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ORIGINAL RESEARCHPhil Wilayto Milwaukee GenesisWhere George W. Bush's "Faith-Based" initiative really comes fromJust nine days after being sworn in as president, George W. Bush announced the establishment of a new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which opened for business on February 20, 2001. The stated goal of the new office is to help religious groups receive government funds and contracts to deliver social services, especially to the very poor. You don't want to get involved in those kinds of protests, Woodson warned the mostly Black ministers in the audience. That's not what you want to be doing! "Real change happens street by street, heart by heart, one soul, one conscience at a time," Bush earnestly explained the following day, speaking outside a religious-based community program in Washington, D.C. He described a legislative proposal that includes a variety of tax credits and deductions for those contributing to religious charities. The legislation would also create a fund that would match private dollars with federal money to provide technical assistance to faith-based and community charities. Joining Bush at the photo op was Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the recent vice presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, ho said he and Bush were of "like minds" concerning the goals of the new initiative. Lieberman's erstwhile running mate, Al Gore, had also called for a more active role for religious groups in delivering federally funded social services, and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO) also indicated interest in Bush's proposals. While most criticism of Bush's initiative has focused on threats to the constitutional separation of church and state, the problems with this program go far beyond that, and include the increasing privatization of government services, deregulation of the delivery of social services, weakening of public sector unions and the development of a layer of hand-picked "leaders" in poor communities answerable not to the people they serve, but to the government and conservative foundations that provide their funding. John Ashcroft's "Charitable Choice" Provision Opened the DoorFor many years, churches and church organizations have received government contracts to provide services like food, foster care and drug programs. Most of these contracts were channeled through separate non-profit agencies which were supposed to refrain from trying to proselytize their "clients." The door to the direct funding of religious groups was opened wide with the passage of the 1996 welfare reform act, which contained a section called "Charitable Choice," giving religious groups the right to present their religious beliefs along with their services. The New York Times reported that "Charitable Choice... granted religious groups that contract with the government the right to maintain their religious identities, symbols and philosophies and to choose only staff who agree with their religious beliefs." In other words, providers were free to discriminate against job applicants who didn't share their views. Former Missouri senator John Ashcroft, the pro-Confederacy conservative religious zealot who is now the nation's top law enforcement officer, drafted the Charitable Choice provision. Like so many in the Charitable Choice business, Ashcroft has close ties to the conservative philanthropies that sponsor most Republican ideologues. In November of 1999 he was brought to Milwaukee, home of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the nation's number one funder of conservative advocacy and action organizations, to be the main speaker at a conference they had sponsored on government funding of faith-based groups. To head up his new Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, Bush chose University of Pennsylvania political science professor John J. DiIulio, Jr., charitably described in the New York Times as "a widely published expert on juvenile crime." DiIulio is a fellow at both the conservative Manhattan Institute and the Brookings Institution. According to MediaTransparency.org's grants database, between January of 1988 and August of 1996 DiIulio received five grants totaling $277,000 from the conservative John M. Olin and Bradley foundations, plus a share of another $400,000 grant. DiIulio, who describes himself as a "New Democrat," had been a strong advocate of increased prison construction in the early 1990s. His efforts are credited with influencing the 1994 crime bill, which provided millions of dollars for In his book DiIulio predicted that children and teenagers - "Superpredators" - would soon carry out a new and brutal crime wave. His dire warning of course never materialized, but both Democrats and Republicans seized on DiIulio's predictions to justify their own wave of brutal legislation, including the trying of children as adults, harsh new sentences for juvenile offenders and the massive expansion of juvenile prisons, all of which contributed to the doubling of the nation's prison population. Bush has also created a national advisory board for his faith-based initiative, to be headed by former prosecutor and Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith. Goldsmith has been closely associated with the Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank that played a leading role in the development of Wisconsin's welfare reform program called W-2. Hudson, whose so-called experts are pervasive in the mass media, has received at least $9 million from the conservative philanthropies since 1987. During his tenure as