out dimes, under the guise of "helping". As we became a nation of rationalizers, able to rationalize any bad deed away, profit became a standard for the standard non-profit, many "non-profits" were started by masters of creative accounting, and for-profits (lots of it!) could be disguised as charities.


[edit on 19-3-2010 by desert]

Originally posted by MikeboydUS
This is just more evidence that Fox News preys upon patriots and conservatives.

They prey on the uneducated and the gullible. Thinking people have always seen "Faux News" for what it is.

I dread to think how much money the U.S military (and therefore U.S government) would and could still save if they policed charities cl;aiming for the military a bit more. I don't know what the laws on this sort of thing are, but if the law was how it could be then, then Hanity (and probably most of his family) would be hanged as traitors, and bad citizens.

All charity work saves government a lot of money. Here in the U.K. it's a shame so many charities are allowed to spend so much on advertising-expenses, because the amount it would cost government to police would be many times less than the value of gextra ood work achieved (by the publoics donations).

Originally posted by johnny2127
Sorry but you guys are failing to think critically and are letting this blogger do it for you. You all fail to think about or mention that the vast vast majority of the kids of these fallen soldiers are either infants or very small children. Hence they cannot receive the money for the scholarships yet. You can also look at the Scholarship Trust Funds that have been set up from this fundraising, of which more than $15 million is currently in and legally only able to be dispersed to colleges for scholarships. There is no smoke, there is no fire.

Do not let your hatred of Republicans cloud your intellectual honesty. The money is still there, its not in Sean Hannity's pocket. As you can see in the same tax returns, of the money that left the charity each year, over 75% of the money went to the programs charitable purposes. Of course most of that money was not given in scholarships yet, MOST OF THE CHILDREN ARE NOT COLLEGE AGE.

Did no one read this? One of the best posts on this thread. He's entirely correct that the majority of these kids are not near college age. I'll wait for someone other than Debbie Schlussel reports on it. She is an awful source, IMO.

"The figures are taken from our Federal Form 990 which is filed with the Internal Revenue Service and posted on our web site and audited by an independent auditor using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. This financial record not only meets, but exceeds standards of program efficiency set by most charity evaluators." Thomas P. Kilgannon
Oliver L. North President
Founder & Honorary Chairman
Freedom Alliancev22570 Markey Court, Suite 240vDulles, Virginia 20166v(703) 444-7940



The forms are there for any to see. the breakdown is pretty straight foward. I dont care how you try to spin it, the foundation does a good job managing the money and seeing that the majority of it goes towards those who it was created to help.

as for Mr. Hannity, he has given large amounts of monies to this charity, and donated his time, as well as paid for all his expenses. If this were not the case then it seems it would be rather easy to prove since any good accountant is writing off all those expenses for tax purposes. It would also be necessary for the charity to have receipts for all these expenses.

All in all a rather lame and shameful example of pure hated, so intense as to allow one to commit slander.

[edit on 3/19/2010 by Phedreus]

Originally posted by Rephaim
I hope you all find this interesting.

Source: www.freedomalliance.org...

I guess this explains everything. It took me literally 20 seconds to find the answer, yet it's easy enough to trash someone. I find it kind of hard to believe that someone like Sean would be day to day on the radio espousing Conservative and Libertarian values yet pull a fast one on the brave men and woman in uniform. Shame on you for even posting this trash without checking for the quality of the information.

friend i read the pdf version and i quote

" 79 percent ($5,317,970) was spent on Program Activities
• 14 percent ($945,950) was spent on Fundraising
• 7 percent ($481,797) was spent on Management"

do you know what program activities are? yeah...neither do i and i do not care. the question is how much did the intended recipients receive?

Not sure if this was mentioned but Daily Kos mentioned this back in 2007:

Hannity's "Freedom" concert is a money scam
by davefromqueens

Mon Aug 06, 2007 at 04:29:15 AM PDT

(snip)

A very small part of their organization is about the scholarship fund.

As the troops returned home from the Middle East, the work of Freedom Alliance continued. Four programs were instituted in the years that followed to assist the troops and their families. Freedom Alliance established the HEROES Scholarship Program to provide college scholarships to the children of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who were killed during Operations Desert Shield or Desert Storm. This program continues today under the name, the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund. Through these two programs, Freedom Alliance has awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships and helped hundreds of children of American military heroes achieve the dream of a college education.

And a fellow diarist came up with these numbers from a report he gained access to.

