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Charities Upset Over Chase Facebook Contest
ssv03 writes "The New York Times is reporting that Chase Community Giving of Chase Bank recently held a contest on Facebook in which users were encouraged to vote for their favorite charities. At the end of the contest, the 100 charities with the most votes would win $25,000 and advance to the next round to have a chance to win $1 million. Initially, the vote counts for each organization were made public, but two days before voting ended they were hidden, and the final totals have still not been released. While Chase had no official leader board during the voting, several organizations were keeping track of projected winners. Those projections were almost identical to the final results, yet several organizations including Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), Marijuana Policy Project and several anti-abortion groups were not finalists. They had been performing very well (some within the top 20) until the vote counters were removed. Chase Bank has so far refused to discuss the issue with the organizations. SSDP has spoken out in a press release (PDF) and is calling for a boycott."
Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), Marijuana Policy Project and several anti-abortion groups were not finalists
In what ways are these charities? I thought charity is about giving to people in need, not supporting political organisations.
Obviously Chase meant the top "non-embarassing to a big company" charities. Can you imagine if Chase had to donate $1M to the Marijuana Policy Project? I'm sure the board freaked out at the thought of "chase" and "MJ" being in the same sentence and said, "do whatever is necessary to make sure we don't get that association."
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I wouldn't have a problem if Chase had declared an organization ineligible, but that's not what they did. Instead they wimped out and hid the vote tallies, probably blocking votes to organizations that those running the contest don't support, without even saying who or why they were disqualified.
The reason a corporation give money to a charity isn't because it believes in the charity, but because it will get a blurb in paper saying how good they are and increase the brand good will. Does anyone really expect a corporation to spend $25000 so it can be on the news with a headline "Chase supports legalizing Drugs". I won't even get to the quagmire around abortion. I'm sure if they do this again, they'll pre-screen organizations that are allowed to participate. Frankly I'd been more concerned if they screened out an organization that helps people get out of credit card debt.
" I am altering the deal, pray that I do not alter it any further ".
Banks, Ugh!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Like anything, both sides are filled with extremist assholes.
Remove them from the beginning rather than letting them think they have a chance.
Yeah, like the many people dead or wounded due to gang violence fueled by the street drug trade, or the many people addicted to drugs who can't get medical or treatment help because they will get arrested or simply ignored, the people dying in Afghanistan and Iraq due to terrorist groups funded largely by the heroin trade.
I could go on, but you're an idiot if you think the current US policy toward narcotics doesn't cause starving, dying and suffering.
People who think caring about drug policy is for bong-toting fratboys sicken me.
It actually makes much more sense to complain and try to fix things where society is proactively hurting people than when society is just ignoring people or where some natural problem is.
I mean, an organization trying to figure out why someone is homeless is hard. Getting them off street is hard, as is making sure someone just doesn't show up to take their place.
Likewise, curing a disease is hard. We can spend millions on research that doesn't go anywhere.
Compares to those, not locking people up for drug us and not spending money to do so is incredibly efficient. We don't actually have to solve some biological or social problem. We just have to stop doing something.
It's like, if your house is falling apart, due to termites, random vandals, water damage...and a guy you're paying to run around punching holes in the wall with a sledgehammer.
Which problem are you going to address first to fix your house? I dunno about you, but I'd get the sledgehammer guy to stop, even if the other problems are 'worse' in some objective sense of how damaged your house is.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Well, please do invent the absolute worst kinds of inhumane treatment to prove that women must have no control over their own bodies. A shockingly vast majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester, and if you can make out an expression on a fetus that's less than 12 weeks old, you've got an imagination too vivid to be anonymously yelling on the internet. Of the vanishingly small percentage of abortions that are performed when the baby has passed the normal age of viability, the vast majority of those are performed to save the life of the mother, or to prevent the infant from having a short, brutish, and pointless life. The misogynistic organizations are attacking a strawman that was never relevant in the slightest.
The abuses you've imagined are not because a mother suddenly decided, two weeks before her due date, that she didn't want a baby. Late term abortions are performed to save lives and limit suffering. We find it sane to put down a dog that's been grievously injured, but for some reason ending the suffering of a child born without a brain is some gross unjust cruelty, and you somehow believe that a child cursed to die before their first birthday should be forced to live through a year of brutish suffering, rather than being given the only kindness we have.
Finally, statistics demonstrate that women will still get abortions, regardless of how stringent the theocracy is that you place them under. Legalized abortions mean fewer women die. Which do you want, brassy moral superiority and thousands of women dead, or an unpleasant feeling and those women still alive? That's the only 'choice' offered.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio