economy

• Good as You has the letter as well as the complete list of names of those who signed Elaine Donnelly's latest effort to save Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
• Anti-illegal immigration activist William Gheen is blaming the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League for a recent Missouri law enforcement report linking some right-wing organizations to the growing militia movement, despite that fact that neither group had anything to do with it.
• Media Matters catches Fox News once again passing off Republican talking points as "facts."
• Steve Benen finds that Norm Coleman's legal team responding to yesterday's damaging court loss by claiming they have "no choice but to appeal that order to Minnesota Supreme Court." As Benen notes: "And when that doesn't work out, it's safe to assume Ginsberg will have 'no choice' but to head to federal district court. And when that fails to give the GOP the results the party wants, Ginsberg will have 'no choice' but to seek relief from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court will be asked to weigh in."
• Sarah Posner is back with her latest FundamentaList - she also has a good post on Tony Dungy, saying the invitation risks creating a situation where the "White House's approval institutionalizes the cover that religion gives people like Dungy for their hostility to their fellow citizens."
• Dan Gilgoff reports on the growing rift between "Religious Progressives" and the "Religious Left," though I think his use of the term "religious progressives" to describe the centrists ends up glossing over what is actually one of the key areas of contention between the two groups.
• Think Progress reports that the authors of a report, which Republicans are citing to back up their claim that the green economy legislation before Congress would "cost every American family up to $3,100 per year in higher energy prices," are telling the GOP to stop intentionally misinterpreting their study.
• Jonathan Stein argues that "conservatives have a built-in ideological reason for opposing expertise on all subjects, not just science and the environment" which stems from the fact that "they fundamentally do not believe government should play an active role in Americans' lives."

Anyone who have been reading this blog over the last week knows, I have spent a great deal of time trying to knock down the misinformation swirling around regarding a provision in the stimulus bill that would prohibit funds for being used to upgrade or repair university facilities when said facilities function is primarily religious.

But, despite my efforts, this fraud keeps cropping up on right-wing website, with the Christian Coalition now spreading it and the Family Research Council continuing to peddle it:

First, we know that the current stimulus legislation in Congress is a disaster for the free market economy. But, did you know that there are limitations in the legislation against religious liberty? David French of Phi Beta Cons on National Review Online finds some disturbing facts restricting religious liberty within the stimulus legislation.

The Higher Education, Modernization and Renovation component of the bill requires that the money allocated in the stimulus would not be spent on religious instruction, worship, or any department of divinity, or any building that would be devoted for religious purposes on college campuses.

So, this leaves the question: where will religious groups meet on campus? I guess this means it will be back to dorm rooms or nearby churches. However, this ban would not apply to groups, like Amnesty International, College Feminists, Greenpeace, etc., who can meet in any room on campus. Seems odd, doesn't it? I guess it is 24/7 liberal indoctrination...thanks to the Obama's stimulus plan.

FRC doesn't provide a link to French's post ... but if they did send their readers there, they'd find out that French, who happens to be Senior Legal Counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, links to our first post about this whole issue and says that we are right:

One clause indeed prohibits funding for buildings only when a "substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission." (emphasis added). The meaning here is obvious, and it clearly applies to buildings like chapels, or perhaps divinity schools, or many facilities at religious universities. It has no real application to secular, public universities that open up classroom buildings to student groups.

Another clause, however, prohibits funding for buildings that are "used" for "sectarian instruction" or "religious worship." It does not say "primarily used." It simply says "used." For People for the American Way's reading to be correct, one has to assume that the drafters intended "used" to be read as "primarily used."

I have to give French credit, as his post on this issue is the only one that I have seen that actually seeks to understand the provision instead of simply proclaiming it anti-Christian.  And he raises an interesting point regarding the meaning of the word "used" in the section that proclaims that "no funds awarded under this section may be used for ... modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity."

