-Caveat Lector-
>From www.ncpa.org
> The opening of Safeco Field in Seattle last Thursday was met by
> protests, legal threats and a growing squall over how much the
> public should pay for stadiums that enrich private owners.
>
> �Costing $517 million, Safeco Field -- the new home of the
> Seattle Mariners' baseball team -- is the most costly
> single-sport stadium ever built in North America.
>
> �The ownership group, which includes Microsoft billionaires, had
> promised to cover all cost overruns on the new park.
>
> �The public thought its share of the cost would be $372 million
> until the owners stunned even the team's strongest supporters by
> asking taxpayers to pick up most of a cost overrun which totaled
> $100 million.
>
> �Safeco Field also has the dubious distinction of being the first
> ballpark built with public money after voters defeated a
> nonbinding referendum and refused to pay for it.
>
> Stadiums scheduled to open in Milwaukee next year and Pittsburgh
> in 2001 are also being built with tax dollars even though the
> public voted overwhelmingly against using public money in their
> construction.
>
> "I think the public is at its limit," says Thomas M. Finneran,
> the Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, who
> led a fight to curb the amount his state would pay to keep the
> New England Patriots from moving to Connecticut. Finneran says
> that "more and more, people are saying enough of this kind of
> corporate welfare. And I think the sports owners asked for the
> backlash," by making exorbitant demands.
>
> Source: Timothy Egan, "What Price the Most Expensive Diamond of
> All?" New York Times, July 17, 1999.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>From www.infidels.org/infidels/newsletter/1999/july.html
> Pat Robertson reorganizes, chases gold, and bashes gays
>
> James Still
>
> Everything blew up in televangelist Pat Robertson's face last
> month. Robertson is the founder of the Christian Coalition, a
> U.S.-based religious right group desiring to restrict the rights
> of gays and lesbians, to dismantle the Department of Education,
> to rewrite the First Amendment, and to influence the Republican
> Party's platform. He said famously at the 1992 Republican
> National Convention that "feminism encourages women to leave
> their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy
> capitalism, and become lesbians." Robertson spun the coalition
> out of his 1988 failed Presidential bid as Republican nominee,
> salvaging the mailing list and organization from that race to
> attract right-leaning voters to the coalition. By 1993 it had
> 900,000 members in 870 chapters in all fifty states, a database
> of 1.6 million people believed to be sympathetic to the
> organization, and an annual budget of over $12 million.
>
> First, the coalition must reorganize in an attempt to remain
> viable in the wake of an Internal Revenue Service rejection of
> its application for tax-exempt status. The New York Times
> reported that coalition spokesman Mike Russell announced that the
> coalition would split into two groups. The first group will be
> called "Christian Coalition International" with a mission to
> engage in the political arena to include party- and
> candidate-advocacy. The second group will be called the
> "Christian Coalition of America" and promises to stick to
> nonbiased voter educational issues. Under section 501(c)(4) of
> the Internal Revenue Code, organizations who accept contributions
> from supporters do not have to pay income tax on monies
> collected. However, to close campaign finance law loopholes,
> organizations approved under 501(c)(4) are not allowed to engage
> in "substantial" political activities nor can they endorse a
> specific party or candidate. The coalition has come under fire in
> recent elections for distributing voter guides that distort
> issues in order to endorse Republican Party candidates. For
> example, in the contentious 1994 Senate race between coalition
> favorite and Republican candidate Oliver North and Democrat
> Charles Robb, the coalition's voter guide stated that Robb
> favored "Government-financed obscenity" because he supported the
> National Endowment for the Arts. The coalition is headquartered
> in Chesapeake, Virginia.
>
> From its inception the coalition has attacked the National
> Endowment of the Arts (NEA), believing it to be a patron for gays
> and lesbians. In 1990, the coalition took out full-age
> advertisements in prominent newspapers warning, "There may be
> more homosexuals and pedophiles in your [voting] district than
> there are Catholics and Baptists." The ad went on to say that the
> NEA, with the approval of a Democratic Congress, was using
> government money to teach the sons of "working folks" to sodomize
> one another. Working through evangelical churches in local
> communities, the coalition managed to organize the campaigns of
> candidates who fit the "pro-family" profile: pro-life,
> conservative Christian, pro-gun, anti-government, and
> anti-intellectual.
