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Federal Disaster Assistance Nonprofit Fairness Act Of 2013 (H
The Federal Disaster Assistance Nonprofit Fairness Act of 2013 () is a bill that passed in the United States House of Representatives during the 113th United States Congress. The bill would make religious organizations and religious non-profits eligible to receive federal funding for repairs and rebuilding of their facilities after a major disaster. The bill amends the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. The bill passed the House by a large margin, but was criticized by opponents for using taxpayer money to help tax-exempt organizations and for violating the principle of separation of church and state. Provisions/Elements of the bill ''This summary is based largely on the summary provided by the Congressional Research Service, a public domain source.'' The Bill would amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to include community centers, including tax-exempt houses of worship, as "private nonprofit facilities" for p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chris Smith (New Jersey Politician)
Christopher Henry Smith (born March 4, 1953) is an American politician serving his 21st term as the U.S. representative for . Though it has taken various forms, his district has always been situated in central New Jersey. Currently, the district contains parts of Ocean and Monmouth counties. Smith is the dean of New Jersey's congressional delegation and the longest-serving member of Congress in New Jersey's history. He has focused much of his career on promoting human rights abroad, including authoring the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 and several follow-on laws. From 1993 to 2019, he was the top House Republican on the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. He has used his leadership positions, including chairmanships, to author multiple pieces of legislation focused on human rights and conduct aggressive oversight of human rights abuses, actions that have earned him scorn from abusing nations. Smith is a member of the Rep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tax Exemption
Tax exemption is the reduction or removal of a liability to make a compulsory payment that would otherwise be imposed by a ruling power upon persons, property, income, or transactions. Tax-exempt status may provide complete relief from taxes, reduced rates, or tax on only a portion of items. Examples include exemption of charitable organizations from property taxes and income taxes, veterans, and certain cross-border or multi-jurisdictional scenarios. Tax exemption generally refers to a statutory exception to a general rule rather than the mere absence of taxation in particular circumstances, otherwise known as an exclusion. Tax exemption also refers to removal from taxation of a particular item rather than a deduction. International duty free shopping may be termed "tax-free shopping". In tax-free shopping, the goods are permanently taken outside the jurisdiction, thus paying taxes is not necessary. Tax-free shopping is also found in ships, airplanes and other vessels traveling ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emergency Management
Emergency management or disaster management is the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters. Emergency management, despite its name, does not actually focus on the management of emergencies, which can be understood as minor events with limited impacts and are managed through the day to day functions of a community. Instead, emergency management focuses on the management of disasters, which are events that produce more impacts than a community can handle on its own. The management of disasters tends to require some combination of activity from individuals and households, organizations, local, and/or higher levels of government. Although many different terminologies exist globally, the activities of emergency management can be generally categorized into preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery, although other terms such as disaster risk reduction and prevention are also common. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Americans United For Separation Of Church And State
Americans United for Separation of Church and State (Americans United or AU for short) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that advocates for the disassociation of religion and religious organizations from government. The separation of church and state in the United States is often accepted to be provided in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." AU has been labeled "liberal" by the Associated Press (AP). Organization Americans United describes itself as officially non-sectarian and non-partisan. According to ''The Praeger Handbook of Religion and Education in the United States'' "It includes members from a broad religious, and non-religious, spectrum, including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and atheists." Its national headquarters are in Washington, D.C. Its former executive director, Barry W. Lynn, is an ordained minister in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Center For Inquiry
The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a US nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal, as well as to fight the influence of religion in government. History The Center for Inquiry was established in 1991 by atheist philosopher and author Paul Kurtz. It brought together two organizations: the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (founded by Kurtz in 1976) and the Council for Secular Humanism (founded by Kurtz in 1980). In January 2016, CFI announced that it was merging with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. In June 2009, Kurtz left CFI over a conflict with then-CEO Ronald A. Lindsay. Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Through the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and its journal, ''Skeptical Inquirer'' magazine, published by the Center for Inquiry, CSI examines evidential claims of the paranormal or supernormal, including psychics, ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, UFOs, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Amendment To The United States Constitution
