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Judge Bars Kars4Kids from Broadcasting 'Misleading' Ads in California

68 points by xnx ago | 34 comments

aranchelk |next [-]

The fact that the organization is Jewish is stated prominently in the article, but I’m not entirely sure why that’s relevant. Many charities in the US have religious affiliations.

The adult matchmaking etc, that deviates substantially from their advertising.

MichaelDickens |root |parent |next [-]

It's relevant because the fact that it's religious organization was an important fact in the judge's ruling. From the article:

> If Kars4Kids resumes advertising, [Judge Apkarian] wrote, its ads must contain “an express, audible disclosure of its religious affiliation and the geographic location of its primary beneficiaries and the age of the beneficiaries, specifying whether they aim for children or families, or both.”

aranchelk |root |parent [-]

Having to audibly name the religion/ethnicity of beneficiaries of charities is a pretty wild requirement for a US charity.

That may have been the judge’s framing, but it seems off from what I typically expect from mainstream US news.

futter9 |root |parent |next [-]

It's not at all wild if the charity presents itself as non-discriminatory (ostensibly to deceive "outsiders" into misguided donations) while specifically benefiting the ethno-religious group of its administration.

It's clearly deceptive and exploitative.

fn-mote |root |parent |next |previous [-]

To clarify the last sentence: the article says:

> Kars4Kids primarily funds a New Jersey-based Jewish organization, Oorah, which provides programs, including an adult matchmaking service, trips to Israel for teens and summer camps in New York, the judge wrote. The only program in California that Kars4Kids sponsored was a promotional giveaway of Kars4Kids-branded backpacks, she found.

MBCook |root |parent [-]

It’s still not relevant.

The charity is giving almost no money to kids. Thats the relevant part.

Doesn’t matter if it Catholic, Jewish, Scientologist, or Zoroastrian.

The law wasn’t faith based. The decision wasn’t faith based.

So why does the faith matter?

Ukv |root |parent |next [-]

Both "giving almost no money to kids" and that the recipients (mostly adults) it did benefit were "based on religious affiliation" seem fairly surprising to me. If I donated a car, I would feel mislead by both.

ande-mnoc |root |parent |previous [-]

> I'm not entirely sure why that's relevant

Because they are funding young people to visit Israel and this gives it context.

MBCook |root |parent [-]

Why does Israel matter?

All that matters is very little money is going to the stated goal of helping poor kids.

Religious angles of what they’re doing instead doesn’t seem to have mattered in the ruling.

incomplete |next |previous [-]

they'll just need to change the jingle to be something like:

one eight hundred cars for kids, for east coast kids to fly to israel on your dime!

also, praise be <diety> that these jingles will soon be off the air.

akatechis |root |parent [-]

Jokes on us, the "east coast kids" already fly to israel on our dime...

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tptacek |next |previous [-]

I went back on Archive.org, and it does seem to be the case that they've been up front about their religious affiliation (online) at least since 2013, when I stopped looking.

The pitch K4K has had for most of this time isn't about the good that they do so much as that they're very good at picking up your car conveniently and maximizing the IRS impact of the donation.

(Donating your car is probably not a good deal and you might be better off just having it bought and picked up by a salvager, and then taking the money and donating that.)

dec0dedab0de |root |parent |next [-]

People donating things aren't generally looking for a good deal.

I don't really care about the religious aspect, but if you're calling yourself kars4kids, the proceeds really should go to kids. In general, charities should have to be more up front about how their donations are being used. With rules being stricter as they get bigger. That is to say, the local fire department doesn't need to tell me how much of the hoagie sale is going to beer, but once you're buying commercials there should be some transparency.

As far as car donation options the purple heart is still around. I think at one point either the EFF or the FSF used to do it too, but I can't find it anywhere. Does anyone remember that?

tptacek |root |parent [-]

It does go to kids, it's just a religious charity for kids. That's an extremely normal thing. I'm Catholic, we have them too. And they're not hiding it.

I don't think it's a good donation! I wouldn't use it. Like I said, I'd junk the car and donate the proceeds.

nostrademons |root |parent |next [-]

Did you ever hear the jingle? [1]

The main issue is that it's a bunch of kids (~5-8yo) singing "1-877 cars for kids, K-A-R-S Kars 4 Kids, 1-877-KARS-4-Kids, donate your car today". Given its resemblance to preschool-age kids songs, and that it was a bunch of very young kids singing it, and that it played incessantly over California radio stations, many people thought that it was a charity funding local underprivileged kids of preschool/school age, not gap years for 17-18 year old NYC and NJ residents in Israel. They were always up-front on the website about what it is (presumably how they avoid fraud charges), but how many people are going to check the website when they have the 877 number burned in their brain?

If you look at the lawsuits against them, they almost all fit that pattern: someone (often elderly) who heard the kids singing on the radio, had a junk car, and figured they'd go help some underprivileged kids. Sure, always read the fine print, but the judge listened to the jingle and agreed that it was pretty misleading. So did other judges in Pennsylvania and Oregon.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8UV7SAhvG4&list=RDK8UV7SAhv...

tyre |root |parent |next |previous [-]

I think if you polled people donating, over 99.9% wouldn’t guess that it’s going to late-teens in a religious organization flying to Israel. I don’t even know that the 1/1000th person would guess.

You can’t hear the ads + see the billboards, compare it to where the money was going, and say in good faith that people thought that.

pessimizer |root |parent |previous [-]

Just from personal experience, Catholics are better at this. Other religions often consider religious instruction a charitable function. Catholics just help you, and you're moved into wanting religious instruction.

