Religious charities in 10 states got 40 percent of the $2 billion in taxpayer money available to groups deemed ‘faith-based’ by the White House in 2004, according to figures the White House provided Thursday to The Associated Press.
That’s only slightly more than the money awarded under President Bush’s initiative to international groups, which snared a third of the total funding. Organizations in the other 40 states and three U.S. territories shared the remaining funds.
I’ve got the day job to contend with at the moment, but I’ll try to track down some of the exact groups receiving this money. I’m predicting more than one surprise in there.
Without reading any more than your lede, my reaction is: And which 10 states are those? Red and/or blue trending purple, I’ll bet.
Which would make this yet one more example of how this administration is using our money to advance its own political agenda. (Cynical, moi?)
“According to the White House figures, grants of more than $100 million for religious groups went to New York, Illinois and California.
The other states rounding out the top 10 were New Jersey, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia and Ohio.”
The ten states which received the 40% also happen to be the ten states with the largest populations (57% of the U.S. total). Given that one-third of the faith-based money was distributed for international use (that is, not to any U.S. states), this figure is almost exactly in line with what one would expect even if the distributions were made purely proportionately to population. (57% of 67% is a bit over 38%.) So I doubt there’s really much basis for complaint there.
For those who are wondering, here is the recent report “Grants to Faith-Based Organizations, Fiscal Year 2004”, which can be found on the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives website. I could not find specific information there on which groups had received the funding, but perhaps it’s buried in there someplace.
And maybe this is just a gratuitous shot here, but the AP story was authored by none other than Nedra Pickler, who’s certainly come under criticism in the past for her less-than-entirely competent reporting. (See, for example, “Nit Picklering” by Matthew Yglesias in TAP or this comment by Kevin Drum in Washington Monthly.
I did notice the Nedra connection…
should go to the needy, poor, health problems, education, jobs, etc. etc. etc.
Instead, our fearless leaders use our money to pander votes from the brainwashed religous …
For any of the legal minds here: how many signatures does it take to question, or repeal a government action? What would be even better would be a Demand for Resignation, but I know, I’m only dreaming here…I need to go beat up a piece of concrete…LOL
I’ll go out on a limb(ha) and say that quite a few might be black churches(trying to buy votes)and mostly fundamentalist type churchs.
I seem to remember reading somewhere also on this that there is no oversight for this money, no accountabilty of how the churches are spending the money.