Did YOU Inadvertently Help Enrich FLDS? Maybe !

Sarah's picture

If you paid taxes in the last few years, that is.
The Houston Chronicle has details. Millions in taxpayers' money helped build the sect's home and fortune -- as did labor and tithes from church members "prophet" Warren Jeffs dunned.

The market value of Yearning for Zion Ranch exceeds $21 million — with the approximately 80,000-square-foot temple valued at $8.7 million, according to the county tax appraiser. One of the county's biggest taxpayers, the sect paid last year's $424,000 bill on time.

There is little mystery about the source of all the money and manpower it took to build the ranch, according to dissident FLDS members, who still live at the sect's historic home on the Utah and Arizona border.

They say before Warren Jeffs was arrested in August 2006, the sect's self-pronounced prophet aggressively solicited the faithful at its base in Colorado City, Ariz., for donations of cash and labor to build its "New Zion" in Texas.

Yet the money didn't all come from inside the FLDS. Some came straight out of the contracts and Small Business Administration loans taxpayers' dollars fund.

he Defense Department awarded $1.2 million in contracts to an aircraft parts supplier linked to the West Texas polygamist retreat that has been unraveled by a massive child welfare investigation, according to a newspaper report.

New Era Manufacturing, based in Nevada, where the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is primarily based, also received a $900,000 federal small-business loan in 2005, according to records found by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The money is among the millions in taxpayer dollars that have apparently helped finance the religious sect, whose property includes a compound in Eldorado where state officials are investigating allegations that children have been physically and sexually abused, the newspaper reported.

And to think, I figured Bush's emphasis on "Faith Based" services for the government wasn't serious.

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bringiton's picture

Sex, wives and videotape

The Salt Lake Tribune web site has a Polygamy Section; more than anyone should ever want to know.

lambert's picture

A tiny little theocratic state in the state of TX

How nice for everyone. Wonder who signed off on the contracts.

NOTE And thank you, Sarah, for following this amazing story. Who would have guessed the Mighty Corrente Building would become the go-to site for tracking polygamy cultists....

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi

Sarah's picture

Lambert, it's in my backyard ...

there's an offshoot of them about 40 miles from here.
How they treat their wives and daughters makes my back teeth itch; but so far, at least, that bunch hasn't done anything legally actionable.

Oddly imitative of art, this section of real life -- I don't know if David Weber had the LDS in mind when he wrote about the Church of Humanity Unchained, but certainly the FLDS could step right into the role of his Masadans, IMNVHO.


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