Taxpayers Forced to Support Religious Activities
Courts bars suit against faith-based plan
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Monday that ordinary taxpayers cannot challenge a White House initiative that helps religious charities get a share of federal money.
The 5-4 decision blocks a lawsuit by a group of atheists and agnostics against eight Bush administration officials including the head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
The taxpayers’ group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation Inc., objected to government conferences in which administration officials encourage religious charities to apply for federal grants.
This is ridiculous, and atheists like me would be well-advised to start our own religions with the most idiotic and offensive of tenets, so we can apply for federal funding.
Samuel Alito and John Roberts are corrupt activist judges. They’ve always BEEN corrupt and they will die corrupt, unfettered by morals, honesty, or a sense of what’s good for the nation. Fuck ‘em.
Furthermore, the whole faith-based funding thing is a ruse. I know: I work for a human services agency that has applied for faith-based funding, and the whole thing is a boondoggle. Lord knows they haven’t done SHIT in Philadelphia:
But the real problem, [head of the Mayor’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives] Taliaferro said, is that faith-based initiatives were designed to fail.
President Bush had established the federal program with the idea the government would help churches deal with issues like poverty and violence. The concept: People of diverse faiths could work together.
Mayor Street bought it, and created the city’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives in January 2001 to “assist in the development of practical expressions of government/faith community cooperative programming … â€
It became a fervent prayer without any real support.
[snip]There are roughly 2,300 houses of worship in Philadelphia, from tiny crumbling storefronts to million-dollar mega churches. Taliaferro has a staff of three and a program budget of zero.
Churches eager to launch community-based programs with government funding must apply for federal grants. They’re then confronted with prerequisites and paperwork, a bureaucracy so daunting it creates what Taliaferro describes as “a pain where a pill don’t reach.â€
The grants also discourage churches from working together.
“People naturally inclined to cooperate are instead competing over grants,†says Taliaferro. “So church A doesn’t want church B to know what they’re doing. The worst part of it is that certain agencies, when they start chasing grants, start to lose their mission.â€
So our taxes are going to support a program that doesn’t do anything. Sound familiar?
Also, you have to enjoy this graf:
The White House program appears to have had a substantial impact.
Why? because the White House says so: no need to check facts:
In fiscal 2005, seven federal agencies awarded $2.1 billion to religious charities, according to a White House report. That was up 7 percent from the year before and represented 10.9 percent of the grants from the seven federal agencies providing money to faith-based groups.
Cus you know, the White House would NEVER EVER in a million years inflate their numbers. Never. Straight as an arrow, those guys.
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