Roaches, They Never Really Go Away: Ted Haggard's Cash-For-Heaven Offer

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Fri Aug-24-07 04:24 PM
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Roaches, They Never Really Go Away: Ted Haggard's Cash-For-Heaven Offer

Ted Haggard's Cash-For-Heaven Offer

Colorado Confidential
by: Cara DeGette
Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 11:20 AM MDT

Have some extra cash? Feel like going to heaven? Then you might consider sending Ted Haggard and his family some monthly checks for the next two years while they move into a halfway house and get psychology and counseling degrees from the University of Phoenix.

If you haven't had enough of the Haggard/New Life Church saga, this week KRDO Channel 13 in Colorado Springs aired a story about a letter that Haggard sent to consumer reporter Tak Landrock, letting him know of the Haggard family plans to move into the Phoenix Dream Center to minister to ex-cons, recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes, and "other broken people," Haggard writes. "I identify."

Haggard, the charismatic former head of the National Association of Evangelicals, was fired last Nov. 4 from the 14,000-member New Life Church that he founded after he admitted buying meth and getting massages from a male escort. After three weeks of intensive "restoration" therapy, Haggard claimed he was "completely heterosexual"; he and his family subsequently moved to Arizona. In his most recent communiqu� with the Colorado Springs TV reporter, Haggard indicates that he and his wife Gayle, along with their two underage younger sons, are planning to move into a one-bedroom apartment in a Phoenix halfway house to minister to the residents. They are both, he wrote, enrolled at the University of Phoenix.

In what is clearly a fundraising letter, Haggard indicated, "we need to raise our own support." However, he doesn't mention that when he left the church, New Life Church leaders agreed to pay his salary through 2007 - estimated at about $138,000 annually. In addition, as Colorado Confidential reported earlier this month, El Paso County Assessor property records show that the Haggard's still own their 5-bedroom, 3-bath home in Colorado Springs. Sitting on 5.1 acres, its current market value is listed at $715,051.

The home is not currently on the market for sale.

http://www.coloradoconfidential.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2630

*** - Its nice to see that the "restoration therapy" didn't diminish Ted's chutzpa, nor his abilities as a con-artist. Although, he's clearly come down in the world. Well, sort of. I mean he went from fleecing middle-class gomers up on the mountain top, to the desert to restore ex-cons, ex-alcoholics, ex-drug users and ex-prostitutes to their former pristine state. People with whom, as he says, "I identify." Like an ex-minister-of-a-megachurch-that-made-fabulous-money-but-now-not-so-much. Which brings us to the new pitch for aid for the new target group, "Donations From Illiterate People Without Computers, Televisions, Radios or Common Sense."

And, and, and.... he's doing all this "work" while both he and his wife are in school at the University of Phoenix working on their degrees. I wasn't aware that the U of P offered advanced degrees in chicanery and flim-flamery, but I suppose the curriculum must change with the times if you're going to stay ahead of the game. Of course I realize that the U of P offers its degrees online. I just hope Gayle has one of those child porn-proof filters on his computer. We don't want him to have relapse, now do we? Cause then that'd mean that the restoration therapy didn't work.

Anyway, its just wonderful to see this as a great example of one pulling oneself back up by one's own bootstraps. Why I'll bet he'll be doing a lot of bending over for those bootstraps in the days to come. Again. And again. And again.....