Why We Should Be Taxing Churches

A piece in Slate makes a good case for why we should be taxing churches - all of them.  To the list of taxed organizations should be added in my opinion all of the quasi-religious organizations such as NOM, FRC, AFA, etc. , which are nothing more than propaganda organizations for extreme religious beliefs and which actively work against the rights and well being of other citizens.  Some might say that churches provide charitable relief to the poor and so forth.  If they can document these efforts, give them an exemption for funds actually spent on these endeavors but not on lavish church buildings and activities that do nothing to further the general welfare.  Here are highlights from the piece:

Amelia Thomson-Deveaux has a great piece about religious groups that are trying to remove restrictions on church-based electioneering. She suggests that rather than gutting the rules, there's a simple fix, "Religious leaders who want the liberty to endorse candidates can give up their churches’ tax deduction."

I would go one further. Let's tax churches! All of them, in a non-discriminatory way that doesn't consider faith or creed or level of political engagement. There's simply no good reason to be giving large tax subsidies to the Church of Scientology or the Diocese of San Diego or Temple Rodef Shalom in Virginia or the John Wesley African Methodist Episcopal Zion church around the corner from me. Whichever faith you think is the one true faith, it's undeniable that the majority of this church-spending is going to support false doctrines. Under the circumstances, tax subsidies for religion are highly inefficient.

What's more, even insofar as tax subsidies do target the true faith they're still a pretty bad idea. The basic problem with subsidized religion is that there's no reason to believe that religion-related expenditures enhance productivity.
Upgrading a church's physical plant doesn't enhance the soul-saving capacity of its clergy. You just get a nicer building or a grander Christmas pageant. There's nothing wrong with that. When I was young I always enjoyed the Grace Church Christmas pageant. But this is just a kind of private entertainment (comparable to spending money on snacks for your book club—and indeed what are Bible study groups but the original book clubs?) that doesn't need an implicit subsidiy.

Meanwhile, nobody thinks churches and other religious institutions should silence themselves on the important issues of the day. On the contrary, discussing moral action is at the heart of many religious enterprises. And much moral action plays itself out in the arena of politics. So trying to say that churches should get subsidy when they don't endorse candidates is de facto a kind of subsidy to religious doctrines whose views happen to lack strong partisan implications. So if your faith says "abortion should be illegal and spending on the poor should be increased and it's too bad neither candidate supports that" you're golden, but if your faith says "abortion should be legal and spending on the poor should be increased so good for Barack Obama" suddenly you're in trouble. That's perverse. Just make everyone pay taxes.

Yes, taxing churches would put some parishes and congregations out of business.   But why should I be indirectly subsidizing a religion that hates me or teaches in my opinion false views and lies?  Put churches out in the market place and let them compete like every other business - religion is, in truth big business, just look at Pat Robertson and the many sleazy televangelists who fleece people via cable TV on a weekly basis. If their "product" sells, they will survive.  If not, then they can end up on the trash heap of history.

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The GOP Fueled Driven Decline of North Carolina

The southern boundary of the Hampton Roads area is the North Carolina/Virginia border.  Indeed, my office is less than 25 miles from North Carolina and I've spent a great deal of time in the Outer Banks surfing.  Hence, I thought I knew the state.  Yet, since the Republican Party took control of the North Carolina legislature and governor's mansion, North Carolina has veered off into insanity.  One has to wonder how long it will be before its reputation as a moderate and pro-business state is destroyed by the GOP/Christofascist extremism.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at the rapid decline of that state.  Here are excerpts:

Every Monday since April, thousands of North Carolina residents have gathered at the State Capitol to protest the grotesque damage that a new Republican majority has been doing to a tradition of caring for the least fortunate. Nearly 700 people have been arrested in the “Moral Monday” demonstrations, as they are known. But the bad news keeps on coming from the Legislature, and pretty soon a single day of the week may not be enough to contain the outrage.

In January, after the election of Pat McCrory as governor, Republicans took control of both the executive and legislative branches for the first time since Reconstruction. Since then, state government has become a demolition derby, tearing down years of progress in public education, tax policy, racial equality in the courtroom and access to the ballot. 

The cruelest decision by lawmakers went into effect last week: ending federal unemployment benefits for 70,000 residents. Another 100,000 will lose their checks in a few months. Those still receiving benefits will find that they have been cut by a third, to a maximum of $350 weekly from $535, and the length of time they can receive benefits has been slashed from 26 weeks to as few as 12 weeks.

