I Want To Help But I Can't. . .

There are so many reasons why people think they aren't able to help the animals. Money, personal situations, living arrangements, small children, medical needs, and many more. In many cases, there are a lot of ways people can help without even having to leave their homes.

Begin with sharing and networking these animals in need. Perhaps someone in your social circle will be able to help in some way. If your local shelter is overcrowded and under staffed, perhaps you can volunteer your time to help out there. Feeding animals, cleaning kennels, exercising and socializing dogs, or maybe even photographing the animals to help promote them on social media are all ways you can get involved. Hosting fundraisers, volunteering to help out at adoption events, transporting animals, doing home checks, or providing professional services (are you a graphic artist, lawyer, veterinarian, work at a pet supply company) are all ways to help out a rescue you admire, and in some cases you don't even have to live close by.

Of course, adopting, fostering, and donating if and when you can are always welcome. If you would like to donate to our rescue, you can do so here.

LEAVE NO PAWS BEHIND

Clinton Foundation Doles Out Favors, Charity Rater Gives It Four Stars In Return

Charity Navigator had previously put it on its watch list due to concerns about its finances and transparency.

A non-profit group that has received favors from the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), including a free membership that entitled its officials to rub elbows with world leaders, issued its top rating Thursday for the Clinton Foundation.

Charity Navigator awarded the Clinton Foundation four-stars based on an rating algorithm that scored the controversial non-profit with a 97.5 on financial issues and 93 on accountability and transparency. The new rating represented a boost for the foundation, as Charity Navigator had previously put it on its watch list due to concerns about its finances and transparency.

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A place to help people with modest needs

Founded in 2002, Modest Needs is a non-profit organization with a unique, threefold mission. Modest Needs exists:

To responsibly provide short-term financial assistance to individuals and families in temporary crisis who, because they are working and live just above the poverty level, are ineligible for most types of conventional social assistance but who (like many of us) are living one or two lost paychecks away from the kind of financial catastrophe that eventually leads to homelessness;

To lessen the burden of state and federal agencies charged with the care of the truly indigent by doing everything in our power to stop these at-risk households from slipping into the cycle of poverty, despite the burden posed by an unanticipated, emergency expense; and

To promote compassion and generosity on the part of individual persons living in the United States and Canada, the areas that we serve, by standing as a living testament to the power of human kindness to change lives, no matter how much (or how little) a person has to share.

ModestNeeds.org

Cancer patients fly free (multiple resources)

I have a friend who has been accepted for treatment at NIH (National Institute of Health) and needs financial assistance for he and his wife to travel to Bethesda, Maryland. Here's some resources that help if you or anyone you know find themselves in this same situation:

To get the best care possible, sometimes cancer patients need to travel to treatment facilities that are far away from their homes. Traveling long distance for cancer treatments can be both exhausting and cost-prohibitive, potentially eliminating available treatments options for some patients. To help alleviate this burden, there are organizations who offer FREE air travel services for cancer patients, many on private jets.

Most groups who offer this free travel assistance require that the patient be ambulatory (able to walk and get into/out of the plane with little or no assistance) and be medically stable as the pilots are not able to provide any medical assistance. While some groups require proof of financial need, others do not. Typically, patients are allowed to be accompanied by one family member or support person.

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NYT: HOSPITALS CUTTING CHARITY

Hospital systems around the country have started scaling back financial assistance for lower- and middle-income people without health insurance, hoping to push them into signing up for coverage through the new online marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act.

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Help exists for those struggling to pay veterinary bills!

Denying medical care to a sick or injured animal can ruin days and induce lasting guilt. Even so, the scenario is familiar among veterinarians with clients who can't afford medical treatments for their pets. Financially strapped owners often turn to euthanasia to alleviate an animal's suffering — sometimes prematurely.

Numerous charitable organizations hope to prevent this from happening, usually by paying for a portion of medical treatment needed by pets belonging to people with limited incomes. Such organizations proliferated during the recent economic slump, to the point that dozens exist today in the United States alone.

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You can't save the world

Buying a homeless man a sandwich for two dollars feeds that man. Appropriating twenty billion dollars to feed a sandwich to every homeless man in America will only provide sandwiches to a small percentage of the homeless at a cost of four thousand dollars a sandwich.

Once you try to buy sandwiches for millions of homeless men, the sandwich money is eaten up by the expenses of studying how to identify the homeless, learning what kind of sandwiches they would like, studies on marketing sandwiches to homeless people over social media, the costs of diversity training for the sandwich makers and a million other things.

You can buy a homeless man a sandwich, but you can’t buy them all sandwiches because once you do that, you are no longer engaging in a personal interaction, but building an organization. You don’t need a homeless man to exist so that you can buy him a sandwich, but once an agency exists that is tasked with buying homeless men sandwiches; it needs the homeless men to exist as ‘clients’ so that it can buy them sandwiches and buy itself steak dinners.

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LIGHT A CANDLE, SAVE A LIFE

By purchasing this candle you will be shining light into the life of a homeless dog or cat!

One hundred percent of the proceeds go to the animals in The Rescue Train’s care. The funds raised by Candle With A Cause allow us to save more dogs and cats that are waiting for love in our city shelters. It’s the perfect gift for any animal lover in your life!

Candles come in two scents: Puppy Love for dog lovers and Cat’s Meow will make any cat lover purr! Each package tells a heart-warming tale of the lives saved each time the candle is lit.

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Obamacare fines charitable hospitals

Isn't this great?

Charitable hospitals that treat uninsured Americans will be subjected to new levels of scrutiny of their nonprofit status and could face sizable new fines under Obamacare.

