General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Does anyone else think it's time to tax the churches? [View all]2naSalit
(87,642 posts)If you take a look at the STATE UNIVERSITIES in Idaho, for example... all three of them, they have engaged in "land swaps" whereby the church owns property that is for the use of LDS students only with free meals, tutors, student unions, computer labs and other subsidies that the rest of the students don't have readily available without paying additional fees. And, these land swaps were used to allow the church to trade off crumbling buildings for the state and the nonLDS students to cover the costs of either raising or upgrading, all of which was a cost far higher than the value of the property the church absconded with... and taking up entire city blocks while "commoner" buildings languish for upgrades. That all happened in the early 90s-2000s. Most of the faculty has been replaced by church members for the majority and all the pres. and upper admin positions are also LDS folks. The legislators of ID and UT are most certainly dominated by LDS and many of the local gov'ts in MT, ID, UT, WY and NV are LDS dominated...
So don't think they aren't already in a position where they don't foist their beliefs on a large portion of the population/legal system in the country. Pay attention, a large number of the Teabagger clowns and misguided individuals in the Rocky Mountain west are LDS, authentic Zionist zealots. And I don't mean to disparage religions but this is for real in that region just as other religious groups practice zealotry and legislative domination in other regions. The first Amendment is supposed to prohibit this but what I am trying to point out is that it is failing the rest of us by not doing so. Taxation is key in reining in this religion-creep phenomena that seems to crop up a couple times a century.