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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHershey's Charity for Children Became GOP Slush Fund
Milton and Catherine Hershey signed the deed of trust establishing the Milton Hershey School as an orphanage in 1909, funding it with revenue from the famous candy company. Since then, the school has officially been dedicated to the purpose of nurturing and educating children in need. Because its founder gave MHS Trust a controlling interest in the Hershey Company, today it boasts a massive $8.5 billion in assets and also owns Hershey Entertainment & Resorts (operating hotels and an amusement park). In keeping with its mission, the Milton Hershey School serves about 1,800 students from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade, who study in state-of-the-art school buildings in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
What the charity also does, of late, is shovel money and favors to a coterie of prominent Pennsylvania Republicans. MHSs alleged wrongdoing is pervasive and well documented, but thanks to the GOPs grip on power in the statemost crucially its iron lock on the attorney generals officethe charity has never been effectively called to account. With the first real possibility of the attorney generals office shifting to the Democrats since it became an elected position thirty-two years ago, all this may change come November.
For a sense of MHSs alleged misdeeds and the culture of impunity surrounding the charity, consider how, in 2006, board members of the school allowed the trust fund to purchase a failing luxury golf course called Wren Dale. The $12 million investment was two to three times the appraised value of the course and bailed out as many as fifty prominent local businessmen and doctorsincluding a former Hershey Company CEO who also sat on the MHS board. These investors stood to lose tens of thousands of dollars if the course closed. With the purchase, the investors turned their potential losses into profits of between $15,000 and $100,000. MHSs board then sank another $5 million into a swanky, Scottish-themed clubhouse for the money-losing course, all paid for by the charity. The charity explained the purchase as necessary to create a buffer between MHS students and the community, and later claimed the land was for future MHS expansion.
By the fall of 2010, mounting questions and a probing Philadelphia Inquirer series pressured thenAttorney General Tom Corbett, now the states Republican governor, to launch an investigation. Since then, the attorney generals office has confirmed only that an investigation is ongoing, without releasing any further information about its progress. Normally, an investigation like this would never take that long, said Randall Roth, a charitable trust and legal ethics expert at the University of Hawaii, who has written extensively on a parallel case in Hawaii involving the Bishops Estate trust. Its very surprising that its taking longer than two years.
http://www.thenation.com/article/170640/hersheys-charity-children-became-gop-slush-fund#
These people are scum. Alave labor and stealing from children.
progressivebydesign
(19,458 posts)Can you imagine what they could have done with that money to help a million kids???
Done with Hershey. Their chocolate tastes like shit anyway.
badhair77
(4,218 posts)They've moved jobs to Mexico. There's rumors about China. Maybe that has come to fruition by now. It's all about the cash instead of the kids.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)JPZenger
(6,819 posts)Hershey has expanded their modern plant in Hershey and also has a large plant in Virginia. Their research facility and headquarters are also in Hershey. They do have one plant in Mexico.
dballance
(5,756 posts)They have a flipping endowment of $8.5 BILLION and they only serve 1,800 students? Shameful.
badhair77
(4,218 posts)The charity is now connected to a hot mess of Repub corruption. Check out the info about Leroy Zimmerman.
Fisher lost the election to Democrat Ed Rendell. But before leaving office to take a federal appellate judgeship handed to him by President George W. Bush, Fisher used the attorney generals position to set in play a Republican takeover of the already dysfunctional charity organization.
He began by arranging for Pennsylvania Republican kingmaker LeRoy Zimmerman, himself a former Republican state attorney general, to join the charitys board (he later became its chair). Zimmerman briskly proceeded to triple the boards base compensation from $35,000 to $100,000 and retooled the charity as a partisan slush fund. Since then, Republicans have made millions from the Hershey Trust. Zimmerman collected nearly $500,000 annually, according to nonprofit filings, while James Nevels, a Bush-appointed former chair of the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, made slightly over $580,000 in 2010. Meanwhile, former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, who became President Bushs first secretary of homeland security, pulled in $200,000 annually, according to SEC filings obtained by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Numerous other prominent Republicans also snagged lucrative seats on the charitys various boards. These included Barbara Barrett, a leading Arizona Republican, and Lynn Swann, a former Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor. But during Zimmermans tenure, despite the MHSs mission, no child welfare professionals were named to the MHS board.
Zimmerman also used Hershey Trust Company property to host a June 2007 fundraising dinner for the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania featuring Karl Rove as the guest of honor, according to a legal complaint filed by Robert Reese, a former Hershey Trust Company president and Hershey charity board member, as reported by the Inquirer. The Hershey Entertainment & Resorts companys PAC paid the GOP committee a $15,000 fee for the event.
The article duly notes that the Repub candidate for AG is the son-in-law of Zimmerman. This jerk will walk away from the mud scot-free if Freed is elected. Life is definitely not fair.
Response to badhair77 (Reply #2)
JPZenger This message was self-deleted by its author.
badhair77
(4,218 posts)In the interest of being fair I will admit I have my own reasons for biases about the Hershey Company and they're connected to relatives and others I know who work and have worked there. I'll reserve my comments on that. I'm glad the company stayed in Hershey and that only 1 plant is in Mexico and I'm sure they'll thrive without my financial support, except for an ocassional Special Dark miniature. I'm not too thrilled they moved one plant to VA either. I used to love the Hershey Canada tour in Smith Falls, however. I'm probably being hypocrite here because I also love the Chocolate Spa.
I also know people who work for the school and they're upset at cuts and changes while all this money was spent on that golf course. There is (was?) some crossover here also. One person who was on the Hershey Co board was also on the Trust board and the board of managers of the school. Maybe he no longer holds those last 2 positions. I know he left the Hershey Co board last year.
My main concern is not getting Freed as AG.
DainBramaged
(39,191 posts)HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)Too bad they're not also selling medical marijuana, Holder would be all over it then.
DainBramaged
(39,191 posts)DainBramaged
(39,191 posts)thank you
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)This is not what Hershey was all about at all.
DainBramaged
(39,191 posts)About a year ago, a "citizen" petition was sent to the FDA, asking if chocolate manufacturers could replace cocoa butter in chocolate with "cocoa butter replacements" or "cocoa butter substitutes," while still calling the misbegotten product "chocolate." (I guess you can tell where I stand on that issue, and many of you have your own opinion.)
Believe it or not, despite the United States' bad reputation for chocolate, we're actually ahead of the European Union on this one. The EU version of this Standards of Identity (the documents that specify what ingredients can or cannot be in food, and what you can call them) allows manufacturers to substitute up to 5% of the cocoa butter in chocolate and still call the resultantwhatever it is but it's not chocolate as far as I am concerned"chocolate."
That does not keep manufacturers from replacing the cocoa butter with other fats; they just can't call them chocolate anymore.
Hershey, for example, makes something called Special Dark® Chocolate. If you look at the label, you'll notice it's trademarked. Elsewhere on the label, there's the phrase mildly sweet chocolate, which means the chocolate conforms to the FDA Standard of Identity for "sweet chocolate." A look at the ingredients reveals the presence of milk fat and other dairy-derived ingredients, which enhance shelf life and contribute to the pasty texture.
Hershey has taken the next step in the process, replacing the cocoa butter in some of its chocolate with far less expensive vegetable oil. Of course, they can no longer call it chocolate or even milk chocolate, but they can call it "chocolate candy," or "chocolatey," or the even more obtuse and deliberately misleading: "made with chocolate."
http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2008/09/chocolate-cocoa-butter-replacements-hersheys.html
DainBramaged
(39,191 posts)but I guess it isn't newsworthy enough toady