Chris Shelton has a fun treat for us today. He tells us that during his Sea Org career, he remembers seeing a letter that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard sent to Ronald Reagan just after the Gipper was elected to the presidency in 1980.
Now a former Scientologist has given Chris a copy of that letter, which Chris says is the same one he saw while he was in the church.
We don’t think the letter has been on line before, but it certainly sounds like Hubbard, and it doesn’t surprise us that the old red-baiter would have been happy that Reagan was elected that November.
The timing is interesting, however, because it was in February 1980 that Hubbard went into permanent seclusion, saying goodbye to close staff like John Brousseau and Sinar Parman in Hemet, California, going away in a van driven by a young couple, Pat and Annie Broeker. At the time, Hubbard’s wife Mary Sue was appealing her conviction in the Snow White prosecution along with ten other Scientologists. Worried about the chances of his own prosecution or being served with lawsuits, Hubbard slipped away into hiding.
That November, when this letter was written, Hubbard and the Broekers were probably staying out of sight in a Newport Beach apartment. It would be a while yet before they settled at the Whispering Winds ranch in Creston, California, where Hubbard would live out his final years until his January 24, 1986 death. So the Tampa, Florida PO Box return address that Hubbard put on his letter to the new president-elect probably had very little to do with where Hubbard really was at the time.
Other than that, the letter pretty much speaks for itself. It’s characteristic of Hubbard that he would feel compelled to offer the newly elected president some advice about how to run the country. And his claim that he’d been on equal footing with Reagan in their Hollywood days is a classic Hubbard tall tale. While Hubbard did sell at least one serial to the pictures, 1938’s forgettable The Secret of Treasure Island, his other Hollywood exploits were mostly just hot air.
As for “studying economics at Princeton,” that’s quite a howler. Hubbard’s college career consisted of flunking out of George Washington University in DC after his sophomore year in 1932. It was in 1944, and near the end of his involvement in the Navy during WWII, that Hubbard requested and was granted a request to spend a few months at Princeton taking a course in “military government” at the Navy Training School there, not as a student enrolled at Princeton University itself.
We’re posting the text and pdf of the letter, and Chris is giving it a thorough going over in a new video…
L. Ron Hubbard
PO Box 24152
Tampa, FL 33623
28 November 1980Mr. Ronald Reagan
President-Elect of
The United States
1669 San Onofre Drive
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272Dear Sir,
I am writing you because I very much want to see you make it. Inflation was apparently the key issue which swept you in.
There IS a way to handle it and [ ].
When I studied economics at Princeton decades ago, they still knew basic economics: But the economic scene has been muddied by two foreign importations: Lord Keynes and Karl Marx. You can trace the economic tragedy of today to them. Their think was dedicated to plausible destruction.
If you were to forthrightly abolish income tax and substitute for it a ten percent Federal sales tax, percentage adjustable for commodities like stocks and bond which have repeated sales, the Federal Government would have MORE money than it has now. The “rich” who buy things would bear a lot of the tax and this could be used as an argument for the plan. The XVI Amendment does not require Congress to tax incomes, it only authorizes it to do so, and can cancel its own laws. It could also make it attractive to states to abolish theirs.
Income tax removes the money from the society in the wrong place – before it is spent. Substituting a sales tax for it would put the money out into the market place.
The banks would not like it at first glance as it would become possible for companies and individuals to work hard to make money, save up and use it, by-passing loans. But banks cannot prosper at double-digit inflation and their survival would depend upon such a change. It would remove some of their excess paper from the market.
The socialist inheritance taxes often punish firms who have to find the money for estates. They can wreck a lot of people and do. The have-not vengeance against the successful should be abolished.
Social Security is really a farce. FDR put it in because he needed money right then which he would not have to repay until much later. The big insurance companies would be utterly delighted to have it phased over to them and off the government’s back.
Production has to be raised to absorb excess paper. The fast way to do it is simply abolish income tax, shifting the buying power over to the market place; abolish inheritance and witholding taxes and get the money into people’s pockets to be spent.
I realize that with your floods of mail, this letter will probably never reach your eyes. But I would feel bad, knowing what would bail you out, if I did not send it in your direction.
I am an old fan of yours. We were high up in Hollywood at the same time. I really quite desperately want you to succeed. I want to see you break the presidential tradition and leave office far more popular than you went in.
Well, there. I have sent it your way. It’s good, straight economics. The move is bold but you will have to be bold to handle the awful mess Marx and Keynes got us in.
Respectfully,
L. Ron Hubbard
L. Ron Hubbard 1980 Letter to Ronald Reagan by Tony Ortega on Scribd
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Samantha Bee skewers Scientology
Comedian Samantha Bee is getting a lot of attention for the way she used Scientology to take a shot at the NRA last night on her show Full Frontal.
You may have seen a short, 1-minute version of her bit last night, but the longer piece, here, is really worth enjoying.
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Make your plans now!
Head over to our HowdyCon 2018 website to start making your travel plans!
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Bernie Headley has not seen his daughter Stephanie in 5,047 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 1,650 days
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 193 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 1,256 days.
Carol Nyburg has not seen her daughter Nancy in 2,030 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 2,804 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 2,150 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 2,644 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 1,684 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 1,396 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 922 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 5,011 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 2,151 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 2,471 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 2,446 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 802 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 5,104 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 1,210 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 1,613 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 1,485 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 1,067 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 1,572 days.
Mary Jane Sterne has not seen her daughter Samantha in 1,816 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 12,925 days.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on March 8, 2018 at 07:00
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BLOGGING DIANETICS: We read Scientology’s founding text cover to cover with the help of L.A. attorney and former church member Vance Woodward
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GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice
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