French is correct to note that the provision does not say "primarily used" ... but neither does it say "occasionally used" and yet, for some reason, that is how the Right is interpreting it.  Despite the fact that, as Sen. Dick Durbin pointed out last week, this sort of language "has been in the law for 40 years [and] is the result of three Supreme Court decisions," the Right's interpretation of this standard, boilerplate language is that it means that any building on campus that is ever occasionally "used" for religious worship (i.e., a student group meets in their dorm for a Bible study) would be prohibited from using stimulus funds, as opposed to the more straightforward and logical interpretation that "used" refers to a building's primary function (i. e., a church is occasionally "used" for potluck dinners and Bingo nights, but its primary function is religious worship).

The language of this provision is clearly concerned with facilities in which a "substantial portion of the functions ... are subsumed in a religious mission" and it is within that context that the word "used" must be understood.  

Only an intentionally obtuse reading of this provision could lead one to conclude that the word "used" in this context was intended to mean "occasionally used" rather than "primarily used." Yet that is exactly what the Right is claiming ... and I, in turn, have had to spend hours of my life rebutting false claims that hinge entirely on their nonsensical understanding of the meaning of the word "used."

I feel so used.

Despite the fact that the economy is going from bad to worse, Republicans are quite pleased with their unanimous opposition to the stimulus package and are planning on continuing it when the legislation heads to the Senate.

After being crushed at the polls for the last two elections by voters fed up with their inability to govern, those on the right side of the aisle have apparently decided that the best course of action is to simply obstruct President Obama and the Democratic Congress as they attempt to repair the damage the Republicans have done to the country over the last eight years .... and for that they are being hailed as heroes by the likes of the Family Research Council:

In the face of the most popular incoming President since JFK, Republicans stood together in statement of solidarity. We applaud them for showing real backbone against unprecedented government expansion ... Swimming against the liberal tide isn't easy, and House Republicans need your encouragement to stay motivated for the work ahead. Please call the leader in your district today and thank them for refusing to back down on H.R. 1.

And here is Tony Perkins saying that the stimulus bill is "more about pork and political payoffs than economic recovery" and calling on Congress to enact more tax cuts instead of "abortion promotion":

Apparently, Republicans and their allies on the right believe that they have "better" ideas for dealing with our myriad problems ... and just because those "ideas" have failed to work, damaged the nation, and caused the party's prospects to utterly collapse, it doesn't mean that they aren't going to press ahead with their obstructionism. 

Just check out this email from Vision America:

Stop Taxpayer Funded So-Called "Recovery!!"

"Tell Congress to STOP the So-Called Taxpayer-Funded "Recovery" TODAY!!" – Pastor Rick Scarborough

Friends of Vision America,

In the revised edition of my newest book, Enough is Enough, I wrote the following:

Jonah Goldberg documents in his best-selling book, Liberal Fascism, how liberals need a crisis to in order to push their agenda forward, whether it's a declared war on poverty or a real war. During a perceived or real crisis people make decisions that reflect the seriousness of their situation. Christians have the wonderful advantage of calling on an all-sufficient Creator to provide guidance through the crisis. Crisis can force us to a place of fully placing all of our trust in God and God alone.

Unfortunately, most people in America no longer turn to God first but rather government as their source and provider which makes them vulnerable to exploitation.

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who was given god-like powers to dispense the first Federal bailout which we now know did not work, made a dire prediction that the current financial meltdown could become "so extreme that martial law may have to be imposed on the American people." This was an ominous warning granting the government almost unlimited power to impose the will of those in charge.

This week the House of Representatives presented its version of the major economic stimulus bill, H.R.1, otherwise known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Senate is considering its own version (S.1), expecting the completed bill to be signed by Obama by mid-February. One version of the bill contains over six hundred pages of promises to preserve and create jobs; invest in our national infrastructure, decrease unemployment; and stabilize our local and state economies. But as always, the devil is in the details and the more we learn of what's in the fine print, the more convinced I become that WE THE PEOPLE MUST SEE THAT THIS BILL NEVER BECOMES LAW!!!

