Churches get public funds to help with vouchers so parents can send their kids to private schools where they can kick them out for religious reasons, tax exempt status for Mormon churches that use that as a collection tool to get heavily involved in prop 8 politics, faith based charitable organizations receiving government funds that would rather shut their doors than given spousal benefits to gay couples. Up in one of the north eastern states I believe I remember hearing Catholics for Marriage Equality & whatever "family/catholic" group that opposed gay rights were both able to get heavily involved with politics while maintaining their non-political tax-exempt status, instead of say funding soup kitchens or in some cases keeping churches from closing due to lack of funds.

Now I'm all for churches doing good works, but do they really need tax payer money to do it? If this publicly supported charitable efforts can't survive on their own, do we really need to be propping up faith based initiatives?

(Obviously this is a bit tongue-in-cheek to poke fun at the “all government spending I happen to disagree with is a bailout” notion)

[Edited on April 8, 2010 at 6:05 AM. Reason : .]

4/8/2010 6:00:29 AM

What church is getting what, and how much are they getting.

4/8/2010 7:25:52 AM

^^I'm definitely against the Churches getting taxpayer money, and am not happy to hear that they're spending the money in such activities.

4/8/2010 8:43:47 AM

holy shit run-on sentence.

4/8/2010 8:44:42 AM

The concept of a non-proft organization is bullshit and no government money should ever go to any of them. The money should be given back to the taxpayer.

4/8/2010 9:28:23 AM

"Non-profit" doesn't mean "receives money from the government"

4/8/2010 9:44:43 AM

^ Our tax code says otherwise.

4/8/2010 9:48:56 AM

Where does "our tax code" say that?

4/8/2010 9:59:53 AM

He may be refering to the tax breaks non-profits get. I meant "non-profit" is a misnomer. People see non-profit and instantly assume charity or some other group that is assumed to be good because they aren't "for profit". Which is a load of crap. The only difference between non-profit and for profit is that non-profit doesn't deliver money to shareholders based on earnings. That doesn't prevent them from operating in a way to increase their own assets, whether currency or other capital. They're also free to spend that money as they see fit, they just cant technically have shareholders or investors. They can certainly give kickbacks to individuals though.

They are really really excellent means for funneling private money from corporations or individuals into public campaigns without anyone knowing where the funds came from.

For sure there are actually honest to goodness charities out there that probably are worth supporting, but the system has become so corrupted that its hard to pick them out. Especially when you end up sticking religion in there. Im sure there are probably some religious non-profits out there that take in public funds and do good things without imposing their beliefs along the way, but for every one of those there are probably 10 like the one in the op.

The non-profit system as it is today should be eliminated and replaced with some sort of charitable organization system that is strict in its requirements.

4/8/2010 10:22:45 AM

Quote :

"The concept of a non-proft organization is bullshit and no government money should ever go to any of them."

Health and Human Services is often the 2nd biggest budgeting priority for county municipalities across the nation. And they do a lot of that through contracting out to non-profits. Ending that contracting out, but keeping the same budgeting priorities would just mean its more expensive to do since you have less options, less expertise, and the government has to reinvent the wheel in creating agencies to do what they were contracting out for before.

Maybe you were suggesting that in addition to not contracting out to non-profits that governments also change their funding priorities so they don't fund the kind of work non-profits were doing any more.

If we did away with government contracting out to non-profits (& dropped those funding priorities) we'd wipe out many homeless shelters, soup kitchens, housing programs, job training & retraining programs, job placement programs, drug abuse programs, senior care, senior centers, domestic abuse programs, rape counseling, after school programs for at risk teens, mental health programs, and many other programs in one fell swoop. Given the externalities associated with many of these programs, I'd be hard pressed to say that gutting them would for sure have an end result that is better for the tax payer.

Where do you draw the line between non-profit after school programs for at risk teens funded in part or whole by government money as bad and public schools funded by government as good? Both have positive externalities. Where do you draw the line between a non-profit job placement program that you have to pay to be a participate in (although at a subsidized rate compared to what it would cost straight up), and a public university like NCSU? What is fundamentally different about education that it gets a pass and health & human services don't?

The primary point of my thread is that everyone has their pet peeves with government funding, but in the recent climate some of it is getting blown out of proportion.

[Edited on April 8, 2010 at 10:38 AM. Reason : .]

4/8/2010 10:31:04 AM

see you're confused. you think non-profit = charity which is not the case. Charities that do good work and conform to strict standards are fine.

The difference between bad government spending (which the op is about) and bailouts, is the degree of spending and the regularity. Giving money to failing bad companies and their unions is a bailout. Giving money to bad non-profits in the course of normal government spending, is just bad government spending.

[Edited on April 8, 2010 at 10:35 AM. Reason : .]

4/8/2010 10:33:47 AM

You made a blanket claim that no non-profit deserves their tax breaks..

