Police Protective Fund still suckering people

A friend posted a list compiled by Tampa Bay Times of America’s worst charities today so, knowing there’s a special place in Hell for scumbags who rip people off in the name of charity, I decided to check it out.

Lo and behold, spot number twenty was held by one of my favorite charities, the Police Protective Fund (PPF). You may recall I profiled the Police Protective Fund back in 2008 after I got a call from a solicitor seemingly trying his best to sound like a police officer.

According to tax records, PPF raised about $50 million from 2001 to 2010. Of that, roughly $15 million went to pay its solicitors. Oh, and as for the first responders PPF claims to assist, those brave men and women received $260,000 over that timeframe. That’s about $29,000 a year.

What most people don’t know is that the Police Protective Fund is a North Carolina corporation with its registered office at a corporation service on Hillsborough Street. I wonder if our fine attorney general would like to check these folks out. After all, they want to help cops, right? Why not help our state’s top cop investigate them for possible fraud?

70.3 million French phone records, 30 days: US envoy summoned after new NSA report draws ire

Here’s a story on the outrage expressed by our allies regarding NSA spying. What the article doesn’t mention is that these countries also engage in exactly the same kind of spying, against the US and other countries. In light of this, their protests ring a bit hollow.

The U.S. National Security Agency swept up 70.3 million French telephone records in a 30-day period, according to a newspaper report Monday that offered new details of the massive scope of a surveillance operation that has angered some of the country’s closest allies.

via 70.3 million French phone records, 30 days: US envoy summoned after new NSA report draws ire – The Washington Post.

The ocean is broken | Newcastle Herald

This is a depressingly sad report from a sailor who reports that our ocean appears to be very, very sick.

Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he’d had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.

“There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn’t catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice,” Macfadyen recalled. But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.

No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.

“In years gone by I’d gotten used to all the birds and their noises,” he said.

“They’d be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You’d see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards.”

But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.

via The ocean is broken | Newcastle Herald.