Remember the special seminar that was put on by Kevin Wilson in Santa Barbara to help them learn how to make and save money?
Well, the results are in. And they are not pretty.
About 20 people showed up… No idea how many of them are staff. Or from other areas than Santa Barbara. Some commenters here may know some of these people.
This happy bunch ended up paying over $4500 to “ideality” for the pleasure of attending a seminar on fiscal prudence.
But they also broke the big news. Over the next two days they managed to collect a total of $10,000 which means they are “more than halfway” to paying off their MORTGAGE — only $290,000 to go!
This news is about as surprising as Tampa Org completing the letter A of the never-ending CF project.
After nearly 15 years of working on an “ideal org” they announce this $10,000 will be an “important step” “on the way” to getting an “ideal” org so they can being to take “full responsibility” for their zone. Because they have to pay off their mortgage to get to square one in the ideal org rat race. And after 15 years they are still not even halfway to getting started.
With a runway like this, 2050 may even be an unrealistic target.
Can you imagine what it is like in Hawaii and Albuquerque?
And they constantly promote WUS as the “first ideal continent.” And I think that is absolutely true. WUS is far ahead of everywhere else. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. So too, in the land of the great “birthday game race” where most of the horses have been flogged to death, the broken down nag wins every race.
Frankly, more than ever, this is all looking rather pathetic.
But good news – Dear Leader does not have to worry about having OT IX and X ready to go as soon as all orgs are ideal. That was always a safe bet.
Glad the crowd was “up tone” (code word for totally lost touch with reality)….
M
A few years ago, it was punted that Africa (52 countries) would be the first “ideal” continent – AFRICA, not South Africa. The staggering, limping, crippled orgs that represent South Africa have, for all intent and purposes, given up. The people are tired, broke and few. The whales have been declared leavingthe burden of funding to one or two only still in.
Zimbabwe, part of Africa, but only one country, has one of its “ideal” orgs occupied by homeless people and prostitutes.
Two countries out of fifty two is what Miscavige was referring to as Africa! He can’t count or he’s just being himself, a pathological liar, believed by a sad few.
I look at thee photos and just think back and remember how contrived they always are. Almost always someone seems to be overly enthusiastic, bordering on total delusion who excitedly says, “let’s all really wave and smile and show the field out there what it’s like to be involved.”
100% of the time, I’ve seen this. At least in CL V and Mission scenes. I recall some photos like this at PAC too with SO. And as it was, it was more like a command to be enthusiastic and smile and wave under a more “ethics” sort of voice. Perhaps it’s just what groups do when they get before a camera. But being somewhat sheltered in Scientology it appears as a total Scientology PR phenomenon.
Say the original debt was $600K, half would be $300K. That extra 10K has pushed them over the halfway mark paid to $290K (working on principle only and ignoring interest, fees etc)
That’s what they mean surely? Maths isn’t that hard but perhaps they just have trouble communicating it. 😀
“. . . our zone of influence – bringing sanity to the people of Santa Barbara and Ventura . . .” HUH?? They probably meant to say ” . .to the area of . .” but as stated it sure would make a good news item in the local newspaper.
Sort of reminds me of a local go-go bar which cheerfully advertised on its highway sign “Alcoholics Welcome!” It was quite a flap for awhile.
“The Santa Barbara Independent” and “The Santa Barbara News Press” – ain’t the internet wonderful? I have limited computer skills but I’ll try to figure out how to get a letter to both of them with a copy of the Theta News above. No matter how you look at it, that statement is condescending and insulting to that community. I lived in Santa Barbara for 6 months and found the community and its citizens to already be more “sane” than the people in that picture. lol
P.S. Handwritten letters often get more attention than e-mail
used to live in montecito and run cabrillo every morning to stearn’s wharf. the pictures made me nostalgic. never visited the santa barbara org tho.
Montecito….where the seriously rich folk live. Seriously…
Scientology – a world where we commit crimes and drive people insane so the leader, David “Slappy”Miscavige can have a luxurious lifestyle hob nobbing with Tom Cruise and John Travolta. Where members lie to trap people to give up money and work as slaves for free. Where people go broke, shatter their families and lose abilities and skills gained while being a Wog.
Where the science of “knowing how to knowers” – DON’T KNOW and WON’T LOOK!
Dave,
Thuggery update:
In the planned new movie, El Chapo, will be played by a blond haired, blue eyed actor. He has you beat by 4 inches (4 feet, seventeen).
Will your father’s book be made into an Oscar winning movie? Who will be the director?
