April 4, 2019 6:00 AM
Morning Reads – Thursday, April 4, 2019
Peaches
- Sponsor says talks came too late to save rural Georgia transit bill. I say bad actors ruined it.
- Ethics in Journalism Act getting national attention. Like everywhere.
- Stacy Abrams calls Georgia’s GOP governor an “architect of voter suppression”
- Savannah mayoral candidate arrested
- Supreme Court Turns Away Georgia Cash Bail Challenge
- One of the garbage bills to pass this session #forthechildren
Jimmy Carter
- Leveling the media playing field with tech giants
- Speaking of, time to control algorithms?
- Nuclear option on Trump nominees?
- Biden pledges in video to be more ‘respectful’ of personal space
- The unbanning of plastic bag bans
- …but on the contrary of bag bans…
- America Is On Track To Accept A Historically Low Number Of Refugees This Year
- Your Fourth Amendment Rights Should Not be Limited by Terms of Service
Sweet Tea
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I think that study linking media multi-use and obesity confuses cause and effect. People aren’t fat because they flip from cell phones to tablets and back but because they sit on their butts and live on takeout and cellophane snacks. No different from lying in a recliner with a bag of chips while wearing out the TV remote.
Trump has announced Congress will vote on a healthcare plan to replace Obamacare in 2021 or later. Now the only thing to do is to figure out who and when the plan will be developed, since the Trump administration won’t be doing it, and Republicans in Congress are incapable of it. There’s 8 years proof of that.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/436854-trump-predicts-new-health-care-law-after-2020
He has a secret plan to end the healthcare war.
They’ve always had a plan. If you’re poor or middle class and you get really sick, die quickly so we can cut taxes even more. If you’re rich you’re entitled to the best health care money can buy. Health care is not a free market commodity but that’s the GOP view of healthcare, it’s like buying bitcoins.
Pay no attention https://cis.org/Rush/Private-Refugee-Resettlement-Agencies-Mostly-Funded-Government
To the man behind the curtain. https://capitalresearch.org/article/refugee-resettlement-the-lucrative-business-of-serving-immigrants/
What curtain?
These nonprofits have been operating with publicly-disclosed financials/tax returns for-like-ever.
And do you want a breakdown of nonprofits, in every sector, which rely heavily if not almost exclusively, on government grants? Spoiler: Government grants fund a ton of non-profit work.
What else do these articles complain about? Executive compensation? For example, $150K to run an organization with a $50M budget? Sure, maybe non-profits should be impoverished and only hire people willing to run a $50M budget for $100K a year. Or maybe you could take that same knowledge of, say, regulatory compliance to the private sector for more. Maybe we want to pay people enough to ensure that we have someone who knows how to manage and comply with federal funds and grants.
If your complaint is just that there are too many programs for refugees, asylees, or those in need of temporary protection, then just say that. Of course just saying it like that may sound cold or inhumane.
But saying the programs cost more than they should? To my knowledge, most individuals/families receiving resettlement assistance get 3 months of grant-based assistance, then that’s it. Arrive in America, then learn everything you have to in order to be self-sustaining within 3 months.
Then best of luck. There’s a need for more durable services that most nonprofits can help with, but there is surely no excess of resources in any of these programs.
Ironically, federal grants also fund the Center for Immigration Studies which produced the report about RRAs receiving federal grants.
And I don’t care to track down CIS’s 990s (tax returns), but my guess is that their Exec. Dir. and other officers make respectable paychecks. Even where there is a mix of public and private funding, there can be fungibility, and you could argue that the federal grants subsidize the salaries.
Thank you for your thoughts. My post was incomplete this morning. The articles I posted are educational in detailing the makeup of the organizations in Huffpost article. Did you notice that the organizations in the Huffpost article are religious based? Statists hate them some government money going to religious based organizations until they find one that they use to line their pockets and potentially build their voter base. Separation of church and state is a must to a statist until there is an opportunity to pocket other people’s money. I lament the plight of the refugees and applaud the reduction of public funds being funneled into these organizations.
The extra commentary helped to explain your position.
The intersection of government funds and religious organizations extend through this area of refugee services, and conceivably so many other fields of nonprofit operations. Adoptions? Housing/Homelessness? Parochial schools? Etc.
The end recipients of government funds can be religious organizations, but they are bound by anti-discrimination laws and rules insofar as service delivery. That’s why the fuss- imo- about giving the right to religious adoption agencies to discriminate from among the families they place children with. I don’t think that ever got passed, though? But I get both angles of that argument.
So, no, religious orgs are not just protested until and unless they’re used to line pockets of “statists” and their assumed-to-be-liberal “voter base”.
There’s a lot more nuance and detail.
But mostly not enough grant money, nonprofits, nonprofit donors, adoptive families, etc. to resolve all the needs and problems out there.
The budgets/appropriated programs reflect broad priorities. Clearly, you don’t have the same priorities, but there’re legit reasons why refugee resettlement programs exist and are prioritized as a % of the budget over alternative spending. Think about what would happen if we didn’t have a semblance of reciprocity with citizens in countries where we are actively engaged in diplomacy or even combat? For years, the U.S. has resettled, e.g., Iraqis, Afghans, etc., Not to mention where we defend human rights internationally by protecting a group from religious-based persecution. If you care about religious freedom.
Ironically, among the other numerous reasons the programs exist, they also can be based upon the religious principle of loving your neighbor. So, it’s absolutely no surprise that religious orgs would be engaged in this line of nonprofits.
If you care about religious freedom.
Ironically, among the other numerous reasons the programs exist, they also can be based upon the religious principle of loving your neighbor
This is exactly the point. Whose and which religious principles are we to support with tax money? What religious organizations get to profit from it? Because at the other end of the spectrum you get this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/us/politics/trump-grant-abortion.html
I understand your concerns, but I don’t see any solution in, say, eliminating all religious-based nonprofits from receiving federal or state grants. In theory, btw, the government could just directly create a program like abstinence education, and operate it, and even though the program has methods or outcomes which reflect principles based upon a religion, there would be no violation of the establishment clause if there was no discrimination in accepting applications or delivering services, and no proselytizing. Nonprofits that receive grants may get to interject some religion into the process, but the services themselves (say a sonogram) are religiously neutral. The program’s goal- say reduce teen pregnancy- is also a permissible expression of priorities.
The broader issue about any solution is whether grants could be given to one kind of religious organization for a stated priority. In other words, if a Church of Paganism also supported reductions in teen pregnancy, and they applied, they would be on equal footing (in theory) as a Catholic-based provider of those services.
So, perhaps one way to counteract any de facto establishment vis a vis nonprofits would be more diverse range of nonprofits, not just eliminating the programs entirely.
Just speaking personally… back in college I interned for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) which is a major recipient of State Department grants to resettle refugees. The organization’s motive has nothing to do with “pocketing other people’s money” and everything to do with Judaism’s belief that helping refugees and the unjustly persecuted is God’s calling. They’ve been doing this work since the 1880s and have helped resettle over 4 million refugees from around the world.
Yet they do pocket other people’s money. I applaud the motive and your service to the cause but govt should not be in the business of funding the cause through a religious organization.
They’re non-profits and charity organizations. The only world in which they are “pocket[ing] other people’s money” is one where you believe people working for non-profits receiving government grants shouldn’t earn a salary.