https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kblFVVbEz4I

Anyone seen watched this 1969 propaganda film? First they go into how American BYU with all it's flag waving is a peaceful community. A student body that is "clean" and don't look or smell like "Tarzan, Jane or Cheetah". They are 100% in support of defending Americanism in Vietnam.

Then there is a segments showing an older couple who have worked all their lives and are tired of farming in Idaho, so BYU shows up one day and explains that if they deed their estates over they can avoid "capital gains tax." And how great it is to not pay taxes, because America is a great place, and BYU doesn't have any Beatniks.

This is horrible, Mormondom inc and BYU. needs to be prosecuted for this crap, and lose tax exempt status, What's most disturbing is that there are people who really believed this and have lost their estates to this scam.

Thoughts?

When I was a member of the Church living in another province we had a family visiting to our ward. The husband was revered because he was "working for the Church in Utah." That isn't unusual because most ambitious people would leave our town (as I would) because we had the highest level of urban poverty in Canada.

However, I was surprised to learn that he is employed by LDS Philanthropies. He job was to "encourage" elderly people to leave their estates to the Church. What a leech!

I certainly don't have any first-hand knowledge of the situation, but it is likely that these salespeople aren't actual employees of the church, but independent businessmen who are compensated for their efforts by receipt of a certain percentage of the 'take', less an automatic 10% deduction for tithing.

The odious aspect of this would be the 'sales rep' encouraging those donating to cut off the kids so that their, the reps', cuts would be bigger.

I tend to place used car salemen on a higher level than the 'Donate to ghawd' sales reps.

I thought I saw a good-looking hermano walk by with a cute senorita. :D

I'm an ogre, or as they say in Spanish, a real guapito...

Say, aren’t those gold fillings in your teeth? There’s a temple we want to build...

EOD's fillings are of recycled rubber. You have to remember his nickname is El Cheapo.

Or was that El Chapo? My Spanish sucks.

So close!

It's "El Chulo"

Is that like a churro?

Just speculating about the couple selling their dairy farm. While the tout the value of the farm at 300K, they only mention that they would receive a monthly living allowance.

Any guesses of a paltry amount?

I am thinking a $200 check. Can you picture the Idaho couple in a run-down camper/trailer making a retirement trip to the Grand Teton? (I am choosing a close locale~ I think the area is gorgeous)

I think the church is run by crooks that gladly swindle old people's assets. I hated how they made a big deal about not taking any government handouts, but they made no bones about fleecing members' tithing and the BYU Education fund. My parents in the 1970s were always pressured to make a "small" donation.

Exactly! the poor elderly couple lose hundreds of thousands and in exchange get the equivalent of a reverse mortgage with very small monthly annuity payments. The church has bilked hundreds of people of their assets like this. All the while pretending to be true Americans defending Vietnam, waving flags, Apple pie and parades, yet preaching ways to avoid taxes. Wilkinson, Lee or Benson certainly weren't going to go themselves and fight in Vietnam, they weren't going to experience discrimination of the time before the 1960s.

This clip from 1969 is a great reflection of the sociological situation of the time. Essentially there was an older established generation that completely disregarded anything that the younger generation was saying. They completely disregarded the campus demonstrations of young men who didn't want to die in a foreign war. They disregarded the civil rights movement and those demonstrations.

The only thing Mormon officials care about is looking "clean" and appearing to have loyalty to America and LBJ, I guess?

going to leave his millions to the church, but he didn't. He would have liked to take it with him, but the kids and grand kids did get it.

My dad would have NEVER even considered it. Not for a moment. (He had a farm.)

Well, threats like that must have made his family feel good about the church.

My uncle was not active mormon until he was in his 50s, when they called him in and challenged him to quit smoking and drinking so he could be called as bishop. My boss was one of his counselors and my boss should have been bishop, not my uncle, but my uncle had more money. His oldest son had 6 marriages and finally got married in the temple in his 60s. He has one son how is a bastard who has always been active mormon. I've talked about him before. His youngest daughter, my age, died of cancer at age 37.

My aunt, who was always active mormon, told me several times that he was a lot more fun before he found religion. He was really upset about having to leave his money behind. He made some really good real estate purchases and that is where he made his money.

His daughter told me that he was scared to death of dying. He spent a few years in a nursing home, just wouldn't go. He had no clue how to give a talk. I had a friend who was in his stake who told me he thought he must be senile by the talks he gave, but he wasn't senile.

He served alcohol at all the family parties up until he found religion.

So, I'm sure his saying he was going to give the money to the church was just one of those things. He was also afraid his wife would spend it all once he was dead. She was really angry at him at the time he died. She and I were really good friends.

So now his kids have spent it. I would bet if he could have put the cash in his casket, he would have.

I had a TBM aunt like that. Nobody could pinch a penny harder than her.

She died at age 49 because she didn't want to waste money on cancer treatments. She was an RN and died of breast cancer.

Her husband divided all of her savings between their 6 kids when she died. I heard they each got around $200k.

Those kids deserved every penny. They grew up in poverty and lived like dirty little paupers.

I'm sure they appreciated the money after she died, but shame on her husband for letting her do that to their children. Yet, i'm sure the Mormon cult got all of theirs every 30 days. Wouldn't want to burn in hell.

I don't usually take the time to watch videos this long, but I had to check this one out to see whether it actually said "A student body that is 'clean' and don't look or smell like 'Tarzan, Jane or Cheetah'".

