SEC Fine and the Meaning of Sustaining our Leaders

[ttribe]

Just picking a nit here regarding the opening post and the blog commentary - What was alleged in this matter was a violation of civil law, not criminal law. I sometimes testify on matters of fraud and, IMO, I think anyone would be hard pressed to make a fraud claim against the Church based on the available facts.

The following is just my opinion:

Was there intentional obfuscation and concealment in contravention of SEC rules and civil law? Yes.

Were there steps taken that were dishonest? Yes.

Were employees manipulated and used in an immoral way? Yes.

Was there a crime in any sense of the legal definitions? No.

Do I blame any believing member for being disturbed by this? No.

Edited March 29, 2023 by ttribe

[LoudmouthMormon]

1 hour ago, ttribe said:

Except none of this had anything to do with taxes. But, please, don't let that get in the way of your deflection.

Heh.  Well, ok.  Yeah, the SEC is not the IRS.  Both are products of the same processes, but yeah, I'm sure my post had absolutely zero relevance for the topic at hand.  😒

[mfbukowski]

On 3/28/2023 at 10:36 AM, Meadowchik said:

An excerpt from a recent blog post by the sister who was my Young Women's leader, thirty years ago:

"PUBLIC CHATTER HAS largely abated regarding the February 21 SEC order and its incumbent fines of $1 million against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and $4 million against church-owned Ensign Peak Advisors. You can read the specifics in the order by clicking the colored link above (its surprisingly easy to understand), but the tldr; version is that, between 1998 and May, 2018, the First Presidencies and Presiding Bishoprics (identified as “senior leadership” in the order) created 13 shell (or unfunded) companies into which they pretended to transfer portions of the Church’s billions in order to hide it from the public, and then they knowingly falsified documents (F13 forms) to cover it up. This is a crime. The realization that our senior leadership spent two decades willfully committing crime ought to shock members to their core. It does me. "

She continues here: https://outsidethebookofmormonbelt.com/2023/03/28/lds-sr-leadership-the-sec-and-my-sustaining-vote/

 

While I am no longer a believer, the author still is. When I read this I was surprised at how my heart broke reading it, for her and others.

My feelings about Mormonism are complex...just yesterday I cited Joseph Smith's ideas about faith in a discussion about the realities of existence, to support my point no less.

But tithing is a painful subject. I am personally subjected to financial abuse and so I think this subject also hits a chord for me. Furthermore I remember my dad's discouragement when I was little when out family hit hard times. As the head of our home of full and faithful tithe payers, my father went to our bishop to ask for help to pay for milk for our very large family. He was turned away. 

Anyways, the author of this blog post makes some important points and also makes an argument for what sustaining our leaders should look like. I think that what she suggests could be a very healthy model.

Please read the blog in its entirety before commenting. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

The reason you hire a doctor lawyer or accountant is because you don't have the expertise to do what they do.

To check what they do, you would have to know all you yourself know and ALL they know also.

I don't want to study IRS code all day.   I know I am unusual in that.

So I hire a CPA to do it for me.   

But if HE screws up- am I responsible?

No, that's why there are things like malpractice lawsuits.

I did not set my broken leg so that it is not as long as the other- that's all I know.   So I get sued for having a short leg?

[Calm]

5 hours ago, smac97 said:

he church must still be operating under the influence of philosophies prevalent during the apostasy."

I agree with her in this.  We have had a lot of cultural baggage being brought into the Church from converts (since in the establishment phase all were converts, there would be a massive impact in the foundation, imo) that then gets carried forward by their children and others even if always members.    Some is good, some is bad.  Just look at the antiCatholicism bigotry that has persisted.  And then there is the stuff we create ourselves, given the human tendency to fill in gaps even when it’s not necessary, to create hedges and all, mission creep, etc.  There is no way to escape cultural or doctrinal heritage except by conscious challenging of all our beliefs, imo (and that may or may not help).  But then I think we should be doing this anyway on everything because the human factor is always there.

