It’s hard to keep track of the craziness on the right – birtherism, creationism, secessionism, supply-sideism, the Gold-Fringed Flag conspiracy . . . the range of delusions they gin up to obsess over and rile each other up about is so broad and ever-changing that you can’t keep it straight. But weird economic fads, often fraudulent, are part and parcel among it all.
I don’t mean just large-scale weirdness, like voodoo economics and the constant yammering about “socialism”. Here I’m talking about retail-level con games – the stupid fads and frauds that right-wingers perpetrate at the individual level. There’s the one about how you can declare yourself a “sovereign person” and avoid paying all taxes. There’s the one about how the US government was secretly replaced by a “corporation“, and thus none of the laws of the US are valid and you can get out of obeying them by simply stating this fact in court. (There’s an even odder one about how all laws are invalid because they are made by lawyers, and lawyers are invalid because they have “Esquire” after their names, and esquires are invalid because the Constitution prohibits titles of nobility. I’m not making this up.) There are the ones about how you can establish your own currency or issue liens against other people’s property because you are your own government and the real government is illegitimate. Naturally, instructions on how to do all these things are available for a hefty fee (instructions on what to do after you go to jail for this are generally not available).
What is common to all this nonsense is its genesis in right-wing paranoia and delusion. The “sovereign person” and fake-government scams are nothing more than variations on the anti-”big-government” resentment that fuels so much of the right wing – they’re basically the Atlas Shrugged fantasy revised as a tax scam. The bizarre theories about the Constitution and the flag have much to do with the whole anti-civilization shtick the wingers have got going – the same things (and in many cases the same people) that show up in militia/secessionist movements and Golden Age nostalgia (we used to have a legitimate government, but FDR or Abraham Lincoln secretly did away with it and everything went to hell, plus those kids won’t ever get off our lawn). The fact that they can be repackaged as tax avoidance or get-rich-quick schemes is just another attraction, and another opportunity for the scammers to prey on the delusions of even-more-gullible wingers.
There’s an old joke about the small island where everyone made a living taking in each other’s laundry. The right wing makes money by scamming other right wingers, first by deluding them with lies predicated upon their underlying fears and confusions, then by telling them they have to pay for security against those manufactured fears, and ripping them off when they do so.
The Big Picture lines out an especially obnoxious example: Glenn Beck is shilling for an abusive precious-metals “investment” company that pays for ads on his shows, during which he tells his gullible and stupid fans there will be an economic meltdown and they should invest in gold to survive it. The company sells antique French gold coins as a hedge against inflation or economic disruption, without informing buyers of the difference between collectible coins – which sell for more than the value of their precious metal alone, because of their value to collectors – and plain bullion coins, which sell for only a small amount more than the value of their gold or silver by itself. Buying bullion can be a reasonable way of storing value if you’re the sort of person who thinks that (a) the economy is going to hell, and (b) gold will always be in demand (i.e., the post-crash economy is going to be populated largely by people who also read Ayn Rand, or just like shiny trinkets). But buying collectible coins as a store of value is immensely stupid, because the excess price, above their shiny-trinket value, will only be paid by other coin collectors, who are likely to be the first ones eaten by the Randian ubermenschen in a post-apocalypse cannibalistic meltdown. Even worse than this, the company Beck is fronting for marks these coins up by about $150 each above their current selling price on the legitimate market, without ever informing the customer, virtually guaranteeing a huge loss on the purchase while offering deliberately misleading promises of financial security.
As Big Picture’s helpful graphic makes it clear:
Customer buys 20 Franc French Roosters [coins] for $402 each.
Customer loses 42% of their investment instantly.
The company is under investigation by local authorities in California, and has been the subject of a Congressional investigation:
Goldline International has been in business since 1960, but has gained national prominence recently by sponsoring conservative talk show hosts.
These paid spokespeople have happily agreed to promote Goldline by playing off the fear of inflation, to encourage people to purchase gold as an investment that will protect them from an out of control government.
In reality Goldline is a company that uses conservative rhetoric, high pressure sales tactics and tall tales about the future of gold to sell over priced coins that can be bought somewhere else for cheaper. . . .
