Lost in Translation somewhere ....
- Thread starter GURPS
- Start date
Larry Gude
Strung Out
Religious freedom as defined by....you?
Get rid of the tax exemptions for 'real' churches and this is a non issue.
This_person
Well-Known Member
Your response, while truly sad and disheartening, is 100% accurate.
Like redefining "marriage" to include same-sex couples, or redefining "fair" to mean taxing people at different rates, or redefining "non-discrimination" to mean only discriminating against white males, this "church" is utilizing a loophole within the law to forego over two centuries of common societal norms and values to call a strip club cum swinger bar a church. By the letter of the law they are likely to get away with it in the end.
CleanTheSlateInSMC
Infidel
I agree.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
let's explore this, shall we?
This gets expressly to the heart of the matter; religious freedom. Do you suppose the founders put freedom of religion in their so as to create a special class exempt from paying for the common government? I doubt it. So, why do 'real' religions, I term I'll use for ease of use, get favorable tax treatment? The right to religious freedom came, explicitly, from disdain from having to belong to a specific church, the established state church in England. If anything, we, the people have all the more reason that our CHOSEN faith help support the costs of the very government that provides the power to protect that freedom.
So, we, as usual, want it both ways; OUR religion is the REAL one, or at the very least one from THIS list, an approved list. A government approved, by virtue of the tax exemption, list. How is that not establishment? Whether it is or is not is another question but is certainly part of the conversation. More to the point is that special exempt, approved class and the natural attraction to other ostensibly free people to enjoy those same benefits and approval. Who are you to decide which faith is proper? Baptist? Islam? Latter day Saints? Presbyterian? Lutheran? Methodist? You name it. Get rid of the state sanction and let those faiths stand or fall on the free will of their communities.
Do that and you know what else happens? Religions you, or I, may consider silly or simply seeking tax favor will disappear. Or not. But they won't be seeking a benefit, a government approved establishment that would thus no longer exists. Remove the attraction, the tax break, remove any and all fact or appearance of government favor and/or establishment of religion. Leave it to the people. Along with an equal share of the tax burden.
All this is is our endless quest to tell one another what we can and can not do. It is exactly the same thing with gay marriage. If no one ever said "No gay marriage!" there'd be little interest in it and that which would exist would simply be sincere and beyond any and all suspicion as to motive, like the stripper church. If the first two gays who wanted to get married...got married...and folks who disagreed with it resigned themselves to those folks right to pursue happiness AND that it really was no one elses concern, it, like seeking tax exemption would not be of any note. But we can NOT help ourselves. It is in us to tell one another what we can and can not do is this land of the free and the home of the brave.
The only thing you have to be sad about, that I can see, is the loss of control over others and, in my view, that should be cause for celebration of individual liberty, not disheartening.
This_person
Well-Known Member
I feel we agree on this 100%; we merely have different emotions about it.let's explore this, shall we?
This gets expressly to the heart of the matter; religious freedom. Do you suppose the founders put freedom of religion in their so as to create a special class exempt from paying for the common government? I doubt it. So, why do 'real' religions, I term I'll use for ease of use, get favorable tax treatment? The right to religious freedom came, explicitly, from disdain from having to belong to a specific church, the established state church in England. If anything, we, the people have all the more reason that our CHOSEN faith help support the costs of the very government that provides the power to protect that freedom.
So, we, as usual, want it both ways; OUR religion is the REAL one, or at the very least one from THIS list, an approved list. A government approved, by virtue of the tax exemption, list. How is that not establishment? Whether it is or is not is another question but is certainly part of the conversation. More to the point is that special exempt, approved class and the natural attraction to other ostensibly free people to enjoy those same benefits and approval. Who are you to decide which faith is proper? Baptist? Islam? Latter day Saints? Presbyterian? Lutheran? Methodist? You name it. Get rid of the state sanction and let those faiths stand or fall on the free will of their communities.
Do that and you know what else happens? Religions you, or I, may consider silly or simply seeking tax favor will disappear. Or not. But they won't be seeking a benefit, a government approved establishment that would thus no longer exists. Remove the attraction, the tax break, remove any and all fact or appearance of government favor and/or establishment of religion. Leave it to the people. Along with an equal share of the tax burden.
All this is is our endless quest to tell one another what we can and can not do. It is exactly the same thing with gay marriage. If no one ever said "No gay marriage!" there'd be little interest in it and that which would exist would simply be sincere and beyond any and all suspicion as to motive, like the stripper church. If the first two gays who wanted to get married...got married...and folks who disagreed with it resigned themselves to those folks right to pursue happiness AND that it really was no one elses concern, it, like seeking tax exemption would not be of any note. But we can NOT help ourselves. It is in us to tell one another what we can and can not do is this land of the free and the home of the brave.
The only thing you have to be sad about, that I can see, is the loss of control over others and, in my view, that should be cause for celebration of individual liberty, not disheartening.
