current body count:
- UN: 4
- Canada: 8
- Lebanon: 1000
- Israel: 163
i agree with
Daily Archives: Friday, 20060818
616
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER
August 13, 2006
Thanks to President Bush and his plan to Christianize the nation’s provision of social services, one’s relationship with Jesus Christ has become a real resume booster. As author Michelle Goldberg reports in her new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, Bush has ushered in affirmative action for the born- again.
In 2005 alone, more than $2-billion in federal tax money went to faith-based programs for such services as job placement programs, addiction treatment and child mentoring. Overwhelmingly, this money went to groups affiliated with Christian religions.
This reallocation of social service money from secular agencies to religiously affiliated programs has also resulted in shifting employment opportunities. But some of these new employers have a shocking job requirement – only Christians need apply.
Goldberg cited the publicly funded Firm Foundation of Bradford, Pa., as a blatant example. The group provides prison inmates with job training, something one would think any trained professional could do. Well, think again. According to Goldberg, the group posted an ad for a site manager. It said that the applicant must be “a believer in Christ and Christian Life today, sharing these ideals when the opportunity arises.” Apparently, experience and qualifications are secondary.
Transforming social welfare into conversion therapy was Bush’s design when he made faith-based initiatives the priority of his administration’s domestic agenda. And his success has been astounding.
Before Bush upended things, religious groups had always been enlisted by government as providers of social services. They just had to wholly separate their religious mission from their government-funded services. Under Bush, there has been substantial blurring of the line.
As to hiring, the law always allowed religious groups to discriminate on religious grounds – so that the Catholic Church could hire Catholic priests, for example – but that exemption did not extend to employees hired with public funds to provide social welfare. It was a simple, clear rule. If you took public money, you hired on the basis of merit, not piety.
But Bush wiped away this calibrated distinction by issuing a series of executive orders early in his presidency approving taxpayer financed religious discrimination.
Some of the resulting collateral damage has been tragic. Just talk to Anne Lown. She worked for 24 years for the Salvation Army in New York City before resigning due to the hostility she felt toward her non-Christian beliefs. The office she ran had hundreds of employees with an annual budget of $50-million, almost all of which came from public sources. Lown oversaw foster care placements, day care services, residential services for the developmentally disabled and many other programs.
In Lown’s experience, the Salvation Army had always in the past been meticulous about keeping its evangelical side from mingling with its provision of social services, but all that changed in 2003. She attributes the change directly to Bush’s policies. A lawsuit filed by Lown and another 17 current and former employees of the Salvation Army alleges that religion suddenly pervaded the agency’s personnel decisions.
Lown says she was handed a form that all employees were expected to complete, asking for list of churches she attended over the last 10 years and the name of her present minister. Lown says she was told that indicating “not applicable” was not an option. A lawyer for the Salvation Army says the form was modified after complaints were received.
But Lown said that atmosphere was fear-inducing for the professional staff.
She pointed to a mission statement that all employees were required to support as a condition of employment. It stated that the organization’s mission “is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Margaret Geissman, who is also part of the lawsuit, claims that she was asked by a supervisor to point out gay and non-Christian employees, with the overt suggestion that there would eventually be a purge of sorts. The Salvation Army denies this.
Despite the Salvation Army’s disclaimers, Goldberg cites an internal Salvation Army document describing a deal struck in 2001 with the White House. In exchange for the administration passing regulations protecting faith-based groups from state and local antidiscrimination regulations relative to gays, the Salvation Army agreed to promote the administration’s faith-based agenda.
Forget the proverbial wall. Here it is, church and state working hand-in-glove, with tax money and the government-sanctioned intolerance as the prize.
Meanwhile, money is flowing into religious coffers without anyone watching. A June report from the Government Accountability Office found that few government agencies that award grants to faith-based organizations bother to monitor whether the recipient is improperly mixing religion into their programs or discriminating against clients on the basis of religion. A few organizations contacted by the GAO even admitted to praying with clients while providing government-funded services. As to kicking out non-Christians on the staff, the Bush Justice Department says that it is perfectly okay.
Just another example of how, under this president, I hardly recognize my country anymore.
this is news?
By Rachel Zoll
14 August, 2006
Randall W. Harding sang in the choir at Crossroads Christian Church in Corona, Calif., and donated part of his conspicuous wealth to its ministries.
In his business dealings, he underscored his faith by naming his investment firm JTL – “Just the Lord.” Pastors and churchgoers alike entrusted their money to him.
By the time Harding was unmasked as a fraud, he and his partners had stolen more than $50 million from their clients, and Crossroads became yet another cautionary tale in what investigators say is a worsening problem for the nation’s churches.
Billions of dollars has been stolen in religion-related fraud in recent years, says the North American Securities Administrators Association, a group of state officials who work to protect investors.