Not saying this means we should automatically dump any shared ideas, etc. because I assume a lot of truth and good stuff survived in other faiths.  Also mistakes could be made in understanding/interpreting current revelation, so I don’t see a reason to believe LDS unique ideas are sacrosanct from inspection/questioning.  Just thinking we should be taking out our beliefs and reexamining them on a regular basis to see what refinements God wants us to make in them.

[Calm]

4 hours ago, Teancum said:

The FP was totally involved in this. So you think they are stupid and did not know what they were doing?

It seems quite possible to me they were not informed of how each and every detail was going to be carried out.  Would a CEO of a large corporation be informed of how managers were to be chosen (common names only), how companies would be identified (located out of state with local area codes), or the specific instructions on SEC forms that would be given to employees?  Surely that level of detail (“btw, we are going to have the manager just sign the last page of the forms to limit even their ability to make connections”) is not included in top level discussions.  Not quite as bad as expecting a discussion about low level issues, as in something like “we have decided to buy TP from this other company because it’s softer” or “we are going to use warm white lightbulbs in the factory to make it feel less stark” as opposed to a general directive from senior executives to make facilities more comfortable for employees, but it is hard for me to see their subordinates thinking it was worth senior leaders’ valuable time to tell them they were going to not let the managers see the full SEC form.  The working out of details and paying attention to them….isn’t that what leaders hire others to worry about so they don’t have to?

I can see senior church leaders likely being informed about splitting into LLCs and discussing in general the appropriateness of trying to obscure connections, maybe even between the LLCs themselves (not letting one know the others exist?) and them saying “it sounds like a good idea, go ahead with it” and then whoever is overseeing it at Ensign figuring out the nitty gritty details of choosing more common names, out of state claimed locations and phone numbers, no answering of phones, etc and then some overzealous employee (possibly the same, possibly the person the Ensign boss got to do the actual work of filling out the forms) come SEC form time…the kind of person who thinks if something works well, than 10x that something is even better, decides to withhold info about the LLC itself from even the LLC manager by not allowing that individual access to the full SEC form and requiring them to just sign without reading contrary to the statement on the form…

Thus the actual lying that was done was imo likely something not approved of specifically by church leaders, though I see them as still responsible for it in that case as the employees who did instigate the signing under false pretenses were their agents.  It should have been made clear that while senior leaders were on board with obscuring any connection between the LLCs and the Church, nothing that required active dishonesty (as opposed to intentionally and actively not providing onlookers enough info to draw the correct conclusions), lying by or coercion of employees was acceptable.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Calm

[CV75]

2 hours ago, ttribe said:

Just picking a nit here regarding the opening post and the blog commentary - What was alleged in this matter was a violation of civil law, not criminal law. I sometimes testify on matters of fraud and, IMO, I think anyone would be hard pressed to make a fraud claim against the Church based on the available facts.

The following is just my opinion:

Was there intentional obfuscation and concealment in contravention of SEC rules and civil law? Yes.

Were there steps taken that were dishonest? Yes.

Were employees manipulated and used in an immoral way? Yes.

Was there a crime in any sense of the legal definitions? No.

Do I blame any believing member for being disturbed by this? No.

My thoughts in reading your opinion:

Was there intentional obfuscation and concealment in contravention of SEC rules and civil law? Not according to the language of the 34-96951.pdf (sec.gov), but as a matter of personal interpretation, some may still believe so.

Were there steps taken that were dishonest? Same as above.

Were employees manipulated and used in an immoral way? Same as above.

Was there a crime in any sense of the legal definitions? Same as above.

Do I blame any believing member for being disturbed by this? No, but neither do I blame any believing member for not being disturbed by this.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

So I hire a CPA to do it for me.   

Is the head of the CPA firm responsible for what one of his accountants did for a client though?

Is Ensign Peak owned by the Church or hired by the Church?

Were those who filed the forms hired by EPA or working for EPA?

And legally speaking…even if you sue your accountant for screwing up your account with the government, doesn’t the government hold you accountable?  You don’t get out of paying fines by saying ‘my accountant blew it’, right?

Edited March 29, 2023 by Calm

[Calm]

2 hours ago, ttribe said:

I blame any believing member for being disturbed by this? No.

Are we okay if we are not that disturbed by it?