That's right - according to the Religious Right, the biggest problem at the moment is that "people in America no longer turn to God" and the stimulus bill will only exacerbate that, so it must be defeated.

Last year we noted that Vision America claimed to have sent out ten million emails in one day in support of Mike Huckabee during the GOP primary, which seemed hard to believe considering that a powerhouse organization like MoveOn only claims 3.2 million members.

But they are sticking with their story - according to a recent "Rick Scarborough Report," the organization claims to have more than 1 million subscribers:

As the end of the year approaches, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who receives this Report and prays for our efforts. Because we now have over 1,000,000 subscribers, I am certain some will forward this email to friends who do not typically read our reports so let me rehearse who I am and what I do, and most importantly, why.

How could that possibly be true?  Even by fringe right-wing group standards, Vision America is among the smallest and fringiest.  I follow VA as closely as I follow influential groups like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council and yet if you were to ask me what they actually do, I'd be hard-pressed to tell you. They rarely issue press releases or hold events and almost never generate any press coverage, even by their own admission.

Could this tiny organization, which always seems to be in desperate need of money, really have more than a million subscribers?  That just seems beyond belief - I just can't imagine that there are a million people in this country who would sign up to receive Scarborough's rambling emails, which are full of hyperbole and nonsense: 

I believe that America is facing the gravest challenge since the Second World War, and one that will forever change the course of this great nation if Christians do not experience a renewed commitment to freedom and understanding of the role of God in government.

...

I am not hopeless, but I do believe that Christians and other god-fearing Americans must be willing to confront what Barrack Hussein Obama has made clear will be the most radical pro-abortion and pro-homosexual big government administration ever. We still have friends in Congress, but we must mobilize millions of Americans to stand with them and let them know we are here to pray and to act!

...

And now we are hearing of plans to take the financial crisis this country is facing and using it as the gateway to nationalizing enormous chunks of the American economy, moving us down the road to European style socialism. One of the foundational principles of the Declaration of Independence was the inalienable right to pursue happiness. With nationalized healthcare, no health care professional will ever be included in that right again, and you will see an erosion of the greatest healthcare system the world has ever known.

Who knows?  Maybe there really are a million people out there just waiting for Vision America to mobilize them to action.  I doubt it, but if that is the case, one has to wonder just why the organization has seemingly been unable to accomplish anything at all. 

It’s the beginning of the year, so you know that that means:  Pat Robertson is back with his report on what God told him to expect in this coming year during his annual prayer retreat:

Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, announced at his staff's annual prayer retreat that God told him Americans would embrace socialism in 2009 "in order to relieve their pain" and that the economy would rebound under an Obama administration.

"The Lord said the economy of your nation will recover," Robertson told a group assembled at Founders Inn on the campus of Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va., a university Robertson founded.

Robertson said God also declared, "The steps taken will lead to a dramatic increase in the power of government. The people will welcome socialism in order to relieve their pain. Nothing will stand in the way of a plan by Obama to restructure the economy in the same fashion as the New Deal in the '30s."

…

Socialist policies and massive government spending, Robertson told Meeuwsen, could lead to heavy hyperinflation, sending prices through the roof and the value of the dollar through the floor.

"The Lord said the dollar is going to go down dramatically," Robertson said in the interview. "If I'm hearing him right, gold will go to about $1900 dollars an ounce and oil to $300 a barrel."

Conveniently, CBN has posted the entire segment on YouTube for easy viewing, so you can listen for yourself as Robertson informs his audience that "Islam is weakening" and that poverty and misery will become so widespread that it will lead ten of millions to Christ:

Since they began the segment by highlighting a few instances where Robertson’s 2008 predictions proved correct, it only seems fair for us to remind everyone of his dire 2007 predictions when he warned that God had told him to expect a massive terrorist attack on US cities that would kill “possibly millions of people.”

