Tag: Foundation

The War Against Christianity: Atheist Organization Has IRS Monitoring Churches in Arizona

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics4 Comments

 

American ChristianityIn the “Left Behind” Christian Novel Series about the Rapture and subsequent Tribulation, people who become Christians after the Rapture find themselves abused by a repressive government, who keep tabs on Believers through informants.

That’s just fiction, right?

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

ChristianPost.com reports that

An Arizona-based legal group has filed a lawsuit in federal court demanding that the Internal Revenue Service divulge information about an agreement it made with an atheist organization regarding the monitoring of churches.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative group based in Scottsdale filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia earlier this month.

ADF’s complaint charges that the IRS has failed to honor a Freedom of Information Act request made by the Alliance regarding the details of an agreement between the tax collecting federal body and the Madison, Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation.

“As of the date of this complaint, Defendant has failed to: (i) determine whether to comply with the request; (ii) notify Plaintiff of any such determination or the reasons therefor; (iii) advise Plaintiff of the right to appeal any adverse determination; and/or (iv) produce the requested records or otherwise demonstrate that the requested records are exempt from production,” reads the complaint.

“Plaintiff is being irreparably harmed by reason of Defendant’s unlawful withholding of records responsive to Plaintiffs’ FOIA request, and Plaintiff will continue to be irreparably harmed unless Defendant is compelled to conform its conduct to the requirements of the law.”

In 2012, the FFRF sued the IRS demanding that they enforce the Johnson Amendment, a provision that strips a church or its tax exemption if it is openly involved in political activity.

Last summer, the FFRF and the IRS reached an agreement wherein the federal body would make an effort to enforce the Johnson Amendment when violations are brought to their attention. But the IRS has not disclosed the details of that agreement.

“This is a victory, and we’re pleased with this development in which the IRS has proved to our satisfaction that it now has in place a protocol to enforce its own anti-electioneering provisions,” said FFRF co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor in a statement.

Last November the group Judicial Watch, which is representing ADF in its complaint, filed its own FOIA lawsuit against the IRS demanding “any and all records” relating to the agency’s “monitoring of churches and other tax exempt religious organizations.”

Judicial Watch had filed a FOIA request earlier that year, but the IRS failed to provide them with a response. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said in a statement last November that he found it “troubling that the IRS seems set to rely on a group of atheists to point them toward churches that might have criticized politicians.”

“And it is even more disturbing that the IRS would violate federal law, The Freedom of Information Act, in order to keep secret its monitoring of Americans praying together in church,” continued Fitton.

Regarding the April complaint brought against the IRS, ADF Litigation Counsel Christiana Holcomb said in a statement that “Americans deserve to know what the IRS is up to.”

“The agency’s unwillingness to produce these records only furthers the perception that it makes secret deals with activists that it wishes to hide from the public,” said Holcomb.

Who is the Freedom of Religious Foundation (FFRF) and why should they be concerned about monitoring Christian Churches in Arizona?

According to their website:

The purposes of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., as stated in its bylaws, are to promote the constitutional principle of separation of state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

Incorporated in 1978 in Wisconsin, the Foundation is a national membership association of more than 17,000 freethinkers: atheists, agnostics and skeptics of any pedigree. The Foundation is a non-profit, tax-exempt, educational organization under Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(3). All dues and contributions are deductible for income tax purpose.

What Does the Foundation Do?

• Publishes the only freethought newspaper in the United States, Freethought Today

• Sponsors annual high school, college and grad student essay competitions with cash awards

• Conducts lively, annual national conventions, honoring state/church, student, and freethought activism

• Sponsors an online forum for members

• Bestows “The Emperor Has No Clothes” Award to public figures for “plain-speaking on religion”

• Promotes freedom from religion with educational books, literature, music CDs

• Provides speakers for events and debates

• Maintains a Web site at http://www.ffrf.org

• Broadcasts Freethought Radio

• Places freethought billboards and bus signs

…First Amendment violations are accelerating. The religious right is campaigning to raid the public till and advance religion at taxpayer expense, attacking our secular public schools, the rights of nonbelievers, and the Establishment Clause.

The Foundation recognizes that the United States was first among nations to adopt a secular Constitution. The founders who wrote the U.S. Constitution wanted citizens to be free to support the church of their choice, or no religion at all. Our Constitution was very purposefully written as a godless document, whose only references to religion are exclusionary.

