Posts by JeffT

9

Notice to the Congregation and Members of the Burns Kingdom Hall - possible entitlement to monetary distributions

by OrphanCrow in

jw
friends

*i saw this posted on reddit and thought that it might interest some here.... https://btimesherald.com/classifieds/.

notice to the congregation and members of the burns kingdom hall of jehovah’s witnesses, as of 5-17-2011. notice is hereby given that the trustee of the zelma christine brooks revocable living trust is attempting to identify all qualifying beneficiaries fitting the following description:.

“dedicated, baptized active heads of households, male or female, members of the burns, oregon congregation jehovah’s witnesses,” on the exact date of 5-17-2011.. qualifying individuals may be entitled to monetary distributions from the above named trust.

JeffT

I just did a little snooping around. She died in September, according to the public page of My Life she had a net worth of $50,000 to $100,000. Her listed income was $10,000/year. My guess is that's Social Security. A revocable trust means she retained control of the funds until she died, now the money is being disbursed according to the terms of the trust. If the language about moving, DFing etc not effecting entitlement to the funds is in the trust document, she made it clear she wants the money to go to the individuals, NOT the WTBS.

I'm sure the Society will put pressure on recipients to pass along the money. I hope somebody has the backbone to tell them to go pound sand, there isn't a thing they can do about it legally.

17

Do you think its stupid that JWs can't date regular people?

by nowawake14 in

jw
friends

that is absolutely the number one rule that i resent.. i feel sorry for some of those poor dependent minded jws who can't find anyone to marry.

all because they were only allowed to be with witnesses.

what a bunch of boloney!

JeffT

Can't date regular people? Hell, they can't even date each other. My wife and I were both converts (we met about the time we got baptized). Having been "out in the world" we knew what dating looked like. This led to counsel about spending too much time together alone. I don't know how you're supposed to learn anything about somebody you can't even have a private conversation with.

We've been married a bit more than 44 years, seems to have worked out OK.

39

When you were an active JW, did you ever have dealings with a pyramid scheme?

by Tameria2001 in

i'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

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.

39

When you were an active JW, did you ever have dealings with a pyramid scheme?

by Tameria2001 in

i'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 in

jw
friends

yesterday, 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 in

hey 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 in

jw
friends

how 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 in

can 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 in

ok, 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 in

jw
friends

rights 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.