In the FLDS there is a philosophy of taking advantage of their U.S. Government calling it "the Beast."

They have bilked millions from the Government via School Districts and other FDLS run Government organizations as well as taking advantage of all the Government handouts they can collect. They routinely ignore child labor laws along with bigamy laws.

And the best place in the country to pull this off - Utah.

Makes me wonder if this philosophy has a relative in LDS Inc. because I believe Uncle Dale said that there is a rich history ala 'The Council of 50' for LDS Inc. establishing itself as a theocracy.

This also goes along with Alma The Prophet judging Korihor - the Book of Mormon ideal that religious people and their religions are better governors of "We The People."

No. I was always taught to rely on the Church for help, rather than the Government. Even better was to learn to be self-reliant. It's more of a Boy Scout mentality.

Of course the cult taught us to only rely on it, & no one else. They didn't want hungry people eating fresh food they could get from food stamps. They only wanted them eating their bishop's storehouse who-knows-what-in-the-hell-it-is garbage.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2013 03:15PM by Tristan.

GAs came out loud and strong against the policies of the FDR administration. They did not want any government help, probably because it undercut the LDS welfare program and keeping members dependent on the church.

Of course, that may be "I don't know if we teach that," topic now.

I think TSCC has done a total turn around in the last 30+ years. When we were newly married, hubby barely enlisted in the military and Iwas pregnant, we were really destitute. However, we were told that in no circumstance should we seek government assistance. Not even the free cheese program that was so popular then, but certainly not food stamps. We could have used it so badly. Don't even know how I had healthy babies when I subsisted on hamburger and potatoes. Period. Of course, the fact that we still had $20 after paying all our bills (including tithing) meant we still weren't eligible for food from the Bishop's storehouse, I guess, because it was never offered to us the couple times we talked to the bishop about our situation. We were told to go to our parents. Our parents rarely offered help and we were too proud to beg.

So it ticked me off so badly when I lived in Provo a decade ago and would stand in line behind people using food stamps WAY more than I do now in Memphis, one of the highest poverty cities in America. Add to that the number of couples in TSCC using welfare (yes, they hate that word, but that's what it is) to have babies. They have no problem taking WIC, Medicaid, TANF, etc. It would have helped us so much in the early days, but nooooooo. The church will help it's own, except it usually won't. But now.... Bleed the Beast. Just don't say they encourage it and are no different from the FLDS.

Gramps is dead but does anyone know if this has changed?
http://www.askgramps.org/4307/how-would-the-mormon-church-participate-in-helping-us-with
“Latter-day Saints are encouraged not to accept unearned government assistance. If an individual accepts unearned government assistance, he may not accept Church commodity or financial assistance at the same time.”

My daughter used all those government bennies when her husband was in grad school to become a chaplain.

And free cheese?! I remember that! The government was, like, "We have too much cheese! Free cheese for EVERYbody!" Sadly, most of it was crap cheese. Later they did that with an overabundance of meat. BAD meat. The commissary program distributed it to all the soldiers and airmen where I was. It was all USDA "standard," which means "commercial grade." Edible. Mostly for cats. Live and learn.

Greyfort Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> No. I was always taught to rely on the Church for
> help, rather than the Government. Even better was
> to learn to be self-reliant. It's more of a Boy
> Scout mentality.


^^this^^

For all its faults, "bleeding the beast" is not an issue in Mormonism.

I think they do promote the "bleeding the beast" mentality despite the "the govmint is no good" attitude of many Mormon politicians.

I worked with a young woman whose husband was a BYU student. Despite the fact that he had many years before he would finish (planned to go on to grad school), they began having kids as soon as they were married. I asked her how they could afford it and she told me that BYU has a counselor that helps young couples with children access government programs for help in supporting their growing broods.

At about this time, Dallin Hoax gave a speech at BYU in which he told the students if they waited until they finished their education to get married and begin a family then they were disobedient to the lord's commands and were just being selfish.

A friend of my daughter followed this astonishingly bad advice and now has two children that she and her husband are not able to provide for. One child has health issues. Their solution was to move to another state where the social program benefits are more generous.

