The God Biz
Gospel fervor gleamed in 3,000 faces at the $30 million city arena at Charleston, W.Va. People around me, arms upraised, jerked in spasms as they loosed the unknown tongue: “Shend-a-la-goosh-a-ma. Dee-dee-dee-dee.” A young woman beside me leaped and squealed. Others wiped tears, swaying and rocking.
Evangelist Ernest Angley from Akron, a squat dynamo in a toupee, evoked the passion like a symphony conductor building a crescendo. He chanted faster into the transmitting microphone concealed in his elegant three-piece suit. His voice boomed from huge banks of speakers on each side of the stage:
“You’ve got to have the old-time power at this final hour. How many want to be blessed during the Ernest Angley program?” All hands rose. “Just open up to God. Say, ‘I’ll take the anointing, Lord.’ Say it: ‘Lord!’ ” The crowd shouted, “LORD!” “All of you that God has spoken to at some time, raise your hands.” Two thousand hands went up. “See, we’re not so crazy. We’re in touch with heaven. It doesn’t matter what people say, because we’re on our way to heaven. The Lord’s with us! The Lord’s with us! Come on, everyone: The Lord’s with us! The Lord’s with us!” The chant spread over the arena. Vaguely, I recalled Gott Mit Uns on Wehrmacht belt buckles.
While the fever was high, Angley launched a 40-minute collection: “Everyone say, ‘Lord, tell me what to give in this offering tonight.’ It’s good to make a covenant with God. I’d rather give my money to God than to doctors and drugstores. I know there are some here who could make a $1,000 covenant, or $500. Don’t be afraid. God will stand by you.”
He asked a show of hands by all who would make a $100 covenant. Barely a dozen hands rose. He exhorted and pleaded: “Not a penny goes to me or the singers. It all goes for TV time. Your money will reach new souls. Through TV, I preach to more people every weekend than Christ did in his whole time on earth. Isn’t that wonderful? And you’re part of it…. Don’t worry about your finances. Put it all in the hands of God.”
Then he called for $50 covenants. About 100 hands went up. “All right, everyone who can make a $25 covenant, stand up and say, ‘Lord, I love you.’ Stand up for Jesus. Stand and say, ‘I love you, Jesus’…. Now $10 covenants: Stand up and say, ‘I love Jesus. I love him. I love him. I love him’…. Now $5 covenants….”
Finally, after all had stood, the stocky preacher told the crowd to sit and write checks to insert in envelopes that had been distributed. While the people wrote, Angley’s gospel rock combo — with electric guitars, trap set, and grand piano — sang about going to heaven when the Rapture comes.
Afterward, the evangelist asked everyone to wave the filled envelopes over their heads. Then he called for a second offering of dollar bills to pay $1,000 arena rent and stagehand cost. Angley asked everyone to wave envelopes in one hand and dollars in the other. An ocean of fluttering mammon engulfed us. Ushers gathered the money in buckets and took it to a locked room under the bleachers.
The show concluded with a healing line. A mother presented her brain-damaged little boy. The preacher seized him with a shrieking “Heeeaaalllll!!!” and then chortled: “He felt that, all right.” Arthritic crones and hard-of-hearing laborers went through the line, many failing backward in a holy swoon when they were grabbed.
Angley also bestowed healing upon various cripples in wheelchairs in the front row. After the service, relatives wheeled them away.
In the arena lobby, assistants sold Angley books and magazines containing endless testimonial letters from followers saying their cancers or diabetes or rheumatism or warts had vanished at the healer’s touch. Angley’s columns say that God gave him the power to “discern spirits,” thus he can see ugly demons inside the ill. Likewise, he says, he can see an angel beside him onstage at every arena, while other angels move through crowds, plucking out demons and curing ailments.
After the show, Angley’s troupe boarded two vista-dome buses and two tractor-trailers for the next city, and the next convention arena. On weekends the evangelist returns to his home base: a garish Akron cathedral that cost his followers $2.5 million. It has imported chandeliers, Italian statues, 24-karat gold veneer on the pulpit and piano, a red-lit “fountain of blood,” and side-by-side pictures of Angley and Jesus. The cathedral is dedicated to the healer’s late wife, who died of ulcerative colitis despite his demon-extracting powers. Her tomb is under a 23-foot-high, 20-ton marble angel on the church lawn.
The day after the Charleston revival, I interviewed several people who had been healed onstage. A retired roofer with only four teeth claimed that he had been cured of hardening of the arteries, diabetes and myriad other ailments. He lapsed into the unknown tongue while telling me about it. As for a deaf-mute young man, his mother said his condition was unchanged. A plump matron mistakenly thought I worked for the Angley organization. She said her nerve and stomach trouble was improved, and “an inch-long thing that flopped in my ear is gone, praise the Lord!” She promised to begin mailing money soon. She asked if Angley’s staff would pray for “my boy Jack, who has a demon in him.” When I asked the nature of the demon, she said: “Well, Jack got sent back to prison because he couldn’t stay out of fights while he was on parole.”
That’s one glimpse into the gospel gold mine that is producing billions — billions — of dollars in America. Angley keeps his revenue tightly secret, but the scope of his national tours and 100-station telecasts indicates a gross between $10 and $20 million a year.
Here’s a look down a different shaft of the gold mine:
A young Californian, Timothy Goodwin of Long Beach, was paralyzed in a car wreck that wasn’t his fault. That was his first tragedy. His second was religious. He later filed a fraud suit in Auglaize County Court in Ohio, telling this pathetic story:
He was convinced by leaders of “The Way” Bible society, a talking-in-tongues outfit, that his paralysis would be cured in a year if he moved to the sect’s headquarters in Ohio and donated large sums from his accident settlement. He gave $210,000 — and later paid $10,000 more for a Cadillac for a Way leader, and $11,000 for a BMW auto for another Way chief, and $13,000 for extraneous gifts requested by Way officials. The healing didn’t work, and Goodwin felt “took.”
After he sued, The Way countersued him for slander. The case was settled out of court in secret, and the quadriplegic moved back to California. Goodwin’s attorney, Craig Spangenberg of Cleveland, told me that the sect refunded all of Goodwin’s money on the condition that he never discuss the matter. “He has kept his promise,” Spangenberg said. “Tim’s a decent young man. He didn’t want people to know he had been such a fool.”
Another vein of the gold mine was worked by Bishop John W. Barber of Alabama, a dazzler who wore white tuxedos and drove luxury cars. He persuaded believers to buy $1,000 bonds in his Apostolic Faith Church of God Live Forever, Inc. Oldsters paid $100 down and sent installments to the Christian Credit Corporation of Nashville. His operation spread over eight states and then abruptly folded, and Barber moved to North Carolina. Lawyer Henry Haile of Nashville was appointed U.S. receiver. Haile told me:
“It’s unbelievable. He sold $1.5 million in worthless bonds and also borrowed from 20 banks, but I can’t imagine why anyone trusted him. He testified under oath he didn’t file income tax returns for six years; yet he always had a new Lincoln and a big home.”
Among Barber’s victims were members of Highway Church of Christ at Marion, S.C., who lost $57,000. Their pastor, Raymond Davis, told me: “He sounded like an angel of the Lord, and my people thought he was rich. He told us the bonds would be worth twice what we paid for them. We trusted him to open us a bank account at Huntsville, and we sent our money to it. Later I flew to Huntsville, and there wasn’t a dime left.” Highway Church filed a fraud suit.
The Ernest Angley television miracle crusade, The Way International, and the Apostolic Faith Church of God Live Forever, Inc., are three eddies in the much-publicized gospel flood swirling over America.
Old-time magical religion has become our chief cultural phenomenon as we enter the 1980s. Celebrity evangelists in lavish hairdos have won followings that alarm mainline churches. The Gallup Poll says 45 million Americans now consider themselves “born again,” and they shell out enough money to support a booming fundamentalist industry. Sales of gospel books, magazines and records have soared to $1 billion a year. A million families have removed their children from public schools and pay for them to attend 5,000 new evangelical schools. A consortium of born-again businessmen has joined with the Campus Crusade for Christ to raise $1 billion for the world’s biggest advertising campaign to prepare everyone for the Second Coming.
Revival tents of yesteryear are forgotten relics. Now the action is in astrodomes and multi-million-dollar gospel television studios. Four fundamentalist “networks” keep broadcast dishes aimed at fixed-orbit satellites, bouncing programs over the continent 24 hours a day. Competing evangelists buy $600 million worth of radio and television time a year, paid for by their followers. At last count, the United States had 1,400 all-gospel radio stations and about 30 gospel television stations, some operated by born-again folk, some run by shrewd businessmen who know where the money is.
The boom has political power. Coalitions are trying to mobilize fundamentalists into the nation’s strongest voter bloc to pass “moral” laws and elect “moral” candidates. In March, Anita Bryant and revivalist Jerry Falwell launched a “Clean Up America” drive against pornography, abortion and homosexuals.
