Blasting Zone
I’m on outrage overload: if I read one more article like the following, I am definitely going to explode. Of course, I’d like to do it in a place where some of these vultures are likely to get caught in the blast radius.
Retreat On Robertson: FEMA Fumbles On Operation Blessing
“Gonzalez examined Operation Blessing’s financial records and was surprised at what he saw. “The biggest single U.S. recipient of the charity’s largess, according to its latest financial report, was Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network,” he wrote. “It received $885,000 in the fiscal year ended March 2004.”
Rob Boston, Americans United
Now, I can’t figure out why the big name bloggers and the media opinionators are surprised by this. I’ve been keeping an eye on ol’ Rev. Pat for a while, and anyone with more than two brain cells can see that Robertson’s so-called “ministry” is nothing but a personal money-making engine, and that the Bush administration is one of his biggest facilitators.
Immediately upon assuming the presidency, George Bush set up his Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, Robertson was, at first, reluctant to participate in this cash cow, but once he was reassured that non-Abrahamic religions would not get any money, and that he wouldn’t be forced to adhere to the non-discriminatory employment rules that secular charities must follow in order to receive government money, he was all on board with it, and Operation Blessing got on the Bush gravy train.
Robertson made the news again when he supported Charles Taylor, the tin-pot dictator of Liberia. Seems Uncle Pat had a partnership with Taylor involving a gold mine. Mr. Gonzalez notes other Robertson chicanery in his article.
How could FEMA not have known about this? Why was Operation Blessing even on it’s list of recommended charities, never mind in the top three? Don’t bother answering those questions; it’s all political payback.
Bryan at Why Now? wonders where all the money that the Congress has approved for Katrina relief is going. Well, at least some of it is going directly in Pat Robertson’s bank account.
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Update: ABC World News Tonight did a story about the Operation Blessing controversy, and reported all the above incidents. However, at the end of the piece, they reassured us that every dollar contributed to Operation Blessing for hurricane relief was going to be used for hurricane relief.
Yeah — right… AMD