It is vital to buttress the Jeffersonian “wall of separation between church and state” which has served our nation so well.

Funny.  Jefferson was a faithful attendant of Sunday Church that was held at the Capitol Building.  He once explained to a friend while they were walking to church together:

No nation has ever existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example.

He also proclaimed

I have always said and always will say that the studious perusal of the Sacred Volume will make us better citizens.

But, I digress…

Back in August of 2011, this same bitter bunch of Atheists sent a letter to the Schools Superintendent of Desoto County, Mississippi, insisting that the pre-game prayer, spoken over the stadiums’ loudspeakers, a tradition held in DeSoto County as long as anyone can remember,  be silenced.

DeSoto County Schools went along with the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s request, despite the disappointment of many students and parents.

And that’s when Americans started organizing.

Y’see, teammates traditionally would take a knee after the game to thank the Lord for a good game and His blessings and to pray for those injured during the game.  And their parents were bound and determined that their young men were not going to have that freedom taken away from them.

So, the next Friday night, instead of the coach telling the team to take a knee, the quarterback did.

Earlier, on Friday morning, students and parents held a prayer walk outside DeSoto County Schools.

As the bright, blessed day gave way to the dark, sacred night in DeSoto County, parents and students began to pray.

According to student Paige Lewis:

If they’re saying that we can’t pray over a loudspeaker, then we’re going to pray alone.

Earlier in the week, The Freedom From Religion Foundation had sent a second letter to School Superintendent Milton Kuykendall.  They not only asked the district to stop praying before school events, but also demanded an apology for the comments the superintendent made in a letter sent out earlier this week.

Cheeky, huh?

These bitter whiners were upset that Kuykendall wrote:

In my opinion, most people do not realize that this organization out of Wisconsin doesn’t really care if we have prayer in our schools. They see an opportunity to try and accuse us of breaking the law and therefore give them a chance to sue our district and win a lawsuit and take millions of our funds. This is money that is needed to pay teachers and educate our students.

In March of 2013, the Governor of Mississippi signed into law, State House Bill 683

What this law does is to allow students to initiate prayers in school and at student activities, to reference their religious beliefs in their schoolwork, both their assignments completed at school and their homework, as well. The bill also allows Mississippi’s students to speak to their classmates about their faith, to “give their witness” as we believers refer to our own personal testimony as to what God has done in our lives.

I make no bones about it. I am a Christian American Conservative. I pray daily. As I write this, I have just returned from a Church-Sponsored “Small Group Meeting” in someone’s home on a Tuesday night.

If it were up to Barack Hussein Obama and the rest of Modern “Liberals”, I would be forced to leave my faith every Sunday morning at the church door. What they don’t understand, is, the Author and Finisher of my faith is not Obama or anyone else up there on Capitol Hill, the Main Stream Media, or any self-proclaimed Liberal Political Pundit and newly-minted “Biblical Expert”.

I answer to Someone waaay about their pay grade.

Liberals, or “Progressives”, do not understand Christians at all. They believe that our faith is something that can be taken off and put back on again, as one would a shirt.

Groups like the FFDF believe that using the Obama Administration’s IRS to monitor Christian American Churches is somehow going to impede the sharing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by Christian Americans.

They don’t have a clue.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Hillary’s Foreign Donations More Massive Than Previously Reported

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

BBerry-Grandma-NRD-6002Well, it appears that Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Coffers have been filled to the brim, not by American Citizens, but by Foreign Powers.

The New York Times reports that

The book does not hit shelves until May 5, but already the Republican Rand Paul has called its findings “big news” that will “shock people” and make voters “question” the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” by Peter Schweizer — a 186-page investigation of donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities — is proving the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy.

The book, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, asserts that foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr. Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department in return.

“We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,” Mr. Schweizer writes.

His examples include a free-trade agreement in Colombia that benefited a major foundation donor’s natural resource investments in the South American nation, development projects in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake in 2010, and more than $1 million in payments to Mr. Clinton by a Canadian bank and major shareholder in the Keystone XL oil pipeline around the time the project was being debated in the State Department.

