THIS IN TODAY'S PAPER

Online campaign boosts home security in Idaho

Avenues for Hope donations outpace last year’s campaign

By HOLLY BEECH    hbeech@idahopress.com      © 2012 Idaho Press-Tribune

 

TREASURE VALLEY — An online campaign to raise money for Idaho’s housing and shelter nonprofits is gaining a lot of attention this year — $11,750 worth of attention in only three days.  

“The nonprofits involved raised more than $9,000 in the first day. It took almost a month to get to that point last year,” Idaho Housing and Finance Association spokesman Jason Lantz said.    The Avenues for Hope campaign includes 30 nonprofits — 12 of which are in the Treasure Valley — that focus on helping people find safe and stable housing.    

“These organizations are all the safety nets, I think, in their communities,” Lantz said.    And this is the time of year, he said, they need an influx of money to help with their missions. To donate, you can browse the Avenues for Hope website and give a gift to the organization of your choice.    

The organizations that raise the most money during the fourweek campaign will also receive grant money from the Home Partnership Foundation — a branch off IHFA — and from Key-Bank.    

Not only is the community on pace to raise much more than the $20,000 it raised last year, but the grant funding was bumped up by 74 percent.    

“We’re very pleased with how the campaign has started off and the amount of giving going on,” Home Partnership Foundation Development Director Deanna Ward said.    

This year the first 10 organizations to receive 20 donations get an “Early Bird” grant of $500, which may be part of the reason the donations flooded in so early.    

“That really gave them the incentive to get off the mark quickly,” Ward said.

Submitted    An “early bird” approach to this year’s Avenues of Hope fundraiser — advertised by the poster above — helped organizers raise more than $11,000 online in just three days.

While I laud these efforts, I have to throw out a caution.  The conservatives out there will read this and say, "hey lookee here, these deadbeats have got this great safety net, let's start cutting back on all them 'entitled-to-ya-ments.  With all these people a-gittin money to save the deadbeat and useless among us, why should we hardworking Patriotic Americans dole out more cash to these low-lifes?"  You think I'm kidding, right?  If you do, I hasten to have you read the papers [not just IPT {Idaho Press Tribune} or the Idaho Statesman] and judge for yourself what kind of people out there believe all those who accept aid from anyone are the scum of the earth.  It's called Social Darwinism.  It's been around for centuries [since circa 1887] and it states, [A theory that persons, groups, and “races” are subject to the same laws of natural selection as Charles Darwin had proposed for plants and animals in nature. Social Darwinists, such as Herbert Spencer and Walter Bagehot in England and William Graham Sumner in the U.S., held that the life of humans in society was a struggle for existence ruled by “survival of the fittest,” in Spencer's words. Wealth was said to be a sign of natural superiority, its absence a sign of unfitness. The theory was used from the late 19th century to support laissez-faire capitalism and political conservatism. Social Darwinism declined as scientific knowledge expanded.]  Believe it or not, the Republican Party is chuck-full of these numb-skulls that think because someone is rich, that person is actually better and smarter [Oops, The Donald appears and disproves it] than you or me.  As if there is a degree of humanness.  I ask you, when you look at a gathering of Chimpanzees on TV, do you think, hey, that one there is less than all the others cause he doesn't have as many nuts to crack?  Ridiculous, right?  But that's what these fools are saying to you.  You are less than the guy who has more 'nuts to crack.'

 

Religious charities...charities in general...do great work.  They help people whom no one else wants to help and they do it, mostly, without strings attached to their gifts.  However, we have to remind ourselves they are just a microcosm of the need out there that needs filling.  That's why you have a government.  Government isn't there just to protect our shores from foreign and domestic threats, it's there to help the least of us become more.  That's why there's free education in this country.  That's why there are BIG safety nets like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  They are there to protect us from ourselves lest we become Social Darwinists and lose our basic humanity.  For when that happens you have Autocrats and Plutocrats filling the void like Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin.  When we stop caring for the least among us, we lose our constitution's basic tenet -- Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

 

I know, at times, I sound like a rabble rouser on a stump, but someone's got to say what needs to be said, so I choose me.