My first publisher, a wise

man named Tom Hay, once told me that it's OK to make people mad, as long

as you don't make everybody mad at once.

Maybe Tom should be in Dubya's

Cabinet. Looks like the Bush Administration could use that advice.

So far, in my opinion, Bush

has been light years better than the alternative would have been, but

certainly not a likely candidate for president of the century.

Well, perhaps he does qualify

as president of the century ... so far.

I've already complained about

the wimpy, phased-in tax cut. Now there's this federal funding of faith-based

charities.

It's like Bush and his advisors

sat down one day and tried to think of what they could do to kindle the

anger of people at all points on the political spectrum.

My most liberal friends are

mad because, in dolling out money to faith-based charities, Bush and the

House

Republicans don't seem willing to use that incentive to force those charities

to hire gay people ... or people of other religious persuasions, for that

matter.

Churches and other religious

groups like the Salvation Army can hire whomever they please. It's called

freedom of religion. But in all other situations I can think of, if the

federal government gives you money, you have to promise to hire without

regard to race, religion, etc.

And that's just one string.

A myriad of strings is usually attached to any federal grant or loan.

So the federal government doesn't give money to religions.

It's called separation of church

and state.

Many conservatives, of course,

are also mad because they think the federal budget for charitable work

is already too high, or they don't think there should be one at all.

Republicans in the House and

the president seem to be in lock step when it comes to doing things to

tick off their conservative base.

Instead of a simple, across-the-board,

permanent tax cut, they gave us a complicated, targeted, phased-in, temporary

tax cut. And instead of streamlining government, they keep coming up with

feel-good legislation that increases spending along with the size of the

government that must administer that spending.

So faith-based charitable spending

angers liberals and conservatives alike, probably Libertarians too, and

I'm only guessing the ACLU will probably find something it doesn't like

about giving tax money to churches as well.

But at least the churches and

the poor people they help will like it, right?

Wrong. Sooner or later, the

pressure on the religious organizations to change their ways will come,

whether directly from the administration or from lawsuits, and these groups

will realize they've sold their souls for a few pieces of silver.

As for the poor who receive

the service, they're always angry about the help they receive, because

it's never enough.

It's bad enough when Democrats

are in charge and they can blame the fact that it's never enough on the

Republicans. Now that Republicans are in charge, they're seated even more

firmly on the hot seat.

Hey, here's a novel idea ...

why don't we just permanently lower taxes so people have more money to

contribute on their own to faith-based charities, and they can give to

the ones they like and agree with, and not give to the ones they don't.

Don't tell me they won't do

it. During the Reagan tax-cut years, charities reported a strong surge

in giving.

As stated earlier, concerning

taxes we need to figure out what our government should be doing (using

constitutional principles), hire people who can do it efficiently, figure

out how much tax it takes to do it, and maintain taxes at that much-lower-than-current

level.

Where charity is concerned,

we need to figure out what the federal government's role in charity is,

hire people who can accomplish that role efficiently, and run those programs

under the auspices of the federal government.

This mickey-mousing around

with touchy-feely ideas apparently is designed to get more women to vote

Republican.

You might convince a few thousand

women to change their voting patterns, but in the meantime how many hundreds

of thousands of Republicans will be convinced to vote Libertarian or independent?