W.H. Chief of Staff John Kelly Can't Get the Confederacy Right

no Confederate flagAs has been widely reported, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly last night on the Laura Ingraham Show said Robert E. Lee was an honorable man and the Civil War was fought because the North and South couldn’t compromise. Kelly was brought into the White House to keep Trump from stepping on verbal landmines. However, he has stepped on a few of his own in recent days.
The unforced historical error comes amid two indictments and the revelation yesterday of an even more damning guilty plea from a former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos relating to the Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Some historical matters arouse little passion, some are critical to get right. Anything involving slavery and the Confederacy and understandably critical to get right. And it isn’t difficult. Lee fought for the South in the Civil War which was fought to keep African slavery as a moral good. All the compromising took place before the war and was evil. See, not hard.
A good social media place to look at for a response to Kelly is Ta-Nehesi Coates thread on Lee and the Civil War.
For more from past posts, see below:
Robert E. Lee on slavery – This post contains a letter from Lee to his wife.
The Vice-President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens on slavery as the reason for the Confederacy – This post contains the words of a speech by Stephens declaring slavery as integral to the new Confederacy.
Unfortunately, it appears that Kelly may have read too much history from David Barton. Barton believes Lee was a good guy and isn’t in favor of removing the Confederate statues. Even though Barton correctly attributes the cause of the Civil War to slavery, he falters on many other alt-right talking points.
UPDATE:
And of course, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, W.H. Spokesperson came out and defended Kelly’s comments.


The heads of thousands of sane historians explode.
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Facebook (blog posts and news)
Facebook (Getting Jefferson Right – history news)
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Why Won't K-LOVE Disclose the Pledge Drive Goal?

This afternoon K-LOVE is still in pledge drive. It is overtime. They didn’t make their goal yesterday as planned so they will keep begging until listeners pledge enough. My question is: how much is enough? In other words, what is the goal of the pledge drive?
K-LOVE’s website posts the percentage of the goal but not the goal.
KLOVE percent
So I called K-LOVE, posted on Facebook and asked on Twitter: How much total are you trying to raise during this pledge drive?
When I called the station, I talked to two people. Neither person knew the goal. Here is the Twitter exchange:


I then asked why the amount could not be disclosed publicly. So far, there has been no answer.

Why Does K-LOVE Need the Pledge Drive?

I suspect the reason is because the amount is quite large. It may also be because it would raise questions about why the pledge drive is needed. Let’s review some key figures from K-LOVE’s 2016 IRS 990 filing:

Contributions/grants:                       $170,313.699
Surplus (Revenue less expenses):   $63,043,532
CEO Total Compensation:                $      563,767
PR Coaching for pledge drive:         $      355,146
Number of executive staff making over $100k: 53

K-LOVE took in $63-million more than the organization spent in 2016. Does 100% of the pledge goal represent $63-million more than is needed? Given their own giving records, K-LOVE would clearly be fine if their current goal was not completely met. Listeners out there fretting because you fear your station won’t broadcast music if you don’t give should take a hard look at these numbers. K-LOVE does not need your pledge. They want it, but they don’t need it.
It is a huge red flag that K-LOVE won’t disclose the goal for the pledge drive.

Pay a Bill or Give to K-LOVE?

Last night, during K-LOVE’s pledge drive, the on-air personalities played a testimony of a young woman who said she once was at a point where KLOVE Carshe had enough money to pay a bill or give to K-LOVE, but not both.  She chose to give to K-LOVE and believes God blessed her for it. The on-air personalities then praised the woman for her action of giving to K-LOVE instead of paying a bill.
Maybe I am a downer or lack faith but I think it is irresponsible to encourage people to give to K-LOVE rather than pay their bills.
Perhaps things worked out for that woman but it doesn’t always work out so well for others. And let’s remember K-LOVE isn’t your church. Giving to K-LOVE isn’t “giving to the Lord.” K-LOVE is a radio station which uses Christian music to create numerous well paying jobs.
We live in a country where Christian entertainment is everywhere. There is no shortage of means to hear and see Christian music at little or no cost. In many markets, there are several Christian stations available. Most people on even modest means can afford a music player to load Christian music from a variety of sources.
I am not saying there is no place for Christian radio. I am saying that Christians donors should be discriminating and not lose sight of priorities because of constant begging.
As I have pointed out, K-LOVE is actually a rich organization. Let’s review some basic stats from a previous post on K-LOVE:

…a review of K-LOVE’s 2016 IRS 990 form reveals a very rich organization.
Contributions/grants:                       $170,313.699
Surplus (Revenue less expenses):   $ 63,043,532
CEO Total Compensation:                $      563,767
PR Coaching for pledge drive:         $      355,146
Number of executive staff making over $100k: 53
So when you are making your $40/month pledge, remember it takes 1175 of you to make the CEO’s compensation. It takes 740 of you just to pay the consultants who coach the K-LOVE on-air personalities in how to get you to give your money (“we need 10 callers during this song!”).

Paying one’s bills is an obligation which should be honored unless an emergency comes up. Breaking a promise to pay a bill in order to help fund the inflated payroll of a radio station is obviously absurd when one steps away from the incessant manipulation of the K-LOVE on-air personalities.
K-LOVE was slated to finish their fund drive at about 10pm ET last night. They didn’t make it. But because every executive bonus must be covered, the drive will go on and presumably more donor bills will go unpaid.

Gospel for Asia Again Fails to Produce Promised Evidence

In February 2016, it was learned that Gospel for Asia was removed from membership in the National Religious Broadcasters. NRB membership requires members to demonstrate good financial oversight and GFA had been evicted from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability in October of 2015. Thus, GFA was removed from NRB. In response, GFA spokesperson Johnnie Moore told the Christian Post:

Gospel for Asia is 100% focused on continuing its work around the world while working very hard to put an end to the false accusations being continually made against the ministry. Gospel for Asia can document the legal and ethical use of funds donated and clearly answer every question.

GFA’s leaders and spokespersons have repeatedly said they want to provide the information which will establish their innocence. Why haven’t they done so?
Over 2.5 years later, GFA’s leaders still are unable or unwilling to produce materials which could prove donated funds were spent as promised. In the federal fraud case brought by Garland and Phyllis Murphy, GFA’s lawyers recently filed a motion (October 6, 2017) to prevent discovery of the very information GFA’s leaders said in 2016 they wanted to reveal.
In the Murphy’s reply of October 16, 2017, attorney Marc Stanley asked the federal judge to require GFA to supply information which would establish whether or not donations went where GFA promised they would go. Murphy wrote:

In sum, there should be no further obstacles between whatever the truth is, and the parties and the Court. If the requests for admission will establish that Defendants do not have the evidence of how the donated funds were spent, Defendants should simply admit that. If they will establish that Defendants have such evidence, Defendants should furnish it. Deflections, inaccurate representations, and obfuscation will not substitute for the simple truth the Murphys have been attempting to discover.

The promises from GFA have not been kept. The Murphy motion lays out the promise with the failure to keep it. It seems obvious that GFA eitherPope KP2 doesn’t have the information to answer the charges or is withholding it. Since K.P. Yohannan controls both GFA in the U.S. and Believers’ Church in India, I believe the latter explanation is most likely.
From the motion to order GFA to produce evidence or declare they don’t have it:

The Court then specifically asked Defendants’ counsel about how the money is tracked:
THE COURT: All right. Mr. Mowrey, you apparently—your clients apparently track donations received by these different categories. Help me
understand the methods that they use to track their disbursements or their expenditures by purpose.
MR. MOWREY: All right, your Honor. Yes, and I will answer that question.
Transcript [Doc. 37] 18:25-19:4.
But the question was never answered. And, with the benefit of two weeks from the time of the conference to submit a written response, Defendants have come no closer to furnishing an answer. All of the verbiage in their response says nothing remotely definitive or clear about how they track expenditures by purpose, much less whether they have such evidence (or, if so, when they will produce it). Either Defendants have the information or they don’t—only they know the truth. If they don’t, they should simply say so.
As Your Honor observed in addressing Defendants’ counsel:
THE COURT: They have a right to acquire it independently; and to the extent that you don’t have the documentation and you do not control in any manner production of documents that have been requested, then I get it. You may not be in a position to provide documents that you don’t have access or control over; but if that’s the case, that’s your response.
Transcript [Doc. 37] 28:15-21.
Instead of giving that response—which the requests for admission would elicit— Defendants insinuate in their brief that they may now attempt to reconstruct some type of accounting from information they (maybe) receive from entities they (supposedly) do not control. But that is not relevant to whether Defendants in fact discharged their obligation to track the donated funds over the last several years (at least through the agreed-upon discovery period of 2009 to Q1 of 2016) and ensure that they were spent as donors designated.
In addressing the Court at the telephone conference, Defendants’ counsel reaffirmed (at least indirectly) that they can corroborate or verify how the donated funds were actually spent:
THE COURT: You’re describing for me somewhat of a shell game inasmuch as if a donor were ever to say, “How can I know that the money that I designated for ministry tools actually went to ministry tools,” and you’re saying, “Well, we can’t prove that. You’d have to ask the people that we gave it to,” who, by the way, are foreign companies or foreign entities or foreign individuals.
So if that’s what the response is, then are you telling me that there is no accounting or accountability mechanism from the people that you forward money to in Asia to corroborate or verify that they are spending the money in accordance with your donors’ intentions?
MR. MOWREY: No, your Honor, I’m not saying that….
Transcript [Doc. 37] 22:2-15.
But Defendants’ response sheds no light at all on what the mechanism is. It obliquely says that more documents may be coming (who knows when), but it also says that “the situation in the Field is complex,” suggesting otherwise. Interestingly, the main “complexity” Defendants cite is “to ensure that the Field partners’ FCRA status is not jeopardized.” Response [Doc. 39] at 6. (“FCRA” is the Indian law requiring registration of entities that receive foreign donations.).
Yet, on the very day Defendants filed their response, The Times of India reported: “The Believers Church, founded by K P Yohannan, and three NGOs associated with it have been barred from bringing in foreign funds to India with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) cancelling their FCRA registrations.”
The Times of India report also quotes Believers Church spokesperson Fr. Sijo Panthapallil: “Our FCRA registrations are under revision for the last one year. They had sent us a letter asking for documents and we have submitted the required documents.” Fr Panthapallil said they had submitted a huge cache of documents, weighing 60kg, to MHA two months ago. “Then they demanded four further documents, which we had submitted on September 4, 2017,” he said. Might the 132 pounds of already-compiled documents (plus four further ones) sitting in the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs have any bearing on what happened to the donated funds? Or are they all completely irrelevant? Whatever the truth is, only Defendants know, but at least obtaining answers to questions like this won’t jeopardize the Field partners’ FCRA status, as the MHA had already suspended it.
In sum, there should be no further obstacles between whatever the truth is, and the parties and the Court. If the requests for admission will establish that Defendants do not have the evidence of how the donated funds were spent, Defendants should simply admit that. If they will establish that Defendants have such evidence, Defendants should furnish it. Deflections, inaccurate representations, and obfuscation will not substitute for the simple truth the Murphys have been attempting to discover.

For years GFA has promised the public to clear up the allegations of fraud and yet they don’t produce even an audited financial statement. Meanwhile donor dollars continue to be plowed into legal and public relations maneuvers to keep the evidence from seeing the light of day.

A Very Rich K-LOVE Uses Disaster Relief to Raise More Money

KLOVE CarToday is the next to last day of the Fall pledge drive for Christian radio giant K-LOVE. The last time K-LOVE had a pledge drive, they did not use confusing appeals to ask for money. They used and are still using contests to draw in donors but they didn’t use the deceptive strategy of saying a $40/month pledge to K-LOVE led to new shoes, warm coats, or food for disadvantaged children.
Now K-LOVE has partnered with a new group to tempt donors. Natural disasters are hot right now so K-LOVE has partnered with disaster relief charity Convoy of Hope to promote the following promise:

Your NEW $40 monthly EZ Gift not only supports K-LOVE, it also provides disaster relief by supplying food, water, and hygiene kits to those impacted!

The following video pitch makes vague claims that a gift of $40/month to K-LOVE will lead to disaster victims getting food, water, and hygiene kits.

