Jul 29 2010
The Exchange Rate in Europe is Getting Ridiculous
On Tuesday we told you about how Humane Society International is claiming to be supported by 11 million people worldwide. Now, it's entirely possible that the Humane Society of the United States (which runs HSI) got its elevensies mixed up. $11 million in debt, 11 million members—you can see how easy it would be to confuse the two.
We suspected that HSI was inflating its membership numbers, but suspicion and proof are two different things. Today we have both.
The European Commission hosts a website called the "register of interest representatives." (Think of it like a Yellow Pages for European lobbyists.) And the entry called "Humane Society International" shows something very, very interesting.
Here it is:
| Total number of members that are natural persons: | 50,000 |
Fifty thousand? That's less than half the membership of the HumaneWatch Facebook page. Which means HSI is puffing up its numbers by a staggering 22,000 percent. We've heard of influence-peddling, but this is more like influence spoofing.
The EU's population is around 501.6 million, which means that just one in every 10,000 Europeans is an HSI member. Just for perspective, if HSUS enjoyed a similarly dismal level of support in the United States, it would have just 30,000 members.
That's about 69 per Congressional district. Or, in other words, the sort of lobby group whose phone calls don't get returned.
Lotsa luck in Brussels, guys.
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Posted on 07/29/2010 at 02:17 PM by the HumaneWatch Team
Document Analysis • Gov't, Lobbying, Politics • (4) CommentsComments
More lies all the time.
“Donor Privacy Policy—Opt-out: We have determined that this charity has a privacy policy which requires you to tell the charity to remove your name and contact information from mailing lists it sells, trades or shares. Opt-out terms and conditions vary from one charity to the next, but all require the donor to initiate the act.” (Charity Navigator)
Perhaps this is why the HSUS claims to have so many “members”.. if you don’t ask to be removed ( and often even if you do) you are still counted as “among the many”.. how do i know.. my deceased mother is still a “member” after being gone for over six years…
“if HSUS enjoyed a similarly dismal level of support in the United States, it would have just 30,000 members.”
I’m sure that’s much closer to reality than the usual numbers they invent.
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Gotta love ya, Humane Watch! Thank you for the TRUTH and for giving me those daily chuckles as I think about the HSUS and where they are headed. And we aren’t talking about Europe, we are talking about them going down and out into the dumpster. ABOUT TIME!
Connie