[CV75]

13 minutes ago, Calm said:

It seems quite possible to me they were not informed of how each and every detail was going to be carried out.  Would a CEO of a large corporation be informed of how managers were to be chosen or the specific instructions on tax forms that would be given to employees?  Surely that level of detail (“btw, we are going to have the manager just sign the last page of the forms to limit even their ability to make connections”) is not included in top level discussions.  Not quite as bad as expecting a discussion about low level issues, as in something like “we have decided to buy TP from this other company because it’s softer” or “we are going to use warm white lightbulbs in the factory to make it feel less stark” as opposed to a general directive from senior executives to make facilities more comfortable for employees, but it is hard for me to see their subordinates thinking it was worth senior leaders’ valuable time to tell them they were going to not let the managers see the full SEC form.  The working out of details and paying attention to them….isn’t that what leaders hire others to worry about so they don’t have to?

I can see senior church leaders likely being informed about splitting into LLCs and discussing in general the appropriateness of trying to obscure connections, maybe even between the LLCs themselves (not letting one know the others exist?) and them saying “it sounds like a good idea, go ahead with it” and then whoever is overseeing it at Ensign figuring out the nitty gritty details of choosing more common names and then some overzealous employee come SEC form time…the kind of person who thinks if something works well, than 10x that something is even better, decides to withhold info about the LLC from even the LLCs managers by not allowing them access to the SEC form and requiring them to sign without reading…Thus the actual lying that was done was imo likely something not approved of specifically by church leaders, though I see them as still responsible for it in that case as the employees who did instigate the signing under false pretenses were their agents.  It should have been made clear that while they were on board with obscuring any connection between the LLCs and the Church, nothing that required active dishonesty (as opposed to not providing onlookers enough info to draw the correct conclusions), lying by or coercion of employees was acceptable.

I think D&C says it nicely, which I think is understood to a higher degree in spirit than it is executed as part of a workload:

22 And now, verily I say unto you, and this is wisdom, make unto yourselves friends with the ^amammon of unrighteousness, and they will not destroy you.

23 Leave judgment alone with me, for it is mine and I will ^arepay. Peace be with you; my blessings continue with you.

24 For even yet the ^akingdom is yours, and shall be forever, if you fall not from your ^bsteadfastness. Even so. Amen.

[Calm]

10 minutes ago, CV75 said:

Not according to the language of the 34-96951.pdf (sec.gov)

 Not in contravention to the law, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t intentional concealment, etc…just that it was legal…up to a point where it involved government forms if I understand the issue correctly.

[ttribe]

11 minutes ago, Calm said:

Are we okay if we are not that disturbed by it?

Who am I to say whether someone is "okay" to be disturbed by this or not? I'm not even sure what you mean by "okay." My point was that I can understand why, upon reading the details of the case, a believing member might feel disturbed by the apparent inconsistency between what the Church teaches in terms of honesty and transparency required of the individual member versus the allegations in this case. It was more of an expression of sympathy for people in that space than it was a judgment upon the decision to be disturbed or not be disturbed.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, ttribe said:

Who am I to say whether someone is "okay" to be disturbed by this or not? I'm not even sure what you mean by "okay." My point was that I can understand why, upon reading the details of the case, a believing member might feel disturbed by the apparent inconsistency between what the Church teaches in terms of honesty and transparency required of the individual member versus the allegations in this case. It was more of an expression of sympathy for people in that space than it was a judgment upon the decision to be disturbed or not be disturbed.

Exactly. I understand why people aren’t bothered, but not the vitriol hurled at those who are. It just seems so overblown to use words like “screed” and “condemnatory” to talk about people who are troubled by this. 

[Rain]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I agree with her in this.  We have had a lot of cultural baggage being brought into the Church from converts (since in the establishment phase all were converts, there would be a massive impact in the foundation, imo) that then gets carried forward by their children and others even if always members.    Some is good, some is bad.  Just look at the antiCatholicism bigotry that has persisted.  And then there is the stuff we create ourselves, given the human tendency to fill in gaps even when it’s not necessary, to create hedges and all, mission creep, etc.  There is no way to escape cultural or doctrinal heritage except by conscious challenging of all our beliefs, imo (and that may or may not help).  But then I think we should be doing this anyway on everything because the human factor is always there.