Goldline Grossly Overcharges For Their Coins
The average Goldline mark-up was 90% above the melt value of the coin. The largestmarkup seen on a coin was 208% above the melt value. The average Goldline markup in comparison to the best price we could locate on competitors websites was 47%, going as high as 102% on one of the coins they offered.
Goldline Falsely Claims To Offer “Good” Investments
By selling gold at twice the melt value, the price of gold would need to double for consumers to break even on their “investment.”
Goldline Salespeople Misrepresent Their Ability To Give “Investment Advice”
Sales people imply that they are “Investment Advisors” or “Financial Advisers” by offering investment advice, which insinuates that they have some sort of fiduciary responsibility to get you the most return on your investment. However, since they are not licensed “Investment Advisors” (the industry term), they have no such responsibility. . . .
Goldline Formed An Unholy Alliance with Conservative Pundits to Drive a False Narrative
On numerous occasions, Glenn Beck has dedicated entire segments of his program to explaining why the U.S. money supply is destined for hyperinflation with Barack Obama as president. He will often promote the purchase of gold as the only safe investment alternative for consumers who want to safeguard their livelihoods. When the show then cuts to commercial break, viewers are treated to an advertisement from Goldline. . . .
Conservative Pundits Profit on Peoples Fear
Fred Thompson, Dennis Miller, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Lars Larson, Michael Smerconish, Monica Crowley and Mike Huckabee are all paid spokespeople for Goldline.
Glenn Beck was also at one point a paid spokesperson but is no longer because it violated Fox news rules. Goldline does however sponsor his program and he commonly encourages his viewers to purchase gold, without mentioning that Goldline is a sponsor of his show
The message that these commentators push is that government is out of control and unsafe, inflation will continue to devalue the dollar and that as an investor you should protect yourself by stock piling gold coins.
Glenn Beck:
- “Tonight, are we facing the end of the almighty dollar?… So I’m sure we can all assume that the dollar is here to stay, and everything is just peachy. But in the offchance that, maybe, somebody in the Middle East wouldn’t tell us exactly the truth, you know, that they’re not exactly 100 percent reliable, maybe we should discover what it means for our dollar and our country if it’s no longer pegged to oil. What does that mean for you? … Any way to protect yourself? Gold”. (Source: The Glenn Beck Show 10/7/2009)
- “We could be facing recession, depression or collapse. Nothing Left! … I like to call it the three G system here for this, its God, Gold and Guns.” (Source: The Glenn Beck Show 11/23/2009)
- “Explain, if I’m right, the policy that the Government has is something that, what is it, the WS2 or something like that policy which is — what is it, Stu? BW2, which is Bretton Woods 2 which is basically the world needs us; we can borrow; it doesn’t matter how much we’ll borrow because the world will never disconnect from the world’s consumers… Best thing we can do is buy the gold, right?” (Source: The Glenn Beck Program 4/9/2008)
- “There are those in power that […] want to destroy the dollar or … the dollar is on life support and they’d like it to stay there. It’s true. Not much that you and I can do about it. Well, there are a few things. You can prepare yourself, that’s what’s next year is a really all about on our program. Preparing yourself and part of that is – or could be – protecting yourself with gold. If you have the money to buy it, protect yourself from an out of control government with gold.” (Source: The Glenn Beck Program 12/3/09)
- “I think you’re nuts. When the system eventually collapses, and the government comes with guns and confiscates, you know, everything in your home and all your possessions, and then you fight off the raving mad cannibalistic crowds* that Ted Turner talked about, don’t come crying to me. I told you: get gold.” (Source: Politico )
- “Just the other night I was rereading Atlas Shrugged*, and in it one of the characters is talking about the value of money and how paper dollars really hold no value whatsoever. They represent your work. The only thing of real value is gold. What you’ve backed that dollar up with. Well, we no longer back our dollars up with gold. If things get dicey, we’re on a banking crisis now, the declining value of the dollar, what will hold its value? Gold. I want you to call 866-GOLDLINE and find out about buying gold. You can buy it as an investment. I buy it really as insurance because it’s the one thing that will have value forever.” (Source: Goldline radio ad)
Mike Huckabee:
“I’ll bet you’re concerned about the economy and the depreciation of the dollar just like me. That’s why people are diversifying their portfolio with gold, as a way to protect against a falling dollar and future inflation. Goldline has been helping people acquiring gold for 50 years. The people at Goldline will explain just how easy it is for you to buy gold that’s delivered directly to you.” (Source: Goldline radio ad)