When I would go to St. Vincent's as a homeless teenager, the only indication that I wasn't receiving services in some government office was the foot-high cross on the back wall. I don't remember a single mention of religion. Plenty of Protestant churches would make you sit through a service before feeding you.

edit: that's what I get for not reading the article before commenting. This is just fraudulent. It's a charity doing Zionist things for Jewish youth. Most non-Jewish people wouldn't donate to a kids' charity that wouldn't do a thing for their children if their children were needy. The only need it's attending to even in Jewish children is the "need" to love Israel and not enter into interfaith relationships.

aidenn0 |root |parent [-]

Are you saying that Catholic charities are more catholic in who they help?

dhosek |root |parent [-]

Mostly. There are exceptions, like the Catholic adoption agencies wanting to discriminate against same sex couples in placements, but as far as using charity as a means to directly evangelize, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. A big part of that is also just a cultural aspect of Catholicism—we tend not to be big on the reaching out to people to join the church and there’s a tendency among Catholics to view themselves as members of an exclusive club rather than a party that there’s always room to bring in more people (the late Andrew Greeley commented on this in his book, The Catholic Myth and during a recent project that had me visiting a number of Chicago churches over the last year and as part of that viewing a lot of parish websites to check for Mass times, the numbers of parishes that had any indication on how to become Catholic at all was minimal (the vast majority assumed that you knew what RCIA/OCIA meant and I think I saw maybe a half dozen parishes that had the words “how to become Catholic” somewhere on their home page, all of which were predominantly Black parishes. On the other end of the spectrum, there were a handful of parishes where it was a challenge just to find an address and list of Mass times anywhere on them).

StanislavPetrov |root |parent |next |previous [-]

>and it does seem to be the case that they've been up front about their religious affiliation (online) at least since 2013, when I stopped looking.

If they were only soliciting funds on their website, which made it clear that your donation was being used to send 17 and 18 year olds to Israel, that would be a different story. In reality, the vast majority of their donations come in from people who are totally unaware because they hear the radio jingle, which is sung by little kids, and makes no mention of their religious affiliation or their affiliation with a foreign country. Here in New York I've been hearing these radio ads on a daily basis for literally decades and had no inkling about the true nature of this "charity" until today.

SoftTalker |root |parent |previous [-]

That was back in the days when if you had mortgage interest, it was to your advantage to itemize deductions and include charitable donations. With the much higher standard deductions now, far fewer people file a Schedule A.

dhosek |root |parent [-]

There’s also the cap on the deductibility of local taxes. The Trump tax “cut” raised my tax rate by roughly 3% (although I’ve tended to have lots of fluctuations in my income and deductions over the last 15 years so it’s hard to make good comparisons from one year to the next).

imglorp |next |previous [-]

https://archive.ph/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/us/kar...

davsti4 |root |parent [-]

Thanks for that link.

Its disappointing that when I go to nytimes now, the only HTML delivered is this: <html lang="en"> <head> <title>nytimes.com</title> <style>#cmsg{animation: A 1.5s;}@keyframes A{0%{opacity:0;}99%{opacity:0;}100%{opacity:1;}} </style> </head> <body style="margin:0"> <p id="cmsg">Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker</p> <script data-cfasync="false"> var dd='rt':'i','cid':'AHrlqAAAAAMAYl57GtItBLkAqF0sXA==','hsh':'499AE34129FA4E4FABC31582C3075D','b':2342411,'s':17439,'e':'0dea157ed708067f48ce0d08c7f23713666ae095714e7407aff1749b0c62909cb0558a3d8d1b2427045cad0fda5e06ee','qp':'','host':'geo.captcha-delivery.com','cookie':'hisUIu5NMcItx~Fvd3kG57mGOkaIgUYyUngfRyIhb6XE0N~XjhS58OOHEPPBtFncTBi11h89pGklYInh0kXQiMHeNs5Ck~KD9lhBHxPD6kvHQn5MMeeL7qX_CDvAG2BG'}</script> <script data-cfasync="false" src="https://ct.captcha-delivery.com/i.js"></script> </body> </html>

I wonder what Sir Tim Berners-Lee would have to say about that...

Quarondeau |root |parent [-]

I'm using a (Greasemonkey) userscript to automatically redirect

https://www.nytimes.com/...

to:

https://archive.li/newest/https://www.nytimes.com/...

diebeforei485 |next |previous [-]

Hopefully I never have to hear their annoying song ever again.

tanseydavid |root |parent [-]

"ok OK! I'll give you my car -- just make that song STOP!"

dhosek |root |parent [-]

It was used to great effect in one episode of The Good Place.

robotnikman |next |previous [-]

I can still hear the old TV commercial in my head... 1 877 kars4kids...

saltyoldman |next |previous [-]

> The ads with a repetitive jingle encouraging people to donate cars do not disclose that most of the proceeds go to a Jewish organization in New Jersey, the judge ruled.

It reminds me of when they did this giant fundraiser for the palisades fire and all the money went to NGOs that didn't do ANYTHING for the fire victims.

lern_too_spel |root |parent [-]

Most of the grantees were obviously doing things for fire victims. Some of them were not obviously doing things for fire victims. Those have been described here: https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/cms/prod_cms_alt/file/...

ceejayoz |next |previous [-]

I didn't realize this was an actual company; I only know of it from The Good Place.

MBCook |root |parent [-]

I knew they were real, but only from people bringing them up as an example of a horrible obnoxious commercial.

I guess they were regional and never in the Midwestern areas I’ve lived in.

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VoodooJuJu |previous [-]

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