>
> Executive Director Ralph Reed recognized that the failure of the
> religious right during the eighties consisted in reaching for too
> much centralized power in Washington rather than at the local
> level in city councils and school boards. "What Christians have
> got to do," Reed insisted in 1990, "is to take back this country,
> one precinct at a time, one neighborhood at a time and one state
> at a time." But it had to be done carefully. The lessons of
> Falwell's Moral Majority were that voters did not appreciate
> heavy-handed morality and wanted their elected representatives to
> remain neutral about religious matters. Reed engineered "stealth
> candidacy" as a result. Stealth candidates were those who refused
> to divulge their hidden agenda and often refused to admit
> publicly that, for example, if elected to the local school board,
> they planned to introduce creation science into the school
> curriculum. The coalition warned its activists never to mention
> the coalition by name in Republican circles so as to avoid
> calling attention to their efforts.
>
> Another important factor in the success of coalition-backed
> stealth candidates was low voter turnout. Over sixty percent of
> eligible voters do not even bother to vote in general elections.
> In local elections, where voters often do not care or bother to
> inform themselves about county commissioners, town council seats,
> or school boards, voter turnout is even worse so that all it took
> was a block of several hundred like-minded voters to get a
> stealth candidate into office. Working through prominent
> evangelical churches in the local communities, the coalition used
> church membership mailing lists to register voters and to direct
> these voters to support the coalition-backed candidate.
>
> In a patriotic July 4, 1991 fund-raising letter Robertson wrote:
>
>
>
> "We at the Christian Coalition are raising an army who cares. We
> are training people to be effective--to be elected to school
> boards, to city councils, to state legislatures and to key
> positions in political parties . . . . By the end of this decade,
> if we work and give and organize and train, the Christian
> Coalition will be the most powerful political organization in
> America."
>
>
>
> The war metaphor was intentional. Robertson likens the coalition
> to an Army of God and calls their struggle a "spiritual battle"
> against the "Satanic forces", the so-called "elite" that embrace
> communism and who control the country.
>
> But there has been a vacuum in the leadership ever since the
> charismatic Ralph Reed left in 1997 as Executive Director of the
> coalition. This year alone, four top officials have either
> resigned or were asked to leave the organization. In early June,
> Robertson demoted Randy Tate, Reed's successor, and plans to take
> over the day-to-day operations of the coalition himself,
> suggesting that the coalition is in bigger trouble than insiders
> admit. With the rejection of their tax-exempt application to the
> IRS, it is unclear whether churches will continue to distribute
> coalition guides or to allow coalition members to speak during
> worship services. Association with a political group could
> jeopardize a church's own tax-exempt status since churches are
> not allowed to advocate or engage in any political activities
> under current tax laws.
>
> Second, Robertson damaged what little moral integrity he has left
> when he entered into an agreement with Liberian warlord Charles
> Taylor to allow Robertson's company, Freedom Gold Limited, to
> mine for gold in the Bukon Jedeh region of Liberia. In December
> 1998, Robertson formed the company offshore in the Caymen Islands
> and listed himself as the company's president and sole director.
>
> Liberia has been in a bloody civil war since 1989 with an
> insurrection against then-President Samuel Doe by Charles
> Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL). Human rights
> observers have reported extensively on the atrocities that took
> place during the seven years of fighting, including the killing,
> torture and forced labor of Liberian civilians. Taylor considers
> himself to be a "man of God", removing and killing his own
> cabinet members whom he felt did not serve God. According to
> Amnesty International and reports by the United States Department
> of State "Liberian Country Report on Human Rights Practices," of
> Liberia's 2.7 million people, more than half are now refugees and
> internally displaced and more than 150,000 people, mainly
> civilians, have been killed.