Dennis Miller:
“Hey folks in a perfect world we could print all our own money, buy ridiculous amounts of stuff and live happily ever after. Well life ain’t a fairy tale my friends. Look at the economy, they’re spending more than Paris Hilton on a bad day and it doesn’t get us a tiny dog and a pink purse either. It leads to a lower dollar. What can we do to diversify our portfolio and protect against that falling dollar? Buy gold. Gold prices have tripled in value and they are up more than 40% in the past 2 years. I trust Goldline.” (Source: Goldline radio ad)
Laura Ingraham:
“With the stock market where it is, volatile, moving up one day, down the next, the trillion dollar budget deficit. And look what’s happening in the banking industry, the government continuing to print money it looks like. It’s important to remember there’s only a finite amount of gold. It makes sense in these types of economic times to seek a safe harbour. And that is gold. I can’t tell you whether gold is going to get up or down. I can tell you however that gold makes sense as part of any portfolio. It serves as a great ballast against inflation.” (Source: Goldline radio ad)
Fred Thompson:
“Our country is experiencing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Stocks and real estate have lost much of their value and government is spending trillions of dollars in a desperate attempt to bail us out. In these tough times I believe you should own gold. Gold offers diversification so all your eggs aren’t all in one basket. And gold is one of the few investments that is going up every year since 2001. My choice for gold is Goldline.” (Source: Goldline radio ad)
So it’s not just Beck – there’s an entire stable of right-wing hacks openly shilling for this rip-off company, on the basis of winger fears of economic catastrophe that they deliberately stoke in order to make sales. Two of these are former GOP presidential candidates – one a former governor and one a former Senator. Huckabee is still taken seriously as a candidate in 2012! In one way or another, they all make their names through oppressive moral judgmentalism, while promoting deceptive and blatantly dishonest “investment” schemes. (And note Fox News’s “ethics” – you can’t be a paid spokesperson for a for-profit company, but you can promote their products by name on your show and charge them for advertising.) There is simply no compunction about playing on your own followers’ ideological insecurities in order to rip them off, while positioning yourself as leader and moral arbiter for them and everyone else.
Of course, none of this would be possible if the wingers, as a group, weren’t so goddam stupid. I, for instance, easily avoid buying overpriced, useless gold coins to protect myself against financial losses while being cannibalized by people with more guns and Ayn Rand novels than me during the coming liberdorkalypse, because I’m not panicked into thinking that cannibalism, or adolescent hero-fantasy survivalism, are likely in my future. (Among other things, I remember that we faced persistent, grueling unemployment, with much less in the way of social support and a less-productive economic base, during the Great Depression, and we successfully managed the situation by electing liberals to office, not harvesting them as a food source. This knowledge leaves me much more sanguine about current events than, obviously, Glenn Beck is.) I am not driven to the edge of madness by my allegiance to a dimly-grasped economic principle that is essentially equivalent to wampum, nor do I regard my ability to almost remember two initials of a more sophisticated system as a refutation of it. And I am not plagued by such a thoroughgoing inability to come to terms with modernity that I literally reject civilization itself as a lifestyle option – thus I have no need to worry about the consequences of living in the anarchically violent state of nature, plus precious metals exchanges, that would result if my addled beliefs about the world actually became real, nor do I have to pin my hopes for survival in MadMaxistan on finding a French coin collector who will give me the equivalent of 150% of my collection’s value in the form of fruits and jerky before either of us get cannibalized. Because I’m not a fucking idiot, and therefore not a conservative, and therefore don’t take advice on investment or survival from Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, or Mike Huckabee.
Even so, I feel – a little – for the morons who do listen to these people. Being angry, resentful, and fearful is a harsh way to live, and it has harsh consequences. Usually the wingers are busily screwing up everyone else’s life. The fact that they are now doing so to each other is a welcome respite, but still not a very nice way to treat people. Which is all too characterisitic of the right wing, and all too familiar.
