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Judge bars Kars4Kids from broadcasting 'misleading' ads in California
https://archive.ph/Uy0Vp https://archive.ph/Uy0Vp
- incomplete 6mo agothey'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 6mo agoJokes on us, the "east coast kids" already fly to israel on our dime...
- imglorp 6mo agohttps://archive.ph/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/us/kars4kids-advertising-banned-california.html https://archive.ph/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/us/kar...
- davsti4 6mo agoThanks 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 6mo agoI'm using a (Greasemonkey) userscript to automatically redirect https://www.nytimes.com/ https://www.nytimes.com/... to: https://archive.li/newest/https://www.nytimes.com/ https://archive.li/newest/https://www.nytimes.com/...
- ChrisArchitect 6mo ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48141771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48141771
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- robotnikman 6mo agoI can still hear the old TV commercial in my head... 1 877 kars4kids...
- el_benhameen 6mo agoStill plays on the radio. I can recognize it within the first two bars and have nearly punched a hole in my dashboard trying to turn it off.
- tptacek 6mo agoI 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.)
- SoftTalker 6mo agoThat 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 6mo agoThere’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).
- dec0dedab0de 6mo agoPeople 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 6mo ago
- ceejayoz 6mo agoI didn't realize this was an actual company; I only know of it from The Good Place.
- MBCook 6mo agoI 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.
- autoexec 6mo agoIt's the same with the "apply directly to forehead" commercial. I've seen so many complaints and references that I almost feel left out. I pulled it up on youtube once just to see what all the fuss was about, but I guess it just isn't the same when it's not repeated 10 times during a 20 minute episode of television at a volume that's loud enough to make you reach for your remote.
- MBCook 6mo agoThat one I think I was lucky enough (ahem) to have in my area for a very short while. However I do remember people complaining about it much later online and wondering why they were talking about something so old. I guess it plastered longer in other areas.
- diebeforei485 6mo agoHopefully I never have to hear their annoying song ever again.
- tanseydavid 6mo ago"ok OK! I'll give you my car -- just make that song STOP!"
- dhosek 6mo agoIt was used to great effect in one episode of The Good Place.
- qingcharles 6mo agoThey just remade the entire song :( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2LQ0K1Xf5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2LQ0K1Xf5E
- VoodooJuJu 6mo ago[dead]
- saltyoldman 6mo ago> 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 6mo agoMost 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/2026/01/09/dbeb8d7e-0c3e-4f32-a50f-9ea81ffbe174/fire_aid_info__3_.pdf https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/cms/prod_cms_alt/file/...
- aranchelk 6mo agoThe 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 6mo agoIt'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 6mo agoHaving 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.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- futter9 6mo agoIt'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.
- EdwardDiego 6mo agoIt would depend on what the precise federal/state law regulating charities is - it sounds, to me, (I'm a Kiwi, but heard one of their ads on the radio today in an Uber in SF) like they need to be more specific about what charity they're raising money for - the after just said "for charity". I'm sure you'd agree that if I was advertising in the name of kids to raise money for a charity, and it happened to be that the particular charity I was raising money for had determines it should give Hamas money to help those kids, that potential donors would prefer to know where exactly their money was going to.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Terr_ 6mo agoRecycling from yesterday's submit (55 points, 19 comments) [0] _____ 'Bout damn time. Spoilers for The Good Place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFQHHor6mT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFQHHor6mT8 I remember being delighted how the scene skewered an unexpected but very deserving target. ____ [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48141771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48141771
- qwertyuiop_ 6mo agoYears ago, I was moving and I couldn't take a car worth $5000 with me. It was too much of a hassle. I thought of donating and the first thing that came to my mind was "Cars for Kids" because it was embedded in my mind from years of listening to their ads blasted constantly on radio. The donation was easy, they came and towed it away. I felt good thinking I was helping the local kids. A year later, I happened to look them up and felt absolutely cheated.
- zeroonetwothree 6mo agoI’ve donated cars to them twice and I’ll be honest I don’t really care. It was convenient for me to not have to deal with selling it and I got a minor tax benefit. I guess if I knew I might have picked a different charity though. But it’s not something I’d spend a lot of time worrying about.
- carlosjobim 6mo ago[flagged]
- iluvcommunism 6mo ago[dead]