{"id":6440,"date":"2006-01-25T15:32:37","date_gmt":"2006-01-25T20:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6440"},"modified":"2006-01-25T15:32:37","modified_gmt":"2006-01-25T20:32:37","slug":"pat-may-be-crazy-but-he-keeps-getting-paid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/pat-may-be-crazy-but-he-keeps-getting-paid\/","title":{"rendered":"Pat may be crazy, but he keeps getting paid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clearly, TV preacher Pat Robertson, after a series of controversies stemming from imbalanced public remarks, is persona non grata in most sensible circles. More and more, the evangelical community isn’t returning his calls, and a political figure of any significance knows it would be foolish to be seen with Robertson right now.<\/p>\n

And yet, when it comes to distributing our tax dollars, the Bush administration is still making sure Robertson is well paid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When President Bush launched his “faith-based initiative” in 2001 to funnel federal money to religious groups, Pat Robertson was skeptical, calling the idea a “Pandora’s box” and a “narcotic” that would ensnare religious organizations in government red tape.<\/p>\n

Those misgivings notwithstanding, the federal government has become a major source of money for Operation Blessing, Robertson’s international charity, under the Bush initiative. In two years, the group’s annual revenue from government grants has ballooned from $108,000 to $14.4 million.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about this funding. For one thing, the group has been investigated for making deceptive appeals<\/a>. For another, Robertson’s charity discriminates in hiring — Operation Blessing does not hire non-Christians — even though it accepts public funds.<\/p>\n

But even if we put those serious concerns aside, there’s a more basic political question the Bush administration should answer: why in the world is Bush giving $14.4 million to a crazed TV preacher’s charity?<\/p>\n

That’s not really a rhetorical question; I’m kind of hoping someone asks Scott McClellan to explain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clearly, TV preacher Pat Robertson, after a series of controversies stemming from imbalanced public remarks, is persona non grata in most sensible circles. More and more, the evangelical community isn’t returning his calls, and a political figure of any significance knows it would be foolish to be seen with Robertson right now. And yet, when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}