[Dialogue] Emailing: Americans United for Separation of Church and State Bush, White House Push 'Faith-Based' Agenda Despite Mounting Record of Misuse.htm
Harry Wainwright
h-wainwright at charter.net
Fri Jun 27 17:29:05 EDT 2008
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 26, 2008
9:15 AM
CONTACT: Americans United for <http://www.au.org> Separation of Church and
State
(202) 466-3234
Joe Conn <mailto:conn at au.org>
Rob Boston <mailto:boston at au.org>
Bush, White House Push 'Faith-Based' Agenda Despite Mounting Record of
Misuse
Administration Officials Steered Justice Department 'Faith-Based' Grant to
Former White House Faith-Based Staffer
WASHINGTON - June 26 - President George W. Bush's "faith-based" initiative
has been riddled with abuses and should be scrapped, not celebrated,
according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Today, the White House is sponsoring a national conference on "faith-based"
social services, featuring a speech by Bush.
"The 'faith-based' initiative should be shut down, not celebrated," said the
Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. "Since day one, the
Bush administration has misused the initiative to advance its political
agenda and reward religious and political cronies.
"The initiative has undermined vital constitutional and civil rights
safeguards," said Lynn. "And it has been cynically manipulated for partisan
ends. The 'faith-based' initiative has been a disaster of biblical
proportions."
The White House event comes in the same week as the latest revelation of
dubious decisions surrounding the initiative.
Earlier this week, ABC News reported, "A former top official in the White
House's faith-based office was awarded a lucrative Department of Justice
grant under pressure from two senior Bush administration appointees,
according to current and former DOJ staff members and a review of internal
DOJ documents and emails.
"The $1.2 million grant," said ABC, "was jointly awarded to a consulting
firm run by Lisa Trevino Cummins who previously headed Hispanic outreach
efforts for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives,
and a California evangelical group, Victory Outreach.
"The grant was awarded," ABC found, "over the strong objections of career
DOJ staff who did not believe that Victory Outreach was qualified for the
grant and that too great an amount of the funds was going to Cummins'
consulting company instead of being spent on services for children."
ABC said Cummins' company, Urban Strategies LLC, was slated to get one third
of the money for helping the self-described "evangelizing" Victory Outreach
use the rest of the funds.
This example of inappropriate funding is only the latest in a long string of
"faith-based" abuses by the Bush administration.
David Kuo, former deputy director of the White House's Office of Faith-Based
and Community Initiatives, wrote a book revealing that political operatives
in the White House, led by Karl Rove, cynically used the "faith-based"
initiative to energize its Religious Right base and help favored candidates.
Kuo's Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction reported that
the White House faith-based office was used in 2002 primarily to help elect
Republican candidates in tight races. Kuo said White House strategist Rove
and other Republican leaders staged a series of supposedly non-partisan
events around the faith-based initiative in states with tight House and
Senate races.
According to Kuo, 20 events were held, and Republican candidates
subsequently won 19 of those races.
Kuo also said that grant reviewers engaged in religious discrimination in
the awarding of federal grants through the Compassion Capital fund.
There are also reports that the Bush administration manipulated the rules to
help favored grantees.
According to Youth Today, a federal juvenile justice official helped
selected organizations apply for Justice Department grants past the deadline
-- a significant violation of department policy -- and directed employees to
help a favored organization win a grant, according to federal documents.
Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington,
D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the
importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.
###
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