Much talk has been had of the Who. But, the Data Series teaches us we need to operate on WHYs. I am rather convinced DM’s donations-for-no-exchange operation is a major one. And while the Idle Orgs has been a recent mother of a money vaccum, the original and grandaddy of all Condition One exchange rip offs has been the IAS.
By way of background, you might want to take a look at a June 09 St Pete Times interview segment where I spoke of the twenty year stat slide. http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2009/reports/project/rathbun.shtml (Scientology on the decline? segment). Since that interview, at least a dozen former Int staff have confirmed the facts I covered there. International church stats have been on a downward trend, unbroken, since summer 1990.
I covered in past posts how IAS was an off-policy, off-Source solution to a problem (defense) that L Ron Hubbard represented long-ago was to be covered by the donations one pays for services. Even under DM’s reasoning to Scientology managers for maintaining an IAS – i.e. to survive the war with the IRS – the fund was moot after October, 1993 when tax exemption was attained (incidentally, despite propaganda to the contrary, the IAS was useless as teets on a bull in attaining exemption; in fact it was an impediment). Yet, since IRS exemption IAS has extorted hundreds of millions of dollars under the tight-fisted, dictatorial control of DM.
Now, here are some hard figures that I believe sheds light on the ‘date coincidence’ for the beginning of the international stat decline.
These come from the figures we supplied to the IRS during the exemption process. We gave lists of the top paid fundraisers for the years 89, 90, and 91.
The total FSM commissions paid to the top ten FSMs internationally are listed below. They are broken down by commissions paid for services donations vs. commissions paid for IAS donations (no service).
(percentages means, the percentage of total fsm commissions that type of fsming constitutes for that year – of the top ten)
1989
services: 914,027.40 (55%) IAS: 746,167.29 (45%) Total: 1,660,194.69
1990
services: 981,424.20 (56%) IAS: 777,748.94 (44%) Total: 1,759,173.10
1991
services: 698,567.60 (31%) IAS: 1,562,905.30 (69%) Total: 2,261,472.90
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to extrapolate where it went from there. What with DM subjugating orgs as servants of IAS, TV actors jettisoning their careers to go where the real money was (e.g. Pomerantz and Roberts), IAS donations being touted as the means to attain eligibility for OT levels and the means to get out of lower conditions. I would venture that donations for services are not even in the double digit percentile when compared to IAS at this point.
Handling: Abolish the IAS and refund the donations. Prepare to deliver to meet the guaranteed demand of tens of thousands of public who for the first time are able to afford Scientology services.
Exhibit A in support: The following report from the former ED and Snr CS of the Birmingham Org:
Hell Marty, stand well back you really lit the fuse when you brought up the IAS.
In addition to their other crimes, the IAS is and always has been a huge burden on the backs of orgs and there is absolutely no doubt they have seniority over and rule the roost when it comes to Scientology orgs and management, in fact they run the whole shooting match. Run it right into the ground.
Not only do the IAS extract untold sums from Scientology public, they extract huge sums from struggling orgs to pay the costs of their events while commandeering org staff as free labor – all the more “profit” for them.
Every year they hold the big international IAS event at St Hill. And every year the St. Hill Orgs go broke because the IAS make them pay the costs of the over the top, lavish event (hundreds of thousands of dollars).
Most every year as part of the “extravaganza” there is an international org ED’s conference (except when DM cancels it as a make wrong at some perceived slight – talk about hissy fits). Anyway, every year at that conference Org executives from around the world stand up and complain to ED Int about the IAS, their tactics, the demands they put on orgs, frequency of their events, on and on. And despite overwhelming evidence that the IAS is the biggest distraction to and external influence on the backs of our orgs ED Int did absolutely nothing. After a number of these conferences it became clear that there was nothing ED Int could do about it.
Around 2002 UK management execs invited Lucy and me down to an IAS event being put on by the London Orgs because Miscavige was now beating the drum for his idle org “strategy” and somebody had to foot the bill. It was held in a fancy London hotel, paid for by the London orgs of course. But despite the opulent surroundings and fancy food it was a bomb. Clearly the public had had enough and for once they weren’t coughing up the money.
Lucy and I witnessed furious IAS Execs rip into UK management execs who in turn put pressure on the London Org execs about this “flap”. The result? They sabotaged the orgs by regging the staff! The staff of the London orgs were themselves pressured and regged hard to take out loans, extend credit cards and go into deep financial trouble, which they did. It was incredibly sad to see, they were going to be moonlighting for the rest of their lives and to hell with LRH policy about when Day and Foundation staff train. The IAS had just demonstrated that they had the power to get management and org executives to crash their own orgs.
On the broader scale the IAS has crashed Scientology.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 