>
> "Clearly, Robertson's greed knows no bounds," said Barry W. Lynn,
> executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church
> and State (AU), a Religious Right watchdog group. "This
> gold-mining deal with a vicious tyrant is shocking even by his
> standards." Lynn went on to add that "if there's profit to be
> made, it seems Robertson doesn't care who he has to deal with.
> Despite all the rhetoric and grandstanding, this deal shows
> Robertson is more interested in money than morality."
>
> According to the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot the new financial deal
> will need ratification from the Liberian legislature. If it
> passes, the country's government will receive a 10 percent equity
> interest in Robertson's gold-mining company. After an exploration
> period, 15 percent of shares in the company will be available to
> Liberian investors.
>
> AU reports that Robertson's interest in African mining is nothing
> new. In the early 1990s, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko gave Robertson
> diamond-mining rights in Zaire (now Congo). That enterprise
> ultimately led to a Virginia state investigation when two pilots
> reported that Robertson's relief planes, intended for
> humanitarian purposes, were actually diverted to transport mining
> equipment instead. The results of that investigation are still
> pending, but the two pilots allege that Robertson routinely mixed
> nonprofit charity funds with his for-profit ventures.
>
> As if his first two troubles were not enough, Robertson also
> caused an uproar on May 18 by claiming on his 700 Club television
> show that Scotland was a "dark land" under the influence of
> homosexuals. Religious, academic, union, and gay rights groups
> protested what was one more in a long line of extremist remarks
> from Robertson. Officials at the Bank of Scotland, who had been
> negotiating with Robertson to provide banking services in the
> U.S., scuttled the deal after losing over 500 accounts. The
> London Times reported that the nonprofit organization West
> Lothian Council closed its �250 million (U.S. $400 million)
> account with the bank over its association with Robertson.
>
> "The Scottish people said they want nothing to do with religious
> political extremism," observed Barry W. Lynn, executive director
> of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "They
> repudiated Robertson's bigotry and intolerance. Americans should
> take a lesson from the Scots. "Concluding this deal," continued
> Lynn, "proved as elusive as the Loch Ness Monster."
>
> Robertson's greed has a long and sordid past. People for the
> American Way write:
>
>
>
> "Ten for-profit businesses have also sprung from the non-profit
> CBN, including the tremendously successful International Family
> Entertainment (IFE), which owns the Family Channel, founded in
> 1977, and MTM Entertainment, a production company that holds the
> rights to a host of syndicated programs. The Family Channel,
> which airs the "700 Club" twice daily, reaches 58 million homes
> through 10,000 cable systems . Robertson recently sold IFE to
> Rupert Murdoch's Fox Kidsworldwide (FKW) for nearly a billion
> dollars � some of which came in the form of a new series of
> preferred stock of FKW. Robertson also owns an airplane charter
> company, a travel agency, a radio station, a luxury hotel, a news
> delivery service, a company that produces family films, and
> Kalovita, which sells toiletries."
>
>
>
> Kalo-Vita is a multi-level marketing operation that spun out of a
> previous MLM con game called American Benefits Plus (ABP). In
> violation of the law, Robertson diverted $3 million from his
> nonprofit Christian Broadcasting Network to ABP to start it up.
> The idea was simple: you buy coupon books from Robertson (at the
> top of the pyramid) and sell them to other distributors in the
> food chain below you. Robertson promised monthly earnings upwards
> of $20,000 a month, however, the scheme soon collapsed leaving
> everyone but Robertson holding the bag. Robertson was forced to
> abandon ABP and reorganized it as Kalo-Vita, another MLM modeled
> after Amway. Hundreds of Robertson's distributors were stuck with
> thousands of dollars of worthless coupon books, which Robertson
> refused to buy back despite his earlier promises to do otherwise.
>
>
> <Picture: ii>
>
> About the Internet Infidels Newsletter | Subscribe
>
> Copyright �1999 Internet Infidels, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The
> Internet Infidels' newsletter "ii" is a general information
> publication only. Internet Infidels, Inc. takes no position on
> the issues expressed herein and all opinions are the sole
> responsibility of their respective authors.
A<>E<>R
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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