This Week’s ‘Well, Duh Award’…The Envelope Please

Posted by Morbo

David Kuo spent three years working in the White House as deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Something just dawned on him: The Republicans don’t really care about helping the poor!

Apparently, Kuo showed up at the Bush White House — after falling off a turnip truck, no doubt — and expected a continuation of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. What he got instead was the “faith-based initiative,” which Bush and party leaders talked about a lot but didn’t really seem committed to.

No longer working at the White House, Kuo poured out his frustration in an essay on BeliefNet. The column sparked a front-page story in The Washington Post.

Reading Kuo’s article, one can only wonder where exactly his office was in the White House — the Terre Haute annex? The faith-based initiative has been a scam from day one. That was easy to see even from the outside. The entire operation, as the former faith-based office director John DiIulio once said, was run by the Rove gang’s political arm. DiIulio called it “the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”

The political angle of the initiative has been well documented. What exactly was current “Faith Czar” James Towey doing at rallies on behalf of House and Senate candidates who were in close races in 2002? Why were black clergy in swing states invited to government-run seminars and filled with promises about all of the faith money they were going to get during last year’s election season?

Kuo chastises Democrats for daring to point out that the proposed plan was a massive violation of the separation of church and state, then goes on to blast Republicans for not going to the mat over the proposal. He seems genuinely surprised that the GOP was more interested in pushing through tax cuts for the rich.

“From tax cuts to Medicare, the White House gets what the White House really wants,” writes Kuo. “It never really wanted the ‘poor people stuff.'”

Imagine that! Republicans put the interests of the wealthy ahead of the needs of the poor. What a surprise. I mean, that’s only happened like 6,410 times since the New Deal.

Bush made it clear from day one: There would be no new money. The faith-based initiative simply cut up a stingy old pie in a new way, diverting grants from proven charities and giving them to Bush’s fundamentalist buddies. (How else to explain the $1.5 million given to latter-day Elmer Gantry Pat Robertson?) Anyone serious about fighting poverty should have known from the get-go that the whole thing was fishy.

Ironically, this is exactly the wrong time for a window-dressing-only approach. A recent report by the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness indicates that requests for help from soup kitchens and homeless shelters are growing so fast charities can’t keep up. The group surveyed 900 providers in 32 states and found that one-quarter of soup kitchens said they had to turn people away for lack of resources. Three-quarters of emergency shelter providers had to do the same.

Make no mistake, I’m not advocating a ramped-up faith-based initiative to solve these problems. I support the radical notion of secular government programs instead — you know, the kind where your religion or lack thereof is completely irrelevant and you get the help you need no matter what you think about God. Call me a nut, but I believe that if a family is hungry and homeless, you should give them something to eat and a safe place to stay. If they later decide they want to go to church, there are plenty of those around that will be glad to have them.

So, to Mr. Kuo I say: If you really want to help those in need, take some groceries down to your local soup kitchen. It sounds like they could use the help. But don’t rely on Bush and his band to do anything for the down-trodden. Despite his constant talk about his faith, Bush worships at the First Church of Jesus Christ Hyper-Capitalist. The Jesus who told the rich to give away their possessions and spent time comforting those in need is not welcome at that church. He’s such an embarrassment.

The president’s priorities lie elsewhere. Somewhere there’s a millionaire in his McMansion behind the securely locked gates of his planned community contemplating his fleet of SUVs who has not yet received a big enough tax cut. Bush and company have four more years, and by gum, they will find him.