{"id":69,"date":"2006-07-21T09:56:35","date_gmt":"2006-07-21T17:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montaraventures.com\/blog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2006-07-21T09:56:35","modified_gmt":"2006-07-21T17:56:35","slug":"national-leadership-award-innovative-fund-raising-or-scam-you-decide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/21\/national-leadership-award-innovative-fund-raising-or-scam-you-decide\/","title":{"rendered":"National Leadership Award &#8211; Innovative fund raising or scam? You decide."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nRecently I received a telephone message from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.house.gov\/reynolds\/\">Congressman Tom Reynolds<\/a> indicating that I was a winner of the &#8220;National Leadership Award.&#8221; In the background of this message, there was the usual cacophony associated with those telemarketing boiler room setups, which definitely sent the antennae up. Not to mention, I live in California, not New York, where <a href=\"https:\/\/lantos.house.gov\/hor\/ca12\/\">Tom Lantos<\/a> is my local Congressional representative.<\/p>\n<p>\nI decline to state my own political views and affliations in this blog. So draw no conclusions about this statement other than it&#8217;s a fact: This award is sponsored by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gop.com\/\">Republican Party<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\nHere are some more facts collected during the return call to Reynold&#8217;s office:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It was confirmed that I have indeed won a &#8220;National Leadership Award&#8221;\n<li>The helpful staffer I spoke with was unable to tell me who nominated me or why I was selected\n<li>A recorded message from Tom Reynolds was played congratulating me on winning this prestigious award\n<li>The award winners names will be in a full page advertisement supporting a Republican-backed tax cut proposal\n<li>Award winners are asked to contribute $300 to &#8220;defray the cost of the advertisement&#8221;\n<li>I asked &#8220;Do I still win if I don&#8217;t contribute?&#8221; Yes was the answer.\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/roller\/resources\/mh\/burnsaward.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>\nAll of this reminds me of an episode of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thesimpsons.com\/\">The Simpsons<\/a> where Montgomery Burns gives Homer Simpson the award for &#8220;Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.&#8221; Burns creates the award in a bid to get Homer to release the nuclear power plant from liability due to it&#8217;s sterilizing effect on Homer.<\/p>\n<p>\nScam or innovative fund raising? You be the judge. Whatever you decide, if you get the call indicating you&#8217;ve won, you can make an informed choice about how to respond.<\/p>\n<p>\n<small>Technorati Tags:<a href=\"https:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/national+leadership+award\" rel=\"tag\"> National Leadership Award<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/scam\"> Scam<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.technorati.com\/tag\/fund+raising\"> Fund Raising<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I received a telephone message from Congressman Tom Reynolds indicating that I was a winner of the &#8220;National Leadership Award.&#8221; In the background of this message, there was the usual cacophony associated with those telemarketing boiler room setups, which definitely sent the antennae up. Not to mention, I live in California, not New York, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}