A North Dakota county will soon hold a vote today deciding whether or not it will halt the acceptance of new refugees, Fox News reports.

If the vote passes, Burleigh County will become the first in the nation to do so after President Trump signed an executive order making such votes possible at the county level. Burleigh County has a population of over 100,000, and is the location of North Dakota’s capital city of Bismarck.

The vote found support among local Republican figures, including State Representative Rick Becker and Bismarck Mayor Steve Bakken, both of whom cited the heavy burden that additional refugees would have on the local economy and public services, including “school enrollment, veterans’ needs, homeless needs, and Native American needs.”

Both the vote and the president’s executive order face opposition from the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a left-wing religious organization that assists newly-settled refugees and is suing the Trump Administration over the order. Shirley Dykshoorn, vice president of a similar group called the Lutheran Social Services, criticized the vote by rhetorically asking “What does it say to the rest of the country when a county where your capital city is located would choose not to participate?”


North Dakota’s Burleigh County Set to Vote on Whether or Not to Stop Accepting Refugees
Eric Lendrum
December 9th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/09/n...ting-refugees/

LSS is small potatoes compared to the tax dollars the Catholic Church’s parasite charity hustlers rake in:


Lutheran Social Service recently had a meeting at the Stearns County Service Center in Waite Park.

This was a meeting of "stakeholders" involved with Lutheran Social Service's contract with the federal government for relocating political refugees to the St. Cloud area. The meeting has not been publicized. Evidently, it is closed to the public.

Even though refugee resettlement in St. Cloud is fueled with federal tax receipts, Lutheran Social Service, as a private contractor, appears to be under no legal or moral obligation to provide transparency to the public. This is deceptive and underhanded, and it must end.

Furthermore, the public must demand a long-overdue accounting of the program, an independent audit of both the use of our tax dollars and the financial impact upon Stearns County taxpayers in areas such as social services, schools, subsidized housing, transportation and public safety.

If Lutheran Social Service ran this program with proceeds from the Sunday collection plate, that would be voluntary charity, and the public might have little say in the matter. Paying taxes, however, is not voluntary.

Lutheran Social Service must be held to the same standard of transparency as any government organization.

LSS must be transparent
WILLMAR Published 1:37 p.m. CT June 18, 2015 | Updated 6:42 p.m. CT June 18, 2015

https://www.sctimes.com/story/opinio...ices/28932369/

Transparency my ass. Assuming charity hustlers are not lying, parasites telling taxpayers what they do with tax dollars adds insult to injury. Instead of transparency the filthy scum in federal and state governments should enforce the First Amendment.


The framers of the Constitution believed that houses of worship should not receive tax dollars. They didn’t feel this way because they were hostile to religion – far from it. While they clearly believed that forcing people to support religion against their will was a violation of the fundamental right of conscience, the Founding Fathers also understood that faith communities prosper when voluntarily supported by members.

In 1785, James Madison penned the “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments” – a broadside that blasted a proposal to force all residents of Virginia to pay a tax to support Christian ministers.

The document is essentially a list of 15 reasons why church taxes are a terrible idea. The entire thing is brilliant, but point seven is especially relevant today:

“Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest lustre; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy.”

Far be it from me to paraphrase Madison, but he’s essentially saying here that evidence shows that church taxes haven’t helped religion, they’ve ruined it. He points out that the Christian faith received state support for 1,500 years, and this led the clergy to become arrogant and lazy. It also sparked ignorance among lay members and fostered persecution. Madison recommends that you ask ministers – they'll tell you that Christianity did better before it took state money.

Madison was right, and we can see evidence of this is the world today. Consider the countries that still have taxpayer-supported, state-sponsored religion. They tend to be either nightmarish theocracies or places where religion plays a largely ceremonial role but dwindling numbers of people actually bother to attend services.

America needs to re-embrace one of its founding principles: No one should be taxed to pay for the religion of another. On Tax Day, recommit to that idea yourself and work with Americans United to buttress it.

Note that Benjamin Franklin distinguished between God and organized religion.

P.S. Benjamin Franklin also had a great quote on this topic: “When a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its Professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the Civil Power, ’tis a Sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”

The Founders Opposed Taxpayer-Funded Religion To Help Faith, Not Hurt It
Apr 15, 2019
by Rob Boston

https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-sep...th-not-hurt-it

p.s. Soviet Union Communists had only one saving grace. They knew what to do with priests.

p.p.s. North Dakota also took on property taxes. See this thread:


North Dakota Considers Eliminating Property Tax
Monica Davey|
Published 1:57 AM ET Tue, 12 June 2012 Updated 10:15 AM ET Tue, 12 June 2012

https://www.cnbc.com/id/47776155


The truth is that funding the education industry with property taxes turned homeownership into an ever-increasing, never-ending, tax liability.

https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...53#post2858653