Between 1984 and 1989, about $450 million was stolen in religion-related scams, the association says. In its latest count – from 1998 to 2001 – the toll had risen to $2 billion. And since then, rip-offs have only become more common.
Cases in recent years show just how vulnerable religious communities are.
Lambert Vander Tuig of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest Calif., ran a real estate scam that bilked investors out of $50 million, the Securities and Exchange Commission says.
His salesmen presented themselves as faithful Christians and distributed copies of “The Purpose Driven Life,” by Saddleback pastor Rick Warren, the SEC says. Warren and his church had no knowledge of Vander Tuig’s activities, says the SEC.
At Daystar Assembly of God Church in Prattville, Ala., a congregant persuaded church leaders and others to invest about $3 million in real estate a few years ago, promising that some profits would go toward building a megachurch. The Daystar Assembly was swindled and lost its building.
And in a dramatically broader scam, leaders of Greater Ministries International of Tampa, Fla., defrauded thousands of people of half a billion dollars by promising to double money on investments that ministry officials said were blessed by God. Several of the con men were sentenced in 2001 to more than a decade each in prison.
“Many of these frauds are, on their face, very credible and legitimate-appearing,” said Randall Lee, director of the Pacific regional office of the SEC. “You really have to dig below the surface to understand what’s going on.”
Typically, a con artist will target the pastor first, by making a generous donation and appealing to the minister’s desire to expand the church or its programs, says Joseph Borg of the Alabama Securities Commission, who played a key role in breaking up the Greater Ministries scam.
If the pastor invests, church-goers view it as a tacit endorsement. The con man often promises double-digit returns, chipping away at resistance among church members by suggesting that they can donate part of their earnings to the congregation, Borg says.
Borg says, “Most folks think ‘I’m going to invest in some overseas deal or real estate deal, and part of that money is going to the church, and I get part. I don’t feel like I’m guilty of greed.'”
If a skeptical church member openly questions a deal, that person is often castigated for speaking against a fellow Christian.
Attorney: Nine People Arrested For No Good Reason
By Scott Weinberger
17 August, 2006
NEW YORK Last April, police targeted a sex-for-money operation at a well-known Brooklyn massage parlor. They sent in an undercover officer to catch them in the act. Instead, the cops involved were the ones who got stung.
Pictures taken from a series of hidden surveillance cameras show the undercover officer entering, standing in the massage parlor lobby and then walking out. He spends a total of 43 seconds inside. Yet the officer claimed that during those 43 seconds he was solicited by all eight women working there.
Moments later the vice squad moved in and the workers and massage parlor owner were arrested for prostitution. Based on the surveillance photos, prosecutors now believe the undercover officer was lying.
John Sims, a former federal prosecutor and assistant in the Queens District Attorney’s office, represents the massage parlor’s owner and workers.
“He had told the police back at the precinct after he had been arrested that he could prove that through the video that existed, he had in fact not committed any crime,” Sims said.
Sources said when the police heard about this videotape, they took matters into their own hands.
On April 13, one day after the prostitution bust, two men broke in through the back door of the massage parlor. Cameras were rolling, capturing footage exclusively obtained by CBS 2.
The men you see on the tape aren’t your average burglars. Rather they’re cops, with guns drawn and badges showing.
On the video, they flip on the lights and begin a search for the tape from the night before, evidence that could prove the prostitution arrests were based on lies.
The break-in escalated into an alleged armed burglary and a cover-up involving ranking members of the NYPD, their desperate actions caught on tape.
“Well, I think clearly the intention of the officers were to come back and either destroy or hide evidence that would demonstrate that at least one of the officers perjured themselves in this case,” Sims said.
The search is led by a lieutenant in a bulletproof vest. He is the same supervisor who led the Brooklyn South Vice Squad on the bust the night before.
A few minutes later the tape reveals the undercover officer carrying a videotape in his left hand. He’s the same officer who stayed just 43 seconds the night before and holds the rank of sergeant
With his lieutenant by his side, the sergeant then notices a small pinhole camera, pulls up a stool, reaches and yanks it off the wall. With the camera now ripped out and videotape in hand, the cops may have believed all is clear, but they were wrong.
A computer hard drive recorded their every action and prosecutors now have this evidence of crimes allegedly committed by police officers.
“This client is technically very savvy which enabled him to maintain his video despite an apparent attempt by the police to destroy it,” Sims said.
Once the District Attorney saw the videotapes, the prostitution charges against the massage parlor were quickly dismissed. The prosecutor’s conclusion: the arrests were based on a lie.
“Certainly I do not think people should always accept the word of a police officer even in a case that may be considered not so serious as evidenced by this particular case,” Sims said. “Why would they lie? I don’t know why they would lie in this case, but they did and nine people got arrested as a result of it.”