Category: Uncategorized

Don’t be like Keith, but there are some things we have learned.

1. Frank Parlato is a pig.  It is not OK to make a living, retirement, or reclusion out of bashing your enemies.  Most of it is on the verge of vulgar.  Still, is worth keeping in touch for the sometimes-impressive journalism.

Next, it is fun to read the court documents.  See the logic.  Is it convincing?  You can almost tell from the documents alone who is going to win.

The trial is Oct. 1 and it promises to be a doozy.

c) The isolated women (and men) stand out, but right now I am thinking about cults.  At first I eschewed it–Rick Ross and the cult institute and all these people writing and studying it.  Bizarre rituals are one thing that is identified with cults, and let’s just put that aside.  Let’s put aside the whole notion of cults and crazy people too.

Brainwashed is not a good word either.

Can a person be taught, trained, even institutionalized?  Definitely.  A family (e.g., parents) can be a brainwashing influence.  Just about any group or individual can be brainwashing.  A company, such as eBay, can be brainwashing, especially if you work there.

There are definite signs and symptoms.  Limiting contact with outsiders, strong leader, secrecy, and smashing outsiders and disbelievers are just a few.  You can study it because there are many examples and it has been going on for centuries.  Then there are those times when it turns criminal and if you wanted to you could mimic the convicts and criminals.  If you were inclined toward crime (Raniere) you could learn it that way.

It is worthwhile to know a little bit about it to reverse engineer it, to learn how, where, and why it is happening in your life.  Then you can choose.  That way you can decide.

Today we are listening to Seance because we wore out our copy (the headphones and batteries) with Heyday.  We already know Starfish is a masterpiece.

Tantalized has replaced Tangled Up In Blue as my favorite song.

LINK.

Let’s talk about Harvey Weinstein.

No, Keith Raniere.  He must know the word “cult” well.  He is a studious guy and Nxvim was no accident.  Jeffs’ life blew up some ten years ago and for Raniere it was a similar plan in action.

Elissa Wall and Rebecca Musser are women who broke free.  They sound exactly like Lucia Evans (Weinstein).  They are both extraordinary women and simply women who have grown up too.  Now they are successful, independent, and also attractive women.

A lot of #me too is about women.

These men went to prison because of individual cases brought by tenacious victims.  Just like with Raniere, for Jeffs the charges (conspiracy to commit underage sex) are just an introduction to the overall harm done.  They even appear as odd charges given the crimes and damage.  Everyone and each separate story is what makes these criminals so fascinating.  Call it justice if you will but there is a happy ending:  it is over.

Banking on Heaven, I still cannot find it.  Damned to Heaven popped-up and was excruciating and informative.  Dateline, fairly recently, is excellent; Prophet’s Pray is very good.  The Lifetime movie (Tony Goldwyn) was fun but very misleading.  Mike Watkiss has talent:  “Mr. Jeffs, are you ready for prison?”  It makes me want to read Under the Banner of Heaven.

Then I watched Putin’s War on Frontline.

One learning is that it is very much like organized crime.  Both rely on trusted lieutenants, family, and strict codes of silence.  They engage in crime conspiracies in that they know it is illegal yet they do it anyway.  They go to extraordinary lengths to plan, execute, and cover-up.

They are both cases where people in some organizations worked to bring them down.  Any charge–Utah and Arizona gave way to Texas to put Jeffs away–that will remove the leader is a start and the immediate goal.

FLDS and NXIVM are similar–Weinstein too, for that matter–in that they get at this thing of, do I feel sorry for the victims?  “Justice” aside, I can never lose track of the focus and that is the victims.  Ten thousand, 8,000, or more–that is the FLDS member estimate–is a pretty small number for a city but it is a large number of crime victims.  Now, Short Creek, right on the border between Utah and Arizona, may turn into more of a refugee camp or social project than anything else.  Worshiping a man in prison cannot go on indefinitely.

It is pretty property but the fences, and particularly the walls, ruin it.  The houses and mobile homes where many of the wives and children live look like slums.  A high percentage are on welfare.  It is like opioid addiction without the opioids.

Oh yes, cults.  Another learning is that a family can be a cult.  We want you to be an alcoholic.  Exercise and education are bad.  Obedience are respect are good.  That is a cult too.

***

Warren Jeffs is the person who turned the FLDS church into a criminal conspiracy.

(more…)

It is nice to see data from the Social Security Administration.

I don’t know anything about inheritance taxes because it does not affect me.  One side of that is I have never inherited a dime.

This little post does identify another perspective, that of recipients’ dependence on, and increased dependence on, social security.  “Cash” vs. noncash will always muddy the data, but one-third only source is a huge number nonetheless as social security alone may not be enough to live on.

It also does not address all the other issues, number one of which is the shift away from employer pensions to self-directed savings.  For somewhere around half of retires that system has not worked and they do not have enough saved.

It is surprising that this blurb does not mention IRAs at all.  And Roth IRAs only began in 1997.  These tax-free withdrawls and income may not show up to the SSA at all.

http://www.concordmonitor.com/Investigators-looked-to-NH-to-catch-Golden-State-killer-17298247

Technology.

Paul Holes.

“Court documents reveal more than a dozen people said they knew or had even seen evidence of the crimes.”  Can’t help it.  It was today’s news on Wapo.