To learn more, I wrote a K-LOVE spokesperson and I called and talked to a couple of listener service representatives. I also wrote Convoy of Hope. After these contacts, I still don’t know for sure what happens when a new donor pledges $40/month.

Disaster Relief as Bait

I emailed Molly Erickson, Senior Director of Public Relations at Convoy of Hope and asked for an explanation for the following claim from K-LOVE: “Your NEW $40 monthly EZ Gift not only supports K-LOVE, it also provides disaster relief by supplying food, water, and hygiene kits to those impacted!”
I asked her to explain how someone giving $40/month to K-LOVE provides hygiene kits to Convoy of Hope recipients.
She told me

When someone gives to K-LOVE, K-LOVE in turn gives that money to Convoy of Hope so we can procure and deliver the food, water and hygiene kits to storm survivors — which is something we are already doing, but K-LOVES support enables us to help even more people.

If true, this would be a new wrinkle and unusual for K-LOVE. A review of their 2016 990 indicates that K-LOVE gave away just $100,580 in grants during the year.
Although I doubt it, it sounds like she is saying K-LOVE takes some of that $40/month and gives it CoH. I wrote back and asked if any of the $40 pledge goes to CoH since K-LOVE had always told donors that 100% of the donation goes to K-LOVE.
She wrote back to say:

I would encourage you to reach out directly to K-LOVE if you have questions about their pledge drive and donations to Convoy.

Earlier I wrote to a K-LOVE spokesperson but received no answer. Today, I called and talked to two customer service representatives. One told me that Convoy of Hope gives a disaster kit for every new $40/month pledge. When I asked who pays for the disaster kits, I was transferred to another representative. The second representative wasn’t sure if K-LOVE gives money to Convoy of Hope from the $40/month pledge. Although she didn’t know how, she repeated that $40/month pledges resulted in a disaster kit being given away.
It is disappointing that representatives of donor supported ministries can’t answer a basic question about a major fund raising operation. It is hard to believe these organizations don’t know how their relationship works.
To me, K-LOVE and CoH describe a scenario where the disaster relief kits are being held for ransom. The K-LOVE donors pay the $40/month ransom and Convoy of Hope will release a disaster kit already made to a needy person. In fact, those kits are going to go to needy people whether K-LOVE listeners pledge $40/month or not. At least, I hope CoH isn’t holding on to disaster relief. It is unconscionable to think that CoH would take money from a CoH donor, create a kit for a homeless disaster victim funded by a CoH donor, and then hold on to it until a K-LOVE listener pledges $40/month during pledge drive. Making it worse is that K-LOVE tells their donor that disaster victims have a kit because they gave. 
Using disaster victims to add more millions to K-LOVE’s surplus is disgusting. I had come to believe K-LOVE was making an ethical turnaround, but this erases any hope of that.
If CoH or K-LOVE believes I have misrepresented what happens with the pledges and disaster kits, I will provide space for them to correct the record.

K-LOVE Is Very Rich

K-LOVE sends out their on-air personalities to beg for money every pledge drive as if the results of the drive keep the wolf from the door. However, a review of K-LOVE’s 2016 IRS 990 form reveals a very rich organization.
Contributions/grants:                       $170,313,699
Surplus (Revenue less expenses):   $63,043,532
CEO Total Compensation:                $      563,767
PR Coaching for pledge drive:         $      355,146
Number of executive staff making over $100k: 53
So when you are making your $40/month pledge, remember it takes 1175 of you to make the CEO’s compensation. It takes 740 of you just to pay the consultants who coach the K-LOVE on-air personalities in how to get you to give your money (“we need 10 callers during this song!”). So if you want to help disaster victims, giving $40/month isn’t a good way to do it.

K-LOVE Should Take Advice from K-LOVE

K-LOVE asks donors who don’t have enough money to afford necessities to trust God to supply their need. Why doesn’t K-LOVE do that? If K-LOVE really believed what they pay $355k for some consultant to tell them to say, why don’t they believe it enough to practice it?
Just stop with the contests and the gimmicks and tell donors on your website what you need and why. If God is really in it, He will supply you with what you need, right?