At the same time, the state is also making it harder for future generations of workers to get jobs, cutting back sharply on spending for public schools. Though North Carolina has been growing rapidly, it is spending less on schools now than it did in 2007, ranking 46th in the nation in per-capita education dollars. Teacher pay is falling, 10,000 prekindergarten slots are scheduled to be removed, and even services to disabled children are being chopped. 

Republicans repealed the Racial Justice Act, a 2009 law that was the first in the country to give death-row inmates a chance to prove they were victims of discrimination. They have refused to expand Medicaid and want to cut income taxes for the rich while raising sales taxes on everyone else. The Senate passed a bill that would close most of the state’s abortion clinics. 

And, naturally, the Legislature is rushing to impose voter ID requirements and cut back on early voting and Sunday voting, which have been popular among Democratic voters.

North Carolina was once considered a beacon of farsightedness in the South, an exception in a region of poor education, intolerance and tightfistedness. In a few short months, Republicans have begun to dismantle a reputation that took years to build. 

Two things strike me: (1) what the GOP is doing in North Carolina is a blue print of what the Virginia GOP wants to do in Virginia, and (2) while the GOP claims to be the party of Christian values, its actions are the antithesis to the Gospel message of Christ.

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Texas Governor Rick Perry Will Not Seek Reelection

Rick Perry - long rumored to be a closet case - has announced that he will not seek re-election.  Perry most recently made headlines by personally attacking the Texas Senator Wendy Davis who filibustered a proposed draconian amendment to Texas' abortion laws.  Perry, Ken Cuccinelli and, of course Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker epitomize the insanity that has become the norm among most Republican governors and would be governors.  If the nation is lucky, Perry will not make another run for president in 2016.   His decision to not seek reelection will hopefully set the stage for someone sane to win the governor's mansion.  The Washington Post looks at Perry's announcement.  Here are excerpts:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), the longest-serving governor in the state’s history, announced here Monday that he will not seek reelection in 2014 amid speculation that he will run again for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

“I remain excited about the future and the challenges ahead but the time has come to pass on the mantle of leadership,” Perry told an audience at a heavy equipment company in San Antonio. “Today I am announcing I will not seek reelection as governor of Texas.”



Even before Perry made his announcement, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) had made no secret of his desire to run for governor. With Perry’s decision, he will be able to move ahead..

Perry’s announcement came as a special session of the Texas legislature continued work in Austin on a bill to restrict abortions. A similar measure died during a special session last month after an 11-hour filibuster by state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) and as a chorus of demonstrators chanted from the galleries as time in the session expired.

His most embarrassing moment came at a [presidential] debate in Michigan when he faltered as he tried to remember the three agencies of government that he had pledged to eliminate if elected. “Oops,” he said apologetically when he finally acknowledged that he couldn’t remember the third..

The “oops” moment was an exclamation point that came to define his candidacy, though his fate was sealed earlier at a debate in Florida when he described opponents of a Texas plan to grant in-state tuition to children of illegal immigrants as “heartless.” He never recovered from that episode, though he remained in the race for another two months.

Though Perry was silent on the question of 2016, his advisers were peppered with questions from reporters after the event and did nothing to tamp down talk that he is already pointing toward another campaign.  

I'm sorry, but Perry is an idiot.  But, idiocy is the main character of today's GOP base.

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North Carolina GOP: Anti-Sharia Bill and Extreme Abortion Restrictions

Republicans had not controlled the North Carolina legislature for 100+ years until recently.  Now, with the GOP in control, the flood gates for far right and Christofascist (a/k/a Christian Taliban) extremism and batshitery of all kinds have been opened.  Abortion, gay marriage and Sharia law are but a few of the North Carolina GOP's obsessions.  One can only wonder what is going to happen to the state's former pro-business atmosphere now that the culture wars seem to trump all else.  As Think Progress reports, an insane anti-Sharia law bill is being used to assault abortion rights as well.  Here are some story excerpts:

The North Carolina legislature is advancing a package of stringent abortion restrictions that appeared in the Senate this week without any public notice. The anti-abortion measures popped up on Tuesday night, tacked onto a controversial measure to ban Sharia law, and caught women’s health advocates completely off-guard.

