[HPN] Fw: Open Letter to G.W. Bush

[William Tinker]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Tony Hearn <thearn@thewestgategazette.com>
To: William Tinker <wtinker@fcgnetworks.net>
Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2000 9:47 AM
Subject: Open Letter to G.W. Bush


Dear Governor Bush:
 
You say the needs of the poor can be met by "faith-based institutions"
rather than by local, state, and federal government. This is how you
would reduce
government expenditures so that you can cut everybody's taxes.
 Obviously,
you have given this some thought or you wouldn't be mouthing it to the
public. Would you kindly provide concrete information on how you, as
president, would see to it that faith-based institutions, your words
for, I suppose, churches, would pick up the many social service
obligations now being addressed by the various levels of government?
 
 In Austin, Texas, where you live in publicly-financed housing, there is
a swelling affordable housing crisis,
growing steadily worse during each of the years of your incumbency as
governor. Article after article has been published in your local
newspaper about the lack of affordable housing now for hard-working
persons. That city government in your homebase acknowledges that
shelter
space for homeless, unemployed persons "is insufficient" is even old
news.
What, governor, do you recommend that faith-based institutions
commence
doing  to alleviate the lack of affordable housing here in
Austin? If you provide some specific recommendations, Austin can
become
your pilot project for the rest of the nation. Wouldn't you agree that
"charity begins at home!"? Austin is the place for you to demonstrate
that your "compassionate conservatism" actually works and is more than a
slogan.
 
 Are you going to recommend that the owners of Austin's many, many
apartment complexes unite to form a faith-based association? Will this
organization, like a bar association, provide "pro bono" housing for
those, like new teachers, who cannot afford to rent even the most modest
units in Austin's sky-rocketing rental market? Are you going to call
upon well-healed born-again Methodists, like yourself, and Baptists,
Episcopalians, and members of other Christian denominations, and maybe
even members of our local synagogues, who are
mature, senior "believers," rattling around in their large,
many-bedroomed, luxury homes in West Austin, to open up their
manicured
homesteads to the working poor so that they can live, also, with a
modicum of peace and serenity? Just what are your recommendations to
the well-to-do born-again believers for relieving the affordable housing
crisis in
Austin? Have you given any thought to how your faith-based "programs"
can relieve the growing income disparity, and the various social agonies
caused thereby, between the working poor and the new rich which is so
very apparent here in your homebase? How are you going to convince
new
rich believers like yourself to build and live in less pretentious
housing so that the working poor can call even the most modest
dwellings
their homes? How are your going to call down from their lofty perches,
Austin's old and new rich, like Jesus did to Zaccheus who seemed to want
to be involved with your
Christ, to stop charging what the market will bear so that their wealth,
and the enjoyment of it, is not the cause of suffering to the working
poor? Can you tell us how you have convinced even here in Austin your
ardent supporters to live more simple, modest lifestyles so that the
working poor can have anything resembling a decent lifestyle at all?
Isn't this what your Christ would have you do? Demonstrate to us with
concrete evidence how your "faith-based" solutions will resolve our
local as well as national crushing social problems? In the absence of
such observable data, your advocacy of "faith-based" problem solving is
mere campaign verbiage, stemming at best from a naive notion of what
faith is all about. Faith has no meaning without works. Show us the
works that really solve problems. Don't visit some soup kitchen
somewhere and say this is a solution to hunger; don't visit some
Salvation Army Shelter somewhere, financed, by the way, with
government grants, and tell us this is the solution to homelessness and
lack of
affordable housing. Show the people of your own homebase and the
voters
of America, to whom you now are giving slogans, some real
demonstration
of how your "compassionate conservatism" is being put into practice by
"faith-based" institutions. We want to see what you are talking about,
Governor! Show us your faith by showing us your works!
 
Sincerely,
 
 Tony Hearn
 Austin, Texas    
 
 Tony Hearn
Whirl Headquarters for http://thewestgategazette.com/
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