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Originally posted by rue:
Church donations are not necessarily charity donations.

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Originally posted by thatweirdgirl:
Some day when I'm more sane and stable I want to start and run a non-profit. I have it all planned in my head.

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It's tempting to discount the church donations

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Joel Osteen has not yet had major sex scandals, drug scandals or molestation scandals like the other megachurch pastors: Pat Robertson, Al Sharpton, Ted Haggard, Paul Barnes, D.E. (Earl) Paulk, Jimmy Swaggert, Jim Bakker, William Dodd and too many others to possibly mention here.... In his sermons, Joel Osteen does not talk about God. Joel Osteen instead talks about almost everything except God. He has a television ministry, a massive church, $43 million a year in tithes and another $36 million a year in mailed in donations, but he won’t talk about God. He, like Pastor Kevin Gerald, talks about more pleasant topics, such as donating money to him and positive thinking.

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Even More Evangelist Preachers Arrested on Sex Charges; Tony Alamo Trial Set for May; Ted Haggard Looking “Haggard”, Promoting HBO Documentary.
*Joe Barron of the huge Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, who was arrested for soliciting sex with minors over the internet.
*Ted Haggard, the head preacher of New Life Ministries in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and friend of James Dobson, leader of the ultra-right, super anti-gay, Focus on the Family.
* James Howard Bell, KY, pastor of the Refuge Temple Church of God in Christ, was arrested for abuse of a child under 16 and determined to be HIV+.
* Lawrence Webber, NC, a preacher and member of the Reeder Memorial Baptist Church, was charged with felony sex crimes against children under 13.
* Gilyard, FL, pastor of the Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church, was arrested for sending lewd messages to underage girls, after 20 years of accusations of indecent conduct. Gilyard was purported to be one of the up and coming leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention.
*Leroy Ruedes Cruz, TX, pastor of Grace Fellowship, a pentecostal-type, strip mall church, was arrested for solicitation of a minor over the internet.
* Shellman, George–Harold Lasseter, Jr., pastor of the Shellman United Methodist Church, was arrested at his church on child pornography charges.

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TX - Here in the gentle hills of north Texas, televangelist Kenneth Copeland has built a religious empire teaching that God wants his followers to prosper. Over the years, a circle of Copeland’s relatives and friends have done just that, The Associated Press has found. They include the brother-in-law with a lucrative deal to broker Copeland’s television time, the son who acquired church-owned land for his ranching business and saw it more than quadruple in value, and board members who together have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking at church events. Church officials say no one improperly benefits through ties to Copeland’s vast evangelical ministry, which claims more than 600,000 subscribers in 134 countries to its flagship “Believer’s Voice of Victory” magazine.... “There are far too many relatives here,” said Frances Hill, a University of Miami law professor who specializes in nonprofit tax law. “There’s too much money sloshing around and too much of it sloshing around with people with overlapping affiliations and allegiances by either blood or friendship or just ties over the years. There are red flags all over these relationships.”

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I'm not sure that government should be involved in morality.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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I'm not sure that government should be involved in morality.

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Then why create laws against killing, or stealing, or polluting?

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,

I don't think you should absent church donations.

People donate to Church because they feel that the Church will perform good works in the spirit of the God or Gods they believe in.

People donate to other charities because they feel that the other charities will perform good works in the spirit of the moral or moral imperatives they believe in.

Same pizza, different slice.

--Anthony

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But does that make it right to bribe people into selfless behavior?

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Because those are actions that, while also immoral, violate people's rights.

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Originally posted by citizen:
People donate to their church, partly because it's expected (when the collection plate comes around) and partly to keep it, their social life and their community going.

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Isn't that a major impetus for charitable giving in general?

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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Because those are actions that, while also immoral, violate people's rights.

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The construct of "peoples rights" is an intrinsic expression of what we think of as "right" and "wrong". In fact, the word "right" is the basis of the words "rights".

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Originally posted by SergeantX:

Isn't that a major impetus for charitable giving in general?

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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Isn't that a major impetus for charitable giving in general?

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No. Usually when people give to charity the money doesn't wind up back in their community. It often goes to a distant location, or a group of people which have no effect on the donor.

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by SergeantX:

Isn't that a major impetus for charitable giving in general?

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Only if you want to include going down the pub as a charitable donation.

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Yeah... semantic arguments tend to go nowhere, especially here.

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I'm talking about a distinction between laws which protect freedoms and those that coerce desired behaviors. That's the distinction (I think) that Anthony was making.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
One person's freedom is another's oppression. For example, there is a famous quote: "Property is theft". (Please google it in quotes to find the entire history. )

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Be very wary of the word "rights". It implies an intrinsic, natural, inevitable framework which simply doesn't exist.