We, as a society over the last 2+ centuries, provide organizations tax-exempt status because those organizations benefit the bulk of society and therefore the bulk of taxpayers. If we're going to remove tax-exempt status from any reasonable charitable organizations, we must remove it from all.
Similarly, our 50 laboratories of democracy have, over their time in existence, uniformly determined that one particular coupling has a net beneficial effect on society. Therefore, they have offered various but incredibly similar definitions of those unions and provided bureaucratic advantages to people who fit that definition AND seek recognition from the government. If we're going to remove the advantages for those who fit the description by offering the same advantages to those who don't, we must logically remove the advantages from all. 19 Wives and Counting have absolutely no less right to those advantages once we remove the original intent than Non and Kate plus Ted and Alice than Barry and Michelle. Once it is agreed that the original intent no longer applies, the advantages must be removed from all.
Similarly, if we want fair taxes, we must tax all sources of income and all amounts of income exactly the same.
If we are going to demand that any race be represented by one company be a certain percentage, all races must be legally required at all companies based on the same reasoning.
If you can't vote, you can't contribute must also be followed with if you can't vote you can't be taxed. Taxing business is simply a hidden tax on consumers.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
Well, then, let us not quibble over emotions.
We TOTALLY agree on campaign finance; you can't vote, you can't give to candidates or parties. Speak your mind all you like about issues. You just can't support parties or individuals because you can't vote for them. Seems plain to me.
Same on taxes; companies should not be taxed. By paying taxes, they become very interested parties and that drives the buying of candidates in the first place. They should be good neighbors first and foremost. Companies are only interested, especially publicly traded ones, in the business, in making money; not being good neighbors. Get them out of the tax business and the vote buying business and they are stuck, rightly so, making sure the voters like them.
Taxes, overall, should ONLY be paid by the voters. The power to vote for more or less spending, and paying for it, should only come from we, the people. THAT is an impossibility but it is the right and best solution to our constitutional ills.
Tilted
..
Indeed. Even beyond tax exemptions for religious organizations, we should get rid of all such favorable tax treatments. When it comes to tax policy, it shouldn't be used to play favorites or pervert markets or manipulate behavior. It should be used to... wait for it... raise the revenue needed to do whatever we've decided to have the government do.
But, when it comes to special tax treatment for religious organizations, it creates the problem of not being able to (read: that we shouldn't be able to) differentiate between what is a 'real' religion and what isn't, or even what is religious in nature and what isn't. If we're to be true to the notion of religious liberty, and we're to have such favorable treatment, then we have to accept that anything - anyone - can claim them, whether we might consider them (or what they're doing) really religious or not. Indeed, even if they're not claiming what they're doing is religious, we have to allow them the same favorable tax treatment. Otherwise, we are discriminating on the basis of religion - what someone's particular religious beliefs (or practices) are, or whether they have such beliefs at all, determines their tax treatment. That's antithetical to (part of) what this nation is about, to the notion of religious liberty. If someone donating to a church, which might use part of that money to build a new church building or recreational hall which that someone then gets to use, gets to deduct the amount of that donation from their income taxes, then Bill and John and Tom should get to deduct from their income taxes the money that they pool together to build themselves an awesome sports room where they can come together and eat, drink, play pool, and watch football games. Otherwise, particular religions (or religiosity in general) is being favored.
Tilted
..
Companies (at least corporations) are already stuck with appealing to voters - to trying to make voters like them or see things (e.g. political issues) the way those companies would like them to. Corporations are not allowed to contribute to candidates or parties. That's already the law of the land.
They still can speak their mind on issues and, of course, on particular candidates - that is to say, people can speak their mind on issues and, of course, on particular candidates (even if those people can't vote for or against those particular issues) because we still, to some small extent, value freedom in this nation. And no aspect of that freedom is more sacrosanct than free speech in the political sphere. We get to say what we think about people and issues and such, especially when it comes to politics, regardless of whether we get to vote. That's just the way it is, and that's the way it should be. I get to say Nancy Pelosi is a political hot mess, and California voters should stop putting here in office. And I get to spend money to facilitate my saying that or in order to get my message to a broader audience.
Now, that's not the same as getting to give her (or her campaign) money. I'd be okay with prohibiting or further limiting that. But, no, the government doesn't get to tell me to shut up when I might be talking about a politician (even one I can't vote for) or criticizing government or asking people to vote for this or that political issue or this or that political candidate. If we don't like the results of (or problems created or exacerbated by) freedom, in conjunction with democracy, then I don't know what to say. Maybe we should give up the latter then, if we really think it's that bad; we sure as hell, in my view, shouldn't give up the former.
