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Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B

apnews.com

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Re: Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B

#41

Post by annoyingnoob »

jawns wrote: post #30
annoyingnoob wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue that I have is that the Catholic Church has enormous assets, something like 30 billion in net worth globally. I'm feeling like the church had options beyond lobbying for relief.

Those assets are, in large part, the church buildings themselves. They are not liquid assets. Indeed, they are even more illiquid than most other real estate, because the market for church buildings, all of which are constructed to meet the needs and functions of a particular faith, is quite limited. A lot of people are under the mistaken impression that the Catholic Church has vast piles of money sitting around in a…

In Santa Barbara you can find the Church of Skatan. A skateboard shop built in a church building.

Re: Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B

#42

Post by true_religion »

klyrs wrote: post #19
abetusk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is some contorted logic. "We will not privilege religion, so we will give a privileged tax exempt status to religion". Ha, nice, the Satanic Temple is also tax exempt [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Temple

I've been thinking a lot about the Satanic Temple recently. The supreme court has been ferociously eroding the separation of church and state lately. I wonder how they, and the public, would respond to public funding for a Satanic charter school that openly discriminated against heterosexual teachers and forced heterosexual students to undergo gay conversion therapy... Edit: to be clear, I don't think that it would b…

I’m not against a gay only school. It doesn’t sound too dissimilar to male or female only schools, which only seek to employ teachers of the same gender.

Re: Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B

#43

Post by diegoholiveira »

klyrs wrote: post #31
diegoholiveira wrote: post #29

I saw a lot of people saying things like "tax them". Why would you tax a non-profit institution that has like 5K hospitals and more than 10K homes for the elderly, orphans and those with special needs?

Because they exert, and lobby for, the right to refuse treatment on religious grounds. Women's reproductive rights, and LGBTQ people are harmed where tax dollars are redirected through "charity" and cannot be used to establish secular services of the same kind. They're great for the "right kind" of elderly, homeless and orphans. But they've got a long history of screwing everybody else over, for example, forced conve…

You're saying: they not perfect. And I agree with you. But who's perfect?

Re: Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B

#44

Post by klyrs »

diegoholiveira wrote: post #43
klyrs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they exert, and lobby for, the right to refuse treatment on religious grounds. Women's reproductive rights, and LGBTQ people are harmed where tax dollars are redirected through "charity" and cannot be used to establish secular services of the same kind. They're great for the "right kind" of elderly, homeless and orphans. But they've got a long history of screwing everybody else over, for example, forced conve…

You're saying: they not perfect. And I agree with you. But who's perfect?

Who said anything about perfection? I'm saying tax dollars would be better spent providing services to all citizens, not just those whose lives conform to a particular religion's norms. And thus we should tax churches for a percentage of their tithe. And maybe not shovel money on them just because they asked with cash.

Re: Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B

#45

Post by haspoken »

voisin wrote: post #16
danso wrote: post #6

The news peg for this particular story (i.e. why the Catholic Church and not all denominations) is ostensibly the Church's ongoing legal battle and settlements re: clergy sexual abuse, but also the fact that the church's lobbying arm successfully argued an exception for religious organizations to not be disqualified under the rule's dictate "that only businesses with fewer than 500 employees, including at all subsidi…

$50k in lobbying for $1.4B (possibly $3.5B)? Seems like a hell of a ROI. I’ve never understood why elected officials seem willing to acquiesce to huge pork barrel projects for such little $$ in lobbying. “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Lobbying Dollars”?

I've wondered why more groups or individuals don't take advantage of this. Most politicians seem to sell themselves so cheaply.
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