In 1995, when the Washington DC animal shelter was going to have to close due to a budget shortfall, HSUS
which is based in DC offered to build and operate a shelter at its own expense. Like selling your soul to the Devil,
there were conditions. HSUS wanted the city to give it 3-5 acres of land and tax exempt status for
all of its real estate holdings in the District of Columbia. Keep in mind that their list of property holdings is pretty impressive.
The DC government offered a long-term lease but HSUS refused to proceed unless it was given the land.
This is the familiar mafia style of the organization. The district declined, and the only HSUS funded animal shelter
never materialized. The HSUS makes enough money in a year to fund a shelter in every American state but seeing how they
could not swindle a few acres of land and get tax exempt status they would not help the animals in their own state.
Then there is the Hitler Youth Program, I mean the Humane Teen Program. This is where teens who want to
start an animal rights group in their school can buy a starter kit for $22.00 full of the typical HSUS
propaganda or they can "RENT" a video to show their class for $25.00. Keep in mind this was in 2003. I recently browsed
their kids site and the shopping area reminded me of Toys-R-Us.
Ahhh…look at the happy go lucky hippy types trying to save the animals. This is a stereotype that died a long
time ago and has been replaced by big business. The HSUS wields an annual operating budget of $95 million. The
truly funny/scary thing is that when people are giving to the HSUS with thoughts of helping their cats
and dogs or even stopping the seal hunt they will be lucky if even a small portion of what they give ends up there.
The truth of the matter is a minimal, and I mean minimal, amount of the
money is used for either. Most of it is funneled into funding the main goal of the HSUS which is to halt all meat farming. That's right, when you give to these
vegetarian fundamentalists you take one step closer to saying goodbye to the grilled steak you so dearly love
or if nothing else you have helped to jack up the price.
In October 2002 the independent organization Charity Navigator issued a scorecard on the financial soundness
of major charities. Its ratings awarded charities from zero to five stars depending upon their performance.
The HSUS ranked in the 9.4 percent of the rated charities that got only one star because of their "poor"
performance. Charities received this rating if they failed to meet industry financial management standards and
performed well below most other charities involved in similar activities. I'm not sure if the "similar" organizations
included animal welfare organizations or just animal rights. In the past few years the HSUS seems to have sprouted affiliate
groups like the spreading of mold. While the HSUS financial records get better these affiliate groups rankings are
horribly low. One has to wonder how the money flows between these groups and even though the HSUS seems to
have become more responsible, have they just become better at hiding it?
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