Ark Encounter is being funded by a $62 million TIF.

It turns out the majority of Ark Encounter is being funded by a TIF granted by the City of Williamstown, Kentucky. On November 1, 2012, a Memorandum of Agreement (begins on page 55) approving $62 million in funding for Ark Encounter, LLC was signed by officials of Williamstown and the County of Grant.

It said that, over a 30-year period, 75% of Ark Encounter’s real estate taxes would go toward repayment of the interest-free TIF. So instead of that money going to the city (and the citizens), it’ll be used to repay those bonds.

Also — pay attention to this one, potential Ark Park staffers — all employees working within the TIF district (that is, Ark Encounter) will pay a 2% job assessment fee on gross wages. In other words, $2 out of every pre-tax $100 dollars you make will go directly to paying off the for-profit Noah’s Ark attraction.

You can view the bond issued by The City of Williamstown to Ark Encounter hereand here.

According to Section VIII of the Memorandum of Agreement, in addition to the $62 million, the city and county agreed to other incentives (courtesy of local taxpayers):

$175,000 would be given to Ark Encounter to reimburse the amount they felt the property was overvalued.

read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/11/11/what-ken-ham-isnt-telling-you-about-ark-encounter-funding/

Tony Abbott spent Australia Day travelling to the United States for a speaking engagement. The occasion is private, but it should be a matter of public concern. Especially in the wake of his decision to remain in politics, the event should raise some questions about the increasingly international ambitions of the Christian right, and its connections with the right wing of the Liberal party.

The organisation Abbott is speaking to – the Alliance Defending Freedom – is a pillar of the US Christian right. It’s the legal arm of Christian right behemoth Focus on the Family, has a budget of $40m, and is currently focused on waging a broad legal battle in the wake of some key supreme court rulings.

These include their victory in the Hobby Lobby ruling, which recognised corporations as having religious rights, and their defeat in Obergefell v. Hodges, which granted same sex couples the right to marry in all US states.

The Alliance Defending Freedom employs 50 lawyers and is networked with thousands more who cooperate on state and federal litigation intended to stonewall the expansion of civil rights for those whom evangelical protestants consider to be living against God’s law.

One strategy they advise on is what Frederick Clarkson, senior fellow at Political Research Associates calls “religification”. Groups like ADF have issued handbooks that instruct organisations such as churches, schools, universities and hospitals, how to redefine all of their jobs and functions as essentially religious in nature, so that they can be wholly exempted from discrimination provisions in the Civil Rights Act under the “ministerial exception”.

When successful, this allows them and their employees to discriminate against job applicants, and even clients, who are LGBT, or with whom they simply have a religious disagreement.

In the face of rapid and seemingly unstoppable social change around issues of sexuality, this essentially defensive strategy allows Christian organisations to retain bastions of control where their identities and practices can be protected.

Assisting fellow conservatives to resist the advance of gay rights is the ADF’s top priority, and Abbott is visiting them at the same time that the Liberal party is conducting a civil war over same sex marriage.

In the Australian context, prominent conservatives like Eric Abetz are running a similar, defensive, delaying political strategy in the face of broad community support for marriage equality .

Abbott himself, when prime minister, similarly stonewalled on this issue.

Speaking to me by phone, Clarkson conceded that the closed-door nature of the meeting – which has not been advertised on ADF’s site – made it difficult to know what was happening. But it may not just be an after-dinner speech.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/27/tony-abbotts-speaking-engagements-deserve-our-scrutiny-and-our-concern

We seem to have lost the vision of a genuine pluralism, in which competing points of view on serious moral issues are both allowed to coexist so that the arguments for each may be put. Rather, we resort to tweeting and shouting. Thankfully, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has injected a sensible note in the discussion, noting that people in his own party hold different views and that it is actually unsurprising. It may even be a good thing.

Ironically, the treatment of Mr Abbott rather proves the ADF right when it claims that our religious freedoms are under threat as never before. The ADF website states that "we will prayerfully enter every battle expecting to win while always demonstrating respect toward those who oppose us".

That respect seems to be in short supply.

Dr Michael Jensen is the rector at St Mark's Anglican Church, Darling Point, NSW.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-29/jensen-freedom-of-religion/7123204

Sorry to harp on, Dr Jensen, but for many years before this arsey righteousness, anyone who did not follow the Churches' dictums would have been racked, quartered until they recanted or died.

It is very VERY difficult to have respect for people who believe that Adam and Eve were real people, that we're all stained with an "original sin" because of these two dorks — and that god created a 14 billion year old universe to bamboozle us into believing in heaven and hell. CRAP. Go away. Though Jesus may have been a real person, his persona has been used as a symbol of ... well, Churches went to war over it, and we still use the symbol to go and wage war against people we don't like in the name of peace and love. All the "stories" about Jesus where rewritten and repackaged in the fourth century AD, in order to make the story "believable" to the idiots. 

Anyway enough about the debunking of religion, people like Abbott use this platform as a launching pad for their ambitions. I believe Abbott failed the "priesthood" for a single reason: SEX. Anything else about Abbott is irrelevant.

He is a deceitful dishonest christian.

Tony Abbott's decision to stay in politics may not be the best decision for him. Sadly, I predict tears – and not of the before bedtime variety. Those are just the tears of overtired children and soon pass. I think Abbott's decision, if he proceeds with it, will bring him a more lasting, irrevocable grief.

There is a chasm between the pressure of being prime minister and that of being a backbencher. Having wound himself up to that higher pace, Abbott may well find it hard to wind back. If that turns out to be the case, he will be constantly looking for things to do.

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/fairness-apparently-a-missing-dimension-in-abbotts-political-calculations-20160129-gmgt3d.html