News

23259 readers

3379 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

291

West Texas Pastor Who Used Illegal Donations From Churches to Campaign for Office Is Fined $3,500 (www.propublica.org)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A West Texas pastor who used his parish’s resources to campaign for office and several pastors from other churches who donated to him were fined after the state’s ethics commission determined that each violated election law.

The fines, some of which were issued last month, are the latest sanction from the commission following reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, which revealed that three churches donated to the campaign of Scott Beard, founding pastor at Fountaingate Fellowship church, despite state and federal prohibitions on such activity.

Beard, who was fined $3,500, showed a “lack of good faith” in accepting the donations and in posting campaign signs on church property for his unsuccessful Abilene City Council race despite the commission’s warnings against doing so, it found.

“Because the respondent committed extensive corporate contribution violations in defiance of the applicable law, a substantial penalty is required,” the commission wrote about Beard. He did not respond to a request for comment.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

If he broke the law for $800, I'm guessing $3,500 is probably more than 5% of his income. He's the pastor of a West Texas church with less than 100 congregants. It took his church plus three others to shore up less than a grand. He probably makes less than $70,000 gross, so you're likely actually suggesting that he be fined less than the $3,500 he was fined.

What I'd really like to see is his church and any other church that conspired to break the law for political ends be stripped of their tax exempt status.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I'll take both for $500, Alex.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That's why you can't do a flat fee; a minimum with exponential scaling. By the time you get to anyone in the top, say, 10% of income it should to become life crippling. For the top 1% it should be life destroying. For the top 1% of 1%, they should be fined so hard they can't even afford a box to shelter in.

If we didn't make them suffer in the only way they seem to understand - the wallet - then they'll never, ever stop.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

The ultra rich will show up with close to zero income, because they don't actually deal in cash. This isn't the master plan you think it is.

Issuing a fine that is some multiple of the damages ensures that it doesn't become a "cost of doing business".

Issuing a fine based on the income of the person receiving it makes sense for a handful of civil violations, if you can keep it from being exploited, but it is very exploitable especially if you have a lot of non-cash capital that you can leverage without ever generating any legally recognized income.