Other gospel big guns summoned 200,000 born-again believers to the April “Washington for Jesus” demonstration to back “pro-God” legislation. Evangelist Pat Robertson declared: “We have enough votes to run the country. And when the people say, ‘We’ve had enough,’ we are going to take over.” Anti-abortion groups defeated U.S. senators Dick Clark of Iowa and Thomas McIntyre of New Hampshire, and have targeted others for elimination. And fundamentalist uprisings against “ungodly” textbooks have forced several school systems around the United States to change books.
The gospel boom is under intense study by pundits. Author Jeremy Rifkin says it’s “the single most important cultural force in American life” and might lead to fascism. Some sociologists think it’s a backlash to the radicalism of the 1960s. Some say it’s a breakaway from insipid conventional churches. Some say it’s a search for security as the economy worsens. Some say it’s part of the “me generation,” in which people focus on themselves.
But one aspect has hardly been mentioned: rip-off. Part of the billion-dollar industry is cunning fraud, or bald opportunism, or exploitation of the superstitious, or tyrannical misuse of donated money by weirdo leaders. In my job as newspaperman and religion writer, I’ve covered the territory for 20 years and watched it grow.
While the born-again bandwagon gathered momentum through the 1970s, gospel scams and abuses surfaced with increasing frequency. In the past two years, they’ve become an epidemic. For instance:
— Dapper Oklahoma evangelist James Roy Whitby was known in the gospel world for saving Anita Bryant when she was a Tulsa schoolgirl. In 1978 he was convicted of swindling an 83-year-old religious widow out of $25,000. In 1979 he was charged with selling $4 million in worthless Gospel Outreach bonds. Accused with him the second time were three convicted swindlers, including the Rev. Tillman Sherron Jackson of Los Angeles, who had previously bilked the born-again in the Baptist Foundation of America — a $26 million fraud that caused a congressional probe in 1973. In the widow case, Whitby’s appeals ran out in 1980, and he’s in prison. The Gospel Outreach case ended in acquittals, but U.S. attorney John Osgood took it philosophically. “Their kind usually show up again,” he told me.
— America’s all-time champion evangelist was Garner Ted Armstrong, whose national broadcasts drew $75 million a year to the Worldwide Church of God run by Garner and his father, Herbert W. Armstrong. (That’s double the amount collected by Billy Graham.) Money poured in from followers, many of whom met in secret groups and donated 30 percent of their incomes. Garner lived like a maharaja in a California mansion with his own private jet, elegant sports cars — and, allegedly, female believers in bed. Trouble hit in 1976 when some members published a protest. They accused Garner of sex and Herbert of self-enrichment. Chess champion Bobby Fischer said the elder Armstrong had used “mind control” to take nearly $100,000 from him. In 1978 the father fired the son, who started a new television religion.
In 1979 the California attorney general filed a receivership suit accusing Herbert and treasurer Stanley Rader of “pilfering” at least $1 million a year for themselves. Gold bullion owned by the sect was reported missing. Financial records indicated that Herbert and Rader each got salaries of $200,000 plus fabulous expense accounts. Garner accused Rader of taking $700,000 from the church in one year. Garner’s sister said Rader had three homes, a horse stable, a Maserati, a Mercedes and a limousine. On June 2 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the attorney general’s right to investigate the church. Meanwhile, little is left of perhaps $1 billion of believers’ money that was squandered over the years.
— Handsome, tuxedo-clad, faith healer LeRoy Jenkins of South Carolina grossed $3 million a year by selling miracle water and prayer cloths and healing T-shirts to believers who watched him on 67 television stations. He made an emergency appeal for $300,000 to pay church debts and then bought himself a $250,000 home two weeks later. He heavily insured a vacant cathedral just before it was hit by a mysterious explosion.
In 1979 Jenkins was sentenced to a 12-year prison term for conspiring to (1) burn the home of a state trooper who had given his daughter a speeding ticket, (2) burn the home of a creditor, and (3) mug a newspaperman who had exposed his money abuses and drug arrests. Evidence came from a police undercover agent in the evangelist’s staff. (The reporter, Rick Ricks, told me that police had warned him in advance he was to be “set up” by an anonymous telephone offer of information; so when the call came, he didn’t go to meet the informant.) After Jenkins entered a South Carolina state prison, his staff distributed rerun tapes of his “Revival of America” show. For several months in 1979, the preacher still looked out of television screens around the United States and begged “love offerings,” although he actually was in a cell.
— The Justice Department filed suit in March to force the PTL (“Praise the Lord”) Club of Charlotte, N.C., to open its books on $51 million it grossed last year. The suit said the FCC wants to know whether the gospel television show broadcast “fraudulent and misleading” appeals by begging money for overseas missions but spending it on overhead. During a 1978 crisis, PTL leader Jim Bakker announced that he and his singer wife were “giving every penny of our life savings to PTL,” but they soon bought a $24,000 houseboat, and their salaries and benefits rose to $90,000 a year. Because of PTL’s enormous cash intake, a Charlotte radio station mockingly advertised a “Pass the Loot” Club.
(PTL attracts all varieties of fundamentalists because the show’s superslick production conveys clean-cut, happy, old-time faith. But I spent a week at PTL’s $20 million national headquarters last year and saw bizarreness not revealed on-camera. A worship leader gave incantations to “bind demons” and bind a “prince” devil in charge of Charlotte. She also sang in the unknown tongue and distributed written incantations to exorcise demons through miracle anointing oil. A distraught young man leaped down a stairway beside me, yelling “I’m Jesus Christ!”)
— The Rev. Hakeem Abdul Rasheed (alias Clifford Jones) and a young woman aide were convicted of mail fraud in California in February 1980. They had operated a $20-million-a-year church in an Oakland movie theater. Members who donated $500 became “ministers of increase.” Then, periodically, the pastor called them forward to receive $2,000 “increases from God,” while the congregation cheered. Bigger gifts drew bigger returns. Spreading excitement caused joiners to donate as much as $30,000 each. The church collected up to $350,000 a night. Rasheed-Jones had ankle-length mink coats, diamonds, a $100,000 Rolls-Royce, and a million-dollar yacht. His downfall came after he reported to police that four armed robbers took more than $300,000 from him aboard his 100-foot boat, and detectives began wondering why a minister had so much money. It turned out that his church was a “Ponzi scheme,” using new donations to pay former donors.
— The Rev. Robert Carr of Durham, N.C., was sentenced to 10 years in prison in April for taking paychecks, food stamps, and welfare checks from members of his Church of God and True Holiness. He and other church leaders kept believers like slaves in a dormitory, forced them to work in a poultry plant, and pocketed their earnings. Carr’s daughter and son-in-law also got prison terms, and a fourth church official is a fugitive. U.S. attorney H.M. Michaux Jr., told me that Carr was arrested by state police, but the case was turned over to him for prosecution under a federal slavery law.
— Bethesda Christian Center at Wenatchee, Wash. — a gospel church, radio station, school, magazine publishing house, college, and gasoline station — was jolted in January 1980, when more than $1 million was reported missing and administrator James Eyre was jailed on embezzlement charges. About $340,000 that members lent to the church has vanished, authorities said. So has nearly $1 million that members put into deals such as diamond investments.
— American Consumer Inc. was indicted on 1,000 counts of mail fraud for selling the “Cross of Lourdes” at $15.95 each, falsely claiming that the crosses had been dipped in France’s miracle pool and blessed by the pope in Rome. The company was fined $25,000 in 1979 in U.S. District Court at Philadelphia and ordered to refund $103,000 to buyers.
— Frost Brothers Gospel Quartet of Columbus, Ohio, launched Consumer Companies of America, a 20-state chain. Born-again families who paid $534 for orders of merchandise were entitled to enlist others and collect commissions on their orders. When enough were signed up, CCA was to build discount stores and give each member a share of the earnings. Evangelist Bob Harrington, “the chaplain of Bourbon Street,” boosted the plan, saying, “God wants his people to succeed… and I thank God I’m identified with CCA.” (I interviewed several CCA leaders — ex-gospel singers in flashy suits and high-rise hairdos.) The Frost Brothers lived like kings. President Alvin Frost bought a $1 million mansion. But they were convicted of stock violations, sued for fraud, slapped with a $370,000 tax lien, and charged with running a pyramid scheme. CCA collapsed in 1979 with losses for all.
— The Rev. Jerry Duckett of Williamson Church of God in West Virginia was indicted last February on charges of stealing $40,000 from his church’s building fund. (His denominational superior swore out the embezzlement warrant and then was chagrined when I made the theft public.) Earlier, Duckett was fined $100 for pulling a pistol on a service station aftendant who wouldn’t put leaded gasoline into his unleaded-only car.
