Last week we presented how Tiahrt stands on the issues of labor, the environment and civil rights. Sure we could have stopped there because there were enough reasons to vote against that fascist but Tiahrt brings even more embarrassment to Kansas that we should mention it.

Tiahrt Fighting Poverty

The number of people going below the poverty line is increasing thanks to Bush's destruction of the booming Clinton economy. Having taken Clinton's era of the greatest economic expansion in American history and turning it into the largest deficit in American history millions of people who want to work are out of a job. As mentioned last week Tiahrt voted to not extend unemployment benefits and voted to eliminate overtime pay for those who are working (Tiahrt didn't have a problem with voting for a pay raise for himself and his fellow rich Congressmen).

So what has Tiahrt done to fight poverty? His solution is more religion. Heck, why not more religion? After all churches continue to expand and build more churches, religious tax-exempt businesses and additions onto existing churches. If the churches are getting richer then Tiahrt's solution is to give those churches more money so they can get more people in those churches so they can pray to God for more money. It's that simple? Solve the economy with divine intervention.

Bill HR7 allowed tax-exempt churches to compete with secular non-governmental groups for government funds and tax breaks. Secular organizations work to help people out of poverty, religious groups will help, as long as you accept Jesus. If you happen to be Atheist you are out of luck. You'll either have to lie and pretend to be a Christian (that also applies to all you Muslims, Jews and other categories) or you'll have to find a secular outlet who is probably underfunded due to the religious groups getting the government funds. The thing about those religious groups is that since there is a separation of church and state (in theory anyway) there is no government oversight. So these groups can take government money for something like relationship counseling but aren't required to have licensed counselors unlike the secular groups which are overseen by government agencies.

On two separate bills Tiahrt voted for a pork barrel program to spend $200 million to promote marriage. How getting married is supposed to help get you out of poverty, I don't know. Tiahrt just doesn't want a couple living in sin I suppose so God will reward a married couple with more money. In HR3073 Tiahrt wanted to set up a governmental program to promote responsible fatherhood (what makes them responsible, I don't know). For being a "responsible" father you get a bunch of governmental goodies. Not surprising funding for this program will go through churches whose view of being responsible happens to be the same as being Christian. Finally those who are poor and need governmental assistance Tiahrt's solution is just to get rid of welfare or at least kick people off of welfare in two years but they must work during that time.

Tiahrt on Welfare

Welfare? I thought we just covered welfare? I don't mean welfare that helps people from sinking further into poverty but that welfare which helps the rich get richer. Yes, it's corporate welfare. Tiahrt has no problem giving out billions of welfare dollars out to multi-billion dollar corporations but when it comes to handing out millions of welfare to poverty stricken families trying to pay their heating bill Tiahrt draws the line.

The World Trade Organization declared that billions of corporate tax breaks to corporations was illegal so Tiahrt shot back and replaced those illegal tax breaks with $140 billion in new tax breaks. That's HR4520. These are the same corporations who are making records profits while laying off thousands of Americans and moving those jobs to foreign countries. Tiahrt still holds onto the myth that if corporations make more money they'll hire more American workers. For an explanation on this myth see Michael Moore's book Downsize This! Of course Tiahrt believes with the Bush administration that outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries is good for the American economy. Riddle me this Tiahrt, if Americans are out of work how are they going to afford to buy new houses and $30,000 cars if they aren't bringing home a good income? Maybe they'll just do as Dick Cheney suggests to improve their financial situation by selling products on Ebay.

Tiahrt worked really hard for a corporate welfare program that would give more money to Boeing (a huge donor to the Tiahrt campaign) while bringing no jobs to Wichita. Tiahrt wanted the Dept. of Defense to spend $21 billion to lease 100 airplanes from Boeing rather than buy them outright. If the DOD bought the planes they'd only spend $4 billion dollars. What advantage would there be to spending an extra $17 billion of taxpayer money? Well, Boeing would get an extra $17 billion dollars which means Tiahrt would get rewarded with more campaign contributions and probably a nice CEO job when he finally follows through with his promise of self-imposed term limits. Let me get this straight though. Boeing would get $17 billion of taxpayer dollars they didn't work for but those who actually build the planes wouldn't get any overtime pay working their asses off building those 100 planes. It's no real surprise who Tiahrt is really working for.

Tiahrt on Education

Tiahrt isn't too big on education, face it, the guy is a moron. He also believes the world is 6000 years old, yup, he's a young earth creationist. Tiahrt's solution for improving education is, you guessed it, bring more religion into the schools. First Tiahrt thinks that we can win the war on terror if schoolchildren are forced to pray during this never ending war on terror. It's in H.CON.RES.239. He's also in favor of a Constitutional Amendment which would require prayer in public schools. As the law is now anyone can pray if they want to, they just can't compel others to do so. However this amendment would change that as anyone, even non-students, could come into school and have a prayer service. As mentioned last week Tiahrt is a big supporter of school vouchers which would take money from our public school system, where people vote for their school board representatives and have a say about the education process, and give it to religious schools where the people don't have a say. In the meantime Tiahrt flip-flops and says he's for smaller government therefore the Department of Education should be abolished. So the Department of Education is a representative of big government but forcing children to pray in the schools is reducing the size of government. Like I said, Tiahrt is a moron.

Thankfully there is someone who is familiar with the subject of education running against Tiahrt. That is Wichita School Board member Michael Kinard. Kinard was born in Wichita, went to school in Wichita, graduated from Friends University in Wichita. On the other hand Tiahrt was born in South Dakota, went to schools outside of Kansas and spent most of his life living outside of Kansas. Who better can represents the desires of Kansas? Someone who spent just less than 10 years living in Kansas or someone who spent their entire life in Kansas? Kinard knows the community he represents, Tiahrt is a stranger to this state.

Book of the day for the third time: Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore

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