Completely off-topic, a question about James Packer, aka Mariah Carey’s new Australian billionaire fiance, reportedly he became friendly with TC awhile back and, as a result, got involved in the cherch. Anybody know the details? He definitely has whale potential…
Packer got out before no major damage was done to his finances.
Smart guy!! Thanks.
“A civilization without insanity and war blah blah bladdy blah, etc”
Any time is a good time to hear those mighty words. Sci-fi-dollargy is clearing this planet, it’s the hope of mankind you know. Now as soon as the Santa Barbara org can pay off its mortgage it can get down to ridding people of their nasty engrams and making this world a better place. Only thing is, the worst problems in the Santa Barbara area are the elevated cholesterol levels and maybe a higher than average rate of noontime adulteries. Perhaps clearing the planet has to start off with the easy cases and work its way up to the criminally insane in the less affluent vicinities. It’s hard to say because I’ve never seen or heard of a formal plan to implement the tech in venues where the dollars aren’t plentiful. I mean, in a more ambitious way than just handing out condescending booklets on why we ought to do as we should.
You don’t suppose ‘saving mankind’ was never more than just a sales pitch do you? It’s certainly a great BIG objective and it makes all those who are part of it feel like they’re a part of a great BIG thing. Not only that but it makes a therapy that provides brief experiences of elation seem like a big breakthrough in man’s understanding of the mind. Yep, that ‘saving the world’ hype casts a powerful big shadow at least when the light is dim. That’s when a mouse can look like a lion.
Hi RogerHornaday, Thank you, your post made me think. Yes a mouse can certainly look like a lion and I can see and agree with what you post. Yet for me the mice had fangs with a sharper bite than my old Asho Lion ever had before he split the scene when Asho was disbanded.Sometimes it is the little details that trip me up.As in never thinking til push came to shove,that any Sea Org member would be working against me, rather hard I might add.Roger, it is really good for me to post here and talk about my scene even though it was long ago, some things remain the same with this cult.Love Always my great friend, Ann.
Hi Ann. I had some lousy tricks played on me at ASHO and a few people said things to me that were unconscionable. The following year I was living in a great apartment overlooking the city. One night I was with some friends and I spotted one of my S.O. bullies outside the test center on H’wood Bl. I walked up to him smiling and chatted him up a bit.
He was obviously ill at ease, I was obviously well-dressed and having a good time gloating! Poor guy, he seemed shorter than I recalled. Fangs were missing too. You know those dirty little rats all got what was coming to them one way or the other. They were in an outfit that eats its young.
Hi RogerHornaday, Thank you for posting some more info about your post! Now I understand how you framed your original comment.Your post on the SO member when you saw him makes sense to me.I was thinking of how I felt when in regarding the mice with fangs.If I ever see a SO member today, I would feel sad that they were still in and overjoyed we are out and not afraid of any SO OSA or COSer.Love, Ann.
What I want to know is how an ‘organization’ like scn managed to get a mortgage of any amount? Whenever I lent money to any scilon it was always a pleasant surprise when it actually got repaid.
I love these insanely stupid briefings which tell you how to make money then brag about how much they screwed out of the audience while they were there, has no one there spotted that there is something wrong with this principle? Regges don’t care about finance policy, they want the money yesterday and will make you do anything to get it. I still remember the first time one of them told me to remortgage my house, I laughed loudly at the sheer idiocy of this, however years later when I was fully on board I did just this not once, but at least 5 times, digging myself ever deeper into debt, we managed to avoid bankruptcy because I left while I still had the means to repay nearly $45,000 of credit card debt. Others I know where not so lucky and have gone from being home owners to living with a local scilon in a spare room, yet they are still in! How much idiocy can a person manage in one life time?
Thanks Gimpy for sharing that story. I’m glad you were able to get out before having to declare bankruptcy and are doing well today. So many people have similar stories, and sadly, not everyone is able to avoid bad effects from the predatory regging cycles. It really bothers me that good people like yourself are coerced to do things that harm them, like this, the financial pressure is so much. As your story illustrates, it happens over time, you start out thinking ‘no way’ then as the regges put more and more pressure, find yourself giving in and somehow reconciling your mind to putting your finances in a sorry state. I keep reminding myself, all these people started out with the best intentions and idea of joining a group dedicated to helping others and the planet, now look what they’ve done to you. blah. – T.J.
Back in my day in the 1970s regges were hard sell about putting money down for training and auditing, but the ruthless and relentless pressure nowadays to “donate” and increase “status” is hard to imagine. Someone would need to be superhuman to fend them off.
