Illinois General Assembly donates
your tax dollars to their favorite churches

The only way that I found out about this was from reading Ray Long and Rick Pearson's story, Pass the pork:  Quinn and lawmakers dole out projects, on Monday, June 1, 2009, in the online edition of the Tribune.

There was a link in the story right to the legislation.  It's the 972-page House Bill 313 - Senate Amendment 3, that revealed all of the secrets that the Legislature was trying to keep from us, and especially me.

Here are the three worst examples of blatantly unconstitutional expenditures that I've found, so far:

On page 170, a grant of $700,000, your tax dollars, to St. Malachy School for "costs associated with capital improvements."  There can't possibly be a single legislator in all of Springfield who doesn't know that Article X, Section 3, of the Illinois Constitution prohibits grants of tax dollars to parochial schools, yet there are dozens of similar grants throughout the Bill.

On page 54, a grant of $150,000, your tax dollars, to Keshet for "costs associated with construction of a cabin at Camp Chi," a Jewish camp IN WISCONSIN!  It's bad enough that the legislature is making unconstitutional donations to religious organizations, but now they're making donations to religious facilities in OTHER STATES!  Hey, I went to Camp Chi one year in the '60s.  It was right around when I was Bar Mitzvahed.  It's a great camp, but you can't go taxing people to support a place where children are sent to have a religious experience, particularly when the place is out-of-state!

Here's the most outrageous of them all:  On pages 335 and 336, a grant of $140,000, your tax dollars, to Francis Cardinal George, the "Catholic Bishop of Chicago for general infrastructure at St. Martin de Porres Church."

Francis Cardinal George

Now, how did that happen?  Do you remember the unconstitutional Moment of Silence law that I successfully challenged in Federal Court?  One of the sponsors of that law was State Representative LaShawn Ford.

State Rep. LaShawn Ford

According to Mr. Ford's biography on his State Representative web site, Rep. Ford is a "member of St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church Parish Council and Finance Committee."  Oh, so that's how it works when you're a state representative!  Instead of asking your fellow parishoners to donate to your church, just go to Springfield and sponsor a law that requires everybody in the state to donate to your church.

I thought that's why we had a Revolutionary War, so that we would no longer be taxed to support the church of the person or persons in power.

Representative Ford ought to be impeached, but he's not the only one.  This law, with all of these millions of dollars in illegal donations of tax dollars to religious organizations, was approved unanimously by all 59 members of the Illinois Senate, and unanimously, 115-0, in the 118-member Illinois House.  Rep. Coulson and Rep. Fritchey voted "Present," with Rep. Hamos not voting.

You haven't heard the last of this one from me.  I've already been in touch with Governor Quinn's office about meeting with the Governor to urge him to veto each and every one of the hundreds of unconstitutional provisions of this Bill.  If he won't, or if he does and the General Assembly overrides his veto, I'll file suit to stop the expenditures, just like I sued to stop that million dollar grant by ex-Gov. Blagojevich to Pilgrim Baptist Church.

Stay tuned.