Duggars by the Dozen 38: What Can They Shill Next?

[Johannah]

There’s no way he’s living in the house. And the residency rule is pretty unenforceable. If you own property you can say you are living there. There’s no rule about how many nights you actually sleep there.

I weirdly actually have 2 family members who have run or are running for Arkansas state house. In one case the opponent was most definitely not living where they said they were living, and was actually living in another state, but there was no way to prove that and all that really mattered was property ownership. In the other case, my family member does not currently live in the district they are running in, but bought property in that district and claim they are “planning to move.” Apparently that’s not a residency violation and no one actually seems to care anyway. It’s all political strategizing.

Jim Bob, I mean, Jed, is trying to flip a seat to the Republican Party in a district where the Democrat won by 29 votes in the last election. He sense vulnerability and he’d pouncing. All they had to do was buy property there. The district he chose is not a coincidence. 

[JDuggs]

I actually think that Jed and probably Jeremiah are or will soon be living at the address he used for filing to run. I believe that Jed probably has JB and Michelle’s blessing to run and I don’t think they would want him to undergo any unnecessary scrutiny, which this is. Jed has to appear to the public as an independent man, not a child living with mommy and daddy. If he actually lives there, he shuts everyone up about the issue. I realize that JB wants the unmarried kids on a tight leash to keep them out of trouble, but does he really need to worry about Jed? Jed has seen Josh fuck up in the most major way. There’s no way he would want to behave anyway close to what Josh did if he wants a career in conservative Christian politics. He knows all eyes will be on him and he’ll have to be an absolute Boy Scout.

The house is only 20 minutes away from the Duggar compound. I bet he’ll spend plenty of family time there when he’s not out campaigning , but sleep at his own house. And candidates campaigning seem to rarely be alone. They always have staff with them. So it won’t seem odd for Jed to always have siblings working with him.

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

All Jed needs to run on the republican ticket is to hate gays & abortion and love guns & god. Everything else is irrelevant, Honestly all he needs is to be anti abortion and pro gun and nothing else matters. 

[Iamtheway]

I’m pro choice, pro gays, anti guns and don’t believe in god. I’m a woman with a job I did not get from my father and an education from an actual university. I pay my own way, own my own house and can go where ever I want when ever I want without a chaperon. I think I might be the complete opposite of Jed. 

<— And happy about it too! 

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

1 hour ago, Iamtheway said:

I’m pro choice, pro gays, anti guns and don’t believe in god. I’m a woman with a job I did not get from my father and an education from an actual university. I pay my own way, own my own house and can go where ever I want when ever I want without a chaperon. I think I might be the complete opposite of Jed. 

<— And happy about it too! 

Me too to all of this, but I believe in God. 

Plus I kissed more than one man, and had the whorey sex BEFORE I was married and I used the evil birth control. 

[QuiverFullofBooks]

18 hours ago, SassyPants said:

If he’s not living in the house, and it’s a rental and not owned by the Duggars, who IS renting and living in the house? 

He’s definitely renting it. Whether he’s spending the night there is debatable, and probably not important. He might use it as campaign headquarters to get out of the chaos of the TTH.

[SassyPants]

1 hour ago, QuiverFullofBooks said:

He’s definitely renting it. Whether he’s spending the night there is debatable, and probably not important. He might use it as campaign headquarters to get out of the chaos of the TTH.

If he (or another person under JB’s umbrella) is NOT living there, yet IS paying rent, JB must be realllllllly confident that Jed is going to secure that position. If not, what a waste of money. Could JB actually be that fiscally irresponsible?

ETA- I suppose use as a campaign headquarter could possibly be a tax write off?

Edited November 6, 2019 by SassyPants

[Exposedknees]

Jed's going to clean up the opiate crisis yet he can't clean up after a poopy toddler. Yeah... that's gonna work?

[QuiverFullofBooks]

2 hours ago, SassyPants said:

If he (or another person under JB’s umbrella) is NOT living there, yet IS paying rent, JB must be realllllllly confident that Jed is going to secure that position. If not, what a waste of money. Could JB actually be that fiscally irresponsible?

