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>

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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.
 
Peter Nuhn
 
 
2009 Political Agenda

'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.
 
 

 

Peter J. Nuhn, DMS <peter@nwseo.org>