— Before the Rev. Jim Jones went entirely nuts, his People’s Temple was a money machine. He required members to give 40 percent of their income and sign over their homes, insurance policies, savings accounts, welfare checks, and Social Security checks. To hook the credulous, he staged cancer cures, dramatically seizing the ill, who were stooges in disguise, and pulling out tumors — chicken gizzards. While his Temple still was in San Francisco, two disillusioned members, Al and Jeanie Mills, led defectors in leaking to New West magazine that Jones’s cures were fake and he was milking followers. After Jones moved to Guyana — and led 900 believers in the cyanide horror that stunned the world — troves of money were found. More than $7 million was discovered in two Panama banks, $3 million was in Guyana banks, and $200,000 was in other Caribbean banks, while $700,000 cash and $2 million in real estate were still in California.
In 1978 Al and Jeanie Mills started a refugee center for Jonestown survivors, amid reports that Jones had left behind a “hit squad” to kill defectors. In 1979 the Millses published a book about the minister’s abuses. On Feb. 26, 1980, the couple and their 15-year-old daughter were executed by being shot in the head.
— The Rev. Roland Gray of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago was convicted in 1979 of theft, fraud and corspiracy. He reported his income was only $20 a week so he could falsely collect $43,000 in welfare checks and food stamps — while he concealed that he had $46,000 in cash, several luxury automobiles, expensive furs, and three homes. He also engaged in insurance fraud, collecting $56,000 from 73 bogus insurance claims. He’s serving two years in prison.
— Marjoe Gortner, an aging boy evangelist, confessed in 1972 that his exuberant revivals were a moneymaking fraud, carefully rehearsed and timed to suck big offerings from the yokels. He said his parents pocketed $3 million from his boyhood tours. To expose the racket, Gortner made a documentary movie of himself milking congregations and gleefully counting piles of money in motel rooms, whooping, “Thank you, Jesus!” Gortner went on to be an actor, and fundamentalism went on unfazed.
— At the start of the 1970s, America’s top faith-healer was pugnacious A.A. Allen, who toured the land with his miracle tent. He displayed jars of small embalmed bodies he said were demons he had removed from the ill. Some observers said they were frogs. A California newspaper said he should be prosecuted for running a racket. Time magazine said he grossed $2.7 million a year plus personal “love offerings.” Allen vanished during a tour, then rejoined it at Wheeling, W.Va., then vanished again. He was found dead in a San Francisco hotel room, with $2,300 in his pocket. Cause of death: acute alcoholism. (Gortner said that Allen once advised him how to know when a revival is finished and it’s time to move to the next city: “When you can turn people on their head and shake them and no money falls out, then you know God’s saying ‘Move on, son.'”)
— The Rev. DeVernon LeGrand, who headed St. John’s Pentecostal Church of Our Lord in Brooklyn, recruited many teenage “nuns” who solicited money for his church. In 1975 the pastor, age 50, was convicted of raping one of the 17-year-old nuns. In 1976 the bodies of two more of the girls were found in a pond at LeGrand’s farm in the Catskills. He and a son were convicted of murdering them. In 1977 the pastor was found guilty of murdering his former wives, who died in 1963 and 1970. He’s serving life in prison.
— Bishop Lucius Cartwright and Pastor Albert Hamrick of St. Phillip’s Pentecostal Church in Washington, D.C., were sent to jail in 1976 for embezzling $250,000 while administering food stamp distribution. They used the money to buy a car, an ice cream parlor, and a bank building.
— A white revivalist, the Rev. James Eugene Ewing of Los Angeles, acquired thousands of black followers around the United States through an odd promise: If they sent him monthly donations, God would bless them with Cadillacs, color televisions, Mark IV Continentals, new homes, etc. “God’s Gold Book Plan for Financial Blessings,” it was called. Those who mailed their Gold Book pledges faithfully could expect “power to get wealth,” Ewing said. His monthly newsletter was filled with photos of pledge-payers beaming over new Eldorados or stereos. Followers were also urged to buy “miracle billfolds” and “golden horn-of-plenty neck charms.” (An architect friend of mine sent a fake name to Ewing and collected his mailings to pass around the office as funny-sad reading.) The Los Angeles Times said Ewing grossed $4 million a year. Newsweek said he spent only 1 percent of it on charitable work. Even so, his church filed bankruptcy in 1977, and he moved to Atlanta.
— The Children of God enlisted 5,000 teenagers to testify for Jesus in city streets. Members were required to give the sect all their income for life. New York Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz issued a report in 1974 accusing the group’s leaders of fraud, tax evasion and bizarre forced sex.
— Dr. Billy James Hargis was the king of the anti-Communist preachers after the McCarthy era. He denounced socialism, sex and satanism — and drew millions from right-wing supporters. He lived in a $500,000 Tulsa mansion, had a farm in the Ozarks, and enjoyed the national spotlight. But he was ruined in 1976 when Time magazine revealed that he sodomized male and female students at his tiny fundamentalist college. (The truth leaked out after Hargis performed a wedding of two students and on their honeymoon each told the other of going to bed with their spiritual leader.)
— The Rev. Guido John Carcich was convicted in 1978 of embezzling $2.2 million from the Pallottine Fathers in Baltimore. The Catholic group collected $20 million in donations to help “the starving, sick and naked,” but only 3 percent of the money reached charitable work. Incoming contributions were handled at a secret warehouse, where Carcich told workers to throw away prayer-request letters unless they contained money. He was sentenced to a year of prison counseling work.
— Flamboyant “Reverend Ike” Eikerenkoetter of New York wears $1,000 suits, his fingers drip with diamonds, he has 16 Rolls-Royces, and he enjoys luxury homes on both coasts. From his palatial church, a converted Broadway theater, and over 85 radio stations, he tells a million black believers to “do what the rich do: start thinking big.” He demands “silent offerings” of paper money and chides his adoring flock: “Be proud of the way I look, because you spend $1,000 a week to buy my clothes.” His United Church and Science of Living Institute keeps its income secret, but it has been estimated at $6 to $15 million a year.
Ironically, victims of a gospel rip-off rarely realize that they’re victims. They usually stay devoted to their preacher, no matter what, and view all accusations against him as tricks of the devil.
I learned that truth years ago as a cub reporter. A faith healer named Dr. Paul Collett came to Charleston, started a radio revival in an old movie theater, and proclaimed that cancers were dropping onto his stage. He said he turned water into wine and might resurrect the dead if bodies weren’t embalmed. I wrote a warning article about his multitudinous collections to “build the biggest tabernacle in West Virginia.” But his followers weren’t warned. Instead, 40 of them stormed the Charleston Gazette newsroom, looking for me. Luckily, I was out. Dr. Collett later moved away, leaving no tabernacle or residue of the collections. But his adherents didn’t complain. They bickered over doctrines and eventually scattered to other churches.
I learned it again in 1973 when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and West Virginia Securities Division issued cease-and-desist orders on $12 million worth of gospel bonds sold by TV evangelist Rex Humbard of Akron. The authorities warned that — despite his $4 million cathedral, $250,000 mansion, private jet, $10 million office tower, church-owned girdle factory, and other holdings — Humbard lacked enough assets to back up the bonds. I interviewed investors, and they said they’d gladly double the amount “because it’s an investment in souls.” Humbard begged emergency donations and reaped enough millions to lift the government freezes. (He also sold the unprofitable girdle factory because “panty hose killed us.”) In June, Humbard and his sons bought a $650,000 vacation home complex, in addition to their mansions in Akron.
I learned it in 1974 when the Rev. Marvin Horan led an army of Charleston fundamentalists in violent protest against “atheistic” school books. Horan got three years in prison for helping to bomb elementary schools. Trial testimony said he suggested wiring dynamite caps into the gas tanks of cars in which parents were taking their children to school during a boycott. The Ku Klux Klan held a rally for the convicted preacher on the state capitol steps. His followers stuck by him. He’s out of prison now and running as a 1980 candidate for school board in Charleston.
While I mixed among crowds at the PTL Club in North Carolina last summer, I talked to supporters of evangelist LeRoy Jenkins, who had just gone to prison across the line in South Carolina. They said cryptically: “Satan attacked his ministry.” (I don’t know whether they meant that Satan had led Jenkins into sin, or that Satan falsified the arson charges against him.)
Over the years I’ve covered only one gospel news event in which believers turned against their leader. Radio preacher Charles Meadows testified before the West Virginia legislature in support of the death penalty and ran for the Charleston school board to fight “lewd-minded” sex education. After losing the election, he started his own fundamentalist school. But his flock was stunned when he dumped his wife and departed with a gospel teacher.