I have several TBM nephews who have used food stamps and government welfare the entire time they were in school.

They got married right after their missions, had kids right away. They were in college with non working, non educated wives. Their own father is a Doctor. They also went to school to become Dr's.

The church never did anything for them, as they shouldn't have. The government shouldn't have been paying their way either. The family has plenty of money to put their kids through college, even Ivy League.

They used to call it "milking the gentiles".

I'm doing nofap, so no more "milking the gentiles".

I know mormon kids with wealthy parents who are on welfare while they go to medical school. Of course the parents don't like it if you put it that way.

They view it as getting assistance for their education. In the meantime the welfare kids are getting busy obeying the prophet and having one baby after another that they can't afford. It adds to their welfare money though, so yay!

same here, I have seen this before as well. The young MD in training starts having babies and it's all planned out, can't own a house so they can get Medicaid for the pregnancies. Then later they can make $200,000. While more responsible working class people pay as they go with insurance and don't rely on government. But Bleed the beast is alive and strong except it's quietly practiced, never openly taught from the podium.

Bleed the Beast could also be the philosophy of the church itself, where members are the beast, or tax payers are the beast.

Some interesting observations here:

http://www.the-exponent.com/mormons-and-the-morality-of-utilizing-public-assistance/

Interesting article.

I was under the impression that the cattle ranches and orange groves the TSSC owns were heavily subsidized by the goverment.

Self-suffiency preached to the members; the church itself has their hand out for every goverment "assitance" it can try to qualify for.

And of course the organization is largely tax-free, unlike the individual members because of it's "religious" status.

What makes you think they are heavily subsidized? I didn't even know they had orange groves, and the only "subsidy" for OJ that I am aware of is tariffs on Brazilian OJ, and I don't even know if that is still in place.

There is also a tariff on foreign sugar, which allows the price of US produced sugar to be higher than the international market price. I'm not aware of any price supports for beef. BTW, tariffs are not subsidies. They just jack up the retail price of the product. The government does't pay the producer, the customer pays them more.

Of course they are subsidized....either via the gov or another entity. Just insure your crop and when it doesn't come in, collect the payment. You know how many ranchers in Texas do that with wheat and cotton?? I know of one that has only had one crop come in the last ten years. A couple hundred acres and he collects nearly every year. I'm certain the morg does this, too.

The church no longer wants to hand out assistance to it's members. Of course, as with anything, it depends on your bishop. But I believe the new directive for those in need is that they ask for assistance from family first, then the government, and the church last. Even then, you may not get any help.

My guess is that things started to change when the recession hit, and bishops were seeing an increase in the number of people asking for assistance when the main or only breadwinner got laid off. I think that when those in SLC noticed that more fast offerings were being used at the local levels, they decided it was time to say that the church's program was now to be the last resort, after family and government resources were used up. Even then, it's doubtful that everyone would be able to get that help.

Mormon "bleeding the beast" means making money no matter how low they can go. If it means building casinos in Vegas, peddling porn in hotels, unloading caffeinated drinks for a share of profits, it matters not.

They lie to get people to pay them money, so I doubt their business dealings are any more honest.

Correct.

Wow. It sounds like things are really changing.

The church is a lot of bad things, including greedy and self-serving. But I don't think they encourage their members to live off of, or to get an abusive amount of public assistance. That would make the church look bad.

Look at the Mormon church as you would any brand. They don't want to tarnish it. The mormon money machine will grind to a stop if that system stops working. It will stop working if there is scandal, bad press, prosecution of leaders, etc.

Excellent point. If the Gov'ment is paying your bills they don't want to help you at all (if the above post I posted from "Ask Gramps" still holds true.)

The LDS "Beast" is its own members. Yes, they have a philosophy of "bleeding the beast" for the gain of the church leaders and their/ the churches investments......investments that DO NOT directly benefit the very people they are bleeding.

This has been done since Joseph Smith. The leaders gained, the general membership lost....sometimes everything they had, even their lives.

FLDS members have nothing monetarily to bleed....they are completely controlled. Therefor, FLDS had to find a new beast....the government.