Photo credit: New York Post

With P.T. Barnum’s adage in mind “There’s a sucker born every day,” it’s fairly sad that nobody had ever confronted P.T. for doing the sucking. Too often, we hear of non-profit organizations caught profiting – their controllers sucking away the funds that should be put forth to help fix what they were intended to fix.

We’ve heard of corruption running through such organizations as the Shiloh International Ministries, who spent over 96% of the money they raised on management and fundraising, when their donors thought they were giving their money to help veterans, needy children, and the homeless in California. In South Carolina, Big Hope was founded to raise money for orphans, sick children, and needy families, though it was found to have less than 9% of the $3.24 million they raised actually applied to the cause. Likewise, The Foundation for American Veterans, Inc. in West Bloomfield, Michigan also spent less than 9% of $4.1 million on promoting social and recreational welfare for current and past U.S. Armed Forces members, dependents, orphans, widows, and widowers. In the most recent case, suckers in New York were taken for a ride by the United Homeless Organization.

Notorious on the NYC streets for their water jugs resting on tables draped in red cloths, and with the collectors adorned in red aprons, the nonprofit organization worked for decades gathering funds as a charity for the homeless – or so a mass of suckers were led to believe. Actually, those who dropped their change into the giant plastic vessels were only giving money to the guy in the apron, who paid a $15-$25 flat-fee for the use of that apron, the tablecloth, and the water bottle owned by UHO.

Back in the UHO office, Stephen Riley and Myra Walker, the founder and director respectively, were using the collections for personal living and travel expenses, and Riley was alleged to have four company vehicles transferred to his name as well. A June 18th ruling by Judge Barbara R. Kapnick has left Riley and Walker banned from working within a non-profit framework again, and their organization has been shut down. All UHO assets have been frozen, and a future hearing will determine the amount of damages and restitution owed to the public by the defendants.

“The Court’s judgment will permanently prevent UHO, Riley and Walker from exploiting the trust and good will of New Yorkers and visitors to New York City,” said Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who also added, “This organization’s bad behavior should not undermine the public’s willingness to donate to legitimate charities.”

What’s most troubling is not that the spare change given by the public has vanished, but that there were many who were counting on those funds for basic needs, as it’s always the people these charities are built for that are the most damaged by the corruption and greed practiced by the leaders. Though in this case the homeless fall right in the middle of the public suckers, and Riley and Walker who just suck.

When ranked against Britain, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand, the United States finished in last place in a healthcare report released Wednesday by the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund.

American citizens pay nearly double of what citizens of the other developed countries are paying, and to add insult to injury (no pun intended) the care we receive is of lower quality, the report shows.

The data, taken from national patient and physician surveys, showed that in 2007 Americans paid an average of $7,290 annually, whereas in the comparative countries the people spent less than $3,900. Yet we receive less for our money, according to the fund’s Cathy Schoen who told reporters, “We rank last on safety, and do poorly on several dimensions of quality. We do particularly poorly on going without care because of cost, and we do surprisingly poorly on access to primary care and after-hours care.”

The report which judges quality, access to care, efficiency, equity, and the ability to lead long, healthy, and productive lives, showed that Americans are more likely to receive the wrong diagnosis or treatment, and that we’re most likely to be given the wrong tests.
The fund’s president Karen Davis was quoted, “As an American it just bothers me that with all of our know-how, all of our wealth, that we are not assuring that people who need healthcare can get it.”

Currently, the United States is the only developed country without public healthcare. Consequently, 46 million Americans are still without insurance. Many Americans still believe that the higher costs equate to having the highest quality healthcare, yet the report shows that out of the 7 countries the US finished 6th.

Perhaps the most surprising find came with regard to quality where England topped the list. England’s healthcare system is often used by conservative Americans as an example of a failed healthcare system. Of course, those who deride the English system rarely present valid examples to back up their convictions, yet they have a great influence on many Americans who are generally confused about the methods of health coverage offered throughout the international community.

Much to the chagrin of the Republican Party, a clear victory was scored today for the Obama Administration as British Petroleum executives have agreed to create a $20 billion dollar fund from which to pay the victims of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Though one administration official bluntly stated that the $20 billion is not a cap, and that if legitimate claims arise that exceed the holdings in the independently managed fund they too will be paid out by BP.

Now. we’ll have to watch how the fund’s manager, Kenneth Feinberg will handle the payouts. Known as Obama’s “pay-czar” Feinberg was the man who oversaw the payments that went to the vicitims of the 9-11 WTC disaster, and who was also put in charge of setting salary limits for companies that received money from the $700 billion government bailouts.

For Rand Paul and his Tea Party, and the GOP’s John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, forcing BP to pay for their mishap is a crushing blow, as they support the unregulated free market operations of the private sector. One could only guess that their answer to who pays for BP’s debacle would ultimately come from us, the tax payers, since there is no one else in line.