* I honestly did not read these quotes before writing this post. This guy is more crazy than you can make up.
leanleft
Kevin
tgirsch
Kevin T. Keith
Judd
I don’t know anyone who is furiously buying up gold and coinage, or coinage metals, in lieu of the impending libertardalypse or whatever you called it (which was genuinely funny, btw,) so, despite the face that Glenn Beck said it, it’s obvious from plain observation that you’re talking about people on the fringes, as you did in much of this post. If you go looking for something, you’re likely to find it. What gets presented as “right-wing craziness” by you, and by the media, doesn’t represent what a person is likely to see in the mainstream, what they’re likely to find upon observation of what’s around them on a regular basis, and that’s fairly well known.
Very little of what you’re bringing up here falls into the category of mainstream characteristics of “the right”. What you’ve done, gone to the very fringes to find the craziest shit you can on what “the right” believes, then saying all the people who believe this crap also fall into the larger category of the right wing, and then characterize the entire right wing – as a whole, everyone in it – as the cause for the existence of such beliefs.
Am I misunderstanding you? When you say winger, are you only talking about the fringe characters? Just who are “the wingers” as a group? Is it everyone on the right side of center, or just those who engage in the activities you are describing?
There’s also more reason to the “gold standard” than what you’re addressing here, the demand for gold, and in part it’s that gold doesn’t depreciate in value over time because it’s a noble metal and hence very, very chemically stable. It’s a good investment for that reason, better than a house, or a car, or other forms of equity that lose value over time, or are volatile.
On another note, I too applaud taking advantage of the people who are stupid enough to buy into this. It’s funny, though, that it’s loosely laudable, and laughable to you when the right-wing does this to other right-wingers, but it’s criminal if the stupid fool happens to be associated with liberals. You’re an incredible bigot.
Barbie, I can’t speak for KTK, and you certainly have a point that “batshit crazy right-wing” is not the same as “right-wing”, but do note that one of the shills listed here is Huckabee. While he didn’t get particularly close to winning the presidency, it seems hard to count him out of the mainstream of the right wing.
That notwithstanding, some of those items of batshit crazy are absolutely fantastic. I’d never heard of the “The US government is a foreign owned corporation” before, and I found one particularly striking comment on that site:
… essentially equivalent to wampum…
I’m not sure what you meant to say here, but wampum was a fiat currency.
If you want to see the crazy shit that left-wing fringe nutjobs believe in, go to any Whole Foods Market and randomly pick up one of the magazines in the checkout aisles. Peruse the ads, and prepare to be mortified. It’s crazy, stupid shit, but it’s generally not paranoid, antisocial crazy stupid shit.
T:
My local Whole Foods is in the white part of town (surprise, surprise) so I don’t get over there much. What am I missing?
The politically gullible aren’t the only targets for craven retailers. Look at the Church business, which is chock full of hucksters selling redemption at a premium. From tithing to purpose driven books and CDs, the selling never stops.
SLoS:
Obviously there’s an active market for this, or Goldline wouldn’t be buying time on one of the most highly-rated right-wing TV shows around, or paying super-high-profile wingers like Huckabee, Ingraham, or Thompson to plug them. In general, “the gold standard” is a longstanding right-wing shibboleth, and has particularly salience in economic downturns. Wingers have been hoarding gold for generations, like they used to hoard Confederate dollars; this is just the latest go-round for that bandwagon.
As for being “mainstream”, these people are as mainstream as it gets. Huckabee and Thompson were both GOP presidential contenders, and have both held high elected office as Republicans. Beck and Ingraham are among the most dominant right-wing media stars out there. They have vast audiences – and, obviously, what those audiences respond to (and thus justify advertising dollars for) is ideologically-based encouragement to buy gold at inflated prices driven by reactionary fearmongering and deceptive advertising. People like Beck and Ingraham could sell anything; people like Huckabee and Thompson could pitch any plan they chose based on their political credentials. What they have all chosen to do with their clout – what struck every one of them as the most advantageous use of their own celebrity and influence – is to shill for a low-rent investment scam company. Obviously, there’s not just a market for that, it’s the best market available to people who could do anything they wanted in the right-wing community.
