I know the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating at least a few of these groups, unfortunately the SEC can only do something if the company tries to go public. What the SEC was looking at is lack of disclosure of an important number: inside sales. You'll hear that "XYZ" is a $5,000,000,000 a year business. What they don't tell you is that $4,999,900,000 of those sales is to employees (or agents or whatever they call them). Most of what they move are the marketing kits, or samples or some such. The conventions of various sizes are cash cows, where they make the real money.
Posts by JeffT
-
39When you were an active JW, did you ever have dealings with a pyramid scheme?
by Tameria2001 ini'm not sure why this memory popped up, and i was wondering if any others, when they were still active jw had dealings with a pyramid scheme involving other witnesses in the organization?
at the time it was 1993, and my husband and i were still newlyweds.
once in a while, we would attend a neighboring congregation because that was where he grew up, and some of his family was still attending there at the time.
-
-
JeffT
-
39
When you were an active JW, did you ever have dealings with a pyramid scheme?
by Tameria2001 ini'm not sure why this memory popped up, and i was wondering if any others, when they were still active jw had dealings with a pyramid scheme involving other witnesses in the organization?
at the time it was 1993, and my husband and i were still newlyweds.
once in a while, we would attend a neighboring congregation because that was where he grew up, and some of his family was still attending there at the time.
-
-
JeffT
Yes, we were approached about Amway, some deal with putting stripe decals on cars, my wife was talked into trying to sell Avon for awhile. After we left and started attending a mainstream church we were hit up to get into Amway a couple of times, and a telecom deal. My wife's sister (LDS) is always working some scheme or another.
I noticed a funny thing that unites all of these deals: everybody I ever talked to about one was ABOUT to be rich. None of them ever were, but it was going to happen soon. Just like JW's and Armageddon, the big money is always right around the corner.
Once I got into accounting and finance and knew how to read a financial statement I began to be amazed the people running these things aren't in jail. There seems to be some sort of loophole in the laws that lets people get away with this.
-
81
Are You Horrifed if Someone Goes Into a “Massage Parlor”?
by minimus inyesterday, robert kraft, the owner of the new england patriots, got busted for getting a massage and more.
they say there is another more high profile person who also got busted.. does this stuff upset you that some men have gone into a massage parlor for possibly more than a massage?
?.
-
-
JeffT
No I'm not horrified that the owner of the Patriots got busted for soliciting sex. Celebrating, yes. I guess he's cheating more ways than one.
-
14
Beware of divulging any personal info on this site!
by Crazyguy2 inhey this is crazyguy, forgot my password so this is my new name.
anyway be sure to all you new ones that if you post any personal info on this forum or respond to pms asking for email addresses this information maybe able to be used by wt spies to try and find out who you are!
someone has recently pmd me asking for my email address or more accurately to respond to his email address which would give him mine, this maybe an innocent request but this person also has no posting history.
-
-
JeffT
And there's me (and I hope more like me). My wife and I officially DA'd ourselves thirty years ago next month. I've made no attempt to hide my location or identity because I don't give a rat's ass if the WTBS knows who or where I am. Of course we're helped that at this point we have no friends or family shunning us. There are some good friends I miss and would love to see again. They just need to realize that they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting me back to a Kingdom Hall.
-
12
How much longer until more people believe the earth is flat?
by Crazyguy2 inhow much longer until more people believe the earth is flat then there are jws?
with these youtube channels using propaganda and the bible i believe over a million people now believe the earth is flat.
it maybe not much longer.
-
-
JeffT
If by "more" you mean more than half, you've got a ways to go. One million belivers is approximately 1/7500 of the human population.
If by "more" you mean more than there were yesterday, well there's a sucker born every minute. It still won't add up to much.
-
7
Navigating Sec.gov
by APieceOfShitNamedTate incan anyone explain exactly how to navigate sec.gov in order to find records of watchtower's investments?
i saw the video called why i left jehovah's witnesses from exjw analyzer where he talked about this.
i'm never able to find anything when i go there.
-
-
JeffT
The WTBS isn't publicly traded so it isn't required to file reports with the SEC. I don't believe the SEC compiles its information in a way that would allow you to easily find out who the WTBS has invested in, short of reading every SEC filing for every company required to report.
-
9
henrietta m riley
by lostsheep82 inok, there's been tons on this i know.
here's what i found and spent some time researching some of the companies.
in my search i found in 2014 boeing, lockheed martin & northrop grumman which supports the military.
-
-
JeffT
This argument is a non-starter if you understand trusts. The WTBS has no control over what the trust owns, invests in, or how it disburses the funds. The only thing it could possibly do is send the checks back to the trust. You might make a case that by keeping the money, it is benefitting from defense industries, but I think their are much bigger fish to fry when looking for reasons to attack the WTBS.
Reminder: I'm a retired accountant.
-
121
What Are Your Rights?
by Simon inrights seem to be everywhere nowadays.
say hello to someone in the wrong way and you've violated 101 of their human rights.
people imagine they have the right to all sorts of things - food, healthcare, housing, internet ... so many things are labelled basic rights and then you get onto their human rights - a favourite of the do-nothing bodies such as the un to declare.
-
-
JeffT
My wife and I are collecting social security. If that was all we had, we'd be impoverished. I'm not sure that is a step forward. If the voting rights act was such a good deal, why did they not make it apply to the whole country?
I think the biggest problem we have is each side trying to define what the other side thinks. I've read too many articles (and a good number of posts on this site) that start out "Liberals believe that..." or "Conservatives think that..." those to phrases then followed by something about how the other side feeds kittens to wolves or some such nonsense. It destroys what little conversation we have left in us.
-
-
-
JeffT
I'd rather have a Congress that knows how to do its job, then we wouldn't have to worry so much about the President. -
40
Flat Earth Jw and Galileo Galilei
by Earthmeasured inin the image you can see what jw wrote about how galileo was treated by the catholic church.
now they are disfelloshipping me because i believe the earth is flat.
is this coherent?.
-
-
JeffT
So which idea is dumber: "The earth is flat", or "the GB is interested in my theories?"