Because of my job, religious folks write me letters and phone me. Some recent samples: (1) Bobby Cremeans said she and her husband sent $1,000 to PTL and soon were blessed with an unexpected $710 tax refund and a large profit in a land sale. “We didn’t expect anything when we gave the money to PTL — so I know PTL is of God.” (2) Zella Jarrett told me her 28-year-old son was drawn into a Milwaukee Pentecostal sect that controlled his life and took his money. “He earned $6 an hour making sink tops at Lippert Corporation, but they let him keep just enough to get to work. When we sent him checks, the group prayed and the answer always was for him to sign the money over to the church.” She said her son “finally escaped” and lives in Virginia but wants his whereabouts kept secret because he fears reprisals. (3) Jim Young told me: “The money my wife and I send for the work of the Lord far exceeds our grocery bill each month, and I am thankful for every penny.” He said he supports about 10 television evangelists including Rex Humbard, “who got 554,000 people in Brazil and Chile to accept Jesus Christ. It’s the only way we can obey the last commandment Jesus gave” to proselytize the world. (4) Rita Schott said she was “caught up for six years” in a tongue-talking church in which the preacher received such divine prophecies as “five members are going to give $5,000 each.” She told me she felt “brainwashed, unreal,” but finally broke loose from the group.
An Episcopal priest who does social work in Michigan said that poor families often tell him they send part of their welfare checks to evangelists. “We taxpayers are subsidizing it,” he said. “In the old days, people complained about the poor blowing their welfare money on whiskey — but now it’s on evangelists.”
Whistle-blowers of the sort who denounced the Armstrongs in the Worldwide Church of God or Timothy Goodwin, who sued The Way, are rare. But a few exist. More consumer lawsuits by disgruntled believers have hit the courts recently. Julie Titchbourne, 21, of Portland, Ore., won a $2 million verdict against the Church of Scientology in 1979. Her suit said the church’s claim that it could raise her I.Q. was fraudulent. In February, jazz guitarist Gabor Szabo of Los Angeles sued the church, saying leaders had embezzled $15,000 from him, kidnapped him, and forced him to undergo a $12,000 “life repair course.”
Scientology is a controversial religion started by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who netted millions from members around the world. He was convicted of fraud by a French court in 1978 but remains at liberty on his oceangoing yacht. His wife and eight of his followers were sentenced to prison last December for conspiring to steal U.S. documents in Washington. A grand jury at Riverside, Calif., is investigating reports that Scientologists obtained millions through fraudulent bank loans. (When I wrote about a West Virginia coal millionaire who gave $110,000 and a farm headquarters to Scientology, the church sent my newspaper a bound, indexed, 52-page “falsehood correction.”)
Also, Douglas and Rita Swann of Detroit sued the Christian Science Church last February, saying that two church healers allowed their baby son to die. Their suit doesn’t claim malpractice (three other malpractice suits against the Christian Science Church have been lost in recent years) but accuses the two healers of failing to follow proper miracle cure procedures.
Redneck religion has always been part America — since the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in Tennessee, since Carry Nation smashed the saloons, since Aimee Semple McPherson was buried with a live telephone in her ornate coffin in case God resurrected her. The United States always had a fringe of scripture literalists obsessed with sin, of one-preacher denominations, of Pentecostals who spout “the tongues,” of faith healers who grab the lame, of hillbilly congregations picking up rattlesnakes, of Adventists who periodically announce the end of the world, of sex-haters who burn books and rock albums, of tabernacle-goers who “dance in the spirit” and writhe on the floor, of Bible prophecy fans who think that the Lost Tribes of Israel moved to England and became American settlers.
Why did they cease being a fringe and seize the foreground with such numbers and money? What — besides changes in the national mood — caused the billion-dollar gospel boom? Much of it was created by three electronic marvels: (1) superslick videotape production that gives a “class” look to television shows, (2) fixed-orbit satellites that relay broadcasts all over America for pickup by stations and cable systems, (3) computerized fund-raising centers able to receive miliions of letters bearing $10 and $20 checks and to mail back machine-written responses selected by coding and disguised to appear personal.
As television’s drawing power grew apparent, a crowd of celebrity preachers took to the air, competing for listener-donors. Today more than 1,000 different gospel shows are bounced off the satellites or distributed by radio tape and videotape to stations and cables. It’s a bonanza for the broadcast industry. A typical clear-channel radio station, WWVA of Wheeling, sells $1 million worth of evening half-hours to revivalists annually. Billy Graham pays up to $25,000 per television station per hour for his prime-time crusades.
Listeners foot the bill. Most shows work like this: Watchers are invited to write for a free gift, such as a four-cent “Jesus First” lapel pin. Once a viewer’s name and address go into the computer, he gets letters urging him to beome a “faith partner” and send monthly donations. The computer keeps track of big givers and little givers — and ejects names that don’t produce after three mailings. (Some evangelists raise extra money by selling their donor lists to others.) Computers also dispatch monthly newsletters and sometimes choose prewritten replies to viewers who write about spiritual or personal problems.
The more magnetic a revivalist is, the more watcher-supporters he draws, which allows him to buy time on more stations, which draws more donors, which buys more air time, which draws more donors, etc. His operation also can expand by sale of books, records, magazines, gospel novelties, and tape cassettes. A big entrepreneur usually starts his own gospel college and creates an overseas mission. So far, the top evangelists, their shows, and the best estimates of their yearly grosses rank like this:
Garner Ted Armstrong (The World Tomorrow) – $75 million
Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association – $60 million
Pat Robertson (700 Club and Christian Network) – $58 million
Jim Bakker (PTL Club and Network) – $51 million
Jerry Falwell (Old-Time Gospel Hour) – $46 million
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association – $40 million
Rex Humbard (Cathedral of Tomorrow) – $25 million
Jimmy Swaggart (Camp Meeting Hour) – $20 million
Robert Schuller (Hour of Power) – $16 million
James Robison (Man with a Message) – $15 million
“Rev. Ike” Eikerenkoetter (United Church) – $6-15 million
Ernest Angley (Grace Cathedral) – (secret)
Established, mainstream denominations worry that one-man television sects are siphoning off members and money that would otherwise go to hometown churches. Dr. Martin Marty, a Lutheran scholar, says the “ruffle-shirted, pink-tuxedoed pitchmen” are formidable rivals, and “the loser is the local church.” Presbyterian Survey magazine sneers at “show-biz religion” and “TV salvation for sale” and “the hucksterism of big-time religious broadcasting.” Everett Parker, communications chief of the United Church of Christ, says, “They are on television to make money so they can expand their television exposure and make more money.”
Paul Stevens, retiring communications director of the Southern Baptist Church, announced last year that he plans to start a committee to force financial disclosure by wealthy “glamour boys of religious broadcasting.” Stevens said many Christians feel “a mass revulsion against these charlatans…. Something has to be done. Morally and spiritually, these people are doing wrong…. A man who collects, as one did, $71 million in a year and, as far as we can tell, bought only $10 million worth of [broadcast] time, leaves $61 million unaccounted for.” Later Stevens told me he had to postpone his retirement and creation of his committee.
Dr. William Fore, assistant general secretary of the National Council of Churches, told me he doesn’t think all radio-television evangelists are swindlers — only some of them. He sent me a paper in which he wrote that most broadcast preachers are dedicated, but “some are in the lunatic fringe…. Some are con artists and manipulators. And a few are just plain crooks and frauds.” He said television religion is “great show business, a great audience-grabber, a great moneymaker…. But it’s lousy religion.”
Even Billy Graham remarked on a national telecast: “Because of the great evangelical awakening in America… there are some charlatans coming along, and the public ought to be informed about them and warned against them.” Jimmy Swaggart, an unschooled but shrewd tongue-talker from the Louisiana backwoods, wrote in his autobiography that he “detested the trickery” of “radio evangelists who specialized in selling so-called miracle billfolds, prayer cloths and anointing oil over the airwaves.” Today Swaggart sells $30 “Jesus Saves” pen-and-pencil sets on his show.
The suspicions, the talk of charlatans, arise partly from the fact that U.S. evangelists are allowed to keep their finances as secret as they wish. Under federal law, anything that calls itself a church is exempt from taxes and disclosures. (Even a saint might be tempted if he handled secret money every day. A revivalist always begs, “Give to God,” but he knows God’s name isn’t on the bank account; he knows who gets to spend the money.) Michigan has passed a state law requiring churches that solicit from the public to file financial disclosures, as charities do. The Michigan law already has been challenged in court as a violation of freedom of religion. Reader’s Digest published an appeal last November for a U.S. law to force disclosure of all church money. it wouldn’t harm reputable denominations, the Digest said, but actually “would help them by exposing the spiritual con artists who cast shadows on all religious fund-raising.”
Such a disclosure bill was introduced in 1977 by born-again Congressman Mark Hatfield and others, but it failed. In 1979, Billy Graham and three dozen other revivalists launched a voluntary disclosure plan. They created the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, which will require members to issue public audits. Revivalists who refuse to join presumably will be stigmatized — if their followers notice.
The Better Business Bureau, which protects consumers from rip-offs, is doing its bit by citing evangelists who won’t open their books. The BBB lists 50 ministries as failing to meet BBB’s ethical standards.
