Bush Funds Bible-thumpers' Push to Convert Katrina Victims

[newswolf56]

From a just-transmitted press release:

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today sharply criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for its plan to fund hurricane relief efforts by churches without adequate accountability and safeguards to protect the evacuees.

“After FEMA’s ineptitude in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it’s distressing to see the Bush administration making even more blunders,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “Before you turn over millions of taxpayer dollars to churches, there must be strict accountability and safeguards to protect the civil and religious liberty rights of those who need help.”

The Washington Post reported today that FEMA plans to broadly reimburse houses of worship for their relief efforts. The move, the newspaper noted, “would mark the first time that the government has made large-scale payments to religious groups for helping to cope with a domestic natural disaster.”

“Some religious organizations are openly using the hurricane relief efforts to win new converts,” Lynn said. “If these groups can’t separate their evangelism from their relief work, they should not be eligible for public funding. People displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita should not be subjected to unwanted, high-pressure religious coercion as the price of getting help from their own government.”

The damning details of this latest Bush effort to impose theocracy on America are available here:

http://www.au.org/site/News2?abbr=pr&page=NewsArticle&id=7579&security=1002&news_iv_ctrl=1241

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Some churches live to prey on the weak and weary. That's their

best shot to reel people in with their bizarre line of thinking.

[doni_georgia]

2. Your tax dollars at work....eom

[bertha katzenengel]

3. I know that as a "lockstep" liberal, I am supposed to be incensed by

this news. But the ONLY thing about it that makes me mad is that the Bush administration dismantled FEMA in the first place. FEMA is the org that's supposed to be doing the work that these other groups have been forced to step into the void to perform.

I don't want anyone proselytized with federal money. But SOMEONE has to do the job of helping these people, and if our government isn't going to do it, then they damn well better at least FUND the people who will!

One thing is certain: whether they evangelize or not, these religious groups CARE about George's vaunted "the American people" infinitely more than George himself does.

My dearest hopes are 1. that the people in the 'cane zones get exactly what they need, and quickly, and 2. that if anyone holds medical care, food, supplies, or shelter over their heads as "reward" for sitting through a sermon, the newspapers are there to take notice and report it.

Edited to flameproof :rofl: myself by putting the word lockstep in quotes.

[Cha]

4. Fuck that hypocrite bush!

And all the hypocrites who follow his cult.