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That said, I define my community at various breadths, from my family, to my neighborhood, to my nation, to my world.

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Interesting. I'm wondering if that was an influence on Orwell...

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Originally posted by SergeantX:

Not sure what you mean.

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Originally posted by rue:
Who keeps changing the thread title ? Every time I look, it's different.

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Silence is consent.

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
The question is whether charity is the proper role of government.

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Originally posted by Geezer:
So it appears that the people who want to give away other people's money are less likely to give away their own.

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Originally posted by rue:

Posted by Rap, written by Will, about a 'study' done by Arthur C. Brooks, to be accurate.

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
Voluntary solutions will represent the will of the people in the most accurate, egalitarian way possible. People will give exactly as much as they think they should. Sometimes that will result in levels of giving that you don't like, and I think that's the crux of the problem. It's about control.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Originally posted by rue:
If I have time to get around to it, I might. Or, maybe not. It depends on what else is happening at the time.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
So in a very real way, voluntary solutions will represent the AWARENESS of the people in the most accurate, egalitarian way possible.

Just something to ponder...

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Originally posted by Geezer:

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Originally posted by rue:
If I have time to get around to it, I might. Or, maybe not. It depends on what else is happening at the time.

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Then maybe you shouldn't criticize if you don't have the time to be informed?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Maybe she had to; maybe her hands were tied, and it was politically expedient...



Mike

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You know, taxing someone into poverty, and then taxing them some more to fund programs supposed to raise them out of it doesn't exactly sound like a logically sound idea to me.

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Me neither, so it's a good thing that people AREN'T taxed into poverty! (And anyone who says they are is wrong!)

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As a coda, there's no way in hell imma take pure malicious sophistry nicely from a shitheel that tried to shovel the concept that the rich pay so much tax and the poor almost none, on a day I was fucking starving cause I couldn't afford food in spite of working a fifty hour week due to the fact that an independant contractor in this job that both local (Engler) and national politicians have virtually destroyed which carries a tax bite of almost forty fucking percent of the total income BEFORE expenses...

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Thirty four PERCENT, damn you.

And motor fuel tax, property taxes, utility taxes, sales taxes, every fuckin penny, coming or going the bastards take a bite, and without fail just after april they demand MORE cause I ain't gotten shit back for near a decade, just a bill, and folks makin far more than me whine about how us poor pay no taxes, while I eat jiffy biscuits for dinner cause that's all I can afford on what I got left after the Gov gets done bending me over the sawhorse...

And hearing some shitheel who no doubt makes more than I do, and who no doubt actually had something better to eat recently tell me the poor don't pay taxes makes me wanna ram their keyboard up their stupid, ignorant, uninformed ass crossways, cause I am right sick of hearing it, BEING one of those poor who supposedly "doesn't pay taxes" and here I am gettin royally raped on the fucking things.

Don't shovel that shit to me, especially not in the middle of a decade long relationship crumbling cause I don't make enough money no matter how I bust ass cause the more I make, the more they take, and not when I have to leave my chosen line of work for one I dislike cause it makes more money, and busting ass at both currently which means taking an even BIGGER tax hit since that eliminates the single job deduction till I get the transition covered.

Frankly, every time I hear that line of shit I wanna rip someones spine out, not even when I was fourteen and officially a dependant did I "get it all back" and that was well over twenty YEARS ago, it's always been a lie, a bald fiction to gloss over the fact that the working poor take such a tax bite that it's actually in many cases more sensible to go to the very government that pauperised them and beg for a handout.

Maybe if we didn't friggin impoverish them via taxes in the first damned place, they wouldn't NEED that goddamn handout, a lot of em wouldn't anyways, and we'd save a buck on all the folks chugging at the Govt trough, all the salarys of those who count, collect and enforce it coming it, and count, account for, and dole it out in the opposite direction, all of whom take their own little nibble as it passes till there's hardly nothin left.

It's not charity to rob someone, chew the take down to the bone, and then throw it back to them, it's just sheer meanness, and wasteful meanness at that.

And us working stiffs don't even get the damned bone back, how nice is that ?

And then we gotta listen to this bullshit lie over and over, while we count pennies and suck on ramen, and the Gov plans to squeeze us even harder to bail out their rich fatcat friends who've squeezed us dry till we got nothin left already.

Tell me, would you prefer to be pan fried, or boiled in a nice cream sauce ?

Eat the rich, yeah eat the rich
Out of the palace and into the ditch!
Krokus

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
We DO tax folk right into the poorhouse, and small biz owner/operators take the worst of it, so please, for the love of mercy do a little homework on how often taxes are the factor that sinks smallbiz, often before they even really get off the ground!

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