There is a truly exceptional review of Mike Huckabee's latest book up on Religion Dispatches that argues that the driving forces behind Huckabee, his campaign, and his new book tour are resentment and bitterness.  I have to say that I completely agree with that assessment ... probably because I happen to be the one who wrote it:

Billed as an inside look at “the movement that’s bringing common sense back to America,” the book is part campaign memoir, part policy statement, and partly a challenge to all Americans to stop being so fat, lazy, and mean. But mostly it is a means for Huckabee to settle scores with all those who failed to support his candidacy, see its genius and, consequently, to save America from itself.

From the very beginning, Huckabee makes no effort to conceal his disdain for his presidential rivals and seemingly goes out of his way to invoke Mitt Romney wherever he can, mentioning the former Massachusetts Governor by name more than sixty times in the first one hundred pages. While Huckabee doesn’t have anything particularly nice to say about Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, or John McCain—the others barely rate a mention—it is Romney who personifies everything that is wrong with the Republican Party.

It’s clear that Huckabee resents Romney’s wealth and the millions of dollars he pumped into his own campaign. Huckabee and his staff, who were often just scraping by, at one point blasted Romney for attempting “a leveraged buyout of the Republican presidential nomination,” calling him one of those “political wannabes with self-inflicted funding [who] let themselves be sculpted and focus-grouped into what a high-priced pollster thinks is a winning package.” Time and again he mocks the former Massachusetts Governor for spending millions, yet failing to win half the votes that Huckabee and his rag-tag campaign racked up, dismissing Romney’s entire campaign as a fraud perpetuated solely by the fact that his “net worth bought him instant status … [as] a serious contender.”

While Huckabee nurtures a deep personal dislike of Romney, what he truly despises is everything Romney represents: the rich, East Coast, insider elites who dominate the Republican Party. Huckabee, the son of a fireman who struggled to make ends meet, effectively wages class warfare against the party insiders and libertarian “faux-cons” in Washington; he lashes out at the likes of The National Review and the Club for Growth, whom he calls “the silk-stocking crowd,” for looking down their noses at the blue collar “values voters” that Huckabee claims to represent. Two chapters are devoted to holding himself up as the representative of those who shop at Wal-Mart and not Neiman Marcus; of those who eat at The Waffle House rather than Ruth’s Chris Steak House; of those who watch “Touched By an Angel” and not “Desperate Housewives.” He expends several pages rehashing old campaign attacks on his record from the Club for Growth and several more pages striking back at The National Review for their opposition to talk that John McCain might pick him as his running mate. But even here Romney remains representative of everything that “was wrong with our party.”

But you don't have to take my word for it.  Here's Huckabee displaying that bitterness during a book tour stop in Iowa earlier in the week:

Appearing on Christian conservative Steve Deace’s drive-time program, Huckabee said though he was criticized by “establishment Republicans” during his unsuccessful bid for the GOP presidential nomination, he has been proven right time and again.

“When I said the economy was beginning to sputter, I was absolutely pilloried by the Wall Street Journal and the National Review and all the other snobbish folks who thought that I was just a dumb hick from Arkansas who didn’t have a clue,” he said.

...

Huckabee’s book has gotten a lot of attention, mainly due to the portions that discuss his fellow Republicans. He was particularly hard on Gary Bauer, the conservative Christian leader and former presidential candidate, whom he described in the book as having an “ever-changing reason to deny me his support.” He also accuses Bauer of putting national security before social issues like the sanctity of life and traditional marriage.

Deace seemed to share his opinion of Bauer.

“The phrase ‘Better for one man to die than the whole nation to perish’ comes to mind,” Deace said.

Huckabee said he couldn’t pull any punches with the book because if he did he would lose credibility with his supporters.