Larry Gude
Strung Out
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2009/03/30/2911/obama-top-recipient-aigs-hefty-campaign-contributions
"Barack Obama, the top recipient in the 2008 election cycle, collected more than $100,000 from AIG. Six other presidential candidates are among the top ten for the 2008 cycle: Chris Dodd, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Joseph Biden, and Rudy Giuliani. Dodd, of course, is the chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, now overseeing the re-regulation of the financial system and the bailout itself."
What am I missing?
Tilted
..
I think we've discussed this particular point before. But, to review, what's typically being counted when people report that certain corporations contributed certain amounts to certain candidates or parties is contributions made to those candidates or parties by employees of (or, in some cases, possibly other people associated with) those corporations. Each employee of, e.g. Exxon-Mobil, could contribute a few thousand or so (I don't know the precise current cap) to, e.g. Hillary Clinton. Add all those contributions up and maybe you have $342,000 contributed to Hillary Clinton by (employees of) Exxon-Mobil. Such contribution totals typically also count contributions made to candidates or parties by PACs that pooled money from employees and other associates of the identified corporations. But those PACs themselves have fairly low limits on what they can contribute to each candidate - meaning, even if the PAC takes in $5,000 from each of 1,000 employees, it can only contribute $5,000 of that money to Hillary Clinton. And, to be clear, the corporations can not contribute to those PACs; the PACs' money comes from contributions voluntarily made by employees and perhaps other associates.
The piece you linked to links, in turn, to OpenSecrets.org (though that particular link, because it's several years old I'd guess, doesn't directly bring up the numbers referred to in the piece you linked). If you look hard enough (and in some cases you don't need to look hard at all), whenever they report contribution totals for corporations, you'll see that they are reporting contributions made by the corporations' employees and PACs not by the corporations themselves. They're basically saying, people that work for (and perhaps people who own stock in) these companies contributed this much in the aggregate to these candidates or parties.
Federal law prohibits corporations from contributing to candidates in federal elections or political parties or PACs which then contribute to those candidates or parties. I'm happy to pull up the actual federal codes if you want to see them, or one of a number of court cases that make reference to this fact.
Last edited:
philibusters
Active Member
I think a lot of tax-exempt organizations should have to pay taxes, but the ones that really rile me up are tax-exempt hospitals. The president of these non-profit organizations can make upwards of 10 million dollars per year (that particularly number would be unusual and would be a big hospital system, but still). These hospitals have profit margins higher than a lot of for profit hospitals, yet only 3 or 4% of the medical services they provide are for free to indigent patients. For example, I may be misremembering the numbers but I think the Yale New Haven hospital system which is the dominant system in Conn. and controls a decent market share in that state had like annual revenues of 2 billion of which 500 million was profit (that is a 25% profit margin).
Larry Gude
Strung Out
And I will make the point I hope I made then; they're not making these contributions so that a pothole in front of their home might be fixed.
Tilted
..
And I will make the point I hope I made then; they're not making these contributions so that a pothole in front of their home might be fixed.
Sure. Well, that's true for most of them surely. Different people have different reasons for contributing to various candidates' campaigns. For the most part I'd think most of them boil down to wanting those candidates to win (or not wanting their opposition to win).
I'm just making the point that corporations are already not allowed to contribute to candidates. We're talking about people contributing to candidates. Tom, Bill, and Melissa are allowed to contribute a few thousand each to various candidates, even if Tom, Bill and Melissa work for corporations. As I've suggested before, I think I'd be okay with prohibiting contributions altogether - from Tom, Bill, and Melissa in addition to for Exxon-Mobil. I've long thought the nature of contributions was a bit sketchy, they're not all that different than quid pro quo bribes (of course they are somewhat different, but to me they're similar enough to be suspect). I might even be okay with prohibiting contributions from certain classes of people - e.g., those that don't qualify to vote for a particular candidate - though I think such classification based prohibitions would be more dubious than across the board prohibitions would be. At any rate, I don't think people necessarily have a constitutional right to contribute to political campaigns. (I'm aware of the current state of the law on that front, I'm speaking to what I think the Constitution does or doesn't require.)
But that's not the case when it comes to my right to speak my mind on political issues or with regard to (even particular) political candidates. The Constitution absolutely protects my right to share my thoughts on Nancy Pelosi's fitness for Congress or advocate for her election or defeat, even if I do't qualify to vote for her. And that's as it should be. It's a good thing, not a bad thing. If it makes for messier politics, so be it. I'll take the individual liberty and let the messiness of politics fall where it may before I'll look to clean up politics at the expense of individual liberty. Further, I get to come together with other people and collectively speak on political matters as well as use non-human things (which themselves don't have constitutional rights) to help get my message out. That's an inherent part of the notion of free speech.
So... contributions, meh, stop them if you think that would make a difference. But... independent expenditures, no freaking way, they represent the right of people to speak as they wish on political issues. Some people get to be a little louder with their voice or a little more effective with their message. Such is life, such is the nature of freedom.