In the long lead up to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign announcement, aides proved adept in swatting down critical books as conservative propaganda, including Edward Klein’s “Blood Feud,” about tensions between the Clintons and the Obamas, and Daniel Halper’s “Clinton Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine.”

But “Clinton Cash” is potentially more unsettling, both because of its focused reporting and because major news organizations are expected to pursue the story lines found in the book.

Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have been briefed about the book’s findings, which have already made their way into several of the Republican presidential candidates’ campaigns.

Conservative “super PACs” plan to seize on “Clinton Cash,” and a pro-Democrat super PAC has already assembled a dossier on Mr. Schweizer, a speechwriting consultant to former President George W. Bush and a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institute, to make the case that he has a bias against Mrs. Clinton.

And the newly assembled Clinton campaign team is planning a full-court press to diminish the book as yet another conservative hit job.

Mr. Schweizer and a spokeswoman for HarperCollins, which is owned by News Corporation and is publishing the book, declined to comment.

The timing is problematic for Mrs. Clinton as she begins a campaign to position herself as a “champion for everyday Americans.”

From 2001 to 2012, the Clintons’ income was at least $136.5 million, Mr. Schweizer writes, using a figure previously reported in The Washington Post. “During Hillary’s years of public service, the Clintons have conducted or facilitated hundreds of large transactions” with foreign governments, he writes. “Some of these transactions have put millions in their own pockets.”

The Clinton Foundation has come under scrutiny for accepting foreign donations while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state. Last week, the foundation revised its policy to allow donations from countries like Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Britain but prohibit giving by other nations in the Middle East.

Hil and Bubba have not exactly been selective as to whom they have accepted donations to their Foundation from, according to discoverthenetworks.org:

In 2002 the government of Brunei gave between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, to help finance the construction of the Clinton Presidential Library in Arkansas.

* As of December 2008, the Clinton Foundation had received between $1 million and $5 million from Issam Fares, an entrepreneur and philanthropist who once served as deputy prime minister of Lebanon. In the United States, Fares is best known as the CEO of the Wedge Foundation, a Houston-based investment firm. But in his native Lebanon, he is better known as an outspoken supporter of Hezbollah and an apologist for the Syrian dictatorship’s previous military occupation of his country:In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Fares insisted that “it is a mistake to make a comparison between the al-Qaeda network” and Hezbollah. The latter was actually a “resistance party fighting the Israeli occupation,” Fares said, explaining that “Hezbollah did not carry out any resistance operation against American interests in Lebanon or abroad and did not target civilians in its resistance activities as happened on Sept. 11 at the World Trade Center.”

…As of December 2008, the Clinton Foundation had received between $1 million and $5 million from the Dubai Foundation (DF), which was headed by Dubai’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. Previously, DF had donated at least 1 million United Arab Emirate (UAE) dirhams (approximately $270,000 U.S.) to “the families of the Palestinian martyrs”—that is, Palestinian terrorists killed in action. And in November of 2006, the sheikh sponsored a concert by Lebanese songstress Julia Bourtos in honor of “Lebanese Martyrs” in Hezbollah.

Also as of December 2008, the Clinton Foundation had received between $1 million and $5 million from the royal family of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who served as president of the United Arab Emirates from 1971-2004. In 1999, this same family established the (now-defunct) Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-Up, which became a notorious platform for anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and supporters of terrorism.

* Another of the Clinton Foundation’s leading donors is the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which, as of 2008, had contributed between $10 million and $25 million to the Foundation.

In addition to direct contributions from the Saudi government, the Clinton Foundation had also received between $1 million and $5 million from the pro-Saudi advocacy group, Friends of Saudi Arabia (FSA). Launched in 2005 and supported by the Saudi royal family, this group acts as a kind of public-relations agency, protesting what it views as the U.S. media’s unfair portrayal of the Saudi nation. Prior the release of the 2007 film The Kingdom, for example, FSA executive director Michael Saba wrote a letter to the chairman of Universal Studios expressing his concern “that the movie might present negative stereotypes about the people of Saudi Arabia.” Notably, Saba himself is an anti-Israel zealot and conspiracy theorist. His 1984 book, The Armageddon Network, alleges widespread Israeli espionage at the highest levels of the U.S. government, complete with a Justice Department cover-up. In 2004 he claimed—on the basis of no evidence whatsoever—that Israeli interrogators had played a role in the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003.

