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RELATED LINKSInternal LinksProfiles: Other internal:
External Links"The Center for Capacity Development" website Arizona-based "Faith-Based Institute" website First Amendment Center's report on $1.17 billion spent by gov't on Faith-based programs George W. Bush interview with BeliefNet Pew-funded "Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy" Washington Monthly story "Faith Without Works" White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Cursor.orgMediaTransparency.org sponsor More stories by Bill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs' Media Transparency writersAndrew J. Weaver FundometerEvaluate any page on the World Wide Web against our databases of people, recipients, and funders of the conservative movement. |
ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz Faith and FabricationsIn the process of institutionalizing its faith-based initiative the Bush administration has handed over $1 billion to religious organizations and more is coming to a state near you"It's true that much attention is being placed on the war in Iraq, but there's also another war that's going on. It's a culture war that really gets to the heart of the questions about what is the role of faith in the public square." "President Bush does not want to proselytize or fund religion. We're talking about things like job training and substance abuse prevention, and opening up to small groups that have been shut [out] by the ACLU and a radical fringe that wants an extreme separation of church and state." In the coming year, while secular organizations providing much-needed social services to the poor will likely need the Jaws of Life to pry money from the Bush Administration, faith-based organizations will be taking in money hand over fist. In 2003 alone, the administration handed out $1.17 billion in grants to religious organizations, and if the president has his way, individual states will soon be handing over hundreds of millions of dollars to faith-based organizations. A report titled "The Expanding Administrative Presidency: George W. Bush and the Faith-Based Initiative," issued this past summer by the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, N.Y., pointed out that religious organizations have now become involved in a wide range of "government-encouraged activities...from building strip malls for economic improvement to promoting child car seats." The report also noted that Bush's faith-based programs "mark a major shift in the constitutional separation of church and state." Four years ago, an impressive array of pastors, preachers, rabbis and community leaders shared the White House platform with President Bush as he announced the establishment of The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. As months passed, and Congress debated some of the thorny issues surrounding Bush's faith-based proposal including fudging the lines relating to the separation of church and state, and the propensity of religious organizations to discriminate in their hiring practices against those of other religions, or sexual orientation, the president moved forward, installing faith-based branch offices in a number of federal agencies. By June 2004, he had added the Department of Commerce, the Small Business Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs to seven other agencies that had already been involved with faith-based projects. Despite the administration's inability to pass a comprehensive faith-based package through Congress, "Few if any presidents in recent history have reached as deeply into or as broadly across the government to implement a presidential initiative administratively," Rockefeller Institute director Richard Nathan said. During the 2000 presidential campaign Bush spoke repeatedly of the ability of faith-based organizations to transform lives. Armed with a great deal of faith but little data, the Texas governor "told audiences that religious organizations succeed where others fail 'because they change hearts, they convince a person to turn their life over to Christ.' Whenever 'my administration sees a responsibility to help people,' he promised, 'we will look first to faith-based organizations that have shown their ability to save and change lives.'" After four years and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, are faith-based organizations serving the needs of the poor better than secular organizations? Certainly in an administration concerned with "results," there must be studies proving the efficacy of the Bush Administration's faith-based theories. But there aren't. In an October 2004 story in the Washington Monthly titled "Faith Without Works: After four years, the president's faith-based policies have proven to be neither compassionate nor conservative", writer Amy Sullivan points out that the administration has failed to systematically track and "monitor the effectiveness" of programs run by faith-based organizations. "The policy of funding the work of faith-based organizations has, in the face of slashed social service budgets, devolved into a small pork-barrel program that offers token grants to...religious constituencies...while making almost no effort to monitor their effectiveness..." "Results, results, results," has been George W. Bush's oft-repeated mantra. Sullivan cites an interview with the religious website Beliefnet, where Bush was asked whether he would support government money going to a Muslim group that taught prisoners the Koran. "The question I'd be asking," Bush replied, "is what are the recidivism rates? Is it working? I wouldn't object at all if the program worked." According to Sullivan, "four more times in the interview, Bush mentioned 'results,' noting that instead of promoting religion, 'I'm promoting lower recidivism rates, and we will measure to make sure that's the