ETA- I suppose use as a campaign headquarter could possibly be a tax write off?

He spent $100,000 on his Senate run when he had about a dozen children in a small house.

[marmalade]

6 hours ago, QuiverFullofBooks said:

He spent $100,000 on his Senate run when he had about a dozen children in a small house.

He actually spent $250,000. 

[WarriorJane]

12 hours ago, QuiverFullofBooks said:

He spent $100,000 on his Senate run when he had about a dozen children in a small house.

But not of his own money.  The money would have come from campaign contributions.

[lumpentheologie]

I really doubt Jed would be allowed to live in the rental house, even with a sibling.  Children staying at home until marriage (or maybe farmed out to a like-minded family) seems pretty central to the Duggars and their ilk. I bet he's renting it just to have the papers to show he's in the district. Perhaps he's courting and planning to move in soon, but who knows. 

The costs for renting a small house in that area can't be that much of a hurdle for as family as rich as the Duggars. Probably less than a thousand a month? If JB would pay for housing if Jed gets married and has babies, I bet he'd also pay for housing for a political campaign.  Babies + taking over the government with those babies is what the cult is all about. 

[Nurse Nic]

11 minutes ago, lumpentheologie said:

Babies + taking over the government with those babies is what the cult is all about. 

I don't think I've seen this lot summed up so succinctly. It's easy to get distracted by their cute babies and fluffy extras and I need the reminder sometimes. 

[BullyJBG]

On 11/5/2019 at 6:15 PM, JermajestyDuggar said:

I wonder if the twins would be allowed to move into a place of their own. That way they would be each other’s accountability partner. 

Abbie's 2 older brothers did that. Nothing about the "accountability partners" in the posts of their family blog, but they said something about them being closer to their works.

  Also, they never said what the younger one of them did when the older one got married.

[JermajestyDuggar]

4 minutes ago, BullyJBG said:

Abbie's 2 older brothers did that. Nothing about the "accountability partners" in the posts of their family blog, but they said something about them being closer to their works.

  Also, they never said what the younger one of them did when the older one got married.

True. John Clay did get married a few years before Caleb. The Arndt boys also have a house down the road from the Arndt main house. And the Staddon boys have a home now too. Maybe this is becoming a thing in fundie land. 

[Xan]

7 hours ago, marmalade said:

He actually spent $250,000. 

"Jim Bob accepts campaign contributions, but he doesn't solicit them. Hutchinson has $1.5 million in his coffers. Jim Bob has $250,000--all his own money."  From:  https://www.quiverfull.com/articles.php/id20/

He may have gotten some donations but I think it's doubtful that he got many.  He only ended up with, I think, less than 25% of the vote.  Even back then, the people of Arkansas must have found him to be insufferable.  I do remember reading articles about how Jim Bob had saved every penny so he could run and the kids were wearing thrift store shoes and eating food that concerned neighbors left as "love offerings" on their front porch.

[Knight of Ni]

So, while Jim Bob was spending $250000 on his political ambitions, his family was eating rice for 3 meals a day and his children were sneaking food into bathrooms to be able to eat. 

 

[CaricatureQualities]

I wonder if he flipped a coin to determine if God wanted him to run or not. That is what JB did. That's right,God will speak on important matters through a coin toss. 

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

1 hour ago, Knight of Ni said:

So, while Jim Bob was spending $250000 on his political ambitions, his family was eating rice for 3 meals a day and his children were sneaking food into bathrooms to be able to eat. 

I want to click the anger button, but don't want to down vote you. This is further proof that kids are just numbers to this cult. How any father could let his kids go hungry to get for personal gain is beyond me.

