One of the great things about the Eldorado scandal is that the nation gets an opportunity to really look at the Mormons.
Authorities, however, are still fishing for something to pin on the YFZ membership to cover for the initial raid. A lawyer searching through the groups finances points out that no one can account for the purchase of significant agricultural implements. The FLDS church never registered as not-for-profit, and have paid their taxes on time, so many of their financial dealings have simply remained private. But since some people may believe this possibility might indict the group, it’s trumpeted on the AP wire like the fresh gossip it is.
We are told in this interview with Raj Patel that many Americans live in ‘food deserts’, in which fresh food is unavailable to them because it is not profitable for suppliers or grocers to serve them. The biggest problem with the majority of the current food market is that the means of production and supply are owned by only a few companies, so they can control who gets to eat.
One solution to this problem is for people such as these to join into a closed economy, by which their needs are provided for through the labors of the group. From an economic perspective, joining a Mormon community such as the FLDS is extremely attractive. Who wouldn’t want a free house with all bills paid? Free, fesh farm food, free health care, and free child care? An inclusive, homogeneous community with little crime and few problems? Is it really such a horrible thing if they have to exchange selling insurance or schlepping drinks for milking cows or building fences?
If one can look past the religious layer and instead examine the functional aspects of the YFZ group (as is becoming increasingly more easy to do), one will find their work instructional as a successful model of a sustainable community.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
6 Responses:
May 16th, 2008 at 11:18 am
This is exactly the kind of thing that John Robb has been pushing as a defense against 4GW attacks on our overstretched and overburdened infrastructure. His forthcoming book will cover this in detail.
I have mentioned a couple of times on FLDS related threads on Grits for Breakfast that the fact that there are producing oil wells on property adjacent to the YFZ ranch adds a real greed factor to this whole mess. I sure would like to know who owns the mineral rights to the property. If the owner is the FLDS, all remaining purity in the State’s case — not very much to begin with, of course — is down the toilet.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
The FLDS have about as much to do with the regular mormon church, which is what Lupo was talking about, as the OTO as envisioned in Liber CI has to do with the Catholic Church.
As for the FLDS “closed economy”, watch for the tax fraud and welfare fraud allegations to come down the pike, if they haven’t already.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Oh, I RFTA, sorry: just color me at least as skeptical as the author of that article.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Wow. I’m not sure the source of your bile, but I’d gently suggest that it’s misplaced. I’m not personally involved, but they just don’t seem like evil people. It’s a little shocking for me to see otherwise rational people get so emotionally bent out of shape over rumor.
The FLDS is legitimately derived from the same groups that originally followed Joe Smith and B. Young. Their origin in aftermath of the shameful capitulation regarding polygamy by the mainstream church is well documented. Whether or not you agree with their theology or policies, you can’t really deny the legitimacy of their origins.
Issues of tax and welfare fraud have already come up, many times. Despite the many rumors, it turns out that the YFZ ranch, which was never registered with the state as a religious organization, has paid its taxes in full and on time to the county as an agricultural business — the third largest taxpayer, behind a couple of oil wells. It also turns out that the relatively few welfare recipients on the ranch were either actually disabled or elderly. They even contributed a great deal, through taxes, to the local school system that they never used. If that’s fraud, it’s about the dumbest attempt at fraud I’ve ever seen.
Are there any other baseless, demonizing rumors about these folks you’d like me to sniff, or would you like to give some complete strangers a chance against what has turned out to be a surprisingly provincial and xenophobic collection of legislators and policy wonks? The presumed abuse of the children by the FLDS folks pales against the institutional damage the state has inflicted on these kids. I can’t think of a single nice thing to say about how the state has handled this whole affair.
May 17th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Ask regular mormons how legitimate they are. The lines of authority in their church don’t descend that way, and the regular mormon church is not run as a commune. Mormon bishops don’t have the implicit authority to schism like in traditional Christianity.
I’m suspicious because in states where similar groups get a fair amount more sympathy (Nevada and Utah) the clashes of those groups with the state generally come from those two sources. It’s like, a crack house gets busted, you know what kinds of crimes are likely to have been committed there. My intent here is more cynical than bileful; I don’t think the FLDS are the moral equivalent of crack addicts.
The statutory rape stuff seems to be fairly well acknowledged, and while I’m not quick to condemn them for that for reasons similar to what you’ve outlined in previous posts, them’s the rules and they knew they were breaking them.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Ask regular mormons…
Doncha think it’s a bit disingenuous to ask the LDS how legitimate the FLDS is? It’s like asking the Pope how legitimate the LDS, or any protestant group, is. People split off from Protestant lines and form their own groups all the time, and there’s rarely a question about ‘legitimacy’ for those involved, except from those who stand to lose out on membership and financial support.
Previous to this fiasco, had someone asked me about the FLDS, I probably would have had some variously dismissive phrases woven together with old jokes about polygamy and inbreeding. Dismissive, because I prefer self-empowering, liberalizing faiths over restrictive, hierarchical ones. Old jokes, as I would have had precious little information about the community to go on before their media exposure. Now that I know about what they were really doing, they seem mostly harmless and I seriously don’t get why people are so threatened by them. They certainly don’t represent any kind of future or even a realistic past, but as a sustainable community, they’re an interesting case study.
Them’s the rules…
I’m not a big fan of Mormonism in any flavor, and I’m disgusted with the varieties of child abuse actually committed in this country. However, despite all the lurid rumor, it does appear that the state is having a very hard time proving any abuse occurred on the YFZ ranch, despite the state having ratcheted up the age of consent just to catch them up on that statutory rape business you seem so certain about. The state has rules they’re supposed to follow, as well, and it seems they were very flippant about which ones they chose to ignore.