House Bill 695, which would prohibit the recognition of Sharia law in family courts — an increasingly popular conservative tactic that essentially serves to demonize the Islamic faith — was slated for consideration in a Senate committee on Tuesday. As soon as that committee convened, it quickly approved several abortion-related amendments to the legislation. HB 695 now combines several different anti-abortion measures that were in different stages in the legislature into one omnibus measure.

The new amendments would prevent insurance plans on Obamacare’s health marketplaces from covering abortion services, ban “sex-selective” abortions, impose unnecessary restrictions on doctors administering the abortion pill to women, and require the state’s abortion clinics to adhere to complicated new regulations that would likely force most of them to close. 

As the News Observer reports, several supporters of the bill — like lobbyists and representatives from the N.C. Values Coalition, the N.C. Family Policy Council, and N.C. Right to Life — were present during the committee meeting when the new amendments were proposed. But the pro-choice lobbyists in opposition to the measure “were not told it was being debated.” A few hours after the committee agreed to tack on the amendments, Senate Republicans decided to bring HB 695 to a floor vote.

Women’s health advocates, who had no idea these measure would be taken up on Tuesday, denounced the last-minute legislative move. They pointed out that state lawmakers are attempting to avoid massive outcry by quietly sneaking through unpopular abortion restrictions right before a holiday weekend.

Now that the abortion amendments are folded into an entirely unrelated measure on Islamic law, some Republican lawmakers are already claiming that “a vote against the abortion restriction bill is vote for Sharia law.”

Even if North Carolina Republicans may have hoped to avoid mass protests against HB 695, activists in the state are already loudly voicing their disapproval with the GOP-controlled legislature. Over the past several weeks, thousands of people have been participating in a series of “Moral Monday” protests to stand up against ongoing conservative attacks on the poor, minorities, women, and the environment.

Attacks on the poor, minorities, women, and the environment.  That is today's GOP agenda.   And what makes it all so dripping with hypocrisy is that these "godly folk" wrap themselves in Christianity even as they betray virtually every aspect of Christ's Gospel message.

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Good Christians in Action

I saw this photo on Facebook and it was too good to pass up.  It illustrates the backbone that the mainstream denominations need to find to successfully challenge the hate filled messages of the Christofascists and their puppets in the Republican Party.

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Virginia GOP Losing Grip With New Voters

The need to reform the GOP isn't just a national level problem.  Here in Virginia the 2013 GOP slate of statewide candidates is the most extreme and in my view mentally disturbed in the history of the Commonwealth.  And who put these loons and extremists on the ballot?  The Christofascists led by The Family Foundation, of course.  The challenge for the Democrats will be to educate voters as to just how insane the GOP candidates are in fact.  Most people likely cannot believe that the GOP has sunk so low into extremism that people this extreme could actually be major party nominees.  A piece in Bloomberg.com looks at the growing divergence between younger and educated voters and the spittle flecked religious extremists who now control the Republican Party of Virginia.  Here are some article excerpts:

Loudoun County the wealthiest in the U.S. Technology companies, many with ties to the federal government, and other businesses fueled by the development have stoked an economy attracting higher educated workers and minority populations that have soared since 1990 -- a five-fold increase of Hispanics and seven times the number of Asians. 

Located 40 miles from Washington, D.C, Loudoun County is now considered by White House officials to be one of the best bellwethers for presidential elections. President Barack Obamawon there in 2008, the first Democrat to do so since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and again in 2012, victories that signaled how shifting economic and population trends are refashioning the politics of Virginia and the nation.

“We are seeing a solidly red state turn blue,” said Dustin Cable, a demographer at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service in Charlottesville. “Virginia is really ground zero for a lot of what we see at the national level.” 

[T]he Old Dominion is also seeing a rise in Asian voters and in the number of residents with masters or doctorate degrees.  .  .   .  Democrats have won because of the combination of the demographic changes and the policy positions taken by Republicans on issues such as immigration and abortion rights. 

“It’s not just the change in demographics, it is the changing issue matrix the party has decided to embrace,” said Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman who represented counties in northern Virginia. “The social and cultural agenda of the party does not play to these educated people.” 

“One of the challenges the Republican Party faces in Virginia and a lot of other swing states is how do we remain a conservative party but still be able to appeal to these changing demographic patterns,” [Bill] Bolling said.