He equated "tax breaks" with "receiving money from the government".

You're both being assholes.

4/8/2010 10:36:12 AM

Quote :

"everyone has their pet peeves with government funding, but in the recent climate some of it is getting blown out of proportion."

how do you blow 12.7 Trillion dollars out of proportion?

4/8/2010 10:36:52 AM

^^yea you didn't read it at all did you. I said the current system is busted and way too open for abuse. It should be eliminated and replaced with a different system designed to allow orgs like ^^^^ is talking about but not things like PACs or PETA or groups that discriminate like in the op.


[Edited on April 8, 2010 at 10:39 AM. Reason : g]

4/8/2010 10:38:25 AM

I acknowledge your clarification. I was just referring to your original post.

4/8/2010 10:43:50 AM

does that video ever become relevant to this topic?

do you have an issue with faith-based and community initiatives? even though studies have consistently shown they are moderately and sometimes even dramatically more effective than similar secular initiatives? i'm not a fan either of tax breaks for churches that preach politics, but i wan't to be clear what issue we are discussing here.

4/8/2010 11:14:37 AM

^[citation needed] please link the studies that have consistently shown your claim.
The video is not relevant.
Religion is stupid.
None of my tax money should be funding, assisting, affecting in anyway church activities, even if they are helpful for the community.

4/8/2010 11:36:02 AM

here is a study more on the effects of organic religion on certain bheaviors
Title: Objective Hope: Assessing the Effectiveness of Faith-Based Organizations: A Review of the Literature
http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=202135


this discusses how churches structure and ability to gather and motivate people makes fbo's an effective tool to implement initiatives
The Role of Faith-Based Institutions in Addressing Health Disparities: A Case Study of an Initiative in the Southwest Bronx
Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved - Volume 17, Number 2 Supplement, May 2006, pp. 9-19
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_health_care_for_the_poor_and_underserved/v017/17.2Skaplan.pdf

more, this does a good job distinguishing between organic and intentional religion
Objective Hope: Assessing the Effectiveness of Faith-Based Organizations: A Review of the Literature
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/crrucs_objective_hope.pdf

it shouldn't really be mind blowing, religion has a structure in place and is effective at mobilizing and motivating people. this is why bush pushed for the addition and why obama promised to expand the program.

4/8/2010 11:59:24 AM

Quote :

"But we do not yet know either whether America’s religious armies of compassion, local or national, large or small, measurably outperform their secular counterparts, or whether, where the preliminary evidence suggests that they might, it is the “faith” in the “faith factor,” independent of other organizational features and factors, that accounts for any observed differences in outcomes."

From the fucking foreword of your last (and only available quoted source).

and from the conclusion:

Quote :

"It is important to note, however, that the small number of intentional studies reviewed by itself, cannot unequivocally certify the claim that faith-based programs are more effective than their secular counterparts"

I am unconvinced. The reason why bush or obama do anything Christian is to pander to the voting majority.

4/8/2010 1:28:24 PM

scroll down to the results, its not a long paper. and if you are a student you can read the other two.

or I can google it for you

4/8/2010 4:33:56 PM

Megachurches are too big to fail!

4/8/2010 5:39:25 PM

^^From their abstracts, they too only talk about how effective faith-based charities are, not how they stack up against their secular counterparts.

EVEN IF you could prove to me that faith-based charities are more effective than secular ones, I would still prefer that all the faith-based ones get replaced by secular ones anyway. The net detriment religion has on humankind is not outweighed by whatever good faith-based charities can do.

At the very least, I don't want any of my tax money going to any religious organization. It's tantamount to a state-supported religion.

4/9/2010 8:48:13 AM

I, too, refuse to discern between the baby and the bath-water.

4/9/2010 9:37:10 AM

Religion is the bathwater. The baby is whatever good deeds religious institutions might incidentally be doing.

[Edited on April 9, 2010 at 9:48 AM. Reason : ]

4/9/2010 9:47:02 AM

Was I too arcane? Why are you explaining my analogy?

Actually, those good deeds still fall under "Religion".

4/9/2010 10:09:30 AM

The baby has been tainted by the dirty, sexually abusive, rotten, murdering, lying, stealing, bigoted bathwater and should be thrown out for the good of humanity.

Good people will continue to do good things long after humanity has given up on religion. There will be other, better babies.

4/9/2010 10:23:17 AM

Quote :

"Actually, those good deeds still fall under "Religion"."

In what sense?

4/9/2010 10:38:25 AM

Good deeds are not more "incidental" to religion than the bad deeds.

[Edited on April 9, 2010 at 10:43 AM. Reason : .]

4/9/2010 10:43:04 AM

Generally speaking, sure they are.

4/9/2010 3:59:54 PM

Is the Catholic Church too big to fail? I think Notre Dame football needs a bailout.

4/10/2010 2:07:03 PM