Reid trails Republican by ten points in full-election poll

At least you don’t have to try and explain Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Joe Biden.

NoDonkey on April 16, 2010

It appears, sadly, that Catholic church leaders tolerate those vile pieces of excrement because they want to be able to say they have Catholics in high places or because they actually agree with their redistributionist and anti-life policies. Lucky for me, I’m a Catholic because of Christ, not the fools who purport to speak for Him.

Extrafishy on April 16, 2010 at 11:21 AM

Historically, the Catholic Church has always been more sensitive to the idea of “helping the poor” than Protestant churches, not only in America but in Europe. Catholic immigrants to America (especially Irish, Italian, and Polish) were at one time generally poorer than Protestants, and many of them turned to Democrats to use government “charity” to rectify a perceived injustice against them.

Times have changed, and nobody can honestly believe that Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, or John Kerry are/were “poor”, but after being told for many generations that “Democrats helped the poor” and “Democrats helped my poor ancestors during the Depression”, many Catholics have trouble waking up to the fact that Democrats have defended the killing of over 40 million unborn people since 1973, whose voices have never been heard.

I still hear priests talking about government “charity” toward the poor, favoring Democrats over Republicans who want to protect unborn life, but whom some priests blast as “warmongers” or “killers” because they support capital punishment.

During the 1980′s, “liberation theology” swept through mostly-Catholic South America, where the Catholic doctrine of charity toward the poor was used to justify political Marxism, despite the strong protests against “liberation theology” by Pope John Paul II.

Many studies have shown that political conservatives are more generous to charity than liberals, but conservatives need seize the “charity” issue to win the Catholic vote, which is about evenly split between “charity” Catholics who vote Democrat, and “pro-life” Catholics who vote Republican.

For decades, our current tax code has allowed gifts to charity to be deducted from taxable income for those who itemize deductions, which is an indirect way for the Government to financially encourage VOLUNTARY gifts to private, non-government charitable organizations. Most reputable charities use less than 10% of their resources for advertising and fund-raising, meaning that 90%+ of the money received goes to the poor. If a person in a 25% tax bracket donates $100 to a private charity, the tax deduction reduces his actual cost to $75, while the poor get $90 worth of benefit, meaning that the person’s gift was INCREASED by 20% due to the tax deduction.

Direct Government “charity”, coercing people to spend tax money to give to others, is notoriously inefficient, due to thousands of salaried bureaucrats trying to figure out who should get what, and prevent people from feigning poverty to get “free” money, so that of $100 worth of tax money going to “welfare” programs, the poor are lucky to get $70–a 30% LOSS to the giver!

Conservatives need to make the argument that tax deductions for VOLUNTARY gifts to PRIVATE charity are MORE HELPFUL TO THE POOR than coerced “charity” from redistribution of taxes, and if people are taxed less, they have more money to give! One proposal that could help with this effort would be to allow tax deductions for charitable gifts WITHOUT itemizing deductions. Since lower-income taxpayers usually take the standard deduction and don’t itemize, this would encourage generosity toward those poorer than themselves.

Making this argument could go a long way in winning a larger share of the Catholic vote, which is about 30% of the population, and includes lots of Hispanics who traditionally vote for Democrats.

Steve Z on April 16, 2010 at 1:28 PM