Here they go again.
It looks like there are 20 people in the photo. Out of that 20, 9 of them are staff and 2 more were the speakers brought in from Pasadena. So by my math – you have a grand total of …….Ta da!
9 PUBLIC! Wow! That’s gettin’ it done!
Here is some background on how they went from a thriving Org, when they were located in an older building, to a debt ridden org with a handful of public. They purchased the current building in 1979 and we were all told the story that they were taking on this huge mortgage so Scientology could expand and take responsibility for their area. Need I say that it was a disaster from the get go. The building should never have been purchased as it was far beyond their ability to pay and it only went downhill after that. There was no money for anything other than trying to make the mortgage payment each month and finally the property fell into pre-foreclosure. That’s when the Sea Org stepped in and used some of it’s reserves to keep that public disaster from happening. That made the SO 1/2 owners in the building but even after that, the Org continued to struggle to pay the balance of the mortgage to the bank. To this day, 36 years later, they are still trying to pay down the mortgage, all the while; the building has fallen into disrepair and needs a ton of renovations. Remember the last time someone blew some smoke up their ass in Santa Barbara? https://www.mikerindersblog.org/more-ideal-org-fails/
At one time The Duggan family, Reed Slatkin and John Travolta were some of it’s public but those famous whales have moved on, been put in prison or died over the last few years. Now, the org is on it’s own, in bed with the SO, to live or die while they struggle to pay the mortgage and the public shrinks to zero.
Rather than being Ideal Orgs, these are looking more like Ordeal Orgs.
ROTFLMAO!!!! Now THAT’S some funny shit, FOTL2012! I believe that’s an “Instant Classic!” It also makes you an honorary surfer dude! Congrats!
DING DING DING Fotf2012!
If they only owe $290,000 on their current premises they better hang on for dear life. A quick search showed 1,200 sq foot mobile homes in a trailer park selling for $400,000. Little three bedroom houses selling for over $750,000.
Their current digs have to be worth well over a million.
When I got involved in $ceientology, I was hoping to find wisdom. I was looking for answers to the problems of life and revelations about the nature of man and the universe we live in.
As I look at the faces of those twenty people and observe the game they are playing I am 100% certain that they would not have impressed me even in my darkest moments.
But on the bright side, Kevin Wilson walked off with $1,000 in commissions from his reg cycle. Go Kev!
Hi LDW, I like your post a lot. The picture of smiling blank eyed faces got to me too. Today if I was surrounded by that crowd,I would walk right through them into the Sun. People cannot seem to see or understand within the bubble, the only one consistently getting wealthier & wealthier is dm.So pathetic! Love, Ann.
The photo appears to be Photoshopped, especially those in the back row from center to right. It’s unlikely there’s nothing on the wall and, perspective wise, there should be a corner behind them. I wonder why the photo needed “fixing”.
That luminous haze in that part of the background is the spirit of L. Ron Hubbard. They froze him by glycol and glued him to the wall. Not so fast, buddy, they told him regarding Target 2. You need to succeed here at Target 1 first, you big fat slacker.
Hi FOTF2012, The best laugh of the day and a keeper post. Thank you.XO,Ann.
Yes, the building is a very nice former Hotel.
A landmark structure on the main street,city parking lot
in back, nice restaurants and shopping.
The place empties out at 8:30,PM on Friday nights
because University students flood the streets about that time till 2 am.
Submarine Navy Commander Momson who invented the “Momson Lung”
was public who went OT 8. Many public live on the Santa Barbara Rivera
where they brag about their gardeners, maids, cooks and servants.
What is never talked about is Reed Slatkin who ran the largest
PONZI scheme in history until Bernie Maydoff out of his garage !!!
which among thieves you get extra points.
So they want to move ? Where? to the dark side of the Moon? where
failure is a sure thing. Of course you get only public making less than
100 million per year going to money lectures,20, that’s about right,
lets call it poverty night.
I remember when events like the above took place with the same Hubbard quotes etc. but the intention was for people to buy training and processing. No real mention of that in the above promo aside from having enough $ for the bridge AND OF COURSE $ to give to the ideal org.
How long can this BS continue? When does the Hubbard phenomena of overrun kick in on these people? Something going on too long will, at some point, have to affect even the most die-hard sheeple into an apathy of sorts. Only the good (whales) will survive. No wonder they don’t need very many auditors.
Great article. I agree. It used to be about training and auditing once upon a time.
Santa Barbara is like so many other spots around the Scientology world.
