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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.
Chase’s eligibility rules make it clear that the bank can disqualify any participant.
Pretty straightfoward really, no lawyer techno-bable there.
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 *
And as others are saying, they -should- have disqualified them, instead of changing the game mid-stream and hiding things. The hiding is why people are -really- mad right now.
Don't get me wrong, the pro-MJ people would be pissed either way... But now -everyone- is pissed instead.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Like anything, both sides are filled with extremist assholes.
Remove them from the beginning rather than letting them think they have a chance.
American Express (AmEx) did something similar in the Boston area. However, they thought it through first. An organization that wanted to participate had to submit a proposal on what they would do with the money and description of the organization's misson. AmEx selected about 40 (all worthwhile) organizations to vote on. AmEx got a reasonable selection of charities to participate--some of the really large ones, and a few highly specialized. The organizations used their participation to encourage their members to vote and become engaged to the organiztion goals.
I think every organization that was selected got some funding (perhaps at the $1000 level) so there weren't hard feeling from the losers.
Goes to show you that Chase != American Express.
And the thought of people's lives being ruined over doing something that did no harm to anyone doesn't sicken you?
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.
The thought that people are putting giving someone a hot meal over say giving a good professional education sickens me.
The fact is that most of the people whose lives have been destroyed by drug-related arrests are not bored college kids looking for recreation. If your dad is rich enough your arrest will be stricken off police records. If you can pay a good enough lawyer you'll get probation. If you are poor you'll get a rap sheet that will haunt you forever.
Disclaimer: I have never used drugs, not even marijuana. But I support total legalization of all drugs.
Like anything, both sides are filled with extremist assholes.
When pro-choicers start threatening, murdering and blowing up clinics that refuse to carry out abortions, then you may have a point...
As a long time progressive pro-lifer I must say that the type of groups you are talking about to my knowledge have not existed since the 80's. Most pro-life groups I know of that do outreach have people that help with getting a job, getting into school and very often helping with childcare. The last one I volunteered at even had a licensed therapist come in that treated issues like having an abortion, domestic violence and post-partum depression. Show me a Planned Parenthood that does counseling for grief after the abortion, it seems PP is more of the cut and run type when it comes to this issue.
I'm a member of CFI and not bound by any theology, so your blanket statement doesn't apply to me or most of the people I know who work at pro-life groups like Democrats for Life, PLAGAL and other progressive groups or even volunteers at centers that are sponsored by religious organizations.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I dont need to see a disclaimer to form my opinion here.
Chase is donating 3.5 million bucks to charities, and the result is a bunch of fucking assholes with the nerve to bitch and complain about how they are doing it.
"His name was James Damore."
Wow, a credit card company changing the rules in the middle of the game.
How Shocking!
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?
JAGga.me ----> Producing video games addressing emotional health and wellness issues affecting teens.
Margaret Sanger, is that you?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
At issue here is their social agenda, not their efficient use of bailout monies.
This is highly reminiscent of when Obama asked for input from Americans for issues they wanted to see addressed; the very highest rated issue was legalization of marijuana and amnesty for those imprisoned or otherwise punished.
So what happened? When the time came to address the issues, Obama laughed it off, literally laughing about it in public, during the program for talking about these issues, and acting like it was "crazy talk."
The people running this country - and you'd better believe that includes the people running the banks and other major players in the financial system, such as the insurance companies - are completely out of touch.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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
I'm a member of SSDP. I'm also a member of Amnesty International - and I've been with AI much longer, and am much more involved with them - I've worked with the regional office in D.C. on a couple campaigns even. But I don't think it is at all fair to say that Amnesty's cases are any more important than those of groups like SSDP. And even if you think they are, in this specific case Amnesty wasn't one of the organizations SSDP was competing against. Neither was the Red Cross. Or Doctors without Borders. The organizations that _won_ this contest included things like the "Stella Adler Studio Of Acting". Now, I'm not going to get into what organizations are more worthy of the money, but seriously, if it's worth giving to art education programs then surely it can be worth giving to drug education programs as well.
Now, as for SSDP and similar organizations not being worthy in general - it sounds like you are thinking we are NORML or other legalization organizations. We aren't. We are not a "weed pushing organization", we are a drug policy reform organization. Look at cases like University of Michigan student Derek Copp - he was shot, through his lungs and liver by a police officer over what was later described as "a few tablespoons" of marijuana. A _misdemeanor_ offense in the state of Michigan. He nearly died over it. Look at our prisons - how many hundreds of thosands of people are in prison for no reason other than minor drug offenses? These are not violent people, these are people whose crimes are far less severe than those that Amnesty tries to free. I mean honestly, Amnestly works to help people proven guilty of murder in some cases. So what, we should try to save those people, but if your crime is just smoking a joint, you deserve to rot in prison forever for it? SSDP fights to restore financial aid to students convicted of drug offenses. I have a friend, who's extremely intelligent but from a very poor family. He had financial aid covering his entire college expense. And he got caught once smoking weed. Now he's working at McDonald's trying to save up enough money to go back. SSDP works to help people like him. SSDP works to promote _real_ drug education - the amount of people addicted to illegal drugs hasn't changed at all in nearly a hundred years - yet in just a decade, through _education_ not incarceration, we managed to cut the number of people addicted to nicotine (one of the most addictive substances we know of) in half!
So tell me this - why is saving lives lost to drugs not worth anything? Why is providing a good education to good kids not worth anything? Why is keeping nonviolent offenders out of prison not a worthy cause? I mean ok, I can accept you ranking the red cross up there higher than groups like SSDP - I mean they're purely about saving lives. But things like Amnesty International - they are only different from SSDP because of their size. They're both extremely political organizations trying to save the lives and freedoms of people who _they_ feel haven't done anything wrong.
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.
These abuses are not imagined, they are real. Even if 2 weeks after she found out she was pregnant, that doesn't make it OK. I also think many people may be OK with abortion in the "logical" instances you use in the defense of abortion. A shockingly vast majority of abortions are simply "choice".
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.
I fail to see how you can justify something as "right" because,"They were going to do it anyway!" Michael Vick would still be fighting dogs if we held that standard to everything with any sort of "moral" argument to it. People still fight dogs, every day. And perhaps you are right, less women die. But they kill more babies since it is easy and legal. I am not going to be for heroin being legal just because it may save some lives from bad needles. (I know they can be attained free in places, but you get the point.)
I choose the pleasant feeling of the right choice, and not advocating murder. There is no way around it, that is what it is. Saying a child is not "born", and therefore not alive well, you might want to reserve a nice spot in hell with the rest of the lawyers and lobbyists that deserve to go there. Whatever you vision of hell may be.
One must see the forest from the trees. Abortion for choice is undeniably wrong to anyone if you can concede that a child is alive (refuse to debate that right now) except to anyone who is blinded by selfishness. Killing, or more specifically murder, is wrong. There is no moral way to justify murder. What gives you the right? Would I be justified in killing 2 members of your family to save all 6 of mine? If you can not answer that question in the negative, then you are delusionally on the "moral extreme" and fail to see that "making the hard choice" will only allow whoever setup that dilemma to win.
[ Is it all about not letting a bad guy win? No, it is about staying pure and not succumbing to wrong choices simply because they are easy. Anything less will taint you, and allow you to taint others. I for one, do not wish to welcome our tainted overlords. : ) ]
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.