Red Cross wont say how it spent hurricane Sandy funds - It's a "trade secret"

[ShootSpeeders]

Charities are just businesses out to fleece the public.

http://rt.com/usa/168780-red-cross-sandy-funds/

June 27, 2014
American Red Cross has been reluctant to make public details over how it raised and spent over $300 million in Hurricane Sandy relief funds. The charity’s lawyers say the disclosure would inflict “competitive harm” on the group.

When a New-York based independent non-profit media outlet ProPublica filed a public records request for the same information, the charity’s lawyers argued that journalists could only be given a redacted version, as some of the facts mentioned in the report constituted a “trade secret.”

If such details were disclosed, "the American Red Cross would suffer competitive harm because its competitors would be able to mimic the American Red Cross's business model for an increased competitive advantage," Gabrielle Levin of the Gibson Dunn law firm wrote in a letter to the attorney general's office

 

[ShootSpeeders]

Red Cross has high-paid CEOs just like all other businesses. Big difference is most companies make something or provide a service for their fee. IRC takes your money and God knows what they do with it.

 

[TruthSeeker56]

I always thought the American Red Cross was a CHARITABLE organization, that relied on VOLUNTEERS and contributions (such as blood drives).

WHO exactly is the American Red Cross in "competition" with?

I thought the ARC provided disaster relief and other relief for people who need it . Are there other organizations out there who are "competing" to provide disaster relief for people who lost their homes and/or loved ones?

This is what happens when the U.S. government frivolously and recklessly throws millions and billions of dollars in taxpayer money around like candy, with NO ACCOUNTABILITY from the recipients.

What a sick, fucked-up country we live in.

 

[blastoff]

Were't they going to spend a bunch of millions on computers?

 

[bodecea]

Most military members learned years ago to not trust the Red Cross.

 

[waltky]

Major storms that once might have occurred every 500 years could soon happen every 25 years or so...

Study: Sea level rise increasing major storms off New Jersey
Sep. 28, 2015 — A new study looking back over 1,000 years finds the flooding risk along the New York and New Jersey coasts increased greatly after industrialization, and major storms that once might have occurred every 500 years could soon happen every 25 years or so.

The study by Penn State, Rutgers, Princeton, and Tufts universities, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, finds that flood heights have risen nearly 4 feet since the year 850, largely because of a sea level rise. The study advocates better risk management strategies to cope with storms. It was released a month before the third anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, which devastated the coasts of New York and New Jersey. "A storm that occurred once in seven generations is now occurring twice in a generation," said Benjamin Horton of Rutgers, one of six lead researchers involved in the study. "What we do know is that as sea level rise accelerates into the future, we are going to have more frequent flooding."

The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Adam Sobel, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University and author of the book "Storm Surge" about Superstorm Sandy, said this study, like many others before it, leaves little doubt that sea level rise will be more rapid than it has before. "This is just one more good study adding certainty to what we know already, which is that coastal cities around the world — including New York, but we're not the only one, nor the worst — are in trouble," he said. "This makes the direction of change certain: We are at increasing risk for Sandy-like disasters here in New York City and in many other places as well."

The study does not explicitly state that the changes are due to human activity but implies it "by the timeframes," Horton said. The researchers wanted to compare recent decades to the period before the Industrial Revolution. "The climate community knows the conditions were different in the last 30 years than they were in the last 1,000," he said. The researchers said that in a changing climate, future inundation of the United States' Atlantic coast will depend on storm surges during tropical cyclones and the rising sea levels on which those surges occur. However, the record of tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic basin is too short to draw meaningful conclusions, from 1851 to the present.

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Despite pledges, climate action seen falling short
Sep 28,`15 -- The emissions pledges that countries have made ahead of a landmark conference in Paris have been a major boost to the slow-moving U.N. effort to fight climate change. Less so for the climate itself.

With pledges to cut or curb greenhouse gas pollution on the table from all major countries except India, researchers say the world is on track for more than 2 degrees C (4 F) of warming this century. That's a level that scientists say could result in profound and irreversible impacts on the climate system, including flooding of coastal cities and island nations, disruptions to agriculture and drinking water, and the spread of diseases and the extinction of species.

However, climate experts say that it's not game over yet, as long as the Paris agreement includes ways to step up the pace of emissions cuts over time. "Much of the underlying motivation for any emissions reduction agenda is that first steps lead to second steps, which lead to third steps. It is probably the case that first steps won't solve the problem, but they start the journey," said Chris Field, a candidate to become the next chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

An analysis presented Monday by Climate Interactive, a Washington-based climate research group, found the emissions targets presented by China, the U.S., the European Union, Brazil and other governments before the December conference in Paris leave the world on a path toward 3.5 degrees C (6.3 F) of warming compared with pre-industrial times. Temperatures have already warmed nearly 0.9 degrees C (1.6 F) from pre-industrial times to now, primarily because of emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas, scientists say.

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