On Jul 1, 2008, at 12:45 PM, Marvin Gandall wrote:
> I think the Obama campaign may be badly miscalculating the number of
> committed ground troops it might lose for every independent or
> Republican
> brought into the fold.
Never underestimate the powers of self-deception. E.g.:
Erroneous AP Report: Obama to Support "Hiring And Firing Based On Faith" <http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/7/1/94032/60595>.
Excerpt from the AP story (and $500m is a risible amount):
> But Obama's support for letting religious charities that receive
> federal funding consider religion in employment decisions could
> invite a protest from those in his own party who view such faith
> requirements as discrimination.
>
> Obama does not support requiring religious tests for recipients of
> aid nor using federal money to proselytize, according to a campaign
> fact sheet. He also only supports letting religious institutions
> hire and fire based on faith in the non-taxypayer funded portions
> of their activities, said a senior adviser to the campaign, who
> spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the new
> policy.
>
> Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for
> Separation of Church and State, criticized Obama's proposed
> expansion of a program he said has undermined civil rights and
> civil liberties.
>
> "I am disappointed that any presidential candidate would want to
> continue a failed policy of the Bush administration," he said. "It
> ought to be shut down, not continued."
>
> John DiIulio, who in 2001 was director of Bush's White House Office
> of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said Obama's plan
> "reminds me of much that was best in both then Vice President Al
> Gore's and then Texas Governor George W. Bush's respective first
> speeches on the subject in 1999," according to a statement from the
> Obama campaign.
>
> Bush supports broader freedoms for taxpayer-funded religious
> charities. But he never got Congress to go along so he has
> conducted the program through administrative actions and executive
> orders.
>
> David Kuo, a conservative Christian who was deputy director of
> Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives until 2003
> and later became a critic of Bush's commitment to the cause, said
> Obama's position on hiring has the potential to be a major "Sister
> Souljah moment" for his campaign.
>
> This is a reference to Bill Clinton's accusation in his 1992
> presidential campaign that the hip hop artist incited violence
> against whites. Because Clinton said this before a black audience,
> it fed into an image of him as a bold politician who was willing to
> take risks and refused to pander.
>
> "This is a massive deal," said Kuo, who is not an Obama adviser or
> supporter but was contacted by the campaign to review the new plan.
>
> Obama proposes to elevate the program to a "moral center" of his
> administration, by renaming it the Council for Faith-Based and
> Neighborhood Partnerships, and changing training from occasional
> huge conferences to empowering larger religious charities to mentor
> smaller ones in their communities.
>
> Saying social service spending has been shortchanged under Bush, he
> also proposes a $500 million per year program to provide summer
> learning for 1 million poor children to help close achievement gaps
> with white and wealthier students. A campaign fact sheet said he
> would pay for it by better managing surplus federal properties,
> reducing growth in the federal travel budget and streamlining the
> federal procurement process.
>
> Like Bush, Obama was arguing that religious organizations can and
> should play a bigger role in serving the poor and meeting other
> social needs. But while Bush argued that the strength of religious
> charities lies primarily in shared religious identity between
> workers and recipients, Obama was to tout the benefits of their
> "bottom-up" approach.
Doug