Subject: Enlighten the Vote 2009 Agenda |
From: "peter nuhn" <peter.nuhn@verizon.net> |
Date: 2/18/09, 17:08 |
To: <djparker10@gmail.com>, "Ellen Johnson" <EllJhns8@aol.com>,
"Stephen Gladney" <stephengladney@gmail.com>,
"Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> |
We need to start think about a solicitation email to get out and
for that we need an agenda to spark the interest of people to contribute. Below
is only a draft. Please fill free to comment and work on the individual items
and add your own although I feel that these 7 are a good start. I look
forward to hearing from each of you.
'we have staked the very existence of our country
on the faith that complete separation between the state and religion is best
for the state and best for religion.' Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S.
at page 59, 67 S.Ct. at page 532.
1. Work to stop public funding of religious organizations by their
extensive tax exemptions.
State and local governments fund medicaid, schools, roads, police, and
prisons with a combination of income, sales and property taxes. These
jurisdictions are suffering across the country right now. California has
announced it plans to fire 10,000 state workers. That really isn't much of a
savings for them since those 10,000 will go on unemployment and medicaid that is
state funded. The state says it funds through taxes on all privately owned
personal and real property. But it doesn't. It exempts a major portion of the
privately owned corporate personal and real property through out the state. The
religious corporations are exempt from all property taxes in all 50
states. When the states need more funding, they increase our property tax
amounts or increase our assessments. The religious corporations continue to rely
on fire fighting and police services, they drive on state provided roads. They
don't pay a penny in taxes to provide any of those services and they should damn
well start. Every Enlightened Voter in America should start demanding their
state delegates and senators start considering the funding that is available to
them if they just stopped exempting privately owned corporate property just
because the corporation that owns it claim to be a charity. None of the other
charities across the nation get property tax exemption and neither should
religious corporations who use all the services we use in our state and local
jurisdictions.
2. Lobby for the judges that support a wall between religion and
government.
The Religious Right have in the
person of Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) has publically announced his intention to
filibuster any Supreme Court nominee who supports the First Amendment. We have
to be prepared to lobby hard to ensure that the right judges who support our
important constitutional values.
3. Prevent the Congress from
passing earmarks for religious organizations.
The Republicans continually try to
pass pork barrel funding for their favorite constituents, i.e., the Religious
Right. We will have to monitor all the appropriation bills to ensure that they
fail to secretly plant this pork spending.
4. Stop all laws that allow
church politicking.
The Religious Right will not stop
trying to change IRS rules so that they can maintain their tax exempt status
while at the same time allowing them to openly engage in making endorsements for
the Republican Party.
5. Block the legalization of
military proselytizing.
We have to stop any efforts by the
Religious Right to allow military chaplains to proselytize the troops for the
purposes of creating a devisive and discriminatory U.S. military.
6. Ensure public
schools teach science.
A goal whose actions mostly take
place at the local and state levels across the nation. We have to protect all
children in public schools from being taught the world is flat, it is only 6,000
years old, and Jesus rode on the back of T-Rex's with Fred
Flintstone.
7. Block all government
funding for any program that proselytizes.
It is totally wrong for a single
dollar (let alone a billion and a half dollars) of public funds to be spent on
attempting to convince individuals to join a religious organization. It is also
wrong to support a religious organization that conducts charitable service to
the public with taxpayer funding so that they can then save their funding for
conducting proselytizing.