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CNN: America's 50 worst charities

These nonprofits adopt popular causes or mimic well-known charity names that fool donors. Then they rake in cash, year after year. . .

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MODEST NEEDS: Help for the 'working poor'

At Modest Needs, we work to promote the self-sufficiency of the 'working poor' - the hard-working but low-income individuals and families that conventional philanthropy has otherwise forgotten.

We have elected to undertake this mission because we recognize that a significant gap exists in the social service 'safety nets' of developed nations like the United States and Canada.

This gap leaves low-income but generally self-sufficient individuals and families without access to small amounts of short-term, emergency assistance in favor of providing significant amounts of long-term assistance to these same individuals and families once they've fallen deeply into the cycle of poverty.

In keeping with our mission, Modest Needs offers grants to low-income but generally self-sufficient households, displaced workers struggling to return to the workforce, permanently disadvantaged persons struggling to afford medical care, and small non-profit organizations. Our grants are designed:

• To prevent otherwise financially self-sufficient individuals and families from entering the cycle of poverty, when this might be avoided with a small amount of well-timed financial assistance;
• To restore the financial self-sufficiency of individuals who are willing to work but are temporarily unemployed by providing these persons with the means to return to work;
• To empower permanently disadvantaged individuals who otherwise live within their limited means to continue to live independently, despite a temporary, unexpected financial set-back related to their medical conditions; and
• To strengthen small non-profit organizations by providing a forum whereby such organizations can apply directly to the general public for the help they need to complete the relatively inexpensive projects that will allow them to better serve their clients and communities.

To the best of our knowledge, Modest Needs is the only legitimate non-profit organization of its kind serving the United States and Canada.

FIND OUT MORE

Terrible news

Sometimes, you get news in life that is so awful, so horrible, and the worst is when you can do NOTHING about it to change it.

But, sometimes, we get a chance to make a difference:

MUST READ NOW

Glenn Beck fills Dallas Cowboy Stadium, helps poor, media ignores

Tens of thousands serve in Dallas for Restoring Love, media ignores

“CBS News is reporting 65,000 people show up at Dallas Cowboy stadium on Saturday. Now, I just want to give this some perspective. CBS News is the same organization that said 87,000 people showed up at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. So 65,000 according to CBS News, 65,000 were at the stadium and only 87,000 were on the ‑‑ in the mall, that’s ‑‑ well, here’s the difference, I should point out: All the people that showed up, the 87,000 people that showed up in the mall were enormously fat,” he joked.

GBTV: Glenn Beck: Mercury One Food Drive

I need your help

On Saturday, May 7th, I will be participating in the 18th Annual EIF Revlon Run/Walk For Women. You can join me in the fight against women's cancers by making a donation on my behalf. Your donation will help fund important research into the cause and cure of women's cancers, prevention, education and support service programs. Every dollar will help bring us one step closer to a cure.

I have my own fundraising page and I'm on my doctor's team (Team Taras):

Revlon Run/Walk

Thank you so much.

This means more to me this year than ever because a friend is having emergency surgery tomorrow...we need to protect all of the women in our lives!

NBA IN DIRE STRAITS

Help someone

Please help a fellow blogger-in-freedom who desperately needs some help:

ZILLA OF THE RESISTANCE

Just a $1 or $10 or more--anything you can spare. I remember someone who helped me out when I had to choose between fixing my car (and I live in the Los Angeles area where it's really necessary) or fixing my teeth...I was able to do both because of a friend.

We are all friends in this movement to take our country back. As Glenn Beck says: help one another.

KEEP JESUS OUT OF YOUR SOCIALISM

char·i·ty

noun /ˈCHaritē/

The voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need

tax

noun /taks/

A compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions

Thomas Jefferson

It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that they are faithfully distributed, and duly apportioned to the respective wants of those receivers. And why give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account, where we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see?

Keep Jesus Out of Your Socialism

The headline of the full-page ad asks, "What Would Jesus Cut?—A budget is a moral document." The text continues, "Our faith tells us that the moral test of a society is how it treats the poor."

The ad was produced by Sojourners, a self-described "evangelical" organization whose slogan is "Faith in Action for Social Justice." The ad was signed by Sojourners president Jim Wallis and more than two dozen Religious Left pastors, theologians, and activists. They urge our legislators to ask themselves, "What would Jesus cut?" from the federal budget.

How would you answer that question? My answer would be, "It's a nonsense question. Your premise is faulty. Your priorities are not His priorities."

FBI Investigation Imminent?

How much more proof does anyone really need?

By the way, I am a 15 year veteran of print graphic design and have a Bachelor’s in Fine Art with a Concentration in Graphic Design and graduated magna cum laude and at the top of my class. I have 15 years of professional experience in dealing with print vendors, paper vendors, paper ordering and 15 years pre-press experience–including ordering embossed materials–and I have designed and ordered custom business letterhead too many times to mention. Six of those years I held the title of Creative Director. You can be certain my opinion is a professional opinion. Thank you again.

Cancer patients fly free in the empty seats on corporate jets

Through the generosity of corporations flying business aircraft, Corporate Angel Network arranges free travel for cancer patients using the empty seats on corporate jets.

Since 1981, CAN has arranged more than 30,000 cancer patient flights and currently transports more than 200 patients a month.

www.corpangelnetwork.org

Conservatives more generous than liberals

Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks...the child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts...has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income.

The book, titled "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism" (Basic Books, $26), is due for release Nov. 24.

One reviewer said something that I believe is the real heart of the matter: "It should be obvious to any clear rational person that liberals are only concerned with helping the poor with OTHER people's money." [emphasis mine]