Guest Post by Morbo
Last week I criticized the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times for a strange column it ran about the rise in popularity of Mexican food. This week, in an effort to be fair and balanced, I’d like to give The Times a pat on the back for running an interesting story about the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.
Turns out the Minuteman group is a bunch of crooks. No, really. The story, headlined “Minuteman not watching over funds” by Jerry Seper, paints a portrait of an organization playing fast and loose with the laws that govern non-profit organizations.
Seper notes that the Minuteman Corps, whose main claim to fame is sponsoring a citizen’s patrol of the U.S.-Mexican border, has collected “hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars in donations” in the past 15 months.
Where did the money end up? Good question. Writes Seper:
Many of the group’s most active members say they have no idea how much money has been collected as part of its effort to stop illegal entry — primarily along the U.S.-Mexico border, what it has been spent on or why it has been funneled through a Virginia-based charity headed by conservative Alan Keyes.
That got my attention. Keyes, a perennial U.S. senate candidate in Maryland and Illinois, doesn’t appear to have a job, other than running around and screaming about gays at religious right gatherings. What’s he doing messed up in all of this?
As for public reporting, forget it. The story notes:
The Minuteman organization has not made any financial statements or fundraising records public since its April 2005 creation. It also has sought and received extensions of its federal reporting requirements and has not given the Minuteman leadership, its volunteers or donors any official accounting. A financial statement promised to The Times by [group leader Chris] Simcox for May was never delivered.
The story notes that some Minuteman activists have grown disenchanted with Simcox. One activist, Vern Kilburn, resigned as director of operations for the Minuteman Corps in north Texas, citing what he called “professional differences with the management and business practices” of the MCDC national headquarters.” In his resignation letter, Kilburn said Simcox and other Minuteman leaders offered “no acceptable answers” to concerns he had raised about finances.
Several Minuteman leaders confirmed that they too have concerns but refused to speak about them on the record. One told The Times, “I have no interest in going on the record in this matter. I have a lot of the same questions and have never received answers that are satisfactory. I have been contemplating resigning for a number of reasons, and lack of public accountability is one of those reasons.”
The group’s most high-profile project is the construction of fence along the Arizona-Mexico border. The project has been described as a means to keep illegal aliens out of the country, but The Times portrays the structure as less than formidable, calling it “three miles of a five-strand barb-wired range fence on 2-inch metal poles.” One former Minuteman volunteer asserted, “[It] wouldn’t stop a tricycle.”
Faced with all of this, Simcox is in a predictable defensive mode: It’s all a plot by his enemies, you see, to destroy this great patriotic movement. He insisted he does not take a salary from the group but conceded he makes money through speaking fees. But even that, Simcox said, does not cover his expenses.
Portraying himself as a martyr, Simcox, a former teacher, said he will request that the organization’s board approve a salary for him soon and if he does not get one “it will be necessary for me to leave the organization and return to teaching — or I may need to go get a job at Wal-Mart or Home Depot.”
I have a better idea. It’s a core belief of the Minuteman organization that illegal aliens are stealing our jobs, right? They are taking work that red-blooded Americans would die to have, correct? This is your big chance, Chris. I hear there is plenty of work under the hot sun in California’s vegetable fields — but those darned illegals keep grabbing all of these great jobs. Get your application in now. I think you’d be a hot prospect. But I should warn you, these jobs involve real work — not just sitting around on your butt counting up other people’s money.