Why not a fertilizer factory ? It would be less polluting, and pay more taxes.

Just what Tucson needs is 5,000 little Pat Robertsons running around and voting but paying no taxes.

Since our Dobson controlled State Legislature is currently busy passing the Christian Bigotry Protection Act, which allows anyone to ignore non-discrimination laws as long as they claim to be “religious”, Grand Canyon University can discriminate against gays and persecute them with impunity.
Is this the kind of “industry” Tucson wishes to attract ?
Give me copper mine pollution or exploding fertilizer plants any day.

——– UPDATE —————————————————-

Tucson is blessed to have a city council and mayor that actually listen to their constituents, I am happy to say,

and Councilwoman Romero has realized that this was a bad idea and dropped it:

Plan to put university on El Rio Golf Course is no longer worth pursuing

——————-

I’ve lived in a lot of places (like Boston) where the power of the church causes corruption,

but I have never seen a more blatant scam than the recent vote by our City Council to

donate 1.1 Million dollars to the church for the “repair” of  Marist College.

The council voted 5-2 Tuesday night to allocate federal Community Development Block Grant funds to repair the historic building’s damaged support structure and veneer. The city’s hope is that a developer will eventually come forward and transform the one-time parochial school, built in 1915, into an economically viable property.

It is even personally upsetting in that I have been a long time supporter of Regina Romero, who pushed this effort,

and the only voice of sanity I find on the council is a Repub, Steve Kozachik

Councilman Steve Kozachik said he voted against the measure because the block-grant money would be better spent on housing rehabilitation, neighborhood enhancements and other issues where the city has a waiting list of residents who could benefit. “But instead we are going to give a gift to the Catholic Church,” he said.

It isn’t as if the Church doesn’t have the money to repair its own property – they’ve already spent almost that amount in out-of-state donations to campaigns to fight gay rights and contraception.

I’m calling the ACLU – the city will have another lawsuit on its hands if I can do anything about it.

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/work-begins-on-marist-building-downtown/article_ce68581e-d733-11e1-bb68-0019bb2963f4.html

———— UPDATE – Mayor’s Response —————————-

Patrick, thanks for your e-mail.  I appreciate your feelings due to a lack of detailed reporting regarding this matter.  The proposal which has been made to the Diocese to save this building which is on the National Historic Registry includes stipulations that the Church is to have no financial interest or gain from the building, that the City may take title to the Building if it desires, that the building will be put to partial public purpose and that the Church may have no interest in future use of which the City has full control.  In fact the Proposal from the City takes the property out of Church control and puts it to an entirely new use. The alternative is to lose a Historic Building of National concern for a Diocese parking lot.  Hope that helps you understand the proposal which has not yet been accepted by the Diocese.  Thanks.

My reaction to this is that I don’t understand why the City would take title “if desired”, and not simply take title. Or why it would be put to PARTIAL public purpose, and not entierly ?

It is still not satisfactory – the city should not be donating money to the Church – even “partially”.

While I share the trepidation of those who are afraid of the corrupting effect of Corporations buying our legislatures and writing our laws, a greater danger to democracy has already taken place with barely an acknowledgement. It is the extent of church involvement in our politics – something which used to be viewed as semi-prohibited in exchange for their exemption from taxation, but which is no longer enforced and indeed seems a lost cause. They are too politically powerful for any politician to dare challenge – and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family passed more legislation in the Arizona legislature last year than any other interest group.

While any effort to tax the churches has always been pooh-poohed in the past, in light of the churches increased political muscularity I can only hope that concerned citizens will reconsider our attitude towards these corrupt organizations that now far exceed the power, influence, and wealth of the Mafia.

How much does the privileging of these businesses cost us?

University of Tampa professor Ryan T. Cragun along with students Stephanie Yeager and Desmond Vega have published a study on the Council for Secular Humanism website:

Research Report: How Secular Humanists (and Everyone Else) Subsidize Religion in the United States

  While some people may be bothered by the fact that there are pastors who live in multimillion dollar homes, this is old news to most. But here is what should bother you about these expensive homes: You are helping to pay for them! You pay for them indirectly, the same way local, state, and federal governments in the United States subsidize religion—to the tune of about $71 billion every year.

The report is excellent and I urge everyone to read it. One it the points it makes clearly is that we have traditionally exempted churches because we considered them to be “charities”, while in fact a very small portion of their activities are truly “charity”.

