Among other things for a homeschool adventure we went to Warren Jeff's old cult compound, Colorado City, a "Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints" (Mormon) closed community.
Three generations ago an FLDS break-away cult built the city straddling state borders so they could flee either way depending on who raided them. You may have seen Jeffs, the last cult leader on America's Most Wanted. The mansion he had built in Colorado City is now a hotel with that name. It was awarded to a nephew of an ex-cult wife we stayed with there. All the church property was seized, put in a trust, and is being distributed to petitioners.
My interest was most keen on the cult's economics. It was stunning to see side-by-side an Indian Reservation with the most destitute poverty America has to offer... against all the wealth of Jeff's cult.
They had huge new complexes for each guy with multiple wives, to house dozens of children. More like apartment buildings with commercial kitchen and dining, recreational facilities, new SUV's in three and four car garages, and RV's.
The America's Most Wanted building has really thick high surrounding walls and iron gates that are controlled electronically, with security - and you know they were armed to the teeth.
The Indians have a mobile home or shack and one rusty vehicle. A cattle gate. You can just drive across. One barbed wire fence along the highway, and nuthin' but tumbleweed everywhere else on the Indian land.
The trust that got the seized property was over $100 million. It's an order of magnitude more than that in wealth changing hands. The businesses were worth far more than the buildings and land they were on, they had ongoing contracts, a cash flow, so who knows. Places equidistant from the same National Parks have giant hotels, restaurants, air service, etc.
The way Jeffs ran the program he inherited was to work out mathematically how many boys he had to ex-communicate in order to have the right number of wives to assign among himself and his buddies.
The first wife is a legal marriage. The next four or seven are "single moms". Nobody owns property. Nobody earns income. The church owns everything. The church has businesses like construction, the guys commute with tools, and the Church earns the money.
Men are assigned a place to live, or one is built for them, and provisions are supplied so long as he remains in good standing. Like Mormons in general these people were hard working, ant-colony level zealots.
So it is ironic, drawing full welfare benefits on multiple wives and having the state support most of your children. Warren Jeffs called it "bleeding the beast". Since society has made plural marriage illegal, then do war with the beast using his own rules against him.
These were technically legal welfare recipients, and it was no secret to the government the amount of money involved. That has to be one reason the government took him down. Talk about thumbing your nose at authority.
Women were educated through 6th grade, ostensibly - but towards the end especially it was a curriculum the genius Warren Jeffs wrote himself. Cartoon level stuff, hard to wade through.
The women were educated big time in home crafts and it meant there were no restaurants, laundromats, clothing stores, etc. in the colony. The hardware and tools the men used in their trades were owned/managed by the various companies the church owned. So they had buildings and land, industrial scale commerce but you could not buy a cup of sugar or a pack of gum anywhere.
Buying fabric wholesale and having the women make clothes - it is a tremendous value-added to the colony, not one penny of which is taxed. Warren Jeffs decided who went to dental or medical school, who learned plumbing and who farmed, etc.
The council, mayor, and sheriff's department were all FLDS before they nabbed Warren Jeffs. There was a highway intersection through town, but if you pulled into any street as an outsider you would be watched and followed.
There are some tragedies, like people booted off the land because they did not pay property taxes after the land was deemed no longer Church property. Some claim to have paid the church, and probably did. Things are in disarray. The council, mayor, and sheriff's offices are no longer FLDS.
Some were expecting a second coming, Warren would be carried out of jail on a chariot or something. They refused to pay the taxes on the principle that the state was jailing their Jesus.
So if someone stepped forward and petitioned for the property, and paid the back taxes, and could prove to this trust they had an FLDS connection like having bent over as one of Jeffy's 90 wives I guess then you could obtain good title.
So now, a Subway sandwich place opened up. A Dollar Store. People are doing bed and breakfasts. the tourist trade is going to quickly rise to prominence because Bryce, Zion, and the Grand Canyon are all nearby.
I'm sure all of us feel the same sense of tragedy as another cultural treasure is trampled upon by the State.
They got 'ole Jeffy on audiotape with a 14 year old. I think he married himself a 12 year old too. Which, by the way, is legal and certified by judges in the USA for Muslims.
