Oystein
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 18,903
Fiscal Year 2009, AE911truth payed
- US$87,574 for "Sales Production"
- US$75,450 for Richard's private purse
- US$54,942 for "Operations"
- US$21,941 for "Event Production.
- US$0 for "Scientific Research")
In the course of this whole debate thing I've had a fair amount of contact with Richard Gage and other top people in the 911 Truth movement. I don't know Richard that well and I know nothing about his organization, but I am familiar with small nonprofits and also what the IRS looks for when they investigate nonprofits and this ain't it. My journalist friends would say this looks like your typical small educational foundation, where the "educator" gets a middle class salary and 2/3 or more of the money goes to other stuff like "Sales Production": printing books and DVDs; "Operations" looks like office expenses and may include contract labor to mail out stuff, postage, phone, insurance, website management, etc.; "Event production"... well, Richard went to something like ten cities in the last month, so if AE911's mission is to educate the public about 911 CD, Richard has fulfilled their mission in spades for not much money.
It would look a lot worse if 80% of the money went to Richard. And every year or so a bigger foundation like Greg Mortensen's Three Cups of Tea group that supposedly built 100 schools in Afghanistan with lots of international donations gets caught building almost nothing (BBC went to 30 of these places and found only one operating school; the rest were abandoned buildings or someone else's school!). And what was that Christian group that raised millions and then housed one kid in a wheelchair in a big mansion they bought? These kinds of things are REALLY bad, a waste of the altruistic energies of our whole society.
AE911 is a small educational group with one extremely committed leader and a bunch of volunteers. Structurally, I would guess they are like thousands of other little nonprofits out there. And I DO know Richard well enough to know he is totally sincere and committed to his 911 Truth crusade. He is intelligent, likeable, and I have told him I am baffled that we can see things so completely differently. No explanation I have ever heard has ever rung true. Insanity? Nope. Fraud? Nope. I've given up trying to understand. What a long strange trip it's been!
Chris, the context here is that we have no indication that AE911truth pays for any independent research or investigation to further their agenda. I showed that they have a serious budget (somewhat over 300,000 in 2009), but don't do any concrete steps towards what I perceive as their two main objectives:
- Petition Congress
- A new investigation
They are so much aware of the criticism of the Bentham paper - why not fund a confirmation by a respected lab? That was where this discussion started.
We are waiting for the 2010 Form 2010. Maybe then we get a better feel for how they develop.
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