Posted on 11/09/2017 8:20:52 PM PST by EdnaMode
President Trump has thrown his support behind removing the Church of Scientology's tax-exempt status, according to a HuffPost report.
Twitter messages from a Trump family friend and top official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) claimed that Trump and his family "couldn't agree more" that the church should lose its tax-exempt status.
"From The moment I saw your series I told President Trump & his family we needed to revoke their tax exempt status. They couldn’t agree more, but please don’t publicize that yet," Lynne Patton wrote to actress Leah Remini in the messages obtained by HuffPost. “This is going to get done in the next 4 years or I’ll die trying. Knock on wood!”
Patton is a longtime friend and business associate of the Trump family who has worked with the Trumps since 2009. Last year, she spoke in support of Trump at the Republican National Convention in June.
Remini, who starred on the hit series "King of Queens," is behind the Emmy Award-winning show “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.” Season two of the series is now airing. The show is a documentary examining the Church of Scientology and its alleged abuse of critics, which Remini left in 2013.
“I look forward to doing my part to help put an end to this ongoing nightmare and blatant misuse of our IRS rules & regulations," Patton wrote to Remini. "I want to do more research on Scientology’s history with the IRS, to date, so that I can better understand what tactics have been applied and where we can pick up."
It is unclear if Patton ever communicated with the IRS, and a request for comment from HuffPost was not immediately answered. Experts told HuffPost that such an urging from an administration official would likely be illegal.
“For the White House or any administration official to try and influence who the IRS targets, for whatever reason, is wrong and could result in a violation of the law,” said former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission Larry Noble. “The IRS must make these decisions independently without any influence by the White House or administration officials.”
The IRS website states that “the IRS may begin a church tax inquiry only if an appropriate high-level Treasury official reasonably believes, on the basis of facts and circumstances recorded in writing, that an organization claiming to be a church or convention or association of churches may not qualify for exemption.”
Source please?
Its the crap like this that makes people frustrated with The Donald. If you worked for a large corporation and you found out that the President, CEO and Chairman of the Board was looking at the individual files of a small company and spending any time on it, you would question whether or not they were micro managing.
Trump must be a bear to work for.
“Source please?”
there have been a number of excellent books by former, high-ranking Scientologists exposing all of this as well as websites for ex-members, but one of the very best and most comprehensive exposes is this HBO documentary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_Clear_%28film%29
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4257858/
https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/going-clear
Hubbard’s wife-beating and alcoholism at the time he invented Scientology is well-documented. Hubbard himself also said early on that the only way to make any real money was to fund a religion. At this time, the “church” is estimated to have only about 50,000 members world wide, yet has a real-estate portfolio worth about 3 billion dollars.
Scientology is no longer even a viable fake religion, but is instead now little more than a tax-free real-estate holding company.
fund = found
Your last comment is not borne out by those who work for him
Trump is not going through people’s files. You have a second hand statement from not Trump. Who knows what he thinks. I certainly don’t
No, no, no. Taxes should never be equal.
Always tax foreigners. Free the natives with tariff.
Only then, free the middle class with low tax.
Problem is Govt loves to spend, so tax type, FAIR etc, is irrelevant. You are a slave.
Who decides what is an acceptable religion?
“Well, it did work for witches... “
So, all eyewitness testimony is forever invalid?
“A surprising number of actors buy into it.”
Actors tend to be stupid and uneducated. Even—or perhaps especially—those who have a BA in “drama.”
“The establishment clause is violated every time any religious organization gets preferential treatment.”
The salient point is that there are things that claim to be religions, but which are not. These groups are entitled to nothing.
You want federal bureaucrats to decide what is a valid religion and what isn’t?
*****************************************
It has always been up to the IRS to decide.
Read the other clause.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Ask any Imam what is the function of Islam?
The answer should be, "it's an Iqamat-ud-Deen (established religion)"
To this day you can't legally be a Communist or any ideology that opposes the constitution and run for office or become a citizen. For the simple fact you can't swear allegiance to the constitution(or agreeing to the terms of the contract.) It's technically insurrection.
Islam is a required theocracy (Islam requires a path too Darul Islam or house of Islam) which is clearly against the first amendment. To be real clear: Freedom of religion and a theocracy(established religion or Iqamat-ud-Deen) are the antithesis of one another.
I find it funny when people say, "Muslims have freedom of religion." What they're really saying is "Muslims have the freedom to establish their religion as a theocracy."
Technically people that follow Islam they can't have freedom of their ideology in the US. No one has taken this to the supreme court yet. One day it will have to be ruled on
said, "punished as one would punish an Enron or a tobacco company, for their crimes and actions, not their beliefs, or lack thereof"
Enron was a legally based company that went bad. It didn't have a charter to kill and take legal control all of humanity. Islam does. NO other belief has a legal system built into there belief other then Christianity did when it was a theocracy. That is past history for Christianity which is exactly what the first amendment was written to avoid.
Islam should be treated for what it is. A religion that is required to replace our system of laws which is insurrection.
Scientology was created to generate money for their leader.
It's not a strong enough case to claim it's not a religion. There is no argument that can be made that it's insurrection.
I don’t see this as an anti-religion move as much as an anti-corrupt 501C-3 issue. Too many N/Ps are primarily enrichment schemes for their leadership, leaving just pennies on the dollar towards their “charitable purpose”. Can’t say that outfit like The March of Dimes didnt give us a hint: only 10% of their income trickled down.
That's what I'd like a source for.
Hubbard took a mishmash of things that people did or had done to improve their condition, from talk therapy to various other techniques to improve on's communication skills, to others to improve ones ability to observe realty more fully to techniques to reduce the impact of environmental toxins.
He organized them into a path that many have found helpful.
Yeah he's a fraud, he claimed every single one of them as his own independent invention or discovery.
Yeah he wasn't a nice man.
Yeah he abused a LOT of people.
Worse he set up a system to use a workable technology to abuse people en masse.
And he didn't have the sense to put in safeguards to insure it wasn't used against him.
He died in isolation under the care of the very people who would vastly benefit from his demise.
Cerebral hemorrhage, or so it was said, no autopsy, prompt cremation. Dr Gene Denk had him on Coumadin, a blood thinning agent also sold as a rat poison under the brand name warfarin. It causes death by hemorrhage and internal bleeding.
I knew Dr Denk, and I doubt very seriously that he caused Hubbard's death, but it would have been so very very easy for anyone in his retenue to deliberately or accidentally give him an overdose.
That being said, the tech itself works, like any other tool, it can be used for good or evil. The current ownership chose poorly.
Who died and made them gods?
You're asserting that it's always valid and infallible?
Well there is that "Clear the Planet" thing.
Unless you just meant an insurrection that had the slightest chance of being successful......
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