The toughest crackdown lately, however, has been by the Federal Communications Commission, the watchdog of the airwaves. The FCC holds that it’s against the fraud-by-wire law for a broadcaster to beg money for one purpose and spend it for another. This legal basis is being used in attempts to revoke licenses of some church-owned stations. FCC Chairman Charles Ferris remarked last year:
“They are public trustees. They use a public resource, the airways, and they have an obligation to stay within the perimeters of the law, with respect to the use of these airways, and to serve the public. Where there is fraud with respect to deceit, or improper use of those airways, you know, for fraudulent purposes, our obligation to investigate that and make recommendations as to who the proper licensee should be.”
The FCC recently busted the Rev. Eugene Scott of California, who grosses $4 million a year by marathon preaching over three television stations owned by his Faith Center. In 1977 when the license of one station was up for renewal, the FCC asked to see Scott’s financial records. He refused, saying the government can’t pry inside a church. In 1978 the FCC cited Scott for: (1) refusal to open his books, (2) possible fraud in fund-raising, and (3) failure to serve the public interest. On March 17, FCC administrative judge Edward Luton ruled that Scott’s continued refusal to show records had forfeited his right to the television license. An appeal is pending.
Also, California Attorney General George Deukmejian demanded Faith Center’s records for an investigation of possible fund misuse. Deukmejian is moving against a few California churches under a state law that requires him to protect donors to charity.
Scott calls the bureaucrats “monkeys” and says that he’ll never open his books. “I’m either going to beat the hell out of the FCC or beat them into hell,” he declared. His attorney, Andrew Zanger, said the attorney general “isn’t even going to get to see a voucher for toilet paper.”
In 1973 the FCC defrocked a radio station operated by anti-Communist preacher Carl McIntire on grounds that his programs against American “subversives” were political “hate clubs” violating the fairness doctrine. The aging McIntire, head of multi-million-dollar fundamentalist centers in New Jersey and Florida, was sued in 1979 by a Virginia Beach widow who says he took $100,000 from her. After the Russians invaded Afghanistan, McIntire mailed appeals this year, saying his anti-Red career had been “vindicated.” He asked for donations of “$100,000, $25,000 — I am asking you to answer this letter with as large a gift as possible.” He included pre-written wills for supporters to sign, bequeathing their estates to his ministry. (I got one because I’m on Mclntire’s mailing list, but I didn’t will him my assets.) New Jersey officials said the “mail-a-will” plan probably isn’t legal.
Another federal watchdog, the IRS, tries to monitor 800,000 tax-free churches, charities, schools, foundations, hospitals, etc. By law, money of a tax-exempt organization cannot “inure to the benefit of” any leader. Ministers are limited to reasonable salaries, parsonages, and legitimate expenses, according to IRS spokesman Larry Batdorf. I asked him how Rev. Ike Eikerenkoetter can enjoy 16 Rolls-Royces, $1,000 suits, two mansions, diamonds and such luxuries. Batdorf replied that the IRS can’t discuss publicly any person’s income. “But I’m sure there are abuses,” he added.
The IRS sometimes revokes the exemption of a ministry that becomes more profit than prophet. It axed the Rev. Ralph Baney of Kansas City after he spent funds of the Holy Land Christian Approach Mission for a 236-acre luxury estate, a stable of Tennessee walking horses, and a yacht in Florida. However, at the National Information Bureau in New York, a charity data center, director M.C. VanDeWorkeen told me that the mission had reformed under new leadership and now operates reputably.
So far, all the turmoil hasn’t fazed America’s gospel boom. The evangelical bandwagon continues to roll, spanning all the way from born-again President Carter to Manson cult killers Tex Watson and Susan Atkins, now saved and selling paperbacks about it. And the gospel gold mine continues to produce billion-dollar revenues, with no end in sight.
By James A. Haught, http://www.hiddenmysteries.org
Mortgage Crisis Simplified-but Not For Dummies
First, here is how it is supposed to work. When you mortgage your home, you and your bank (let’s say Bank “A”) agree to two separate documents, a mortgage Note and a mortgage. These are reciprocal obligations: the two halves of a partnership between you and your bank. In the mortgage Note, you promise to pay back X dollars plus Y interest on Z dates. (That Note is a negotiable instrument, like a check, and can be assigned to a third party just as can a check.) In the mortgage itself, in case you default on the Note, Bank A promises to do Q, R, and S before it takes your home, the collateral for the loan. Neither document makes any sense by itself. They are supposed to stay together. If they are assigned, the two documents usually do stay together. If Bank A sells the mortgage and Note to Bank B, Bank A has to endorse the Note over to Bank B. If Bank B then sells the mortgage and Note to Bank C, then Bank B has to sign them over to Bank C. It is like a third-party check. If the check is signed by Bank A to Bank B but is held by Bank C, with no endorsement by Bank B to Bank C, then the chain of title is “broken” and Bank C is not the “holder.” The check may have been stolen and cannot be cashed. Bank C can demand your money, but it cannot foreclose.
Although the debt (the mortgage Note) and the right to enforce it (the mortgage) usually stay together, they can be separated. In that case, the mortgage is said to be “bifurcated.” In that case, the holder of the Note has a right to be paid by you and can sue you, the maker of the Note, if you default, in equity for whatever amount Bank B paid for the Note. However, the holder of the Note in a bifurcated mortgage does not have the mortgage and cannot foreclose the collateral. Only the party who has the Note can know for sure how much is due under the Note, and only the party who has the mortgage can know what are the obligations of the bank.
The problem arose when the banks decided to securitize most mortgages starting about 2002. No longer were the mortgage and the Note held by your local bank. Instead, the large national banks bought up the mortgages and sold them to groups of investors on Wall Street. These Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) were designed to appeal to different investors with different appetites for risk. Some MBS customers wanted super-safe securities with low returns, while others wanted riskier bonds with therefore higher rates of return. Therefore, the loans and the investors were bundled into “Real-Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits” (REMIC’s) and then “sliced and diced”—split up and put into tranches, according to their likelihood of default, their interest rates, and other characteristics.
This slicing and dicing made “senior tranches,” where the loans would be paid in full, if past history of mortgage-loan statistics were to be believed. And it also created “junior tranches,” where the loans might well default, again according to past history and statistics. These various tranches were sold to different investors, according to their appetite for risk. Some of the MBS bonds were rated as safe a Treasury bond, and others were rated by the rating agencies as risky as junk bonds.
This slicing and dicing means that it is impossible to assign a mortgage or Note to any one purchaser of the MBS’s issued by the REMIC‘s. When the REMIC’S were first made, all the mortgages were pristine—none had defaulted yet, because they were all brand new loans. Statistically, some would default and some others would be paid back in full—–but which one specifically would default, no one knew. If you toss a coin 1000 times, then 500 times it will come up heads. But what will it do on the 439th toss? No one knows. It was not simply that the riskiest loans were owned by the junior tranches and the safest loans were owned by the senior tranches. Rather, all the loans were in all the tranches, and if a mortgage in a given bundle of mortgages were to default, then the most junior tranche holder would take the loss first, and the most senior tranche holder would take the loss last.
Therefore, the mortgage Note was not assigned over to any bondholder. In fact, it could not be signed over, since no one knew which mortgage would default first.
The problem then is to make sure that the safe mortgage loan stays with the safe REMIC tranche, and the defaulting mortgage goes to the riskier REMIC tranche. The banks’ solution to this problem was to build the “Mortgage Electronic Registration System” (MERS). MERS directed defaulting mortgages to the appropriate tranches of the REMIC’s. It was, in effect, Dr. Frankenstein’s operating table where the digitized mortgage Notes were sliced and diced and rearranged so as to create the MBS’s. The essential point legally is that MERS does not hold any mortgage Note. The true owner of the mortgage Notes should have been the REMIC’s.
However, for some reason, the mortgages were never assigned to the REMIC’s. One possible reason for this is that, if the bonds sold by the REMIC’s are to fetch top dollar, the REMIC must be judged by a rating agency to be “bankruptcy remote,” so it is better for the REMIC to be a conduit than for it to own assets. A second possible reason is to prevent audits by the bondholders. A third possible reason is so the banks can sell the same mortgage to multiple REMIC’s at the same time.
Therefore, between MERS and the REMIC’s, the chain of title was broken, and the mortgages were bifurcated. No party involved in the process can legally foreclose. The banks are not owners of the mortgages because they sold them to the investors in the REMIC’s. The investors cannot own them because of the structure of the REMIC’s. The REMIC’s for some reason do not own them. MERS cannot own them because it is just a computer or operating table. And the banks’ servicing companies are just the banks’ accountants and do not own anything. Therefore, the debt is unsecured.