Joseph DeAngelo was the story yesterday.  Divorced, loner, daughter living with him (no husband or home of her own), as well as a 15-year old daughter.  Moved from New York, GED, stepfather, Viet Nam, policeman.

I can’t help this either – I like to look at pictures of people’s houses online.    From an $80,000 house in Tennessee, to 17 acres in Maine, to Allison Mack’s parents house, it says so much about them.  You can see inside the mansions or the rural homes in towns no one ever heard of.  It is not as if I stood out front and snapped pictures.  Others have already done that –a bunch of people running around in FBI jackets doesn’t hurt– and Google will provide satellite images too.

But the subdevelopments in California really stand out.  The Turpins.  DeAngelo.  Locked gates and neighbors who heard them arrive home or the swearing.

In the EAR case there were so many clues.  Rancho Cordova, I know it now, was one.

So let’s change the subject.  Allison Mack.  That is not a change at all.

What is not written in posts far below.  She appeared to have it all.  No, that is not the case.  She is awfully screwed-up and that did not happen recently.

But that she wanted his seed, that is a titillating and fairly worn motive.  I remember the woman who thought enough of Cary Grant and her prospects that she sat upside-down in a chair and also wrote a book about it.  It is an excellent book and it was about more than just that.

There is something positive to the Raniere and friends prison influx.  I got some movie ideas by googling Nicki Clyne.  Here is one where she is cast as Guitar Player.

First, my two cents.  She is scared shitless and for very good reason.  The bravado about chasing police cars and volunteering to go to prison is over.  Her life, as she knew it, is over.  It is not baseball, or hardball, or even being hit by a boulder.  It is give us much more or we are not going to budge.

Reading about the Bronfman family history is no fun at all.  Canada, or Russia, will you take them back?  But I digress.

What is going to happen?  There are going to be people saying it is way too harsh for that poor girl.  Others will say she must be related to Charles Manson.

First she must do something to take life in prison off the table.  Then, whittling down the 15 years will be all about more, more, more.

Raniere, the great leader, may as well have it cut off with a meat cleaver.  You’re on your own, baby, and you’re talking about getting it reduced to maybe 5 or 10 years and that is the absolute best that is going to happen.  Tweet, tweet, tweet (sings the canary).

For Keith Raniere, 57, perhaps the public defender will get him to confess.

As for Allison Mack, someone is likely to tell her:  ‘Look.  We’re getting to the point where we’re past shutting it down to tearing it apart and salvage mode.  Are you with us or not?’

For all those suitors out there, Clare Bronfman is still a feisty 39.  You’d better hurry.  Nancy Saltzman, on the other hand, is probably far less desirable and much more vulnerable.

Even the neighbors saw it.  You can’t say you didn’t know these lunatics were walking around at 4 A.M.

Now, on to the movies.  I’ve never seen Smallville.

I am a happy person because I don’t have any secrets.  And I don’t have too many problems, at least none that I cannot write about or think about or do something about and resolve.  I fully plan to, and I am well on my way to succeeding, not leaving a trail of anyone who is mentally crippled, in jail, or worse.

Who is the latest one?  The Waffle House shooter is the latest one.  Let’s forget about guns for a minute.  There are really angry people out there.  Some are so dissatisfied they are willing to kill themselves and take innocent people with them.  A lot of others are really angry at the government, their ex, or something or someone far less identifiable.

My belief (or at least guess) is that in 9 out of 10 cases the problem started with the parents.  It is a lifelong task; I, “approaching” 60, only now think I am truly capable of being a parent.  Also, as an adult son or daughter, it is your responsibility to be your own person and deal with it in an appropriate way.  I cannot stress that enough:  You cannot say stop blaming others unless you stop blaming others.

I am not an angry person.  I do not want to be an angry person.  What is just below marked “definitely Private” makes me angry.

In the U.S. there are two big problems and if they don’t converge we are at least going to see more of them.  They are that more people are going to be old and broke and a lot of people prefer a life of opioids or other drugs to just about anything.

Red Terry, Bent Mountain, Roanoke, VA.

Document.

According to Mr. Report and his buddy Art Voice, the story is the story.  As in, either way, we’re going to make it.

Now, combine greed, media, and a vengeance so incredible it fills nine computers and a server, and look what you’ve got.

It is still the best story because no one has written it yet.  Sex trafficking.  Who’d of thunk it.

The things that stick out at first are money laundering and immigration offenses.  Then there are child endangerment indications leading up to rape.  In terms of business, there is pyramid marketing surrounded by secrecy and an inability or unwillingness to explain it (i.e., fraud).  Then there is the whole class of offenses included within coercion, threatening, and physical harm.

The logic behind sex trafficking is that there is a case, but again, did any of the participants have a clue?  And, in terms of shutting it down, it has extreme teeth — a minimum 15 year sentence.

Allison Mack apparently did not know.

That’s the thing that we still don’t know.  How could Keith Raniere have duped all these people?  And in terms of sex, how could he have been that good?

Probably the only way to find out is to read and read and read what the women have to say.  It is tedious.  I remember things like ‘he is a genius’ and ‘he could have done a lot of good,’ but I don’t recall much more.  I have never seen anything explaining why they would sleep with him.

Money and sex, I get that part.  But sex with him?  That’s the part I don’t get.

I wish someone would write a book or make a movie.  That is the problem with these current, real life moron in jail crime stories.  No one has written the story!