SHADY NON-PROFIT ALERT: LA Times reports "serious financial and operational problems involving nonprofit organization handling of federal grant money"
Oh no...all my "the sky is falling" predictions are coming true! ZD has been warning about non-profit abuse of Federal Public Money in ways just like this. And now we are starting to see examples and evidence of some audits and busts. Hopefully they are working their way to LA City. (Hey Mr. K and Kevin James: This sounds like one of my calls to your show!)
Audit uncovers problems at nonprofit agency
United States Veterans Initiative's complex setup and its dealings with a for-profit partner are questioned. CEO says no laws broken.
By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 10, 2007
An audit report released today revealed serious financial and operational problems involving a nonprofit organization's handling of federal grant money flowing through its social service centers in Inglewood and Long Beach.
"There can be no better use of federal funds than for helping our veterans in need," said Gerald Walpin, inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service. "But that good purpose is no excuse for misusing such funds and thus depriving veterans of money allocated to benefit them."
[ZD: You can simply substitute "low-income people", "homeless", "schools/kids", "elderly", "health care", "affordable housing", "parks and recreation", "any warm and fuzzy cause" for "veterans".]
The audit questioned what it described as "a number of less-than-arms-length transactions" between the nonprofit Veterans Initiative and its for-profit venture partner, Cantwell-Anderson, a real estate firm headed by developer Thomas F. Cantwell.
[Those are supposed to be much better housing programs! Actually, these people (Veterans Initiative) are/were supposed to be running better and cleaner operations already!?!? Have they become corrupted over the years too??]
Entire LA Times article on shady non-proift corruption
AND NOW THE MAYOR IS SETTING UP NON-PROFITS FASTER THAN PROP 215 CO-OPS. (That shady f*ck.)
zumatimes.com
Audit uncovers problems at nonprofit agency
United States Veterans Initiative's complex setup and its dealings with a for-profit partner are questioned. CEO says no laws broken.
By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 10, 2007
An audit report released today revealed serious financial and operational problems involving a nonprofit organization's handling of federal grant money flowing through its social service centers in Inglewood and Long Beach.
"There can be no better use of federal funds than for helping our veterans in need," said Gerald Walpin, inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service. "But that good purpose is no excuse for misusing such funds and thus depriving veterans of money allocated to benefit them."
[ZD: You can simply substitute "low-income people", "homeless", "schools/kids", "elderly", "health care", "affordable housing", "parks and recreation", "any warm and fuzzy cause" for "veterans".]
The audit questioned what it described as "a number of less-than-arms-length transactions" between the nonprofit Veterans Initiative and its for-profit venture partner, Cantwell-Anderson, a real estate firm headed by developer Thomas F. Cantwell.
[Those are supposed to be much better housing programs! Actually, these people (Veterans Initiative) are/were supposed to be running better and cleaner operations already!?!? Have they become corrupted over the years too??]
Entire LA Times article on shady non-proift corruption
AND NOW THE MAYOR IS SETTING UP NON-PROFITS FASTER THAN PROP 215 CO-OPS. (That shady f*ck.)
zumatimes.com
Posted by Zuma Dogg @ 9/10/2007 09:50:00 PM
14 Comments:
Zumma you are soooo fabulous. How could you know there was corruption in a non-profit organazation!!!!!!
Zumma for Mayor, no Zumma for Governor, no Zumma for President !!!!!
Zuma for UN Secretary-General!!!!
What a man!!
How does he do it?
LAT seems to be printing Zuma type of stories concerning Non-Profit Frauds more frequently lately.
1. Zuma has become an LAT editor
2. Zuma is getting close to one of LAT’s editors, getting all the tips and knowing the type of stories to be printed ahead of time
3. Zuma has a crystal ball that works
4. Non-profits are getting out of control
5. LAT reporters and editors are reading Zuma’s posts
Sad to read that story.
L.A. Downtown used to have a lot of homeless veterans (now being replaced by drug dealers).
These nice people from Veterans Initiates have gotten numerous homeless veterans out of skid row (a very nice first step compared with trying to keep them all at skid row) and given them a new life through their program outside skid row. I think most of the successful supportive housing programs nowadays model after VI‘s.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with their model. But the Non-profit organization structure under our current systems must have something to induce frauds.