[QuiverFullofBooks]

Since I brought this up, I wanted to double-check my source and clarify a few things. Jim Bob wrote about his short-lived political career in their first book, “The Duggars: 20 and Counting!” The election where he “cast lots” (it was actually a penny) to determine God’s will was the first time he ran for state legislature. He was elected and re-elected, and then during his second term, “God impressed on me to run for the US Senate.” Everyone though he was nuts and he lost badly in the primary. It turned out that what God had in mind was getting the family into the national media. (A picture of the family ran on the front page of the New York Times, a magazine writer saw it, a TV producer saw the magazine article, and the rest is history.)

Anyway, he said that during the Senate race he got almost $10,000 in unsolicited donations. They sold the Johnson Road house to Cross Church just as the campaign began (it was next door to the original small church and they were about to build the megachurch). Clearly the church was a motivated buyer and the Duggars negotiated a good price, because Jim Bob says he and Michelle agreed “to spend up to $110,000 of it on the campaign.” If it’s true that he had another $140,000 of personal money in the campaign budget, presumably that came from their businesses and savings.

Elsewhere in the book, they said that they couldn’t find any local houses that would work for the family, and so they decided to buy land and build. They seem to have had a decent amount of money in the bank by then. By the time of the election (May 21, 2002), they owned the land where they later built the house. They had 13 children and Michelle was pregnant with Justin. So it’s not like they were really in poverty, and they were making progress on getting into a decent-sized house, but the situation must have looked very strange at the time.

1 hour ago, Knight of Ni said:

So, while Jim Bob was spending $250000 on his political ambitions, his family was eating rice for 3 meals a day and his children were sneaking food into bathrooms to be able to eat. 

 

I think both of those stories date from earlier years and are remembered as low points rather than the norm. The bathroom story was about Jill hiding a treat from the little kids. The Duggar kids never looked starved like the Rodrigues kids.

[DalmatianCat]

27 minutes ago, QuiverFullofBooks said:

The bathroom story was about Jill hiding a treat from the little kids. The Duggar kids never looked starved like the Rodrigues kids.

From what I remember (it’s been years since I read the book), sometime after they bought the land they were asked to put a cell phone tower on it and said that paid for most of their living expenses each month. Michelle also said that sometime when she was ready to go shopping JB would say not to spend too much until all the rental checks come in. As a business owner I can relate...I typically always get the money owed me from clients, but not always in a timely manner. 
SPECULATION

I don’t think the Duggars have ever come out and said it, but I do think they own/run a property management business in addition to just renting out real estate finds. If so, it’s not for the faint of heart...I know I keep my landlords/property management company busy because my building is very old and has not been maintained well (there’s always something...a/c not cool enough, roof leaking, water in the basement, wasps getting in, etc.) and I’m only *one* of their many properties.
I’ve also had friends try their hands at house flipping and the rental business. Buying the house is the easy part. Keeping renters from trashing it and paying rent on time usually leads them to just selling the property in a few years because it’s a *lot* of work for a second job. I’m guessing property management is what several of the boys do as a full time job it’s just not mentioned on the show because you would have to get too much permission to film them going into the houses and businesses of their tenants.

Edited November 7, 2019 by DalmatianCat
Clarity

[neuroticcat]

I think boys are allowed to live out of the family home  - especially with a brother-  in some fundie families...isn’t that part of the whole teaching your son to be financially independent and able to provide line? Not saying it’s successful but could see a scenario where it’s permitted for young men, especially if there’s political benefit.

Edited November 7, 2019 by neuroticcat

[VeryNikeSeamstress]

Babygeddon is upon us! Who's next to announce a pregnancy? Provided M6 and JabJu*1 are born without complication, and two more babies are conceived by April, there could be 19 grandchildren and counting by the end of 2020.

 

*Jabbie Junior

[CarrotCake]

On 11/7/2019 at 2:29 PM, BullyJBG said:

Abbie's 2 older brothers did that. Nothing about the "accountability partners" in the posts of their family blog, but they said something about them being closer to their works.

  Also, they never said what the younger one of them did when the older one got married.

Probably the next brother will move in.

If Jed and Jer indeed will live there and one of them gets married, I guess James will move in next.

[SorenaJ]

If Jed and Jer move in together separate from their family, who is going to do their laundry, cook their dinner and clean up after them?