email sent May 14, 2003 --- Fw: Where our Tax Dollars have been going.. 

----- Original Message -----

This (see email below) is not good.  It will allow Christian based White Supremacist access to federal "faith-based" funds.  Remember it was Christians who supported SLAVERY, then segregation and now discrimination.  We must all fight this latest usurpation by His Fraudulency, George II.  With public school funds being cut in every state as a result of economic downturn, this funding gives control of education to Christian Racist groups masquerading as Christian faith-based groups.

 

It has been said repeatedly that Sunday morning is the most segregated time in the US.  Personally, I don't trust any of the White Christian groups.  Even though one or two have apologized for their role in slavery and subsequent segregation, many have never abandoned their centuries old efforts to maintain racial separation in order to maintain racial superiority. (click UNDER GOD)

 

Get some money to these groups fighting these edicts of  His Fraudulency, George II in the courts.  It is a blatant attempt to establish "Church run public education" in the US, as in Islam.  Get on his case (click BIG OIL).  It has to be illegal for a president of the US to deliberately act against the constitution while in office.

 

Read on and try not to get sick...

> Source: THE JEWISH WEEK   May 9, 2003
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> (05/09/2003)                        <http://www.thejewishweek.com/img/printer_icon.gif> Print this Article <http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=7870&print=yes>                     <http://www.thejewishweek.com/img/email3.gif> Send this article <http://www.thejewishweek.com/jweekmail/mailtofriend.php3?sec=news&artid=7870> 
> Faith-Based Stealth Tactics
> The Bush administration is making headway through back doors on implementing initiatives.
> James D. Besser - Washington Correspondent
> The Bush administration keeps losing skirmishes in Congress over its faith-based initiatives, but it may be winning the war through covert executive action.
>
> As proposals have languished on Capitol Hill, the White House quietly has used its executive authority to provide most of what Congress has spurned. Dozens of religious groups, almost all Christian, already are starting to take advantage of the new funding pipeline.
>
> The Compassion Capitol Fund, through the Department of Health and Human Services, issued its first grants in October. The program was intended to help small community and faith-based charities, but critics say the Bush administration has shifted the emphasis to religious groups and has given money to some big, well-heeled ministries.
>
> According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, most of the $24.8 million in initial grants went to faith-based groups, including the televangelist Pat Robertson’s “Operation Blessing.” Robertson had opposed the faith-based initiative, but that didn’t stop his group from seeking and winning $500,000 in funding.
>
> An Americans United official said that while the faith-based initiative is not supposed to favor any one religion, “not one non-Christian group got money. There wasn’t any Jewish group, or Hindu group, or Muslim group.
>
> “It’s unbelievable. This is the first test of the program, and it shows they just don’t care.”
>
> More recent executive action opened the door to government funding for constructing religious structures that provide social and health services — buildings that could also be used for worship and religious education. The administration has moved aggressively to change the rules on religious discrimination in hiring for federal grantees.
>
> Department of Education officials have rewritten the rulebook for public school administrators on explosive issues such as student-led prayer. And the administration has implemented hundreds of smaller changes, adding the simple phrase “faith-based” to numerous rules governing grants.
>
> The result: an unprecedented shift toward federal funding for social and health services provided by sectarian agencies.
>
> “It’s an effective strategy,” said Marshall Breger, a law professor at the Catholic University of America and a longtime supporter of programs to provide “equal access” to government funds for religious social service providers.
>
> Breger said the strategy developed last fall when President Bush “issued various executive orders requiring agencies to provide specific faith-based opportunities to the extent of the law. The reason was because the charitable choice legislation, as initially conceived, had been held up in Congress for two years.”
>
> Last month, the Senate finally passed a bill that once was the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s faith-based initiative — the Charity Aid, Recovery and Empowerment Act of 2003, or CARE. But the measure, which originally included controversial “charitable choice” provisions that would have vastly expanded access to government grants by religious groups, was pared down to a simple tax bill offering incentives to charitable giving.
>