Not saying this means we should automatically dump any shared ideas, etc. because I assume a lot of truth and good stuff survived in other faiths.  Also mistakes could be made in understanding/interpreting current revelation, so I don’t see a reason to believe LDS unique ideas are sacrosanct from inspection/questioning.  Just thinking we should be taking out our beliefs and reexamining them on a regular basis to see what refinements God wants us to make in them.

Reminds me of Elder Scott's packets of light talk.

[Rain]

4 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Exactly. I understand why people aren’t bothered, but not the vitriol hurled at those who are. It just seems so overblown to use words like “screed” and “condemnatory” to talk about people who are troubled by this. 

I definitely think we need to be careful with how we judge others on it, but I also think there are a lot of different levels that people are bothered by it and how they talk about it. Sometimes it seems that people all get put in the same pot whether they are a little bothered and barely saying anything or a lot bothered and being inflammatory as well as if they cautiously support the church or are willing to die in support no matter what happens.  But that seems to be the case with most things sometimes.

[ttribe]

8 minutes ago, Rain said:

I definitely think we need to be careful with how we judge others on it, but I also think there are a lot of different levels that people are bothered by it and how they talk about it. Sometimes it seems that people all get put in the same pot whether they are a little bothered and barely saying anything or a lot bothered and being inflammatory as well as if they cautiously support the church or are willing to die in support no matter what happens.  But that seems to be the case with most things sometimes.

I think, for the most part, the words people are using to describe their feelings are directly correlated with the strength of their feelings. No two people will feel the same about an issue. Attacking someone's reaction, IMO, lacks empathy and the ability to look outside one's self to understand another person's hurt. In other words, telling someone they are wrong to feel the way they do does more harm than good.

Edited March 30, 2023 by ttribe

[Rain]

3 minutes ago, ttribe said:

I think, for the most part, the words people are using to describe their feelings is directly correlated with the strength of their feelings. No two people will feel the same about an issue. Attacking someone's reaction, IMO, lacks empathy and the ability to look outside one's self to understand another person's hurt. In other words, telling someone they are wrong to feel the way they do does more harm than good.

I agree, but I also think it applies to people's reactions to those reactions.

[Meadowchik]

8 hours ago, Calm said:

It seems quite possible to me they were not informed of how each and every detail was going to be carried out.  Would a CEO of a large corporation be informed of how managers were to be chosen (common names only), how companies would be identified (located out of state with local area codes), or the specific instructions on SEC forms that would be given to employees?  Surely that level of detail (“btw, we are going to have the manager just sign the last page of the forms to limit even their ability to make connections”) is not included in top level discussions.  Not quite as bad as expecting a discussion about low level issues, as in something like “we have decided to buy TP from this other company because it’s softer” or “we are going to use warm white lightbulbs in the factory to make it feel less stark” as opposed to a general directive from senior executives to make facilities more comfortable for employees, but it is hard for me to see their subordinates thinking it was worth senior leaders’ valuable time to tell them they were going to not let the managers see the full SEC form.  The working out of details and paying attention to them….isn’t that what leaders hire others to worry about so they don’t have to?

I can see senior church leaders likely being informed about splitting into LLCs and discussing in general the appropriateness of trying to obscure connections, maybe even between the LLCs themselves (not letting one know the others exist?) and them saying “it sounds like a good idea, go ahead with it” and then whoever is overseeing it at Ensign figuring out the nitty gritty details of choosing more common names, out of state claimed locations and phone numbers, no answering of phones, etc and then some overzealous employee (possibly the same, possibly the person the Ensign boss got to do the actual work of filling out the forms) come SEC form time…the kind of person who thinks if something works well, than 10x that something is even better, decides to withhold info about the LLC itself from even the LLC manager by not allowing that individual access to the full SEC form and requiring them to just sign without reading contrary to the statement on the form…

Thus the actual lying that was done was imo likely something not approved of specifically by church leaders, though I see them as still responsible for it in that case as the employees who did instigate the signing under false pretenses were their agents.  It should have been made clear that while senior leaders were on board with obscuring any connection between the LLCs and the Church, nothing that required active dishonesty (as opposed to intentionally and actively not providing onlookers enough info to draw the correct conclusions), lying by or coercion of employees was acceptable.