Statement of Functional Expenses-2006 (certain examples on 990 Form page 2) The 990 Report is 30 pages long.
$14,503,615 Net assets or fund balances at end of year:
$306,500 Scholarship Grants
$ 97,400 Grants and Contributions
$1,414,215 Printing and publications
$641,411 Consultations
$242,042 Compensations of current officers
$604,310 Salaries and wages not included above
$1,703,232 Postage and Shipping
$246,232 Educational Outreach Consultant
$457,622 Other Expenses
$9,098,290 Scholarship Fund at end of year
$791,555 Temporarily Restricted Net assets

So basically the group began the year with 14.5 million, spent $306,500 on scholarship grants (no guarantee they go to a worthy applicant, they go directly to the college which may or may not use it that way.) and ONLY $97,400 went directly to military families. And where's the rest of the money? So the Freedom Alliance at best gave anywhere from 2% to 8% of its expense money to children of military personnel who died in service. Using the high number, 8% of 8% is less than 1%. So there it is, LESS THAN 1% of the money from Sean Hannity's Scam Concert goes to helping the children of military families yet Hannity bills it as a concert to help these families.
Hann-Scam

(my edits)

I guess we'll see if the latest allegations hold water and this charity gets a little more scrutiny.

- Lee

Originally posted by EsSeeEye
Would it be better if they'd given nothing?

So if I give $100.00 dollars to charity, I should be happy that only $2/$3 dollars of it actually got spent on the cause?

I bet if your boss who is obligated to pay you $1,000 a week suddenly and arbitrarily gave you just $100, you wouldn't just shrug and say "Hey at least he gave me something!"

If you want to be a pigeon for con-men go right ahead, but if you want to convince others to join you, I'd suggest you work better on your sell.

Can't believe that post got a star.

Originally posted by johnny2127
Do not let your hatred of Republicans cloud your intellectual honesty.

Okay you're assuming anyone responding to this claim with disgust is on the left?

Don't let your political viewpoints cause you to try and polarize this accusation and make it be about liberal payback.

Debbie Schlussel, the accuser, is a REPUBLICAN.

Originally posted by johnny2127
The money is still there, its not in Sean Hannity's pocket. As you can see in the same tax returns, of the money that left the charity each year, over 75% of the money went to the programs charitable purposes. Of course most of that money was not given in scholarships yet, MOST OF THE CHILDREN ARE NOT COLLEGE AGE.

So this all begs the question that if the charity has produced funds well ABOVE AND BEYOND its established needs then why even continue it at all?

Keep in mind though...the money isn't designed to simply go into scholarships for the children of fallen troops, it is also to help injured soldiers and their families.

A lot of those soldiers have apparently received ridiculously low amounts of money, especially considering how, since the children of fallen soldiers aren't college age and the scholarships and trust funds are already set up, they should certainly have a lot more funds.

In 2006, Freedom Alliance gave only $1,000 to a soldier from Bay City, Michigan, whom the charity says was in the following condition:

Face was blown up and lost sight in one eye.

And that $1,000 was relatively generous, when you consider this soldier from Romulus, Michigan, whom Freedom Alliance only gave $200:

SM [serviceman] was involved in roadside bomb incident in Iraq, which caused loss of both legs and left arm.

According to its 2006 tax returns, Freedom Alliance reported revenue of $10, 822, 785, but only $397,900–or a beyond-measly 3.68%–of that was given to the children of fallen troops as scholarships or as aid to severely injured soldiers. Quotes from: VeteransToday.com

This seems needlessly stingy considering the sum of the donated funds.
Lets get some more transparency involved in these "program activities" that receive a large bulk of the money.

Right now that is pretty vague for a potentially large umbrella.
I'd like to see a bit more about this and that has nothing to do with left or right.

- Lee

Schlussel’s personal animosity toward Hannity goes back a few years, and may be playing a role here.

The Dems’ Imam: Why is Sean Hannity Deliberately Ripping Me Off?

www.debbieschlussel.com...

You think maybe they had an affair?

Sean Hannity is a scumbag. When you claim to be giving money to a charity like this and then it turns out he's just not doing it. Greed. He's a scumbag. Now, there's nothing wrong with greed and wanting to be rich but he's pretending to care and he's pretending that he is a true conservative. He's just a scumbag. He's no better then Beck or Limbaugh or any of the other media figures. I'm not saying that anyone on the left is any better, I'm just calling a scumbag a scumbag.

reply to post by lee anoma


Although this person did not view the concert as fundraising, what better way to increase attendance (i.e. revenue) than to attach the word "freedom" to it and use personality (North and Hannity) to promote it!

The poster's attitude about the "charity" aspect of it reinforces in my mind how far away from true charity this nation has gone. We now have "magnanimous" donations from the leftovers of a moneymaking venture, rather than the "widow's mite".

What used to be fodder for a comedy skit (Lucy and Ethel's '"charities" for themselves) are now highly praised functions. What little money actually reaches the beneficiaries, even though those beneficiaries are the reason for collecting donations, to some no longer seems dreadful, pathetic, or downright fraudulent.

Rationalizing bad behavior once again. Inviting the scammers to town instead of running them out of town.

it is comical how many people blindly agree with anything that is posted. the orson wells effect is fascinating. the sheeple read this story and without any thought blindly agree with it. case closed. actually pretty scary.