 Wal-Mart, for instance, gives about $1.75 billion in food aid to charities each year, or twenty-eight times all of the money allotted for charity by the United Methodist Church and almost double what the LDS Church has given in the last twenty-five years.⁵

Running tax-supported businesses like schools and hospitals is not “charity”, nor are bingo games or multi-millon dollar political campaigns

The report makes clear that providing tax exemptions for true charities does, indeed, make sense but churches have abused their status and should be required to separate out for tax exemption those actual charitable parts of their businesses for tax exemption and otherwise be treated the same way that other service or business corporations are under the law – like Disneyland for the fans of Fantasy Land.

These wonderful christians are from the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle in

Indiana.

As a wise man once said:

Herr Pope

Enraged that the Obama administration has not been cowed into submission over its demands to outlaw contraception and abortion and gays – and send more tax free money - the Bishops have gone nuclear.  And GOP. Vote GOP or else.

Personally I don’t think these Mafia Dons have the power to frighten their superstitious flock with visions of hellfire any longer, but even though their followers seem wise enough to ignore the old perverts and happily use condoms and Ortho-novum, somehow they don’t seem able to break the hold over their wallets and they continue to fund the right wing in America.

There is some kind of disconnect that lets them say that they aren’t freaky religious bigots, personally, but still they feel the need to pay so that Father Flanagan can be whisked out of town rapidly and quietly before that lawsuit is filed.

After all the Vatican bank is having a little trouble at the moment, and multi-million dollar anti-gay political campaigns aren’t cheap. They need the contribution of every parishioner.

We can only hope that one day they will wake up – but still if you are afraid of ghosts or hell – this is the video for you:

Well I see that blogger Don Lacey has discovered that writing critically of Ron Paul in Arizona is akin to writing critically of Muhammed in Afghanistan

So it looks as if it’s time for me to mention how we arrived at this point in history – which in this case is the story of two melding ideologies.
Ideology 1 – Libertarianism – begun by Ayn Rand with her popular novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and her collection of essays (with her boy toy Nathaniel Branden) The Virtue of Selfishness.

As has been famously noted:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. – John Rogers

Rand was a refugee from Communism and her ideology was basically a celebration of free market individualism and a hatred of socialism.

She also was a dedicated atheist who hated religion, supported abortion rights and what she saw as human rights being oppressed by government.

ANY government.

She was not a “patriot”, did not justify her ideology with rigamarole from the US Constitution or founding fathers and was a believer in individual rights – not “State’s rights”.

Ideology #2 – the Confederates. Even after losing the Civil War the South Shall Always Rise Again in the hearts of the Confederates. These southern gentlemen remain commited to maintaining the privileged place of the white christian male and are fiercely dedicated to the Constitution – or at least those antebellum parts of it that extol “States Rights” – and hate the Federal government ( previously known as the “damn yankees”).

They will extol the virtues of “State’s rights” at every opportunity, human rights not so much, and they love Jesus.

Now it would seem that these ideologies have little in common, which is true, but they have just enough in common – at least in rhetoric – to have become the jumble that Jim sees in his comments thread.

They share a paranoid fear of the “federal government” and they both fetishize firearms.

So when a Confederate like Ron Paul attacks the “Federal” government, they hear it as an attack on “government” – and they are willing to let that little “State’s rights” plug he always inserts slip past. And soon they believe it themselves.

That is why, in 2012, “Libertarianism” looks suspiciously like those idiots arguing with Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind:

You simply do not understand the Libertarian philosophy that is embedded in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution (as per Thomas Jefferson).

The point of this bill was to return more rights to the states

You mean the constitution would have to be obeyed under this act. As it stands, the state governments are forced to bow before the “anti-religion” religion you are a devoted follower of.
The idea of promoting States rights is because you can represent the values of your constituents better that way,
That’s why we believe in state’s rights and limited government,

The federal government shouldn’t have anything to do with the laws of the state. Furthermore, If a state wants to endorse or promote religion then they have that right. It’s up to the state to make just and moral decisions form themselves; even if those decisions turn out to be mistakes.

States rights is a very big deal but the author just does not understand this. If a state has bad laws or ones that I disagree with, I can move away from the state.

Abortion is the most unilateral use of force I can think of. A zygote is not the same as a fetus, but life is life and it should be protected.

It is very clear in the constitution where the federal government should be in relations to the individual States,out of their hair.

Take the California Supreme Court, they created policy from thin air that Gay marriage is to be allowed

Honestly the biggest thing about states rights that appeals to me is the whole mantra of “Don’t like it? Move to a state that runs the way you like.”