Though, it seems to me that it’s impossible to put a price tag of all that has already been lost, and all that will be lost as the crisis continues spilling into the Gulf by tens of thousands of gallons every day. It may just turn out to when we get a clear view of BP’s Tony Hayward shuffling around like Steve Martin in “The Jerk”, searching for his remote control and his paddle-ball while repo-men remove his belongings from his mansion. At least we can hope.

Carly Fiorina, the recent primary winner and Republican candidate for a California Senate seat currently occupied by Barbara Boxer, is donning the clothes of the anti-GOP, as she believes the Obama Administration should’ve played a greater role in government regulation over offshore drilling.

In an interview with right wing media outlet Newsmax, Fiorina told the reporter that the Obama Administration was “asleep at the switch” and according to the report “failed to monitor offshore drilling activities properly.” With her constituents almost wholly against regulating the free market which BP is a part of, Fiorina has slipped right into the murky waters that may leave her alienated from those who just elected her to represent them as their Congresswoman.

As ex-CEO of tech giant Hewlett Packard, Fiorina has expressed her beliefs that our government should be run like a business. Although her track record at the helm of HP was disastrous. Under her 5 year watch the company lost 30,000 American jobs either to “lay-offs” or to overseas outsourcing, and cut the company’s stock value by 60%.

A 62 foot tall, 40 foot wide statue of Jesus erected on the property of the Solid Rock evangelical church in Monroe, Ohio burned to the ground after it was struck by lightning Monday night. The statue, dubbed Touchdown Jesus by locals, was the concept of the wife of Lawrence Bishop, the owner of the 4,000 member church. She claimed that she intended the $250,000 figure to be a beacon of hope and salvation, though to many passersby it was nothing more than alarming. 

For the gangs of exclusory Christians – those who claim their god caused the devastation in Haiti because of a pact the people made with the devil; the same who believe Hurricane Katrina was their god’s wrath sent to destroy the sin-tainted streets of New Orleans (even though the “evil” French Quarter was one of the only sections of the city that was largely untouched by the deluge), this must be another one of those head-scratching moments. Especially when we consider the “Hollywood Hustler” sign advertising a porn shop that is near the statue was untouched during the storm. This must be one of those moments when if asked why, they could only answer, “God works in mysterious ways.”

Photo courtesy of AP

When asked about volume with regards to anything the non-statistician/“normal Joe” usually answers, “Tons!” when it’s a large amount or, “Not much,” when it is indeed not much. I would think that most people who are seriously concerned over the situation right now in the Gulf of Mexico would answer, “Tons!” because a precise figure is needed only by those who have either given up hope, and so now think it would be interesting to find out exactly how much of BP’s crude continues to flow into the waters of the Western Hemisphere, or by those who have forgotten how to think about the “here and now”.

On Sunday, 54 days into what is amounting to a global disaster, engineers from British Petroleum deployed deepsea sensors so they could produce a more accurate number of how much oil continues to flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Initially BP officials measured the daily flow-rate between 1,000 and 5,000 barrels (42,000 and 210,000 US gallons respectively). It wasn’t long before “outside experts” got involved for that number to be pushed aside, however, and the tally has continued to grow ever since. For a long time it was nothing more than a guessing game, factored largely by the video captured of the endless spew from the broken pipe one mile beneath the water’s surface.

At the start of last week BP had pinpointed a number as the collection cap was securing the oil at a rate of 630,000 gallons a day. A sense of relief rippled, even through the relentless statisticians. But the measure was short-lived, however, as an unknown amount was still seen leaking from around the capture point of the broken pipe. From this point new estimates of the “new” amount being leaked came in, registering at approximately “hundreds of thousands” of gallons per day. Of course, the vague figure still left the curious-minded without that precise figure.

The most recent estimate reported between 760,000 gallons to 1.8 million gallons continues to pump from the broken pipe each day. Though with the assistance of these deepsea sensors – that seemingly have been left to sit in storage up to this point, perhaps along side of some contraption also idly awaiting to be put to use, called a Miracle Plug – we’re finally going to have an accurate number of gallons, or barrels still leaking from the floor of the Gulf. As if it really matters.

In 1992, the city of Chicago experienced a flood in which 250 million gallons of water leaked into a tunnel that was once used in the early 1920’s for the transportation of coal. It happened when construction workers were driving new pilings into the Chicago River. The hammering caused a weakening of the tunnel walls which cracked under the pressure, and resulted in the flooding of the intricate network of tunnels, passageways, and basements throughout Chicago’s downtown “Loop”.