“I want people to know the truth. I got a reputation during the campaign as someone who was plain spoken, who didn’t try to sugar coat or frost things over,” he said. “I would have lost credibility if I had written this book and not told some of the things that I try to at least bring forth.”

But the passages that discuss his fellow Republicans are just a small portion of the book, and the attention they are getting is disappointing, he said.

“Shouldn’t be surprised that people would take a few passages out of a 240-page book and act like that’s all that’s there,” Huckabee said. “This book lays out not just what’s happened and why we’ve had the problems we’ve had in the conservative movement, but it also lays out how we get our groove back.”

I take issue with Huckabee's repeated assertion that his attacks on Romney and various GOP-insiders constitute just a "few passages" in his book because, in fact, they make up the bulk of the first 130+ pages. 

Huck may like to pretend that the purpose of the book was to help resurrect the conservative movement, but the fact is that it was written to settle scores and position himself for a future run at president.  As such, his relentless trashing of the very Republican institutions from whom he will need support the next time around is inevitably going to grab the bulk of the media's attention.  If he wanted the press to pay attention to his "Fair Tax" proposals or dedicated to bad-mouthing Mitt Romney and the Religious Right.

You may remember Bill Keller, the man who has dubbed himself "the world's leading internet evangelist," whatever that means, for causing a bit of a stir during the Republican Primary when he launched an all-out attack on Mitt Romney because of his Mormon faith during which he declared that "if you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan!"

Seemingly having successfully used the power of the internet and prayer to destroy Romney's presidential aspirations, Keller has now turned his attention toward solving our economic crisis calling for a National Day of Prayer and Fasting for the Economy and is seeking 250,000 signatures for his petition asking President Bush and Congress to proclaim Thursday, December 18th as a National Day of Prayer:

The reason, Keller explained, none of the solutions put forth by the world's greatest economists to correct the falling economy have worked is simple: the problem is not an economic one.

"The crisis is a spiritual problem," said Keller. "The answer to our economic downfall is not an infusion of trillions of dollars, but the humble prayers of forgiveness and repentance for our sin and rebellion against God."

In this video from back in October, Keller explains that the only way to "fix the economy is for this nation to repent of its sins, ask God's forgiveness, and turn back to God and His truth ... Sadly this nation is so blinded by its sin, so far away from God, that it can't see that what is happening in the economy is the start of God pouring out his judgment on our nation for our sins and our wickedness. Every twenty-four hours we legally slaughter over 4,000 innocent babies, we've made a mockery of God's holy institution of marriage, we bow down and worship every idol and false god man has created. We live in complete and total rebellion to God and His word. My friends, we're not only due God's wrath and judgment, we are overdue God's wrath and judgment."

For what it's worth, WorldNetdaily gives us a little bit of background about Keller and his ministry:

A former businessman convicted of insider trading in 1989, Keller served two years in federal prison, was released and later earned a degree in biblical studies from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

In 1999, Keller launched LivePrayer, which claims to have responded personally to more than 60 million online requests for prayer since its inception and claims its LivePrayer devotional is received daily by over 2.4 million e-mail subscribers.

The Hartford Courant raises some interesting questions about just what the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund - a right-wing Virginia non-profit organization overseen by the likes of Ed Meese, William Bradford Reynolds, and Al Regnery - is doing with the funds it has been raising because it seems like most of it is going to toward fund-raising, salary for its leadership, and to prop up right-wing organizations to which they have ties, like The American Spectator, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Federalist Society :

Tens of thousands of Americans have contributed to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund after reading letters like Stephanie Lawlor's. But while those donations total millions every year, the fund spends only pennies on the dollar directly assisting officers facing criminal charges, state and federal filings show.

Over the past five years, the charity collected more than $13 million, primarily through direct-mail pitches. But most of that money — more than $9 million — went right back to the professional fundraisers hired by the nonprofit legal defense fund.