However, the banks did not accept this legal result. If the MBS’s were unsecured, the banks could not sell them for a high price to investors. (And a bank must sell the mortgages, because one cannot earn much profit lending money at 5.0% simple interest and then paying salaries and losing money on foreclosures.) So the banks decided that they would not follow the law. They were “less than frank” with the investors and told them that the underlying mortgages were fully secured. And when defaults occurred, the banks foreclosed on the mortgages and took the collateral without holding the Notes and without telling the investors. This way, the banks are paid multiple times for each loan: once when they sell it to the investors in the first REMIC, probably a second time when they sell it to the investors in a second REMIC, and a third time when they foreclose on the collateral and take it. This gives the banks plenty of funds to continue making payments to the investors, as they have done. It is essentially a Ponzi scheme. (It is precisely to prevent this sort of things that the law retains the old-fashioned requirement that a negotiable instrument may be enforced only if its holder has an uninterrupted chain of title to it.)
In addition, since they all shared the same risk and the same need, the banks formed an association-in-fact and set up a few servicing companies (such as Select Portfolio Servicing, Ocwen and many others, see Co-Conspirator Section at ) which collect your monthly mortgage payments and divide them among their client banks, not with regard to who owns the Notes, because none of the banks own the Notes, but rather with regard to which bank has contributed the most into the association-in-fact, according to which bank needs to avoid tax liability, and according to which bank needs to avoid legal liability. After all, if none of the member banks owns the Note, it is essentially arbitrary who gets the profit from a foreclosure. In other words, the straw-man entities that foreclose on your mortgage usually have no legal interest in your home. If nothing has been assigned on paper to the plaintiff in your foreclosure case, it has no right to foreclose.www.foreclosureself-defense.com/2010/11/robo-signer/
This massive fraud on the courts requires forged documents. So the association-in-fact of banks hires lawyers with less-than-sterling reputations, such as David J. Stern, the “Florida foreclosure king,” and Codillis & Assocs. in Illinois. These lawyers in turn hire fly-by-night “robo-signer” companies such as DocX and Fidelity National Foreclosure that simply fabricate entire foreclosure files (for $95 a file) and forge the necessary summary-judgment affidavits ($12.50 a case). The affidavits are supposed to prove to the court that there is no genuine issue of material fact and are supposed to be make under oath, stating that the affiant has the file in hand, including records of all payments, and has personally calculated the correct amount due. Instead the “robo-signers” manufacture the files, and then each “robo-signer” signs up to 18,000 forged “affidavits” each month, without any knowledge of the correct amount due or even who the straw-man plaintiff is in that case. In one Florida case, a man’s home was taken through foreclosure even though he had no mortgage on his home. That cannot happen without title fraud. Millions of homeowners certainly are being charged the wrong amounts. And millions more are losing their homes, losing the equity in their homes, and losing their ability to repay their loans—because their credit is ruined by illegal seizures of their principal asset. Meanwhile, the (illegal) foreclosures put downward pressure on real-estate values, which prevents refinancing, which causes more (illegal) foreclosures, which decrease property-tax revenues, which raises taxes, which causes more (illegal) foreclosures.
Source: http://beforeitsnews.com/
Common Insecticide Used in Homes Associated With Delayed Mental Development of Young Children
When the EPA phased out the widespread residential use of chlorpyrifos and other organophosphorus (OP) insecticides in 2000-2001 because of risks to child neurodevelopment, these compounds were largely replaced with pyrethroid insecticides. But the safety of these replacement insecticides remained unclear, as they had never been evaluated for long-term neurotoxic effects after low-level exposure. In the first study to examine the effects of these compounds on humans and the first evaluation of their potential toxicity to the developing fetal brain, scientists of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health found a significant association between piperonyl butoxide (PBO), a common additive in pyrethroid formulations, measured in personal air collected during the third trimester of pregnancy, and delayed mental development at 36 months.
Findings from the study are online in the journal, Pediatrics.
The study was conducted with a subset of 725 pregnant women participating in a prospective longitudinal study of black and Dominican women living in upper Manhattan and the South Bronx underway at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH). The insecticide permethrin was selected for the evaluation because it is one of the most common pyrethroid insecticides used in U.S. homes, as well as the most commonly sold pesticide, according to a nationally representative sample. PBO, a chemical that is added to insecticides to increase efficacy was also selected for evaluation. Any detection of PBO in air is a marker of a pyrethroid insecticide application.
In all, 342 women were studied for permethrin exposure in personal air during pregnancy; 272 for permethrin in maternal and umbilical cord plasma; and 230 were evaluated for exposure to PBO. To collect the air samples, mothers from the CCCEH Mothers and Newborns cohort wore a small backpack holding a personal ambient air monitor for 48 hours during the third trimester of pregnancy.
The children of these mothers were evaluated for cognitive and motor development at age three. CCCEH researchers used the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. In evaluating the results, researchers controlled for gender, gestational age, ethnicity, maternal education and intelligence, quality of the home environment, and prenatal exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and chlorpyrifos.
PBO was detected in the majority of personal air samples (75%). While the results demonstrate that a significant prenatal exposure to permethrin in personal air and/or plasma was not associated with performance scores for the Bayley Mental Developmental Index or the Psychomotor Developmental Index at 36 months, children who were more highly exposed to PBO in personal air samples (≥4.34 ng/m3) scored 3.9 points lower on the Mental Developmental Index than those with lower exposures.
“This drop in IQ points is similar to that observed in response to lead exposure,” said Megan Horton of the Mailman School of Public Health and lead researcher. “While perhaps not impacting an individual’s overall function, it is educationally meaningful and could shift the distribution of children in the society who would be in need of early intervention services.”
The researchers point out that environmental and biological monitoring of pyrethroid insecticides present certain challenges. “We know most pyrethroid insecticides are difficult to measure in the air because they are not volatile and are difficult to measure in bodily fluids because they are rapidly metabolized, and these difficulties may prevent us from seeing significant associations with neurodevelopmental outcomes,” noted Dr. Horton. “Because PBO is volatile and permethrin is not volatile, we would not expect to find a strong association between the two compounds. With the exception of the increased odds of motor delay in the lowest PBO exposure group, prenatal exposure to PBO seems to have an impact on cognitive rather than motor development, which is quite worrisome because mental development scores are more predictive of school readiness.”
As this is the first study of these compounds, the results should be considered preliminary but, Dr. Horton notes, they do — raise a cautionary red flag about the use of these chemicals during pregnancy. And, she adds, research at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health, indicates that “integrated pest management and the non-spray application of lower toxicity pesticides are viable alternatives to the use of these spray pesticides for pest control.”
“This is an important study with potentially broad public health implications,” according to Dr. Robin Whyatt, Mailman School professor of clinical environmental health sciences and a co-deputy director at the CCCEH. “Further, it identifies a critical need for additional research.”
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Journal Reference:
1. M. K. Horton, A. Rundle, D. E. Camann, D. B. Barr, V. A. Rauh, R. M. Whyatt. Impact of Prenatal Exposure to Piperonyl Butoxide and Permethrin on 36-Month Neurodevelopment. Pediatrics, 2011; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2010-0133
Obama Creates World’s First Superstate With US-Canada Merger
In a shocking coup d’état said to rival Nazi Germany’s 1938 Anschluss (German for “link-up”) of the Austrian Republic, the United States this past week effectively took control of Canada creating what is being called by Russian diplomatic officials as the world’s first 21st Century “Superstate”.
The United States announcement of this “merger” between these two North American Nations was made February 4th by a posting on the WhiteHouse.Gov website of President Obama and which, in part, says:
“Today, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have directed the creation of a United States-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC), composed of senior regulatory, trade, and foreign affairs officials from both governments. In recognition of our $1 trillion annual trade and investment relationship, the RCC has a two-year mandate to work together to promote economic growth, job creation, and benefits to our consumers and businesses through increased regulatory transparency and coordination.
They have directed that the first meeting of the RCC be convened within 90 days by the relevant agencies in the United States and Canada.”
Concealed in the “diplo-speak” wording of this historic agreement, however, is the complete overturning of the sovereignty of both the American and Canadian peoples laws and regulations they have lived under for centuries, but which will now be “melded” together with no votes allowed by either of them ever again.
The shock and uproar in Canada over their Prime Minister’s, Steven Harper, signing away their sovereignty to the United States is unprecedented, but the same cannot be said of the American people who, according to Canada’s National Post, have not been allowed to know about it, and as we can read from their article titled “The security perimeter imaginarium of Dr. Harper”, and which, in part, says:
“The New York Times didn’t mention the Harper-Obama agreement (though it did quote some remarks the Prime Minister made about Egypt). There was a story inside the Wall Street Journal, but if any other U.S. media reported on the meeting and press conference, I can’t find it. There is no hint that the US Congress is interested either.”
Equally as shocking were the Canadian government’s deliberate actions to keep this merger secret from their own citizens, and as we can read as reported by the Toronto Star News Service in their article titled “Canada kept U.S. border talks under wraps” and which, in part, says:
“The federal government deliberately kept negotiations on a border deal with Washington secret while it planned ways to massage public opinion in favour of the pact, according to a confidential communications strategy.