In both cases, the errors were the fault of humans wholly ignorant to what effect their operations were having on the surrounding workspace. The difference in reaction was drastic, however, in the sense that the officials in Chicago knew they needed to focus on nothing but plugging the hole. They called in truckloads of cement, rocks, and dirt in their hasty attempts at stopping the leak. At one point they even tried closing off the hole with truckloads of mattresses. Yes, it sounds silly, almost comical that people would take the tampon method of plugging the leak, and figure that a mass amount of mattresses might do the trick, but we have to give them the utmost credit, simply because they spared nothing in their attempts to plug the hole. The point is, nobody sat around trying to figure out the flow-rate of the water as it passed through the city’s underground, only how to stop the flow completely.

To this point we’ve watched high definition video of the flow coming from the floor of the Gulf, and now we know we can do a fairly decent job of surgically manipulating the area as we witnessed a submersible clip the pipe with a fixed set of shears. We’ve watched BP set “hats” and “caps” on top of the pipe, and all the while oil flows steadily toward the shores of the United States and beyond, yet they still can’t seem to find the urgency in which to drop in everything that isn’t buoyant to try plugging the leak.

There’s a point when we should be able to discount the priorities of someone who seemingly lacks the urgency necessary to quell a situation, and simply shove them out of the way. These people who need an exact figure to measure whether or not we need to take immediate action in any potential dire situation, should be forced to remain sidelined until the situation has been remedied. It seems too often they need to be reminded of the situation at hand, and what is most important. Sure, we can keep them at the sidelines where they could be used to simply answer questions such as, “Have we tried stuffing it full of mattresses?” In the meantime, take a backseat while we panic our way to dumping everything including the kitchen sink to dam the flow from the hole BP punched into the earth, where really no human should be allowed to play.

When city officials and heads of state bid for global sporting events, it seems the desire of winning titles such as “home of the 2010 World Cup”, becomes the priority over the welfare of the public who live and work in the shadows of the sporting venues. With the kickoff of the World Cup 2010 today in South Africa, the news coming from the country that has been socially, politically, and economically ravaged for many years is that this trend of popularity over human dignity continues to thrive.

The inhabitants of Mataffin – a district of shanties in the northeastern town of Nelspruit, with many who live everyday without electricity, running water, and who use any hollow vessel they might have to scoop water from mud puddles, watched on helplessly as their two primary schools were closed to their children, and taken over by construction engineers for the zoning of a 46,000 seat soccer stadium. Decked in safari flare with zebra striped seating, and being suspended by 18 metal structures stretched to resemble giraffes, the nearly $150 million Mbombela Stadium will be host to 4 cup matches totaling 6 hours of soccer. Without a national team of their own to use the stadium once the games have ended, the townspeople will be left with a monstrous reminder of an unattainable life of opportunity, and waste; a hollow super-structure born from hollow promises.

When the land owners sold the grounds, the people in Mataffin were told they would be given improved infrastructure, with new roads, electricity, plumbing, and new schools for their children. Instead they spent three years learning in boxes like trailers made of tin before a new school was built. The roads were never built, and the electricity and plumbing were never installed.

James Maseko, deputy chairman of the ward committee for Mataffin, said, “The authorities still say they will keep their promises, but the community is not sure it’s going to happen. When tourists visit, I think they will try to keep them away from the poor. I feel bad about that because this situation needs to be improved. The only way to improve it is to let others in the world see the situation.”

The situation worsened, however, when the people started holding public protests. One instance, in which the police interfered, turned violent as the protesters burned tires and a police car was torched. The police fired rubber bullets into the crowd, wounding many elderly and children who mingled amongst the protesters. Nhlesiphi Mathebula, an elderly woman whose only crime was to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, was beaten with the butt of a police officer’s rifle, as she stood at her front gate concerned and only trying to spot her grandchildren. And as if this wasn’t ugly enough, the violence spiraled further as a string of murders of people related to the situation were later uncovered.

Sadly for the hopes of Mr. Maseko the world is largely unaware of the situation, because the news that came from the host nation as they prepared for the World Cup 2010 was hardly reported upon. Besides, most people have grown so accustomed to the inhumanity that seems to plague the African continent that most reports pass right through our consciousness like water through a sieve. And many of the neighborhoods that lie adjacent to the other stadiums hosting World Cup matches scattered across South Africa were by no means immune to the pre-games strife.

Just outside of Cape Town is a shanty-town called Blikkiesdorp – the “tin can town”, to where thousands of the urban poor are being forcefully relocated so as to avoid being a blight on the landscape en route to Cape Town Stadium, where 9 cup matches are scheduled. Four families must share one toilet and a water tap in Blikkiesdorp, and those who refuse to move there are under the threat of imprisonment. Though ensured by the authorities that the relocation would only be temporary, many of the inhabitants have been there for years now, without any sign they’ll be able to return from where they came.

The practice of disguising reality is common amongst nations holding sporting events that will be broadcast worldwide. Who could forget the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, when the authorities grew embarrassed by the homeless people living in the vicinity of the event-grounds, and so used some of their budget money to purchase suits and ties in which to disguise them. If only the officials in South Africa could be as peacefully humiliating.