More corrupt than the
BCS: Parents for Megan's Law and the “victim industry”
In
the popular book “Death to the BCS,” the authors contend that Division 1-A
college football bowl games exploit many legal loopholes to make massive
profits. Unless your football fanaticism goes far beyond the actual game, you
may not even be aware that the “Bowl games” are actually considered nonprofit
organizations. Obviously, when we think nonprofits, we may think of the Red
Cross, the Salvation Army, or perhaps your local food bank and soup kitchens.
Who would have guessed our federal government had given one of the most corrupt
systems in our culture nonprofit status?
In
chapter 6 of “Death to the BCS”, the authors reveal the compensation for the
CEO of a number of bowl games. For example, the CEO of the Kraft Fight Hunger
Bowl (formerly the Emerald Bowl) made $377,475 in salary, about 11.2% of the
expenditures for running the game. A political action committee known as the
“PlayoffPAC”, whose investigation helped spur government intervention, found
the average CEO pay for nonprofit organizations with budgets between $10
million-$25 million was $185,270. Yet the Sugar Bowl CEO was paid $451,674 in
2007, and received a 42.9% raise two years later. The Outback bowl CEO made
even more, nearly 4 ½ times the average.
These
numbers are important because the impact of these high salaries ultimately
impact tuition rates at universities. Despite the alleged payouts of the bowl
games (between $300,000 and $17 million depending on the game), most
universities barely break even on their athletic budgets, and of course the
losses are compensated by raising tuition. In the end, whether or not you are a
football fan, you are paying the price for this corrupt system. There are few
organizations more despised in our culture than the BCS, which has an approval
rating of less than 10%, far worse than even President Bush at his worst.
However,
there are organizations in existence that make the BCS fatcats look like
street-corner peddlers by comparison.
Victim
industry advocates know they have found the proverbial goose Lane the golden
eggs. With so much focus on sexual abuse and the sex offender registry and our
media, a number of entrepreneurs have found a way to turn this fear into
profits. It has become a lucrative industry, with a number of organizations
making substantial profits while offering little in return. Just as with the
BCS system, a small number of people are making huge profits.
For
the sake of simplicity, my focus will be on a single organization as my example
– the controversial New York-based “Parents For Megan's Law”, run by Laura
Ahern.
In
PFML’s 2007 tax records, the group describes its organization this way:
“PFML
is dedicated to the prevention of childhood sexual abuse through the provision
of educational advocacy policy and legislative support services. PFML maintains
a website where information can be found on Meagans Law [sic] nationwide,
childhood sexual abuse prevention and links to other resources for advocacy and
prevention information.”
So
how much does an organization whose primary function is running a website that
consists of a few resources and referrals to other advocacy groups need to stay
afloat? Apparently a lot -- In 2007, $1.1 million, with just under $880,000
coming from government contributions (your tax dollars at work), in 2009, $1.15
Million, and in 2011, $1.07 million, all to fund an organization with roughly
20 members, most of them volunteers.
As
executive former director of PFML, Laura Ahern collects $120,000 per year, about
11.2% of the organization's total budget (comparable to the CEO of the “Kraft
Fight Hunger Bowl” in terms of percentage of expenses going to a single salary),
and that is before other perks that typically go with such a job. Compare that
salary to a far larger organization with a larger worker base, the New Orleans
area Habitat for Humanity, who spearheaded construction for people displaced by
Hurricane Katrina; in 2009, the Executive Director of that organization was
paid $97,500. It is interesting to note that Ahern is the only listed employee
in the tax forms with a salary. In addition, $170,000 was listed as
“compensation of current officers, directors, trustees, and key employees” with
another $575,000 for “other salaries and wages.” That is roughly 81% of the
budget going into employee salaries and compensation alone. Only about
$205,000, or 19% of the budget, goes into the logistics of running the
organization (they aren't the only culprits: Mark Lunsford's defunct JMLF gave nearly al proceeds to Lunsford himself, while the NCMEC spends roughlt the same amount on operating costs, including lobbying for the Adam Walsh Act, while Ernie Allen makes nearly roughly $1 million in salary and benefits).
Also
of interest, considering the condition of the PFML website, with its many
errors and myths, and its simple format, I find it hard to believe the
organization spends roughly $10,000 a year to keep such a poorly devised
website up and running.
These
numbers are especially troublesome considering that the vast majority of income
for this organization comes in the form of government grants. It will be
interesting to see how much the salary increase Ahern will give herself once
she receives the $1.1 million per year fee to be assessed to the people of
Suffolk County, NY, for the purpose of “monitoring” the homeless registrants
currently being shuffled from shelter to shelter.
While
the BCS system is corrupt and exploited by a small number of corporate fatcats,
at least some small argument can be made that bowl games have benefited the
communities through tourism and at least job creation on a temporary level.
With PFML, you see similar big payouts to a CEO, with compensation going to a
far smaller number of individuals, and virtually no benefit to the community by
way of job creation and tourism.
Like advocates for the BCS
system (who claim a playoff would “kill tradition and stifle the economy),
people who are made rich by the victim industry, like Ahern, have fed us a
healthy diet of lies and distortions of the facts in order to protect their
livelihoods. In 2002, PFML released impromptu findings of an alleged survey of
the state registries, which has given us the prevailing myth of “100,000
missing sex offenders”. This myth has been prevailing in the media, even in the
face of research thoroughly dispelling the myth. To this day, PFML has yet to
publish the methodology and data to justify the assertions of their “research”.
In addition, PFML gives each state a “report card” of their states registries.
Of interest is PFML’s insistence the state of Florida's registry is the gold
standard for Megan’s list. Of course, Florida has padded their stats with
thousands of dead, incarcerated, deported, and out-of-state registrants. Like
the previous study, there is little information given to help determine how
they came to these conclusions.
This
is the most famous of PFML’s myths, but their website is full of lies,
deceptions, and distortions of the facts (such as the “sex offenders have hundreds
of victims” myth). In 2008, I critiqued a number of victim industry advocate
sites, and came to the conclusion that PFML offer decent prevention tips, but
was clouded by a large number of sex offender myths and reliance on fear
mongering tactics.
Ahern and PFML
is only one of a huge number of victim industry advocates out there. Many of
the smaller organizations ultimately benefit only the few people at the center
of the group. Having a six figure salary in an economy where benefits are going
down, unemployment is going up, and the government is looking for ways to trim
expenses even in previously untouchable areas is no small feat. Ask yourself
how an organization consisting of roughly 20 employees can possess a million
dollar budget and a CEO with a six-figure income, putting her in the upper
echelon of American earners.
The authors of
“Death to the BCS” liken the bowl fat cats to “drug cartels”. If we can make
such comparisons to individuals profiteering from a corrupt sports game
schematic, then what can we say about an organization whose existence is
justified by exploiting the fear of sex crimes in our culture? At the least, we
can state that groups like PFML are more corrupt than the BCS.