The Constitution is explicit as to what the rights of the American people are and the Bill Of Rights gives the protection enforced by the “Federal” government. The Constitution also is clear on the restraint of the federal government with interfering with the sovereignty of states.

Using the argument that without the Federal government mandating every aspect of our daily lives this country would be a state dictatorship with slavery is an outrageous statement.

It seems to be official now.   The homily of Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, at the Mass during the April 14 “A Call to Catholic Men of Faith” in Peoria

 

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

……

This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries — only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down. Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the instrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb.
No Catholic ministry – and yes, Mr. President, for Catholics our schools and hospitals are ministries – can remain faithful to the Lordship of the Risen Christ and to his glorious Gospel of Life if they are forced to pay for abortions.

 

Because we all remember when Hitler tried to provide medical care for everyone. I call Godwin’s Law.

We might have made a mistake cutting off these old queen’s access to altar boys. They have become really grumpy – not to mention hysterical – since then.

Maybe we should let them have them back the same way we exempt them from paying taxes and then they’ll go back to shearing their flock and stay out of our government.

“Center-right” leaders, Bush alums form “religious conscience” group

This 501(c)4 organization, Conscience Cause, is aimed at “stopping the implementation of a Department of Health and Human Services regulation which would compel people and organizations to pay for drugs and services that violate their faith”

If you are one of those oh-so-very-religious Americans whose conscience is under assault – or even if you just don’t feel like paying for yours or your employees medical care, you should know that there is a christian denomination waiting with open arms to ease your burden.

The Church of Christ, Scientist can help you not have to pay for any pesky penicillin and they are all scientificey too.

You can even feel morally superior to those insulin sluts whose faith is inadequate to control their glucose the way God intended.

There is only one downside, which is that you’ll have to do a lot of praying for healing, but that’s cheap.

Get in on the ground floor – Sign Up Today.

I simply don’t understand how our Repub candidates are ignoring a huge threat to our national security – a completely undefended northern border.

They have warned of the danger of Obamacare turning our previously free country into one of those socialist-marxist european style welfare states, but you don’t have to go to Europe – Canada lost its freedoms decades ago.

Medical care there is available to everyone, and they don’t even skim off the top for insurance companies.

And the war on religion has been unremitting – anyone can get birth control, covered by their healthcare.

Why, a women there can even get an abortion if she wants one. Any time. With no restrictions. Not even a mild over-the-knee spanking from their priest. And the Bishops are forced to pay for it !!!!!

Talk about not respecting the delicate consciences of Bishops – Timmy Dolan would be apopleptic.

The family unit was destroyed long ago in Canada when they allowed gays and lesbians to marry, thus re-defining the word and making it meaningless. All is chaos, although no one re-defined the word “divorce” so somehow they have a lower divorce rate than we do.

With all of this sinking of moral values and religion being destroyed, Satan has destroyed the country and surely they cannot be pleasing in God’s eye the way that little Ricky wants to help us be. Surely poor oppressed Catholics with no freedoms of conscience will be swarming over the border begging asylum any day now.

Even if our homicide rate is 3 times theirs.

Luckily most of them speak English and we will be able to incorporate them into our prayer circles easily, as long as they aren’t ill or on birth control.

Some of them, however, speak French and naturally should be immediately deported.

We really are going to need that Danged Fence.

The Christian Hate Group American Family Association organized protest of J C Penny for choosing Ellen to be their spokesperson.

Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of its customers are traditional families.

The Christian USA Ministries is calling for a boycott of Starbucks for being one of more than 100 firms in Washington supporting same sex marriage.

“Christians are upset with Starbucks for turning against God…Starbucks can follow Satan if they want to,” Steven Andrew, and evangelical pastor and president of the USA Christian Ministries in California, said in a statement.

Started boycott of Girl Scout cookies in protest of their accepting a transgender brownie.
(I hear they support Planned Parenthood too)

St. Timothy Roman Catholic parish in Chantilly in Fairfax County ousted 12 troops with 115 girls. In Alexandria, Saint Rita Catholic Church is reportedly considering doing the same.

Revealed their control of the Komen Foundation by cancelling support for Planned Parenthood and embrionic stem cell research.
(That went well )

Catholic Bishops posted Urgent Action Alert to protest the Obama administration decision that women were entitled to obtain birth control.

They were busy this week. The good news is that more people seem to be considering them not only hateful, but irrelevant.

Except for Repub Presidential candidates, of course.