Posts by JeffT

44

The Poor the Wealthy and the Middle Class

by Simon in

the poor spendthe middle-class savethe wealthy invest.

the unique circumstances of the lockdown and stimulus checks has highlighted these differences in stark ways.. on one hand, you have jumps in sales and valuation of companies like foot locker and nike, as people spend their "free" government money on sneakers.

they blow it on useless tat.

JeffT

There is an easy route to increased wealth if people will take it: maximize your contribution to your 401(k). This is especially true if your employer matches your contribution. Once money is in the 401(k) it gets invested in (drum roll) stocks and bonds. The profits are also reinvested. And none of this money is taxable so you get to be one of those rich people that doesn't pay taxes on his money.

The thing that stops most people is they fact that it takes twenty years or so for this to start showing significant gains. You have to be ready to play long ball, this won't show immediate results. Gratification is delayed, something Americans aren't good at.

25

Question

by Gorb in

jw
friends

what is the probability that a religious organisation is used for money laundering?

for example, large amounts of money are raised by the organization as a donation and then legally introduced into the financial system.

is there any chance that jw.org is used for this kind of purpose?

JeffT

Keep in mind, the main reason to launder money (in the US) is to avoid paying taxes. The WTBS is a church and doesn't pay taxes they have no need to hide their income.

To answer the OP (if I understand the question correctly) in some ways a church would be a good vehicle for cleaning dirty money. Every Sunday you have the pimps and drug dealers drop the week's earnings into the collection plate. Then you split the money however you want as payments to contractors, salaries etc. The down side is you'd have to have a lot of church staff in on the scam, and possibly a bank or two. I suspect that would lead to a visit from the IRS, see Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

25

Question

by Gorb in

jw
friends

what is the probability that a religious organisation is used for money laundering?

for example, large amounts of money are raised by the organization as a donation and then legally introduced into the financial system.

is there any chance that jw.org is used for this kind of purpose?

JeffT

Great Teacher, better be careful, you could end up like this:

http://www.marksverylarge.com/images/7202cover_l.jpg

68

Help with 1975 please

by jhine in

i answered a question on quora about jw flip flops .

i mentioned, amongst other things , the 1975 debacle.

how witnesses were told that armageddon was coming in the fall of that year.

JeffT

I started studying with JW's right after I graduated from college in 1973. Everybody (and I mean everybody) was talking about 1975. What seems to be their common excuse for this is to blame it on the rank and file running ahead of the organization. Fine, make them show you where they chastised "the brothers" for making this up.

They can't do it, because they were encouraging the talk, not trying to make people act sensibly.

55

Alec Baldwin Shot a Woman Dead

by Simon in

so alec baldwin shot a woman dead on set and seriously injured another man.. what do we put this down as?

a tragic accident?

maybe ... except that implies no one was to blame.. the more you find out, the more it seems that this was due to negligence and lack of attention to safety.

JeffT

I grew up around guns. My father was an avid outdoorsman, if it wasn't hunting season the only thing that kept us off the range some days was fishing.

I learned at a very young that there was no such thing as an unloaded gun, and you never ever pointed a gun at something unless you wanted to shoot it. To this day I can not touch a gun without checking the chamber, and even if I just checked it, the muzzle is always pointed at the ground.

The question here is: were these people attacking Mr. Baldwin? If yes then he can claim self-defense. If he was holding a gun that discharged and killed some one, he should be charged with negligent homicide. There may be some defense to that, I don't know what it would be.

22

Dune (1984) - er, yeah, lol

by LoveUniHateExams in

so, i saw dune (1984) yesterday.

i knew it wasn't gonna be great, but deary me.

i'm not gonna lie - this film is not good, in fact it's laughably bad in places.. first, i'd like to know the thought process that went behind choosing david lynch to write/direct.

JeffT

Just ran across this: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/dune-better-in-hebrew

Worth reading as a look at the linguistics of the books/movies. Interesting minor point -- he says that David Lynch didn't read the book before he made the movie. That would explain a lot.

22

Dune (1984) - er, yeah, lol

by LoveUniHateExams in

so, i saw dune (1984) yesterday.

i knew it wasn't gonna be great, but deary me.

i'm not gonna lie - this film is not good, in fact it's laughably bad in places.. first, i'd like to know the thought process that went behind choosing david lynch to write/direct.

JeffT

Turning a book like Dune into a movie is a difficult project. It is too easy to end up with either a bunch of people sitting around talking, or the point of the book gets lost in gunfire and explosions (for example Starship Troopers). Rarely you see movies that are better than the book.

I'll put Shawshank Redemption in that category. I may take some heat for this but I think Kevin Costner's The Postman is better than the book.

I did not like either of the two Dune movies. I'll see this one when its on HBO.

Edited to add: the Islamic influences are obvious in the books. Paul is terrified that a Jihad in his name will sweep the whole universe.

15

How did you feel after writing a Disassociation letter?

by Iamallcool in

jw
friends

i might do it one day.

.

JeffT

I think people should leave the Watchtower on whatever terms suit them (the people leaving not the WTBS).

Wife and I DA'd almost a year after we stopped JW related activity. Both of us were converts, I had no JW relatives, wife only had two and we didn't see them very often. Both of us wanted to be on record as leaving because we didn't believe in what they taught, nor did we accept them as having any authority in our lives.

We told them we knew they would make an announcement. They could say we'd left, if we found out they'd said anything else we'd take legal action (and I had a lawyer if we needed him). We also attached about thirty pages of research telling them why we would not accept their authority on anything.

It felt good.

18

Superman and Captain America

by punkofnice in

i see that marvel are introducing a gay captain america as dc announce the son of superman is bi-sexual.. whereas i don't give a hoot about a person's use of their genitalia as long as it is consensual and not with kids, i'm finding all this 'inclusivity' becoming a bit boring.. are dc and marvel just virtue signalling in the hopes of selling comics and not being set on fire by the antifa frauds?

?.

JeffT

For a discussion of super-hero sexuality I provide the following. I don't think this will make it into any of the movies.

Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex

20

Do Jehovah's Witnesses interpret the Bible properly?

by Vanderhoven7 in

do jehovah's witnesses interpret the bible properly?.

jehovah's witnesses see the bible as an organizational book which only the faithful and discreet slave (currently 8 men headquartered in warwick new york) can interpret properly.

the faithful slave was first appointed in brooklyn in 1919 and given the exclusive right and ability to understand and teach the bible properly.

JeffT

I had never heard the term "hermeneutics" -- the theory and methodology of Biblical interpretation, and "exegesis" -- critical interpretation and explanation until I left the JW's.

There is a simple explanation why JW's don't talk about these words: they don't do that. The Watchtower has no consistent, logical and rational approach to interpreting the Bible. They ignore such factors as who was writing a particular book, the intended audience, and the relevant history and issues current at the time the book was written. For the Watchtower, all Bible verses are equal.