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… why don't they also spell "façiliate" "façetious" "façets" with a cedilla. For that matter why don't they spell çedilla with a cedilla?

I agree that the cedilla in facade is not needed in English, and that in this context it communicates more about the writer than about the pronunciation of the word. Having said that, I must comment that MS Word auto-corrects my typing of facade to façade and I would be unlikely even to notice the change. (N.B. MS Word in the person of the infernal Clippy has also complained about my typing of "doing good" meaning to do good deeds, pleading that I change it to "doing well". I coldly refused.)

I feel the same way about façade as about the use of the dieresis in cooperate (coöperate). We don't feel the need to use any diacritic to indicate that the sh in dishearten is not pronounced /ʃ/ as a digraph, but /s/ followed by /h/. Perhaps, if there were two words with the same spelling, but with differing pronunciation, the diacritic would be more helpful and, thus, more enduring
(c.f. recreation vs. re-creation).

In French, the cedilla is used only before the "hard" vowels (i.e. a, o, u) to distinguish the pronunciation as /s/, as opposed to the natural pronunciation as /k/. Before "soft" vowels, the c is always pronounced as /s/. (Consider how in English we use a fleeting k as in to politic, politicking, politicked; to picnic, picnicking, picnicked)

So your other examples are impossible. The cedilla would never be written in these orthographic contexts.

To illustrate, there are lots of words in French for which the presence and absence of the cedilla alternate based on the vowel that follows in a grammatical ending (e.g. the French verb recevoir – to receive:

(Present – Future – Imperfect)
je reçois recevrai recevais
tu reçois recevras recevais
il reçoit recevra recevait
nous recevons recevrons recevions
vous recevez recevrez receviez
ils reçoivent recevront recevaient

Present participle
recevant

Passé composé
Auxiliary verb avoir
Past participle reçu

(Subjunctive – Conditional – Passé simple – Imperfect subjunctive)
je reçoive recevrais reçus reçusse
tu reçoives recevrais reçus reçusses
il reçoive recevrait reçut reçût
nous recevions recevrions reçûmes reçussions
vous receviez recevriez reçûtes reçussiez
ils reçoivent recevraient reçurent reçussent

Imperative
(tu) reçois
(nous) recevons
(vous) recevez

A few comments:

1. I'm with Glenn. I would also leave them all out. I do think, Glenn, it may mark you as an anti-academic, but not as an anti intellectual; at least, in the European sense i.e., an intellectual is not defined by the job one holds but by the values he or she holds. I accept your explanation that it doesn't make sense to even consider using diacritical marks with words such as "facilitate" etc.

2. Grant, I didn't know the New Yorker was known for their style preferences. That surprises me. I've always thought of them as the model of Strunkiness.

3. Glenn, it's interesting that your Word program spells facade with a cedilla and my MS Word program on my Mac doesn't (BTW neither does this program give me red line prompts when I write facade without a cedilla). It raises an interesting question: to what extend are our black box computer programs determining our usage of language?

3. Grant, in my opinion, the fact that young people don't know how to pronounce facade when they encounter it in reading isn't a valid argument for the use of a cedilla by the New Yorker. First, very few young people read the New Yorker, second, if a young person knows what a cedilla is, he or she is likely to know how to pronounce facade without one; third, if they don't know what a cedilla is, it won't help them with their pronunciation any way.

As far as I can tell, no one has refuted my original premise, that spelling facade with a cedilla takes away from the meaning of the sentence and focuses it on the word. Or, as Glenn says, "on the writer."

I see your point about Acai. But English has never been known for phonetic spelling. And nobody has suggested that Caesar or Caesura might need a helpful cedilla for those who are unfamiliar with those words.

Besides, would someone unfamiliar with the word Facade know what a cedilla means for the pronunciation?

I've not been to a pawn shop either.

This afternoon, as we were waiting for a meeting to begin, I asked a colleague who was raised in Portugal about the Brazilian spelling. This mild, soft-spoken young lady began by likening the spelling differences to those between British and American English. Then, to my surprise, she flushed and picked up some steam, "but then somebody decided to change Iberian Portuguese spelling ... I don't understand how ... the original source and authority ... how dare anyone ... imagine!" The meeting leader had to verbally interrupt her after his many ahems failed to catch her attention.

I have some questions, but I'm afraid to reopen the topic. At this point, I'm not sure if she uses the revised spelling or not.

I like diacritical marks. I think that in languages that have them (French, Spanish, Vietnamese, Scandinavian) it's probably easier to learn proper pronunciation than in languages that don't have them (German, Italian, English). Think how much easier English would be if,for example, long and short vowels were distinguished by the appropriate diacritical. Or spoken and silent consonants. Etc.