Madonna's Charity: 'Delinquent'
Madonna's Charity: 'Delinquent'
Friday, April 03, 2009
By Roger Friedman
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Madonna's second adoption and charity have both fallen through.
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Madonna’s Charity: ‘Delinquent’
After all that spin about Madonna donating millions to save Malawian children, it turns out the State of California has her labeled as “delinquent.”
According to California’s Attorney General’s office, Madonna’s Ray of Light charity is ‘delinquent’ after years of being up to date. The filing indicates that Ray of Light Foundation was last renewed on June 23, 2008 and is set to have its license expire on May 14, 2009.
Even stranger: Ray of Light’s most recent Form 990 filed with the IRS has been wiped off the publicly-accessed Guide Star website for registered charities and foundations.
The filing, delivered in 2008 for 2007, which I reported in this column last December 30th. It showed that Madonna had given no money to Raising Malawi, the charity she started in 2006 with Michael Berg and other principals of the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles.
However: Madonna did donate $2.6 million straight to the Kabbalah Center itself.
It’s rare that a foundation or charity removes a Form 990 link to Guide Star for any given year. GuideStar automatically posts every new filing as soon as they’re available.
All of this has something to do with this morning’s news that the Malawi court denied Madonna’s petition to adopt four year old Mercy James and take her out of the country.
Here’s a link to one document that may have influenced the court’s decision:
http://www.hrccmalawi.org/madonnastatement.pdf
All hail the Malawi judge who was wise enough to put a stop to this nonsense. Madonna can no longer satisfy her ego by making Malawian children her souvenirs. She’ll have to take home t-shirts and woven baskets, just like everyone else.
And it’s not like Madonna isn’t a good mother. One look at teenage Lourdes and you can see she’s done a good job. Same for Rocco, her son with Guy Ritchie: he’s described by friends as a “great kid.” Of course, Lourdes and Rocco each have active fathers – Carlos Leon and Ritchie, respectively. Madonna’s adopted Malawi son, David Banda, lost Ritchie to divorce a year after meeting him. He’s also endured her reported affair with Yankee baseball player Alex Rodriguez and has since spent time with Madonna’s 21-year-old Brazilian boy toy, Jesus Luz.
It’s not that Madonna’s “stable” family has changed since she acquired little David. Some kind of disconnect has occurred in Madonna’s thinking when it comes to the country of Malawi and its orphans. Taking them home to America or Britain isn’t going to solve the problem of poverty.
Most of us have never been to Malawi, a country that Madonna has depicted as so poor that she must remove its children for their safety. She’s burnished this image so completely that yours truly was surprised to meet a group of Malawi businessmen on a flight in Zambia two years ago. These well-spoken gentlemen were on their way to a weekend retreat – just like businessmen all over the world.
I asked them, What about Madonna and her adoption of little David Banda?
The man sitting next to me said, “We wish she’d stop kidnapping our children.”
The fact is, as the linked document from the Malawi HRCC shows, Madonna could just as easily help Mercy and even David not by taking them home, but by writing checks to help them and all Malawi children on the spot.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,512345,00.html