A finance event quoting LRH, followed by donations that the same guy said they should absolutely NOT do?
There is no connection between these things. It’s all okay in their minds. A very sad state of affairs from their viewpoint.
Debt-free? I thought organizations had to be debt free according to policy. Oh, wait I forgot. Standz Tech is just do whatever unusual off-policy solution DM dreams up between naps.
“Show up, be counted!”
Precisely. Join Scientology and become a statistic.
I’ve never really counted for much. Except for surfing…..
Oops…only 20!
But Miscavige could’t care less; as long as the whales keep ‘donating’ millions, the rest can go to hell and Santa Barbara together with the rest of the blind parishioners are indeed in a hell of delusion.
Silvia, in 2000 a mission opened in Elizabeth, New Jersey (the town of L. Ron Hubbard’s first Dianetics Oranization in 1950). This mission opened just a few blocks from L. Ron Hubbard’s old place. It was opened by an OT VIII named Bruce Dobin and his wife Sharyn Dobin OT VI. I was invited by Bruce personally because I had bought a book from him earlier. I went and there were about 9 people including myself. 5 Were already Scientologists for years I recognized them INLCLUDING Bruce and his wife. Before the actual “event” the mission holder Bruce told me that he didn’t like the way I was watching the video that was playing and that if I couldn’t watch the video correctly to get out that he didn’t want me there, he didn’t need me there. Even though I told him I had already seen this video at Flag 15 years earlier. The mission folded about 5 years after. 🙂 There is no longer a mission there. There is one mission for the whole State of New Jersey in the town of Hawthorne and a combination bi-lingual Dental Office/Mission on Westfield Avenue in Elizabeth. 9 Million people live in New Jersey and they are about to be cleared by 3 Dianetics auditors? Who really needs their heads examined here? 🙂
Hi Lawrence, What a post! Thank you. Being asked to leave because you were not watching a scene correctly reminds me of a long ago SO story.A Commodore’s Messenger came to Asho D & F for about a week.His name was Walter and we all loved him.At muster for Asho F he would imitate all these barn yard animal noises but like a ventriloquist. All the Divisions including 7 were laughing like crazy.Finally our CO said,OK we will have a proper muster or some thetans will have two extra cleaning stations to- night.The CO was a good person and so everyone settled down.Your post did resonate with me.Love, Ann.
And for that cool photo, they managed to get ALL of the org staff and EVERY public Scientologist in the SB area in one room at one time. Well Done!
Looks like the course room.
Could be lobby facing away from stairs.
It doesn’t look like the reg cycles have cut too deep into the culinary budget.
Don’t know about their space or time, but they seem to have lots of matter and energy.
I really enjoy your metaphors!
Really? What’s a meta for, anyway. I never could figure that out…
The Never Ending CF Project. I like the sound of that, Mike. I guess it’s like the, “Never Ending Story.” But, being that it is a never ending CF project, at least they’ll all have something to do for the next 50 years…at least.
The other thing I noticed is if you’re a Scientologist, but not yet OT, you can join the OTC! I mean, how cool is that? I was thinkin’ some of us should drive up to Santa Barbara and pretend to be on lines at some distant org so we can check the place out. However, being one of the most expensive places to live in California, the room rates for us might be a bit prohibitive. Ok, who’s got a big van? Anyone??
Well thankfully Santa Barbara is an older and more mature group…no children in the bunch.
Maybe they were hiding the children in their attics.
Be like Santa Barbara, hide your children when events are happening.
And to Dr Mac. Awesome!
Are they having fun yet???
They’re having ‘Old People Fun!’ Oh crap! I”m….I’m………..I”m one of them!
Scientology math at work. One half of $300,000 is $10,000.
One more thing. At the bottom of this ad, it says any Scientologist who wants to help is welcome to join the OTC. So……you don’t have to be OT to be on the OTC?
I don’t understand $cieno math either. Indeed, how is 10k ‘1/2’ of 300K? It is like when you tell the children in the back seat of your car that you’ll be at Grandma’s house in a ‘little while’.
The moving target part of the clam scam pervades the entire thought process of the mOrgs.
I assumed that the $10,000 they collected that night brought the total of money previously collected to $300,000.
So, if the mortgage was (approx) $600,000, the Org had collected $280,000 toward the mortgage debt. And that night they collected an additional $10,000 to put toward the mortgage. So now they have approximately $290,000 (which is almost half of the $600,000 mortgage debt)
Either that or they are complete morons.