The 14-page public relations document recommended that talks keep a “low public profile” in the months leading up to the announcement by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama. At the same time, the government would secretly engage “stakeholders” — interested parties such as big business groups and others — in a way that respected “the confidentiality of the announcement.”
In advance, the government departments involved — including industry, foreign affairs, international trade and citizenship and immigration — were to “align supportive stakeholders to speak positively about the announcement,” according to the strategy prepared by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ officials.”
One of the “supportive stakeholders” in the merger of Canada with the US is called the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), who in their statement supporting it said, “This is the kind of government action that we in the business community have been seeking for years”.
Canada’s Pacific Free Press, however, has slammed this merger for what it really is, a capitalist corporate takeover of both the United States and Canada, and as we can read as reported in their article titled “New Harper/Obama Border Deal about Corporate Power – Not Security and Trade”:
“The Corporations behind this deal own the politicians who signed it, and the media that are telling us ‘how good it is’.
The CCCE is the secretive umbrella group that represents Corporate Canada. The CCCE is the banks, big oil, the drug companies and manufacturers and retailers and all the rest; the people and corporations who own our country. Many believe they ARE the government of Canada. They are the ones behind this deal.
Also in the Border Deal: A new ‘Council’ will ‘harmonize’ regulations between Canada and the United States (google: Regulatory Cooperation Council):
The Corporations want ONE SET of business-friendly rules for Canada and the United States, they want control of the rules and regulations that govern us, and that is what this deal is largely about.
Where is the Corporate Media? Where is the CBC? All silent – under Corporate orders.
Where are the Unions? The Environmental Groups? The Council of Canadians? The Social Groups. The other Political Parties? We are allowed to hear nothing from them either.
This powerful new agreement will further undermine our democracy, it is all about Corporate Power and Wealth.
Here in Victoria BC, our main Corporate radio station, CFAX, tells us the new border deal will be good for security and trade and nothing to worry about. That is just Corporate Propaganda, but only that one message is put out.
The border deal will ‘protect us’ from terror. That’s how it’s being ‘sold’, but in fact we are getting in bed with the number one terrorist nation in the world today, the United States of America; a nation that is also bankrupt and may be nearing social upheaval. Even worse, this deal gives more power to Corporations which have neither heart nor soul and who will happily see us ruined if it means increased Profit for them; we know this because it is what they do everywhere in the world. Why is Stephen Harper signing us into secret deals with these lunatics?
The new agreement will make it easier to cross the border. This is the other selling point for the deal, but of course the ‘tightening’ of the Canada/US border was done to give us ‘a problem’ that they are now going to solve with a new border around us – which was the Corporate Plan all along.
These are the kinds of games these lunatics play.”
The great British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) once said, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”, and which, sadly, appears to be the case with this historic merger between the US and Canada as those who know and care won’t be heard, but those who do will reign in tyranny over those who live their lives in ignorance.
And yes it is true, and worth repeating, “These are the kinds of games these lunatics play”.
Souce: The European Union Times
Moratorium on Mortgage Foreclosures.
The Constitution for the united States of America is the Supreme Law of the Land, Article VI, paragraph 2. All statutes and laws enacted by Congress must be in harmony with the Constitution. Any statute or law enacted by Congress that is in contradiction or disharmony with the Constitution is null and void from the beginning. It creates no duties, creates no rights, imposes no obligations or duties upon any Citizen of the United States of America. It is as if it never existed. Marbury v. Madison, U.S. Supreme Court decision, 1801.
“…all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution”, Article VI, paragraph 3. When we refer to the Preamble of the Constitution we find this statement, “…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the united States of America, italics for emphasis only. By slight of hand, this statement gets converted to, “the Constitution of the United States”. The term “United States” has a specific meaning. Title 28, USC, section 3002, defines “United States” as a Federal corporation. So then all executive and judicial officers who take the oath to the “United States” are working for the corporation identified as the “United States”. They do not take an Oath to the original Constitution. By trickery and deceit, the government has converted all executive and judicial officers into corporate officers working for the corporate United States for the benefit of the corporation and not for the benefit of “We the People”. That is the current dilemma. We cannot get the corporate officers to listen to “We the People”. Look at what just happened with the so-called Health Care Bill. Simply rammed down the throats of the American People.
All corporations have one goal, to maximize profits no matter what the human cost, or the environmental cost.
This oath to the “Corporation” creates quite a legal conundrum. The minute that “all executive and judicial Officers” take an oath to this mother lode “Corporation”, they have engaged in an act of treason against the People of the united States of America. However, it the nature of criminals to protect themselves, and their actions against prosecution for their crimes. Especially when they are the ones writing the so-called statutes and laws. To wit, Title 18, USC, section 2381 defines “Treason” as “levying war against the United States”. So then “Treason” is clearly defined as levying war against the corporation known as the United States, not as engaging in act of Treason against the People of the united States of America. Thus “all executive and judicial Officers” are free to betray us and engage in all sorts of belligerent and unlawful, actions against Americans Citizens with total impunity.
Hence, we come to the central point of the mortgage foreclosure planned fiasco. Within the four walls of the courtroom, the judge is acting in the capacity of corporate officer interested in protecting the revenue of the corporation. He is not adjudicating law. He is simply a revenue officer. A little known fact is that the judge makes a commission on each and every judgment that goes through his courtroom. The amount of commission is in dispute, could be as high as ten percent or more.
Continuing with the mortgage foreclosure fiasco. Courts with real judges, hard to believe, but there are some judges with a sense of moral imperative, all over the country have set forth stringent lawful requirements that a bank or mortgage company must meet before a foreclosure suit can be initiated and proceed.
First, the lending institution must enter into the court record, the original “Note” and the original “Mortgage” document as of the date the Complaint was filed. The problem is that the lending institution does not have the originals anymore. Immediately after completing the closing, the lending institution sold the “Note” and the “Mortgage” to a group of investors and turned over the original “Note” and “Mortgage” to the investor group. The original lending institution no longer has any capital at risk. Based on this requirement, the foreclosure suit cannot go forward. However, the revenue officer, the so-called judge counts on the abysmal ignorance of the Citizen losing their home and the judge proceeds to steal the property.
Another thing that is happening is this. The banks are using fraudulent securities. The banks enter copies of the note and mortgage that measure 8.5 inches by 11 inches. Pursuant to 18 USC, these full size copies are fraudulent securities. Copies can only measure 75% of the original or 150% of the original. This would clearly give notice that these are copies. However, the banks are entering 100% copies, these are fraudulent securities.
Second, the lending institution must file an affidavit of ownership, which clearly identifies the Plaintiff as the “Real Party in Interest” with all of the attending rights, title and interest in the “Mortgage”. When the lending institution sold the “Note” and the “Mortgage”, they stopped being the “Real Party in Interest”. Hence, the lending institution has no “Standing” to sue on the property.
Third, “Standing” is an absolute pre-requisite to filing a lawsuit. There are three lawful requirements for “Standing”.
- Injury in fact-not a hypothetical injury.
- Causality-that the actions of the borrower created the injury in fact.
- Redressability-that the judgment will make the injured party whole.
The revenue officer, the so-called judge, on the case will not require that his corporate buddies, the lending institutions, prove standing in the courtroom. Thus, without “Standing” the lawsuit cannot go forward.
Fourth, in order for a contract to be valid and binding, there must be “Consideration”. “Consideration” means “something of value”. The Citizen borrowing Federal Reserve Notes, brings his real estate, “something of value”, to the table in exchange for paper called Federal Reserve Notes. So then, one must ask a few basic questions in regards to this transaction. When the bank loaned the borrower Federal Reserve Notes, did the bank go the to vault and take Federal Reserve Notes on deposit and loan those to the borrower?
Ask any banker friend and he will tell you that “No”, they do not loan out their deposits. So then, how are the Federal Reserve Notes “produced”? The bank goes to their computer and by the use of their “magical, Hollywood wand”, a few keystrokes, produce, out of thin air, say $100,000.00 Federal Reserve Notes, to loan you. This is where “Credit” comes from. One second before, these Federal Reserve Notes did not exist. Now, by magic, the bank has $100,000.00 worth of Federal Reserve Notes to lend you. So if creating “something of value” out of thin air is real, then it is easy for me to convince you that the Easter Bunny lays different colored eggs once a year.
In the following sentences you can take the red pill or the blue pill. You must chose.
There is a caveat here at this point. Before the bank or mortgage company create “credit”, also known as Federal Reserve Notes, it needs to have on hand some collateral. You signed two major documents at the “closing”, the “Note” and “Mortgage” or “Deed of Trust”. Most Americans do not realize how valuable their signature on documents is. The Mortgage document serves as the collateral needed by the bank (from this line forward, when I say bank, I also mean mortgage company).
When you sign the “Mortgage”, the bank turns it into “money” and deposits it into a special, secret account set up in your name. By the magic of “banking”, your signature is needed to “monetize” the “mortgage”. To the bank, the “mortgage” document is actual “money”.