It was a quote from Paul Harvey, so neither macaRomney nor BYU can be blamed for that excrescence, though the producer (Scott Whitaker) did think it worth putting in the film. Oh, and no "h" on Cheeta.

On a personal note, I saw an old office mate walking by on a BYU sidewalk (who turned out more "conservative" than macaRomney - surprisingly we are still speaking (barely and rarely)!). There were also shots of Tommy Hudspeth, a young but already bald Stephen Covey, Ernie W, and others whose names I no longer remember.


Most of the tax advice is no longer relevant. What they were pushing was essentially a reverse mortgage to a charitable organization. Not an awful idea, unless you would have inherited the asset that went to BYU, in which case you probably would not have been thrilled.


The main draw of the Mormon Church in the late 1960s and 1970s was that they would protect your children from becoming the proverbial hippie freaks. I suspect a sizable chunk of the people here on RFM either joined then, or their parents did, as a way of protecting the family. Back in those days, it was not at all unusual for whole families to join. Now, not so much, at least not in the industrialized world.

Paul Harvey's "Tarzan" comment to the BYU student body about hippies was actually a quote from then-California governor Ronald Reagan.

https://youtu.be/yfg9WL6j5V4

Reagan was almost choked to death while filming “Bedtime for Bonzo”. Who knew chimps were such good judges of character?

Point well taken. Maybe that really was the whole point of the propaganda film, to confiscate peoples wealth or blackmail the younger generation into not "becoming hippy freaks." What bothers me most is that it is done in the name of 'patriotism' all the while that they are actually talking about tax avoidance.

The film also mentions that BYU doesn't use government money to operate and is mostly funded through tithing, I wonder if that's the same today? But in the end it doesn't make a difference, they are certainly benefiting off a government that they don't want to financially support or help. We as the ordinary citizens are stuck with that burden. The burden of paying for roads, sidewalks, law enforcement, etc for Mormondom inc. and her buildings.

The BYU heads weren't even going to consider the younger generations might be right in what they were protesting, a questionable war.

They allude to BYU rejecting "millions of dollars of government handouts" back then, but don't really explain why. It is so they could avoid compliance with federal civil rights laws (which are enforced through funding).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2019 06:48PM by Aloysius.

Good point about the very heavy emphasis on tax avoidance. Give it all to us, or you might have to (shudder) pay some tax on it. Never mind that giving it all to us is not much different than a 100% tax.

I'm not sure about 1969, but for at least the last 40 years (the time period I am aware of) the estate tax wouldn't apply to a $300K estate in any case. Cap gains taxes took a big cut in the late 1970s, but even before that long term capital gains were given preferential low rates.

The cheesy music and overly-dramatic voice over also made me wince.

Wasn't there a fairly recent video made by the church with a senior couple telling the public about the option of leaving your estate to the church? And it may have had the message that your apostate kids don't deserve it, or something. Anyway, thanks to RfM and other ex-Mormon sites criticizing it a lot, the church took it down. As I recall. Anyone remember this?

YES! I do remember that commercial on KBYU! The senior couple were from the ward in which I grew up, and were friends of my parents. I was visiting at my TBM parents' house, when they were 86, and my father had terminal cancer. That very same senior couple came to our door at about 7:30 at night, and my parents had not told me about any planned visit--they might have just dropped in. The couple made it clear that they wanted to speak to my parents privately, without me there, so, I stupidly left the room. From the kitchen, I could hear the couple yammering on and on--mostly the man--and my parents saying very little, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. Finally, after about two hours, I started thinking something was "off", and I went into the room smiling, and making a joke that it was "after 9:00, my parents' bedtime", and that they should continue the conversation another time--just like my parents used to say to me as a teen-ager. My parents were glad I came in. They were extremely tired!

My parents told me that the couple had been trying to persuade them to leave their estate to BYU! Just like their commercial! My parents had explained that they had already set up a family scholarship fund for the BYU Law School, and had made other donations to BYU over the years. Dad had stood his ground in refusing--but he and Mom were so sick and worn-down that Dad wrote a huge check to BYU, and gave it to the couple. I told Dad, "I'm calling Dan!" My oldest brother Dan is a former bishop, and I wasn't sure what his reaction would be.

My brother drove from another town, early in the morning, and he and Dad went to the bank, and stopped payment on the check!

wow! that's horrifying. The real wealth of mormondom I suspect comes from estates, not from tithing or donations. It's wealthy people in California and Utah that have been bamboozled.

BTW, Paul Harvey came to BYU then, and was a real hit at his big performance. There were also skits put on my students. Harvey himself loved the whole thing, and the next day on his broadcast he said all this stuff about no flag burning at BYU, and the students' support of the Vietnam war, etc. I was at the event, and I also heard the broadcast. Still, it was long ago, and I don't remember any details.

Did you ever eat at the Mr. Steak on South State St., in Orem?

Who had the money to eat out? Not me. I didn't even have a viable way to get to Orem. Back then, Orem was geographically separate from Provo. It was a strange and wonderful place.

Of course, they use words like "legacy," "future generations," and "endowment," but basically, they want in on my estate. Future generations? Don't they know we'll all be dead in 10 years or so?

Fat chance.

I never would have known about it, except my cousin (who I call a bastard) told me. He is a CPA. I had called him to get his sister's phone number as she wanted to buy our farm and he told me that. None of us had to pay taxes on the money from my parents' estate.