Bill Maher Tears Into Romney For Giving Money To Mormon Church Instead Of Directly To Charity
VIDEO here: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-maher-tears-into-romney-for-giving-money-to-mormon-church-instead-of-directly-to-charity/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Mormon church reports spending $180,000 on Proposition 8
op officials with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints filed reports today indicating that they donated more than $180,000 in in-kind contributions to Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California.
The contributions included tens of thousands of dollars for expenses such as airline tickets, hotel and restaurant bills and car-rental bills for top church officials such as L. Whitney Clayton, along with $96,849.31 worth of “compensated staff time” for church employees.
The church said the expenditures took place between July 1 and the end of the year. The church’s involvement has been a major issue in the campaign and its aftermath. Individual Mormon families donated millions -- by some estimates more than $20 million -- of their own money to the campaign.
On top of that, some Prop. 8 opponents say church officials violated election law by failing to file campaign disclosure reports outlining church funds being spent on the campaign. Fred Karger, who filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission after the election alleging that church officials had not properly disclosed their involvement, said he thought today’s filing proves that his complaint has merit.
but that's just me. 
In 1997, Time magazine estimated church assets totaled "a minimum of $30 billion." Richard and Joan K. Ostling in their 1999 book Mormon America put a "conservative" estimate of total assets at $25 to $30 billion, noting that it was likely "well beyond that." Though the church criticized Time's calculations as excessive, according to the Ostlings, it "did not provide even the vaguest hints as to what was wrong and what the truth might be."
The church also manages a large amount of commercial investments, mostly through its Deseret Management Corporation. The Ostlings estimate revenue from those enterprises at $600 million annually and describe the holdings:
"Their enterprises range from a $16 billion insurance company to perhaps $6 billion in stock and bonds, if not more. There's a $172 million chain of radio stations (seventh-largest in the country). The church's more than 150 farms and ranches, including America's largest cattle ranch, make it one of the largest landowners in the nation. The farms and ranches encompass somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 million acres, roughly equal to the size of the state of Delaware."
The church's religious buildings and property, while included in the asset estimates, are considered expenses and not sources of revenue. The church also channels significant funds into humanitarian work; it claims annual donations in the tens of millions of dollars and activities in 147 countries.
http://www.pbs.org/mormons/faqs/structure.html
