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Taxed to Support Churches

A new article in PoliticusUSA:

Hidden Tax: US Families Pay an Extra $1,000 per Year to Support Religion

The economic impact on taxpayers is substantial when considering that when churches avoid paying tax, the cost of maintaining roads, police and fire protection, and schools must be made up by everyone else. When the community picks up the tab for a church’s drain on the community, it is a subsidy and in violation of the separation of church and state. It has been estimated that when church and clergy tax-exemptions are taken into account, the average family may pay up to $1,000 in extra taxes every year to make up for the lost revenue because of the church’s tax exemption and it includes sales taxes, inheritance taxes, income taxes, and personal taxes.

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Zing!

 

 

 

Just out of curiosity … can anyone tell me why the best female candidates the GOP can offer are Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann?

Surely there’s an American Margaret Thatcher, a Corazon Aquino or Indira Gandhi? Where is she?

But then again, maybe there are thousands of them out there. They’re just too smart to jump into the viper pit of current-day GOP politics.

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Atheist Culture

I’m going to wade into a subject I’m totally unqualified to discuss: Culture. But hey, it’s me — Well Meaning Doofus. It’s what I do.

I was talking to some Hopi friends in Arizona a while back about Hopi culture. The subject of Native American culture was of great interest to me back when I lived in Flagstaff, possibly because at the time I had so little sense of my own culture. Continue reading “Atheist Culture”

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Farkity Farking Fark

Slightly annoying Fark headline:

 

 

 

 

If that’s too small to read, it says “Columnist attempts to debunk 10 myths about atheists, manages to prove 9 of them are true.”

Got my back hair up for a minute or so, and I rushed over to read the article.

Then I remembered “Oh. Fark headline. It’s humor.”

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Clint Eastwood: Gays? Marry?

Clint Eastwood wins major Decent Guy points, despite (these days, anyway) being a registered Republican.

I googled “Clint Eastwood Quotes” and most of the lists contain movie lines like “Go ahead. Make my day.” and “…You’ve got to ask yourself one question — Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”

… which are not really Clint Eastwood quotes, but script-writer quotes, or movie-character quotes.

The REAL stuff is so much better:

“These people who are making a big deal out of gay marriage? I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We’re making a big deal out of things we shouldn’t be making a deal out of.”

“They go on and on with all this bullshit about ‘sanctity’ — don’t give me that sanctity crap! Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want.”

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When Coyotes Danced

It was hot, the day the coyotes danced.

It was about 1990, and I was ranch-sitting at a friend’s ranch in Bishop, California. The owner was up in the mountains all summer, but there were cattle at the ranch, and somebody needed to be there to look after them.

In this particular case, ranch-sitting was a minimalist job. The cattle were out in a pasture with plenty of water and grass, and cattle don’t need much more than that. Really, all I had to do was walk the pastures once a day and make sure nobody was sick or injured or dead. Continue reading “When Coyotes Danced”