Hopefully, there is nothing big here, or only one or two bad apples.
If VI has problems, all those Non-profits in L.A must be disastrous.
Instead of auditing Veterans Initiative, the Fed should audit all those L.A. Non-profits who receive Federal money. They are really acting up under MAV.
Maybe they are coming.
This is what happens when you have illegal aliens in a city, it leads to corruption and yoy city going to hell!!!
If only the lazy L.A. Times reporters would start losing weight by getting out of their chairs and chasing down stories instead of reading this blog with attached comments (as well as quit editorializing in their news stories), the Times would become an award-winning paper as they were back in their glory days of the '50's through the early '70's.
A few of my sources tell me that the majority of the Times reporters read this blog to keep abreast of the current news, then print their stories after a little cursory investigation, but very few of them (if any) do any in-depth investigative reporting.
If the Times wants to become the award-winning paper it used to be and increase circulation to respectable levels, it needs to go back to basic journalism: who, what, when, where, why... and no spinning allowed in news stories; save that for the opinion pages.
Well, ZD is too busy being the advisor to all government agencies in Los Angeles to be Editor in Chief of The LA Times.
But he has consented to advise them as well.
After all, he is the Guru's Guru, right?
(The sad part is the fool actually believes some of this stuff is not satire)
LA Slimes has nothing but a bunch of kiss asses to city hall. Notice their stories stay away from the real controversey. That's why so many readers are going to Daily News. Nothing from LA Slimes on impounding the illegals cars but DN had a great opinion piece in their paper saying what we all think and it was wrong.
Steve Hymon has become a joke and people are worried David Z is beginning to spin just like we thought once he got to LA Slimes. He's leaving out key issues in his stories especially when its about illegals. His story last week on May 1 lawsuits was all about Carol Sobel and not the other side.
ZD,
I've said before that I think non-profits are in a far better position to deliver services to people in need than any government agency. Indeed its well known that most non-profit agencies can deliver equal services for pennies on the dollar of any government program.
However it definitely disturbs me when any non-profit goes corrupt. In most of those cases when a non-profit goes bad, its because they've been receiving government funds. Government funds are like crack to some non-profits. And once they get inside, its pretty easy to keep the spigot flowing if you have the right connections.
This is yet another reason why we must seriously cut income taxes at the state and federal level. Let people keep more of their own money and they will donate it to worthy causes that will help the homeless, schools, AIDS, environment, whatever. And if the non-profits have to work for their money (like any other business) they will likely be more responsible and efficient.
Just like people who receive welfare, businsses that get CRA money, corporate welfare, etc. give these non-profits easy money and they will likely turn shady.
12:17 AM
As should be, the LAT is dying on the vine - people are becoming increasingly fed up with lying, controlled media of ALL types and they are not immune. They are undoubtedly feeling the pressure to at least APPEAR to occasionally buck the corrupt powers that be.
12:50 AM
Well, with the war, the bad press, that terrible military hospital that was recently exposed, I suppose the Feds, in typical butt-covering manner, feel by investigating improprieties pertaining to Veterans will give them some PR boost ... maybe they actually will move on to auditing other fraud relating to Federal funds. We can always hope...
Zuma may be on to something when he points his finger at “Privatization of Public Money through Non-profits”
Perhaps “Privatization of Public Money through Non-profits” is the mother of all corruptions?
Most of us know that the Non-profits who receive government grant money may not properly handle the money as the case here illustrates. This is one area of corruption that we are familiar with.
But there is another group of Non-profits that we have to watch out for. That is the activist Non-profits who don’t get government monies directly (they receive other contributions that are tax exempt), but would want to “ensure community benefits” by influencing government agencies to funnel huge amount of Public Money to their favorite private developers or Non-profit friends.
These Activist Non-profits are funded by “Direct Public Support”. The contributions are tax exempt. But they usually don’t release their list of contributors or donors. This is one big layer of corruption that has yet to be unveiled.
Reporters, please look into that.
These Non-profits have been hiding behind those untouchable terms such as “Non-profits”, “Affordable Housing”, “Homeless” ….. for too long.
Now, do we see why Zuma dislikes “Privatization of Public Money THROUGH Non-profits”?
Hey Zuma, here's a hot tip for you:
There is shady gambling going on in Casablanca.
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