Thursday, March 04, 2021

Grifters gonna grift: Episode Infinity Plus One.

Good Lord but it doesn't get any griftier than this -- Rebel News' "Alberta Bureau Chief" and trailer park arm candy Sheila Gunn Reid interviewing, of all people, United We Roll's Glen Carritt:



who left a truckload of people with bad tastes in their mouths regarding a GoFundMe page that was supposed to help truckers cover their expenses for that ride:



The final delightful bit of griftiness -- the above is Rebel News "Premium Content" you need to pay to read.

You can't make this stuff up, can you?

BONUS TRACK:



I'm just trying to be helpful.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This opens the fascinating question of Rebel financing, and exactly how they track and account for the contributions that their readers make in good faith for various causes.
For example: if you want to donate money to their "fight the fines" campaign, you are instructed to e-transfer your money to "donations@rebelnews.com."
If that doesn't interest you, but you wanted to give money to pay for keean Bexte's hotel bill while in "detention", you should e-transfer your money to "donations@rebelnews.com."
On the other hand, if you want to defray the cost of Keean's excursion to the riot on Capital hill, you should e-transfer your money to "donations@rebelnews.com."
But if you just want to send Ezra money to support the Rebel's "Fight For Conservative Journalism", you should e-transfer your money to "donations@rebelnews.com."
Just to be clear, though, if you wanted to give Ezra's lawyers money to pursue the more than a dozen pointless lawsuits launched by or against the Rebel, you should e-transfer your money to "donations@rebelnews.com."

I've run fundraising campaigns for various causes and events in the past, and I've tried to adhere to the principles of ethical fundraising adopted by various professionals over the years. Those include setting clear targets for each fundraising initiative; ensuring that contributions flow to the specific causes intended by the donors; reporting regularly and completely to donors on what's been achieved; reporting at the end of the campaign on its outcomes; and most importantly, specifying what portion of the donation will be contributed to the specific objective the donor is contributing to, and what portion will be used to underwrite the expenses of the campaign AND the corporation running the campaign.

Rebel fundraising more closely resembles Scrooge McDuck's fault - a huge, open pit into which donors are encourage to throw money for specific things they're passionate about, then watch the contribution drift down in a pool of general revenue, with no reporting on where the money goes.

MgS said...

I would start from the assumption that Ezra's fundraisers are nothing more than a pocket-lining exercise. I doubt any of the myriad "lawsuits" he threatens to launch ever go any further than pumping money into "general revenues".

The odds of any kind of ethical tracking of the money is somewhere between slim and nil.

Anonymous said...

At some point Ezra pointed to Terms & Conditions for donations on his website, something to the effect that donations for campaigns can be used however and wherever he chooses. It is curious.

Noteable is that email subscribers to his electronic "news" cannot unsubscribe with a click, which I think violates CASL law. https://www.rebelnews.com/terms_conditions

"If you no longer wish to receive emails from Rebel News, you may contact support@RebelNews.com with your questions. Please include your name, email address and phone number so we can accurately deal with your request."

CASL: Under CASL, you must include an unsubscribe mechanism in your commercial electronic messages (CEMs).
https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/com500/faq500.htm