This story pisses me off, but most stories about how the vets are used by others, pisses me off.
With scores of American soldiers returning home from Vietnam, California businessman and Army veteran Roger Chapin founded a charity in 1971 dedicated to those troops recuperating in hospitals.
Over the next three decades, Help Hospitalized Veterans would distribute millions of therapeutic craft kits to make moccasins, wooden wind chimes and other trinkets, and would win accolades from presidents and Hollywood celebrities alike.
Yet, as the nonprofit enterprise has ballooned into one of the country's largest veterans charities, reporting $71.3 million in donations during the past fiscal year, its spending practices have drawn sharp criticism from charity watchdogs.
Between 1997 and 2005, the charity paid $3.8 million in salary and benefits to Chapin and his wife and spent more than $200 million on fundraising and public education campaigns, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal tax filings. The public records also show that the charity awarded at least $19 million in contracts during that period to firms owned by Richard A. Viguerie, a prominent conservative political commentator and advertising consultant based in Virginia.
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