Is this man a mother?
Mothers Against Drunk Driving is at it again: Come August, if you are below 22, you will need a zero alcohol blood level to drive a car.
It’s unreasonable but not unexpected. This is one of the very worst charities in existence.
MADD was founded by a decent woman with decent intentions. Candy Lightner, whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver, set to work raising awareness about the issue and passing legislation about it. She quit the organization in 1985, feeling that MADD had been hijacked and saying that the group had “ become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned … I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.” This is a distinction that MADD seems incapable of making.
They recklessly inflate their statistics. Notice that they talk about ‘alcohol related accidents.’ This is any accident that can be related to alcohol in any way. Did you have a beer at lunch and a sober person ran a red light and crashed into you? Did your passenger have a blood alcohol level higher than zero? Was an empty beer can found in your car even though you had no alcohol in your system? According to MADD, these are alcohol related accidents.
Even for statistics, it’s corrupt. I have not looked at the numbers for car crashes involving people below the age of 22 but I imagine that there are more accidents in general -not just “alcohol related- than in older drivers. Hence the insurance costs.
As far as fundraising goes, MADD just received a D (a scale from A to F ) from the watchdog organization, The American Institute of Philanthropy. This was caused by its poor spending practices and lack of victim support.
“The AIP says while most charities spend $35 to to raise $100. MADD has spent nearly double that amount. It also says in recent years they have spent $30 million on salaries, leaving just one third of its budget for victim services.”
The American Beverage Institute (a restaurant trade organization) agrees, saying that, in 2008 MADD spent almost $30 million on salaries, leaving just a third of its budget, or $15 million, for charitable work and victim services. They add that:
“Ten to fifteen years ago, Mothers Against Drunk Driving really did shift their focus away from hardcore drunk drivers and targeting them, getting them off the road and policies that did that and going after social drinking of all kinds. They need to shift back, go back to basics.”
And they probably would get back to basics if they could. Problem is, they’ve already achieved every single legislative goal they started with and quite a few that drove their founder straight into the arms of the liquor lobby. Yet they’re still making laws. No wonder. They make a lot of money from doing so.
Now, while one should believe The American Institute of Philanthropy, one could sensibly point out that the American Beverage Institute has a vested interest in badmouthing MADD. But if one is concerned with vested interests, they might also consider the one that MADD has. They too are a multi-million dollar organization. One that has a male CEO. For those of you unfamiliar with biology, it is possible for a male to be against drunk driving but impossible for him to be a mother. This matters because so much of MADD’s cache is based on “motherhood.” Would you expect a group called Canadian Fathers for Change to be headed by an American woman?
For everyone involved, MADD is a money making scheme. They should have no place in forming the laws of this country. That the media gives them respect, air time and acts as if MADD are serving the interests of the people, when they are simply serving the interests of a small, greedy and puritan group while taking advantage of their mostly well-intentioned but hopelessly naive donors, never fails to amaze me. Then again, MADD does buy a lot of advertising.
3 comments
1 ping
Melly
July 27, 2010 at 6:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
oh, oh, I know.
MADD is mad!
Bet you never thought of that one…
Ryan Oakley
July 29, 2010 at 2:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You must be reading my title drafts. Or you’re a mindreader. No other possible explanation.
tv guy
July 29, 2010 at 3:57 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.
Sent from my iPhone 4G
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July 27, 2010 at 3:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
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