Last year, for example, the group spent 81 cents on fundraising for every dollar collected, according to federal tax forms. After other expenses, the defense fund last year devoted only about 8 cents on the dollar to charitable grants, the tax forms show.

That grant money — about $275,000 — was less than the group's co-founders paid themselves in salary and benefits for the year. David H. Martin, a Washington lawyer who serves as chairman, collected $156,000, while Alfred Regnery, publisher of The American Spectator Magazine, received $81,000 for the part-time job of secretary-treasurer. In addition, the charity paid $54,000 into retirement accounts for Martin and Regnery.

In a telephone interview earlier this month, Martin said the charity is at the mercy of expensive mail solicitations. "It's hard to raise money through direct mail. Why? Because postage is so expensive," he said. "It's just a killer."

Martin said he believed the group's fundraising efficiency had consistently improved in recent years. But federal filings suggest just the opposite, showing the cost of raising money increasing each of the last five years, from about 60 cents in fundraising costs for every dollar raised in 2003, to 81 cents last year.

At the same time, administrative costs have soared, particularly for salaries and rent. For years, the legal defense fund was run out of Martin's law office. But the nonprofit now subleases space at Regnery's financially strapped American Spectator. The initial rent in 2003 was $9,000 a year, but the nonprofit agreed last year to increase its payments to $42,000 a year — about a third of the total rent for the American Spectator's space. Martin said the rent covers a large amount of storage space and offices for himself and a clerk, and he said he thought the rent was fair.

And even as the charity devoted only a small fraction of its budget to grants, not all of the money doled out went to help accused officers. Instead, the charity's executives have sent a sizable and growing amount of cash to a small number of universities and conservative policy groups not mentioned in their fundraising pitches.

The charity's biggest beneficiary last year, for example, was not a police officer, but the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a national campus-based think tank that promotes "limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, the rule of law, market economy, and moral norms."

The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund sent $75,000 to the institute last year, part of at least $360,000 the defense fund has pledged. Regnery, secretary-treasurer of the defense fund, is chairman of the institute's board of trustees. The charity has also given tens of thousands of dollars to the Federalist Society, described by The American Conservative magazine as a "training ground for young conservative lawyers"; to the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University in Virginia, a leading center of conservative and libertarian legal studies; and to a project at McDaniel College — Martin's alma mater.

Pat Boone lays out what he and his ideological allies can expect to endure during the forthcoming Obama administration: 

In a terrible pincer movement, an assault is taking place on two fronts simultaneously – one all-out attack on the foundations, the very pillars of our society, and the other on the executive suites in the ivory towers of business and finance. The jihadists in these organized, hugely funded attacks on our morality and virtue are not Middle Eastern – they're homegrown Americans who actually believe they're promoting a better America by destroying the foundations on which this nation was built!

Recall that George Washington declared, "Religion and morality are the twin pillars of liberty" … two foundational supports.

Well, on one front, our jihadists would grant homosexual activity "marriage rights," which outweigh the will of the majority and defy the societal structuring of all human history. And they believe that destroying babies in the womb is a woman's "right" – oblivious to the divinely and constitutionally ordained rights of the unborn American citizen. What if one of those had been Obama?

On the second front, leftist political genetic engineers are moving into power, taking advantage of immoral and irresponsible greed in the economy to socialize industry and finance, and make Big Brother government everybody's boss and banker.

That all sounds rather terrifying, but rest assured that Boone is not only unafraid, he’s actually welcoming it because the slavery, tyranny, and sheer misery we are all about to endure will eventually lead this nation back to God:

But yes, I'm thankful. We the people are getting what we deserve and what we need. Like the people of Israel long ago, we've got the king we demanded, and now we'll experience the benign slavery that comes with a king. At some point down the road, we'll wake up, shake ourselves and again throw off governmental tyranny, this time self-imposed. At least, that's my prayer. The kingdom we're getting can be rejected, if we bring God and morality back into our national life. I'm thankful that His kingdom is still available to us.