I was very surprised in 2011 when invited to join. I saw more non OT’s there at flag than OTs. Went to only a few meetings, once I saw the purpose was for you to join any one of their projects and help, plus more regging..
Oh, they’ll sign you up to get started on that. (And collect the FSM money.) Now, how will you be paying?
“By applying these principals (sic) anyone can get ahead, build reserves, have plenty of money for Bridge and, of course, donate for their Ideal Org!”
This reminds me of my penultimate expedition to Flag for my last refresher. I was by now broke, but as usual I managed to beg, steal (literally, sadly – I borrowed from still-ins who’ve disconnected and so I’ve never repaid them) and borrow (I repaid those who like me have left). When it came to my ‘pledge intensive” I dug my heels in and was duly sent to Qual where I read all those very wise bulletins about maintaining credit, not borrowing and using the ‘bean policy’, etc etc. Capital advice.
I came out very relieved that Flag had FINALLY duplicated my situation and felt great about the handling. Gullible me. The regge was stunned that I hadn’t duplicated the purpose of the handling was that I now borrow the money, and wanted to send me back to Qual to once and for all GET THE MESSAGE. My arguments that this was all contrary to what I’d just studied cut no ice.
I’m amazed I didn’t blow at that point. I went through the motions of phoning around, and they let me go with a warning that I obviously had a pathetically small dick. I was later taken off the level (one of the the happiest days of my life) and finally blew Flag when I later returned to be ‘handled’. Then I arrived for a ‘free’ handling, but was still persuaded to have some auditing (which was great auditing, BTW). When I was requested to pay for yet more auditing in my ‘free’ service, I realised the game was up, packed by bags and FUCKED OFF FOR EVER!!
I’m surprised you didn’t blow at that point too! dr. mac, you seem to have a very strong constitution. And of course, you know in scientologyese that “free” translates into “give us money now.” But, all in all, very glad you made it out ok!
Thanks for sharing your story, Dr Mac. Why were you “taken off the level?”
Let me take a wild ass guess at it here…..
Bad attitude and no money = disaffected!
Back in the 80s Santa Barbara had a beautiful building, a former hotel if I recall, and in a great location. It was “ideal” before anyone talked of Ideal Orgs. Certainly it was good enough for Travolta, who would occasionally do services there.
Looking at Google maps, it looks like they’re in the same building. Still looks nice.
“…with just another $290,000 to wrap it up and give the staff and public the gift of a debt-free Org!”
Um, how does that work now that the public are in debt from ‘donating’ thousands to the Org? They are just transferring the debt from Scientology to the public.
And on top of it all, I don’t think the staff even own the building at the end of the day… it goes to that crazy little shit Let Him Die Miscavige, and the staff and public pay that potty-mouthed, short stature miscreant rent.
Ah Zola, but the building won’t owe any money, won’t that be nice. Ummmm no.
Not one of the attendees appears to be under 40 years of age. Demographically Scientology is in trouble. When I took a Scientology course and visited Boston org in 1975 EVERYONE was young. No one was OVER 40.
DEMOGRAPHICALLY Scientology is in trouble? statistically, technically, public relations -ally, ethically, morally, legally, it’s in trouble. Anyone who comes into contact with it will get hurt. It IS trouble.
Scientology is just a shade above Jonestown……and falling.
Of course they’ll do a fundraiser for the Kool Aid.
Oh, of course! That’s a given…….
Oh yeah, how could I forget— They have a CREDIBILITY problem too.
james, do you mean to tell me the cult has credit problems? I thought they had a couple of billion in a slush fund! Man, that’s just so hard to…..wait…….what? Oh. Credibility problems. That makes a lot more sense. But, they’ve had credibility problems forever. Remember, it’s all make believe so there’s absolutely nothing credible about the cult.
Hi Jonathan Mark, I noticed the same thing. All the people in the photo appear to be 40’s through 60’s – ish, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it does show that no new people are joining. It seems like no younger people are interested. I think the existing group largely remains because they have many long-time friends in the group that they would not want to lose if they left. I’d be surprised if there were a lot of true believers, I’m just guessing, but I’d say a lot of them are probably “under the radar”, just quietly drifting away or putting in the minimum required to keep up the appearances. – T.J.
That is the state of the cult where ever it remains. The public oldies are still there and UTR for only a few reasons:
1) Because they have kids that are involved.
2) Because they have a job working for someone still in.
3) Because their spouse is a believer.
4) Because their friends are still in.
Helpful hint: If it is only #4 that is keeping you ……………. get some new friends. You’ll be glad you did!