If they treat those assets just like a business, ie putting it in the hands of professionals without close apostolic oversight, then it's treating tithing like a business.

On a similar note though tangential, if the First Presidency leaves the legal compensation to sexual abuse victims of church leaders to the lawyers, it's treating victims like business liabilities. I've seen this and I am very, very troubled by it. There are some offences that imo an apostle should be intimitely involved in repairing, especially when representatives of the church are the offenders.

There are matters which shouldn't be passed off to professionals. Handled alongside professionals? Perhaps. 

Tithing imo is one of those matters.

[Meadowchik]

12 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

Exactly. I understand why people aren’t bothered, but not the vitriol hurled at those who are. It just seems so overblown to use words like “screed” and “condemnatory” to talk about people who are troubled by this. 

There's lots of reasons people are or are not bothered. Of those who don't see a problem there are going to inevitably be people who are not capable of thinking about the church critically. People who feel both intrinsically safe in the church and also intrinsically unsafe outside it are imo more likely unable to.

I think that a major reason for that is Mormonism's culture of obedience to leadership. Of course if you are not safe to be critical, it's more difficult to be critical. Our minds can even protect us from ideas--like criticizing the church--if we sense doing so would be dangerous to us.

[CV75]

13 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

Exactly. I understand why people aren’t bothered, but not the vitriol hurled at those who are. It just seems so overblown to use words like “screed” and “condemnatory” to talk about people who are troubled by this. 

Or the vitriol hurled at those who are not.

[CV75]

43 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

There's lots of reasons people are or are not bothered. Of those who don't see a problem there are going to inevitably be people who are not capable of thinking about the church critically. People who feel both intrinsically safe in the church and also intrinsically unsafe outside it are imo more likely unable to.

I think that a major reason for that is Mormonism's culture of obedience to leadership. Of course if you are not safe to be critical, it's more difficult to be critical. Our minds can even protect us from ideas--like criticizing the church--if we sense doing so would be dangerous to us.

There is also a subset of people who can or will not think critically about their own comfortable bias against the Church.

[bluebell]

43 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

There's lots of reasons people are or are not bothered. Of those who don't see a problem there are going to inevitably be people who are not capable of thinking about the church critically. People who feel both intrinsically safe in the church and also intrinsically unsafe outside it are imo more likely unable to.

I think that a major reason for that is Mormonism's culture of obedience to leadership. Of course if you are not safe to be critical, it's more difficult to be critical. Our minds can even protect us from ideas--like criticizing the church--if we sense doing so would be dangerous to us.

Isn’t the opposite also true though, of those who don’t feel safe in the church Or otherwise are very angry/opposed to I t?

Wouldn’t they, by your reasoning, be incapable of not thinking about the Church critically?

[jkwilliams]

25 minutes ago, CV75 said:

Or the vitriol hurled at those who are not.

I haven't seen that here, have you?

[bluebell]

18 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I haven't seen that here, have you?

I haven’t see it here. It’s definitely a part of the blog the OP wants to discuss though so maybe that’s what CV was referring to?

[Kenngo1969]

19 hours ago, ttribe said:

Except none of this had anything to do with taxes. But, please, don't let that get in the way of your deflection.

Certainly, he is more than free to correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think @LoudmouthMormon was suggesting that the matter now under discussion has anything to do with taxes.  I think he was drawing an analogy suggesting that just as various entities wanting to keep their various fingers in various pies has led to the tax code being convoluted, and self-contradictory, and difficult to interpret, and so on, so, too, has something similar likely happened with Securities and Exchange Commission regulations.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Kenngo1969

[CV75]

59 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I haven't seen that here, have you?

Yes I have ("here" meaning posts the original SEC thread started a few weeks ago), but I'm not going to link to them. Suffice it to say in principle, vitriol is unwarranted no matter one's opposing bias or view.