* In 2013, Rilin Enterprises—a privately-held Chinese construction and trade conglomerate headed by the Chinese parliament delegate Wang Wenliang—pledged $2 million to the Clinton Foundation’s endowment. According to CBS News: “Public records show the firm has spent $1.4 million since 2012, lobbying Congress and the State Department. The firm owns a strategic port along the border with North Korea and was also one of the contractors that built the Chinese embassy in Washington. That contract is a direct tie to the Chinese government, according to Jim Mann, who has written several books on China’s relationship with the U.S.”

* In 2014 the government of Germany—as a first-time donor—gave the Clinton Foundation between $100,000 and $250,000.

* In 2014 the government of the United Arab Emirates—also a first-time donor—gave the Foundation between $1 million and $5 million.

* In 2013-14 the government of Australia gave the Foundation several million dollars.

* In 2014 a Qatari government committee gave the Foundation between $250,000 and $500,000. Previously, Qatar’s government had donated between $1 million and $5 million to the Foundation.

While all of these donations from foreign sources raise a host of ethical red flags, contributions that were made during Hillary Clinton’s tenure (2009-13) as Secretary of State (SOS) may be even more significant, given the possibility that such funds could be used to buy immediate political influence. During that period, the Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars in donations from seven foreign governments: Australia, Norway, the Dominican Republic, Algeria, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar (the latter of which spent more than $5.3 million on registered lobbyists while Clinton was SOS).

The government of Saudi Arabia suspended its contributions to the Foundation during Mrs. Clinton’s years as SOS, and then resumed its giving after she stepped down in 2013.

…In January 2009, the Washington Times reported that a secret party had paid an excessive sum for stock donated to the Clinton Foundation:

“Former President Bill Clinton’s foundation, despite identifying more than 200,000 of its donors in recent weeks, will not say who paid it windfall prices for stock in a struggling Internet firm with links to the Chinese government…. Mrs. Clinton’s office and the foundation have declined to answer questions about a lucrative 2006 stock transaction, details of which were reported by The Washington Times in March 2008.

“The Accoona Corp. donated between $250,001 and $500,000 to [the Clinton Foundation] after [Mr. Clinton] spoke at the company’s launch in New York in 2004, according to donor information released by the foundation in December. The foundation sold its Accoona stock for $700,000 two years later, according to the charity’s tax return for 2006.

“Despite what the tax return suggests, Accoona struggled mightily to turn a profit. In 2007, Accoona filed a prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission reporting more than $60 million in losses during three years. In the same prospectus, it listed the China Daily Information Corp., a subsidiary of China Daily, the official English-language newspaper of the Chinese government, as an official partner and 6.9 percent owner of the company…. While the Clinton Foundation voluntarily disclosed the original donation of the stock, it still is unwilling to say who was willing to pay so much for its holdings in the struggling company.”

When Hil accepted the Cabinet Position as Obama’s first Secretary of State, the Clinton Foundation “decided to limit contributions from foreign countries”.

Uh huh. Suuure, they did.

Back on April 26, 2010, in a blog I posted, titled, “Obama’s Money Motivations”, I reported that

…Obama has numerous donors who have contributed well over the $4,600 federal election limit.

Many of these donors have never been contacted by the Obama campaign to refund the excess amounts to them.

And more than 37,000 Obama donations appear to be conversions of foreign currency.

According to a Newsmax analysis of the Obama campaign data before the latest figures were released, potential foreign currency donations could range anywhere from $12.8 million to a stunning $63 million in all. With the addition of $150 million raised in September, this amount could be much more.

Talk about your “tangled web”…

From my computer desk down here in Dixie, it appears that the entire premise of “Smart Power” Foreign Policy, in which the Obama Administration has alientated our friends and embraced our enemies, grew out of the generosity of Hillary and Obama’s mutual campaign donators, those “not-so-anonymous” benefactors in the Middle East who donated to both their campaigns.

Additionally. in a possibly related story, there are now big gaps in the timeline of the e-mails which Hillary’s staff has turned over for review.

Hmmm…

I wonder if any of those missing e-mails originated in Saudi Arabia, Oman…or…maybe…Iran?

Keep your popcorn handy, boys and girls.

This is only the beginning. 

Until He Comes,

KJ