“I am a Republican. I am very concerned about the direction of the Republican Party but I believe in the Republican Party. But I’m not a happy Republican,” he said.

Bolling said his colleagues have done a poor job appealing to these emerging voters, and instead have retreated into a party where “you are persona non grata unless you agree with them 100 percent of the way, 100 percent of the time. We’ve got to move beyond that.” 

Still, Bolling said, if turnout matches historical averages for a governor’s race, Cuccinelli has a good chance of winning. In 2012, 3.8 million votes were cast in the presidential race, compared to 1.98 million in the last governor’s race, in 2009.  If it approaches the 75 percent level of a presidential year, Bolling said, “McAuliffe would win in a landslide.”

We need a landslide win for McAuliffe and the Democrat ticket.  Nothing less may force moderates to try to retake the party from the Christofascists.  The key is educating blacks, women, gays and other minorities as to just how extreme the GOP ticket is and how much they will work to disenfranchise minority voters, totally control women's bodies and make being gay a living Hell in Virginia.  These GOP candidates are not nice individuals and neither are those who nominated them.

 

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Evangelicals to GOP: Don't Betray Us Or Else

The so-called GOP establishment continues to struggle to control the Frankenstein monster that it created in the pursuit of short sighted expediency when it allowed the evangelical Christians - the Christofascists, if you will - to begin their infiltrating of the local city and county committees 15 to 20 years ago or more.  Now, the anti-modernity, open embrace of ignorance and religious based hate and bigotry of the Christofascists is making the GOP non-competitive at at least the national level.  Yet, the Christofascist continue to demand that the GOP surrender to them and push their extremist agenda.  Nowhere do we see this more than on the issues of abortion and gay rights.  In the context of abortion, it is the Christofascists who are ultimately responsible for the GOP's war on women.  The same holds true for opposition to any rights for gay Americans even though more than 50% of young Republicans - or at least those who haven't yet fled the GOP - support gay marriage.  As Politico notes, on abortion, the swamp fever ridden Christofascist (perhaps rabid dogs is a better analogy) are threatening the GOP if it doesn't continue to do their bidding.  Here are story highlights:

After Todd Akin last year and Trent Franks this week, abortion is about the last topic many national Republicans want the political conversation to focus on.

Yet social conservatives in town this week for the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference say the GOP would be making a grave mistake to ignore the hot-button culture war issue. To the contrary, they believe it’s key to the party’s fortunes in the 2014 midterms and beyond.

The Republican National Committee’s 100-page “autopsy” report in March, packed with recommendations for how the party can recover after its 2012 losses, did not make reference to abortion. “When it comes to social issues,” it stated, “the Party must in fact and deed be inclusive and welcoming. If we are not, we will limit our ability to attract young people and others, including many women, who agree with us on some but not all issues.”

Still, some GOP politicians are responding to the call of social conservatives to take a more aggressive stand on abortion — even as Democrats sound the alarm about a Republican “a war on women” and after Mitt Romney lost by double digits among female voters.

Next week the House will debate a bill that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks, even though the measure could never clear the Senate or receive the support of President Barack Obama.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely presidential candidate, is poised to sign a law requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before being allowed to go through with abortions. Ohio’s Republican legislature passed a budget last week aimed at making abortions more difficult.

[E]vangelicals in town for the three-day faith conference warned that the party must give them reasons to mobilize in 2014.   “If they want to just run on economic issues, you’re not going to get the church people,” said Bob West of Tallahassee, Fla., wearing a yellow tie with the words “Choose Life” on it. “That’s the bottom line.”

The rank-and-file believe the steadfastness of the party’s opposition to abortion is a reflection of its character.  “If they back away from that, they’ll never win another election,” said Regina Brown, the national prayer coordinator for the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “Our numbers are in the church.”

The pervasive belief among speakers and attendees at the conference is that not talking about social issues hurts more than the occasional gaffes that get such intense media attention.

Having been actively involved in the GOP when the Christofascist takeover began, I have no sympathy for those in the GOP who are now reaping what they sowed.  The evangelical base is down right insane, worships ignorance and bigotry, is theocratic and anti-democratic, and is a clear and present danger to constitutional government.   They are not nice people and they deserve no deference, especially from anyone who has taken an oath to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution.

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