Need Some Ankle Socks? Ask HSUS.

Given that the Humane Society of the United States spends about half of its budget on overhead—including tens of millions of dollars of fundraising costs that it misleadingly calls “program spending”—there’s no shortage of doodads and tchotchkes that wind up in people’s mailboxes. We’ve seen HSUS calendars, HSUS tote bags, and HSUS t-shirts. But now someone has sent us a pair of HSUS socks that he received in the mail.

Really? Socks?

Maybe HSUS should consider the symbolism of sending people something that is associated with bad stenches. After all, HSUS is an organization that only gives 1% of the money it raises to pet shelters, that recently stuffed $26 million into Caribbean accounts instead of giving that money to help needy animals, and that pays $400,000 a year to a CEO who has said “I don’t love animals or think they are cute.”

Yech.

You’ll notice that there is a little sticker on the socks that advocates spaying and neutering your pet. That sticker is there because it allows some or all of the cost of the socks to be written off not as overhead, but as “educational” program spending because it has an “educational” message. So when HSUS tells the public that 81% of its budget is program spending, that includes spending on cheap socks, the real goal of which is simply to raise more cash (which HSUS can then spend on more socks).

“Whenever I wear them, The HSUS name and paw print pattern will remind me of all the animals that will benefit through my membership,” an HSUS enclosure promises. Actually, it should be a reminder of the financial waste that occurs at HSUS, and the direct-mail companies that profit off of HSUS’s misleading cat-and-dog ads.

Here’s the unvarnished truth: HSUS is now an organization that puts cheap socks ahead of animals.