Three generations ago an FLDS break-away cult built the city straddling state borders so they could flee either way depending on who raided them. You may have seen Jeffs, the last cult leader on America's Most Wanted. The mansion he had built in Colorado City is now a hotel with that name. It was awarded to a nephew of an ex-cult wife we stayed with there. All the church property was seized, put in a trust, and is being distributed to petitioners.
My interest was most keen on the cult's economics. It was stunning to see side-by-side an Indian Reservation with the most destitute poverty America has to offer... against all the wealth of Jeff's cult.
They had huge new complexes for each guy with multiple wives, to house dozens of children. More like apartment buildings with commercial kitchen and dining, recreational facilities, new SUV's in three and four car garages, and RV's.
The America's Most Wanted building has really thick high surrounding walls and iron gates that are controlled electronically, with security - and you know they were armed to the teeth.
The Indians have a mobile home or shack and one rusty vehicle. A cattle gate. You can just drive across. One barbed wire fence along the highway, and nuthin' but tumbleweed everywhere else on the Indian land.
The trust that got the seized property was over $100 million. It's an order of magnitude more than that in wealth changing hands. The businesses were worth far more than the buildings and land they were on, they had ongoing contracts, a cash flow, so who knows. Places equidistant from the same National Parks have giant hotels, restaurants, air service, etc.
The way Jeffs ran the program he inherited was to work out mathematically how many boys he had to ex-communicate in order to have the right number of wives to assign among himself and his buddies.
The first wife is a legal marriage. The next four or seven are "single moms". Nobody owns property. Nobody earns income. The church owns everything. The church has businesses like construction, the guys commute with tools, and the Church earns the money.
Men are assigned a place to live, or one is built for them, and provisions are supplied so long as he remains in good standing. Like Mormons in general these people were hard working, ant-colony level zealots.
So it is ironic, drawing full welfare benefits on multiple wives and having the state support most of your children. Warren Jeffs called it "bleeding the beast". Since society has made plural marriage illegal, then do war with the beast using his own rules against him.
These were technically legal welfare recipients, and it was no secret to the government the amount of money involved. That has to be one reason the government took him down. Talk about thumbing your nose at authority.
Women were educated through 6th grade, ostensibly - but towards the end especially it was a curriculum the genius Warren Jeffs wrote himself. Cartoon level stuff, hard to wade through.
The women were educated big time in home crafts and it meant there were no restaurants, laundromats, clothing stores, etc. in the colony. The hardware and tools the men used in their trades were owned/managed by the various companies the church owned. So they had buildings and land, industrial scale commerce but you could not buy a cup of sugar or a pack of gum anywhere.
Buying fabric wholesale and having the women make clothes - it is a tremendous value-added to the colony, not one penny of which is taxed. Warren Jeffs decided who went to dental or medical school, who learned plumbing and who farmed, etc.
The council, mayor, and sheriff's department were all FLDS before they nabbed Warren Jeffs. There was a highway intersection through town, but if you pulled into any street as an outsider you would be watched and followed.
There are some tragedies, like people booted off the land because they did not pay property taxes after the land was deemed no longer Church property. Some claim to have paid the church, and probably did. Things are in disarray. The council, mayor, and sheriff's offices are no longer FLDS.
Some were expecting a second coming, Warren would be carried out of jail on a chariot or something. They refused to pay the taxes on the principle that the state was jailing their Jesus.
So if someone stepped forward and petitioned for the property, and paid the back taxes, and could prove to this trust they had an FLDS connection like having bent over as one of Jeffy's 90 wives I guess then you could obtain good title.
So now, a Subway sandwich place opened up. A Dollar Store. People are doing bed and breakfasts. the tourist trade is going to quickly rise to prominence because Bryce, Zion, and the Grand Canyon are all nearby.
I'm sure all of us feel the same sense of tragedy as another cultural treasure is trampled upon by the State.
They got 'ole Jeffy on audiotape with a 14 year old. I think he married himself a 12 year old too. Which, by the way, is legal and certified by judges in the USA for Muslims.
via International Skeptics Forum http://bit.ly/2SEj0HK
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