Members-Only Article
We live in an age of plutocracy where money and extortion are the hidden ligaments of power. I don’t know whether you’ve read the jarring Politico article on Jerry Falwell Jr., who runs the family’s Christianity business in Lynchburg, Virginia. The focus of the story is that Falwell Jr. appears to run the operation not as a religious organization or university so much as a real estate investment vehicle. It appears to be a festival of self-dealing, setting various cronies up in their own businesses which stream money back to the family and using the whole operation as what amounts to a real estate investment private equity firm. Since most of the operation is at least nominally a nonprofit this is a major problem. Whatever we may think of the founding patriarch, Jerry Sr., at least according to the insider sources in the article, he ran the operation as one mainly dedicated to advancing his hyper-traditionalist vision of Christianity, in both the spiritual and political realms.
Jerry and his wife Becki seem to have a pattern of striking up intimate relationships with younger, extremely fit men; nude or provocative pics of Becki get into the mix somehow and then suddenly the younger guy is set up with his own business courtesy of a few million from the Falwells or Liberty University.