case'" Where do we stand in terms of measuring "results?" According to Sullivan, "it turns out that the Bush administration forgot to require evaluation of organizations that receive government grants." An August 2004 study released by the Pew-funded Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy (website) found that "while more elaborate scientific studies are underway, the White House has relied on largely anecdotal evidence to support the view that faith-based approaches produce better long-term results." Sullivan concludes that "there is no evidence that faith-based organizations work better than their secular counterparts; and, in some cases, they are actually less effective": In one study funded by the Ford Foundation, investigators found that faith-based job training programs placed only 31 percent of their clients in full-time employment while the number for secular organizations was 53 percent. And Teen Challenge's [a Texas-based drug program often spoken highly of by Bush] much ballyhooed 86 percent rehabilitation rate falls apart under examination – the number doesn't include those who dropped out of Teen Challenge and relies on a disturbingly small sample of those graduates who self-reported whether they had remained sober, significantly tilting the results. The second George W. Bush Administration is "setting its sights on money doled out by the states," for social services, the Associated Press recently reported. "The goal is to persuade states to funnel more of the federal money for social service programs that they administer to 'faith-based organizations.'" To encourage states to participate, the White House has hosted a series of conferences. Jim Towey, the director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, has met with state leaders, and the president "has personally lobbied governors," AP reported . "The White House office also is providing states with technical assistance in setting up their own faith-based offices." Thus far some 21 governors – Democrat and Republican – have set up their own faith-based offices. The White House isn't alone in tutoring faith-based groups about how to apply for government grants. The Community & Faith-Based Grants Institute, an organization run by the Tucson, Arizona-based Faith-Based Institute (website) is offering a "video seminar on Faith Based Initiative grant writing [which] picks up where the free grant writing seminars by the government leave off." The Institute has lined up an impressive array of former administration insiders and veterans of various U.S. charities as seminar instructors including, Dave Donaldson, the founder and CEO of We Care America (website), "an organization that identifies faith-based models and works to strengthen and multiply them to help those in need. Dave works closely with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to educate and engage the Christian community on the Faith-Based Initiative"; Michael McCarthy, the manager of The Center for Capacity Development (website), "a fee-for-service division of The WorkPlace, Inc., Southwestern Connecticut's Regional Workforce Development Board"; Amy Sherman, a Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute's Welfare Policy Center and the founder and former executive director of Charlottesville Abundant Life Ministries, "a holistic, cross-cultural, whole-family, church-based outreach in an urban neighborhood of approximately 380 lower-income, single-parent families"; and Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies, the Director of the Civitas Program in Faith in Public Affairs, The Center for Public Justice (website) and former OFBCI staff member. Jim Towey sees a bright future for faith-based organizations to shoulder a larger part of the load in providing for people in need. "We're on the sunrise side of the mountain," he proclaimed. While it's a long way from the cushy air-conditioned offices of Jim Towey's White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to the dusty devastated streets of Fallujah, the president's War in Iraq and his crusade to have faith-based organizations be the primary engine for delivering social services to the needy in this country may have a lot more in common than at first meets the eye. Bush's war in Iraq was built on fabrications and faith: The administration fabricated claims about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein's relationship with al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden, and the Iraqi dictator's connection to 9/11. Bush faithfully believed that his wild-eyed neoconservative advisors would be proved right when they predicted that U.S. troops would be welcomed with open arms by the people of Iraq, and that reconstruction would be a "slam dunk," to borrow a phrase from former CIA director George Tenet. The neocons were wrong and reconstruction has been a disaster. The president's faith-based initiative – the centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda – is also a combination of fabrications and faith, with a batch of anecdotes thrown in for good measure. Despite any concrete data, the Bush administration insisted that faith-based organizations would provide social services to the poor and addicted more effectively than secular programs. No data existed four years ago, and little more than anecdotal evidence exists today. Built on faith and fabrications, President Bush's long hard slog in Iraq continues to produce death, destruction and a growing insurgency. A civil war could be looming in the aftermath of the January 30 elections. At home, as poverty deepens, the president's faith-based initiative, also built on fabrications and faith, is now heading toward a state near you. sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE 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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