Over the past few years, right-wing conservative media personality Sean Hannity and the Freedom Alliance have conducted “Freedom Concerts” across the nation, with the stated purposes of raising money to pay for the college tuition of soldiers killed in action and to pay severely wounded war vets. However, as conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel writes, Sean Hannity’s “Freedom Concerts” have been a big scam:
According to its 2006 tax returns, Freedom Alliance reported revenue of $10, 822, 785, but only $397,900–or a beyond-measly 3.68%–of that was given to the children of fallen troops as scholarships or as aid to severely injured soldiers.
Freedom Alliance’s 2007 tax returns aren’t much better. Out of $12,459,317 it raised that year, only $895,347–or just 7%–went to seriously wounded troops and scholarships for fallen troops. 53% went to expenses, including $1,464,627 in postage and $1,151,428 in printing. $604,995 went to “professional fees” and “consultants.” Out of millions paid for Freedom Concert tickets and raised in fundraisers by Hannity listeners, only $596,500 went to college scholarships for soldiers who died in battle, and only $299,897 went to horribly injured troops. 208 student children of the fallen got an average of $2,868 apiece for tuition, though many got only $1,000 or less. 382 soldiers with serious injuries got an average of $785 each.
As Logan Murphy of Crooks and Liars notes, imagine if this was Rachel Maddow’s charity – Fox News and other conservative media outlets would no doubt be running a 24/7 campaign against her and MSNBC, with the inevitable calls for her ouster, yet those same conservatives are curiously silent about the scam being run by one of their own. Where’s the right-wing outrage brigade to call Sean Hannity on the carpet for his borderline criminal behavior? Our nation’s veterans – and their families – shouldn’t serve as a means of enriching oneself, and Sean Hannity should be ashamed of himself.
I have emailed my contact list with a link to the story. I title it “DID HANNITY SCAM THE TROOPS”. Till Hannity comes out and sets it straight I will continue to ask the questions. Please do the same.
You ask a good question. Fox news thinks nothing of there drone audience. I’m a realist used to call myself a conservative until sean vannity kept trumping that line. The right wing makes me sick. They nominate john mccain never look critically at there own side, and defend the undefendable. Its all a huge scam just look at the talking heads they always parrot out to sell there latest books. Michelle Fraudkin, Sarah dumb as hell palin, ann coulter, dick morris, karl rove and more bushies. I stopped watching fox news years ago. And when four cops were executed less than ten miles where I live and I find out he was paroled by mike huckabee I stopped listening to talk radio. They defended huckabee. The same people who claim to be tough on crime defend a man who paroled a guy sentenced to a hundred and twenty years who goes out molests a twelve year old and then kills four cops drinking coffee. To bad for me the left is just as corrupt and is all about bankrupting the country. Started by bush but accelerated by obama.