it does NOT say that the rest of that money was spent on u2 tickets and security. it lists these expenses:
$272,700 bill to charter a plane, a $117,838 tab for “transportation and security” and $8,740 for U2 tour tickets.

it does not list any of the other expenses it claims are “outrageous” but the ones listed above, are NOT outrageous. considering that one is an advocacy group, working to raise awareness, sorry i don’t think spending money on press trips and security for the press while on trips in africa, is “wasting” money.

from the ny post article:
“Kathy McKiernan, a spokeswoman for Bono’s organization, said the group chartered the 737 to fly journalists and others on a 10-day “learning and awareness-raising trip” to seven African countries in May 2006. DATA was reimbursed for the majority of the costs from the media, she said. “Our policy is to take security and a camera crew to shoot video for use in our advocacy work with us on all Africa trips we do,” she added. She said the concert tickets were distributed to DATA’s supporters and elected representatives in Washington. McKiernan said the lawmakers were asked to reimburse the charity if the ticket price was more than $50, to comply with congressional ethics rules. Most of the $31 million raised was in grant form and will be paid over several years, with just $8 million coming in 2006, McKiernan said. Bono has never disclosed how much he gives to his own charity, but McKiernan said the rock star covers all of his own travel-related expenses.”

Charity organizations necessarily run overheads which mean that all the money can’t go to actual charitable work. However, when you have a charity that wastes $80 from every $100 donation you have to start to question their motives and competence.

Bono is not accused of brainwashing of thousands of people.

Bono does not promote unscientific medicine or faith healing that is common place in Scientology. Nor does he hide his agenda (unless you know something about him I don’t) Scientology won’t even allow their upper levels to be discussed by spokesmen of the church.

Scientology encourages people to lie because regular everyday people (they call us wogs) wouldn’t understand the “great truths” given to them by a hack sci-fi writter who used money from his “religion” to buy enough of his books to put him on the best seller list.

This goes much farther than accounting for the money for a fundraiser.

Unless you can see in the budget what was spent on production and what was spent on programs and how many tickets were, say, given out to charities so those they serve could attend, what was in-kind and what was cash, you can’t really jump to any conclusions.

And oh, you can’t do that with any of Scientology’s over 200 front-group “charities” because they hide behind a cloak of religion and aren’t transparent about their financials.

one is a lobbying organization as far as i know – not technically a charity. and the majority of funding for one comes from wealthy benefactors such as the gates and buffets.