> The media portrayed the watered-down CARE bill as a defeat for the administration’s faith-based agenda. In fact, White House officials had already shifted tactics. The change is based on “the view of proponents of the faith-based position that much of what they want to do is already permitted under current law,” Breger said.
>
> Opponents disagree, but the shift in administration tactics put them at a political disadvantage. Groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have a strong presence on Capitol Hill, where they have a good track record in influencing legislation involving the tricky church-state line. But when changes are made through executive action, their input in the decision-making process and their recourse is limited.
>
> “They propose a rule, they open it up for comment, we comment — and they do what they want,” said a prominent Jewish church-state advocate. “Then you go right to litigation.”
>
> But litigation is expensive; the new administration thrust means lawsuits in wholesale lots.
>
> Michael Lieberman, counsel for ADL’s Washington office, described the difficult process of fighting executive orders. After a series of faith-based regulations were issued at the Department of Housing and Urban Development earlier this year, “we filed five different formal comments because the department put out proposed rules that talk about eliminating what they call barriers — we call them safeguards — to proselytization, to the mingling of church and state, to religious discrimination. Then the comments are filed away.”
>
> The shift is taking place throughout the federal bureaucracy, with an emphasis on executive-branch officials who can allocate billions of dollars.
>
> “Every week I open the Federal Register and there’s another rule, or another grant announcement, or another initiative,” Lieberman said. “And among those who can compete now are faith-based groups.”
>
> The new rules and regulations also open the door to giving funds to intermediaries that will then give the money to other groups without strict government controls. That’s a key feature of the Compassion Capital Fund; many of the initial grantees will simply funnel the money to other organizations.
>
> “That’s the way the Nation of Islam could ultimately get federal money,” Lieberman said.
>
> The administration has also issued new rules allowing religious social service providers to discriminate in hiring without risking their government funding — another proposal that has irked Congress.
>
> Another component of the shift to executive action involves the new Department of Education church-state guidelines for school administrators. The rules were first written by the Clinton administration; the idea was to tell school districts exactly what kinds of religious activities are allowed by current law and what activities are forbidden.
>
> The Bush administration quietly rewrote those guidelines, striking many of the cautionary passages about things like giving religious “testimonies” to captive audiences and religious harassment.
>
> The new guidelines add something as well: a stern warning that districts that restrict “constitutional protected prayer” in public schools can lose their government funding. Jewish church-state groups say the phrase “constitutionally protected” is an inexact term that is subject to widely varying interpretations.
>
> “These guidelines mean that a lot of school districts will cave into demands that they allow improper student religious activities, including coercive student prayer,” said an official with a major Jewish group here. “The fear of losing funding is an incredibly powerful weapon. And this change was made without any input from Congress.”
>
> Not all Jewish leaders bemoan the change. Orthodox groups say the flanking maneuver could result in a more level playing field that will allow religious groups to compete for funds, including Jewish groups. The strategy is “a way to circumvent the legislative process and to be able to put into effect the president’s plan, which has become the domestic bedrock of his administration,” said Abba Cohen, Washington director for Agudath Israel of America, which supports expanded government funding for religious groups.
>
> From Agudah’s point of view, “that’s not a bad thing,” Cohen said. “But we acknowledge that in the end, the battle will be fought out in the courts.”
>
> What’s really changed is that for the first time, there is a president who genuinely cares about advancing a faith-based agenda.
>
> “Using executive powers to do what Congress won’t do is not new or earth-shaking,” said Marc Stern, legal director for the American Jewish Congress, which opposes schemes for public funding of religious groups.
>
> “What is new is that this administration is much more single-minded about shifting the church-state rules than any of its predecessors. Reagan talked about it but did relatively little; Bush [Sr.] just paid lip service to the concerns of Christian conservatives. This administration is very serious about the issue.”
>
> Opponents say they are prepared to fight the barrage of executive orders in the courts, but the prospects there are far from certain, especially because of the increasingly conservative bent of the federal judiciary. n
>