If you don’t believe me, request a copy of your “Note” and “Mortgage/Deed of Trust”. Examine the Mortgage documents and you should be able to find a stamp on the document that says, “Pay to the Order of, without prejudice ABC Mortgage Company/ABC Bank.” Now we just hit the mother Lode. Follow the money.
Under 18 USC, the “Mortgage” becomes a negotiable instrument, also known as a “Security”. Hence, you, the borrower, by your signature, created a “Security” for the bank. Which in turn, the bank, converts into “money”.
Now here is where it gets fun. Now that the bank has “money” that it deposited into your secret, undisclosed account, it can loan you your own “money” back at interest. The bank then must balance its books, so the bank writes a “hot check” against the “money” in your secret account to “pay off” your debtor. Then your bank demands that the bank receiving their “hot check” pay them back with Federal Reserve Notes. Now the bank turns to you and says, “Now that we loaned this money, you owe us for the next thirty years”.
The bank very conveniently ignores the “money” that you created by your signature and the bank deposited into the secret, undisclosed account. By the fact that you abandoned this secret account, the bank considers this “money” a gift from you. See, under the law, you cannot reclaim a gift that you made. Of course, the bank defrauded you when they took the “money” that you knew nothing about. Wow! What a system!
However, the “money deposited into your secret, undisclosed bank account”, is still there. The bank considers this secret, undisclosed account abandoned. Thus, they lay claim to this “money”. However, this theft of your property is a second degree felony called “Conversion of property”. However, the banking system has little to fear, we as Americans have been dumbed down to the point of illiteracy by our indoctrination system. Oops, did I say indoctrination, I meant to say “education”.
Lets go down the rabbit hole a little more. When the bank deposits your “Mortgage money” into your special, secret account, you owned your home free and clear. The bank neglects to inform you of this little tidbit of information. Pretty convenient and self serving isn’t it?
You would think that the bank would be satisfied with this transaction. After all, it has risked nothing, got your home for free and enslaved you for the next thirty years. No sir! The bank knows no limit on their avarice and greed. The bank lusts for your property in a satanic and demonic machination.
The bank then turns around and sells your “Mortgage” to Wall Street through groups of investors, for full value. Now this is coming to full fruition. The bank has now gotten paid twice on your signature on the “Mortgage” document.
Now class, pay attention. This will be on your test of Life.
1. You created the “credit” for the bank, which the bank treated as “Money”
2. The bank monetized the “Mortgage” document through your signature
3. The “Mortgage” document is a negotiable instrument
4. The “Mortgage” document is a “Security” under 18 USC
5. This “Mortgage money” is deposited into a secret, undisclosed account at the bank in YOUR NAME.
6. The bank turns around and writes a “hot check” against this “Mortgage money” to pay off your debtor.
7. The bank demands and is paid by the receiving bank in Federal Reserve Notes.
8. The bank considers the “Mortgage money” in your secret, undisclosed bank account, abandoned, and lays claim to it.
9. Thus the bank steals your money in your secret, undisclosed account
10. The payments that you make into this secret account are also considered abandoned, and the bank lays claim to them.
11. The bank turns around and sells your “Mortgage” to Wall Street investors, who in turn sell these as “Mortgage Backed Securities” back to the public.
12. The bank has risked nothing in this entire transaction
13. You, the borrower, have voluntarily given your home or ranch to the bank for free.
14. You, the borrower, are enslaved for the next thirty years to the bank because of your own ignorance.
It has been said that “Truth is stranger than fiction”. This is a wet dream for the Federal Reserve Banking system.
Fifth, I saved the best for last. In the first paragraph of this article it was established that this Constitution for the united States of America is the Supreme Law of the Land. Any statute or law out of harmony with this Constitution is null and void from the beginning. Any court decision that is out of harmony with this Constitution, is null and void. The Bill of Rights clarified for the government, that the rights enumerated therein, are God-given rights, not rights given to men by other men or governments, and that these rights are Sacred and untouchable. They cannot be removed or abrogated by any government or any man or any corporation, under any circumstance.
The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right of the People to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The Fifth Amendment guarantees that a Citizen accused of a crime cannot be deprived of his three most sacred possessions, life, liberty and property without a trial by jury.
The Seventh Amendment guarantees the right of trial by jury in any controversy where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars. Here is where it gets tricky. A “dollar” is defined as “a gold or silver coin” of a specific weight. Federal Reserve Notes are paper created out of thin air with no value whatsoever. Federal Reserve Notes have been denominated in increments of “dollars”, to make them appear to be dollars, but cannot by law, be dollars. Federal Reserve Notes have been decreed to be “legal tender” by the corporation known as the United States. “We the People” have been tricked into accepting Federal Reserve Notes as “money”.
Again, back to the mortgage fiasco. When the revenue officer, the so-called judge, on the case, does not provide the borrower being sued, the protection of the Fourth, the Fifth and the Seventh Amendments, he knows that he is not adjudicating law, but simply acting as a revenue officer protecting and enhancing the revenue of the corporate, United States. In fact, he can ignore all requests by the Defendant for a trial by jury because he knows the Citizen being sued has no idea of what jurisdiction he is being sued in.
When the revenue officer, the so-called judge, issues a judgment against the borrower for defaulting on the “Note” and “Mortgage” without a “Trial by Jury”, he knows that he has betrayed the confidence of the American people, but he is doing the will of his master, the corporate United States. His betrayal of the American People is not legally Treason. Treason can only occur if he goes against his master, the corporate United States. The so-called judge is simply being a good “Nazi”, just following orders. However, the revenue officer, the so-called judge, also knows that he is violating the protections of the Fourth, the Fifth, and the Seventh Amendments afforded to the American Citizen.
In New Mexico even under the military rule of General Kearney during the 1850s, the right of a trial by jury in all matters dealing with life, liberty and property remained protected by military law. Subsequently, during the time that New Mexico was a territory, for about 60 years, the right of trial by jury was preserved to all Citizens. When New Mexico became a state in 1912, in article II, section 12, the right of trial by jury was guaranteed to remain inviolate as it had heretofore existed. Thus the New Mexico Constitution deferred to the Supremacy of the pre-existing condition as stated in the Organic Act establishing the Territory of New Mexico.
So then, the banks,the judges and the lawyers are the new “Mafia”, extorting and defrauding the American Citizenry for lucre, due to our abysmal legal ignorance. The banks, the judges and the liarwyers are the modern “Ghengis Khan”, raping, pillaging and plundering the landscape simply because they can. Fact is, most of us are “legal idiots”. This is by design and with the specific purpose to keep us enslaved to the “Legal system and its Liaryers.” Most liawyers and judges have sold out their birthright as Americans for “thirty pieces of silver”, or more specifically, for a few hundred worthless, Federal Reserve Notes.
Judges are no more than ambulance chasing liawyers who put on a little black dress and love to be called “Your Honor” by their ass-kissing fans, the liawyers. A prime example of the psychopathic arrogance that this ambulance chasing group of men engage in, is the fact that in order to cover up their own crimes, these so-called judges have given themselves “judicial immunity”. Don’t believe me, when is the last time you tried to sue a “judge”?
However, “We the People” live under “this Constitution for the united States of America” and thus have the protections of the Fourth, the Fifth, and the Seventh Amendments in all matters dealing with life, liberty and property.
My analysis: The healthiest thing for this country would be for all homeowners to stop paying their mortgages immediately. This would accomplish the following objectives:
1. This would stop the humiliation of the American Citizens.
2. This would stop the physical and psychological displacement of the American Citizens.
3. This would stop the grotesquely, immoral ransacking against the American Citizens that the banks are committing.
4. The banks would be forced to return to “honest banking” and return the owership of homes and ranches to the rightful owners, the American Citizens.
5. Every homeowner would own their home clear and free for the first time since 1933.
6. The banks would be forced to stop all of their fraudulent activities that have enslaved the American Citizens for the last 77 years.
7. The economy would rebound to its healthiest level in 30 years.
I encourage every American homeowner with a mortgage on their home to engage in an act of Civil Disobedience by refusing to make any more payments to the criminal banks. This act alone would destroy the Federal Banking System, the stated goal of Ron Paul.
This is where I will declare a Moratorium on all Mortgage Foreclosure lawsuits and evictions until the banks and mortgage companies meet all five stringent lawful requirements as stated above.
No family will be evicted from their home or family homestead, as a result of a mortgage foreclosure suit, without a trial by jury and meeting the other four lawful requirements.
When the Citizens of San Miguel County elect me as their next Sheriff, before any Citizen in San Miguel loses their homestead unlawfully and unconstitutionally, I swear on the Altar of Almighty God, I will arrest the presiding judge on the case and the Special Master assigned to sell the property.
– Rico S. Giron, Future Sheriff of San Miguel County
~
SOURCE: http://ricoforsheriff.com/moratorium-on-mortgage-foreclosures
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