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws that regulate an establishment of religion, or that prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was proposed to assuage Anti-Federalist opposition to Constitutional ratification. Initially, the First Amendment applied only to laws enacted by the Congress, and many of its provisions were interpreted more narrowly than they are today. Beginning with ''Gitlow v. New York'' (1925), the Supreme Court applied the First Amendment to states—a process known as incorporation—through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In '' Everson v. Board of Education'' (1947), the Court drew on Thomas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Presidency Of Barack Obama
Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican nominee John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Four years later, in the 2012 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee Mitt Romney to win re-election. Obama is the first African American president, the first multiracial president, the first non-white president, and the first president born in Hawaii. Obama's accomplishments during the first 100 days of his presidency included signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 relaxing the statute of limitations for equal-pay lawsuits; signing into law the expanded State Children's Health Insurance Program(S-CHIP); winning approval of a congressional budget resolution that put Congress on record as dedicated to dealing with major health care reform legislation in 2009; ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy (unofficially referred to as ''Superstorm Sandy'') was an extremely destructive and strong Atlantic hurricane, as well as the largest Atlantic hurricane on record as measured by diameter, with tropical-storm-force winds spanning . The storm inflicted nearly $70 billion (2012 USD) in damage and killed 233 people across eight countries from the Caribbean to Canada. The eighteenth Tropical cyclone naming, named storm, tenth Atlantic hurricane, hurricane, and second major hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season, Sandy was a List of Category 3 Atlantic hurricanes, Category 3 storm at its peak intensity when it made landfall in Cuba, though most of the damage it caused was after it became a Category 1-equivalent extratropical cyclone off the coast of the Northeastern United States. Sandy developed from a tropical wave in the western Caribbean Sea on October 22, quickly strengthened, and was upgraded to Tropical Storm Sandy six hours later. Sandy moved s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. Founded in 1828, it was predominantly built by Martin Van Buren, who assembled a wide cadre of politicians in every state behind war hero Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party.M. Philip Lucas, "Martin Van Buren as Party Leader and at Andrew Jackson's Right Hand." in ''A Companion to the Antebellum Presidents 1837–1861'' (2014): 107–129."The Democratic Party, founded in 1828, is the world's oldest political party" states Its main political rival has been the Republican Party since the 1850s. The party is a big tent, and though it is often described as liberal, it is less ideologically uniform than the Republican Party (with major individuals within it frequently holding widely different political views) due to the broader list of unique voting blocs that compose it. The historical predecessor of the Democratic Party is considered to be th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suspension Of The Rules In The United States Congress
Suspension of the rules in the United States Congress is the specific set of procedures within the United States Congress that allows for the general parliamentary procedure of how and when to suspend the rules. U.S. House of Representatives Overview Suspension of the rules is a procedure generally used to quickly pass non-controversial bills in the United States House of Representatives. A motion to suspend the rules is in order on Mondays and Tuesdays and towards the end of a session of Congress and may only be made by the Speaker of the House or their designee, though it is customary for committee chairs to write the Speaker requesting a suspension. Once a member moves to "suspend the rules" and take some action, debate is limited to 40 minutes, no amendments can be offered to the motion or the underlying matter, and a 2/3 majority of Members present and voting is required to agree to the motion. A suspension motion sets aside all procedural and other rules that otherwise p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Place Of Worship
A place of worship is a specially designed structure or space where individuals or a group of people such as a congregation come to perform acts of devotion, veneration, or religious study. A building constructed or used for this purpose is sometimes called a house of worship. Temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues are examples of structures created for worship. A monastery may serve both to house those belonging to religious orders and as a place of worship for visitors. Natural or topographical features may also serve as places of worship, and are considered holy or sacrosanct in some religions; the rituals associated with the Ganges river are an example in Hinduism. Under International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions, religious buildings are offered special protection, similar to the protection guaranteed hospitals displaying the Red Cross or Red Crescent. These international laws of war bar firing upon or from a religious building. Religious architecture exp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Temple
A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temples are called Mandir), Buddhism, Sikhism (whose temples are called gurudwara), Jainism (whose temples are sometimes called derasar), Islam (whose temples are called mosques), Judaism (whose temples are called synagogues), Zoroastrianism (whose temples are sometimes called Agiary), the Baha'i Faith (which are often simply referred to as Baha'i House of Worship), Taoism (which are sometimes called Daoguan), Shinto (which are sometimes called Jinja), Confucianism (which are sometimes called the Temple of Confucius), and ancient religions such as the Ancient Egyptian religion and the Ancient Greek religion. The form and function of temples are thus very variable, though they are often considered by believers to be, in some sense, the "house" of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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