Did I get them all in there?
Americans set record with gifts to charity
Americans gave nearly $300 billion to charitable causes last year, setting a record and besting the 2005 total that had been boosted by a surge in aid to victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma and the Asian tsunami.
Donors contributed an estimated $295.02 billion in 2006. That’s up from $283.05 billion in 2005, according to an annual report released today by the Giving USA Foundation at Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy. When adjusted for inflation, the increase amounts to 1 percent.
“What people find especially interesting about this, and it’s true year after year — that such a high percentage comes from individual donors,” Giving USA Chairman Richard Jolly said.
Yet, the left demands that Americans change their habits. Why do they hate charities?
“Why do they hate charities?”
The answer all sublime, you will conceive in time, is that liberls think of themselves as the saviors of the poor, the low and the downtrodden. When someone else, especially a non-liberl outfit like a conservative Christian church, offers to uplift those same downtrodden, someone just broke the liberl rice bowl.
Lots of boo-hoos follow.
Americans should and do have the right to donate to any charity they wish. What I have a problem with is our current government giving tax dollars to religious organizations via Faith Based Spending. What ever happened to separation of church and state?
I was being sarcastic there, RD. I perceived said sublime answer long ago.
As for the faith based charities, Chris, I perceive any government institution that hands out tax money to be a “faith based charity”, said faith being the religion and worship of government-almighty.
While giving tax money to churches to do the work of government isn’t my preferred method of disposal of tax dollars, it beats a unionized government employee, with all their job benies and perks, doing it for 3-10 times the cost.
My main problem with it is that it is creating a dependancy on government by the chruches. Their programs will, most likely, forever need the gov’ts assistance to stay afloat. Though there is a chance that we could get a program that can raise money by it’s own merits in the near future because of the grants given by the gov’t. But that will take a very libertarian minded church leader to do so. And since I haven’t seen or heard of any church leaders come out against the Faith Based Initiative ala “Keeping Gov’t Out of Religion” (as opposed to “separation argument of “keeping religion out of gov’t”), I’m not too sure we’ll any of those types of church leaders.
The reason I don’t see it as a “separation” problem is that any established place of worship can apply and has gotten funds. If it said that only Buddhists can apply for and get funds, that would be an issue. As it stands now, I’m not seeing anything I object apart from what I mentioned above.