mayor, Goldsmith, according to the New York Times, "privatized everything from golf course construction to sewage treatment and showed an interest in revitalizing long-neglected inner-city neighborhoods." That "revitalization" (read "gentrification") actually resulted in the widespread dispersal of the city's Black community and its subsequent loss of any real political power. Goldsmith will also oversee tens of thousands of Americorps volunteers, whom Bush wants re-directed, as part of the faith-based funding initiative, to work on issues like literacy and after-school care. Don't be surprised if those same volunteers are asked to now bring a bible to work, as last year Goldsmith "suggested that a homeless shelter receiving federal funds should not be prevented from asking recipients to pray once a day." What's Wrong with Charitable Choice?The government funding of "faith-based" social services has actually long been a goal of neo-conservative strategists, who see privatization and deregulation as the way to assert laissez-faire capitalism, free of any restraints on profit making. But faith-based organizations cannot replace the massive government welfare programs that provide some measure of protection against the savage vicissitudes of captialism. By promoting the idea that private groups best carry out social service, faith-based funding undermines the principle that government has any obligation to "promote the general welfare." It replaces the concept of entitlement - of the right to government services - with the pre-industrial notion of religious charity, leaving the government free to concentrate on its "proper" functions of protecting corporate interests at home and abroad -- in other words, the repressive functions of the police and the military. Forgotten in all this is the fact that government social programs sprang up precisely because private charity had failed miserably at providing a rudimentary social safety net. And the mere fact that a group is religious is no guarantee it has the interests of poor people at heart. In recent years numerous such organizations have been accused of fraud, mistreatment of clients and the misuse of tax dollars. An attractive aspect of "faith-based" initiatives for conservatives is its concomitant affect of weakening public sector unions by transferring the delivery of social services from government agencies to sectarian institutions. The result is the large-scale destruction of good-paying jobs, since the largely non-union religious employers are notorious for their low wages and scant benefits. Many workers who stand to lose in this transition are women and people of color. Under "Charitable Choice" religious groups can also claim exemption from government licensing and performance standards, and faith-based daycare centers have already claimed exemption from health and safety laws. A wide range of groups also claim the right to refuse to hire lesbians and gays or others who may disagree with their views. Finally, it will be the conservative Bush administration deciding which faith-based groups receive contracts, thus building up a layer of "leaders" beholden to it for their livelihood - a patronage system promoting the spread of socially conservative (Republican) values to captive audiences in poor communities. For example: Before the presidential primary in New Hampshire, George W. Bush had indicated a willingness to work with the Nation of Islam (NOI), which operates one of the largest and most successful rehabilitation programs for prisoners. Later - a week before the important New York primary - Bush sharply reversed himself, condemning the NOI as a "hate" organization. While it was never an organization that advocated the suppression of another racial group, the fact is that in recent years the Nation of Islam has shown an increasing willingness to work with all races, including whites, to address issues of poverty and racism. It seemed clear that Bush was excluding a particular religious group for purely political reasons There are also indications that accepting this new funding comes with some political strings. A few years ago the Bradley Foundation funded a conference in Milwaukee on the issue of faith-based funding. One of the keys speakers Robert Woodson, president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. Woodson, an African American who is generally presented as a community leader, is almost entirely funded by Bradley. Based in Washington, D.C., Woodson had recently travelled to Hartford, Conn. at the request of that city's chief of police to denounce local activists protesting the police shooting of a Black teenager under suspicious circumstances. "You don't want to get involved in those kinds of protests," Woodson warned the mostly Black ministers in the audience. "That's not what you want to be doing!" Who will stop this dangerous initiative? Not the Democrats. They couldn't even stop the outright theft of the presidential election by the Republican-controlled Supreme Court. Whatever the eventual outcome of Bush's plan to smash the wall between church and state, the signs do not bode well for the usual victims of neo-conservative policies: women, children, and people of color. sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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OTHER LINKSNew York Times Scientologists, Moonies, line up to receive federal tax dollars to participate in Bush's Faith-Based InitiativeMORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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Don't look to Wisconsin as model for welfare reform
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