Tgirsch is right that you can find a lot of craziness in left-wing publications, too, and too many people eager to cater to them. (As an old joke has it, “Don’t get angry at New Agers. Sell them something!”) But the crystal-healing and energy pyramid scams are, literally, back-of-the-book stuff in cheap magazines, pushed by small obscure companies. There are no former presidential candidates selling feng shui advice, no former Democratic governors or senators hawking ripoff investment plans based on lies and 18th-century economics. The crazy on the right wing goes straight to the top – and why not? Three Republican presidential primary candidates in 2008 openly stated they did not “believe in” evolution – among them one of the people who is now shilling investment scams for Goldline; this after 8 years of a creationist moron in the highest office in the land. There’s a range of smart and stupid on the left wing; stupid is a campaign platform (and an investment strategy) on the right.
As for gold, its chemical stability is not the reason for its perceived value. Silver is the other standard base metal used as specie, and it’s highly chemically reactive (and much more widely used in industrial applications than is gold, meaning there are more volatile market forces at work on its value). The economic theory behind specie metals is “Oooh! Shiny object!”
And I did not say it is OK to rip off stupid right-wingers. I said the gold scam is a “weird economic fad”, a “con game”, one of many “stupid fads and frauds”, “nonsense”, an “opportunity for scammers [who] prey on . . . delusions”, an act of “scamming . . . deluding . . . [and] ripping them off”, “abusive”, an “immensely stupid” scheme that is “deliberately misleading”, perpetrated by “an entire stable of right-wing hacks openly shilling for [a] rip-off company”, “deceptive and blatantly dishonest”, the work of people who have “no compunction about playing on [their] own followers’ ideological insecurities in order to rip them off”, the result of a mindset that is “angry, resentful, and fearful”, whose consequences are “harsh”, and is “not a very nice way to treat people”. I also said I do “feel – a little – for the morons who do listen to these people”. I can’t see how you can read that and conclude that it is “laudable, and laughable to you when the right-wing does this”, but, as I have noted elsewhere, Conservative Reading Comprehension Disorder is one of the many plagues of the right wing.
What I did say is that, given the oppressive, intrusive, and abusive behavior of the right wing in most things, it is better when they victimize each other than when they victimize decent people, and given the role of the right wing rank and file in enabling and supporting those abuses, it is better when they themselves are the victims of their own stupidity and delusions than when they impose their ideology on the innocent. But I did not say it was good for right-wingers to treat even right-wingers the way they do; it would be better if they simply weren’t right-wingers, and treated everybody decently. Until then, though, they ought to reap what they sow so that no one else has to.
Dan:
I always thought of wampum as a form of specie. It was regarded not simply as a medium of exchange, but as valuable in its own right. It’s a natural material that has no practical use, but was highly desired in and of itself, and therefore formed a basis for trade.
You’re right, it was specie, not fiat currency. My error.
KTK, T:
fair. I do tend to insert my own meanings into things sometimes, it’s a defensive trait I’ve developed in recent recent years. I forget that I’m not actually one of the right-wing whackjobs you refer to (unless you think I am, but really, neeeehhhh I don’t think so. I’m not religious, I’m a staunch supportor of gay rights, and I don’t condone comparisons of Obama to Nazis/Hitler, to name a few), but that’s because my family treats me like I am. So, when I see something that looks reasonably like a generalization, which this post does in parts, I get all butt-hurt about it and I get defensive. It’s mostly because everyone else in my family considers themselves in the range from push-button socialist (verbatim of my aunt, referring to herself) or a lifelong, solid liberal democrat, and ever since I “defected”, despite the fact that I’m still a social liberal, they’ve been regarding me as if I’m on the far right-wing…because, relative to them and from where they stand, I am. So, mea culpa, I’m too defensive for my own good and sometimes have knee jerk reactions.
Get ready for this one: you’re right – the bush-hippie-crap at whole foods doesn’t hold a candle to the Glen Beck show, etc. I’ve listened occasionally to Beck when my car CD player is on the fritz and I come across him on the radio, and if it’s just the right time of day, the stopped clock will be right, and me, not knowing what channel “the glenn beck show” is on, find myself listening and thinking this is a very intelligent person and this guy says some things that makes sense, and you should give him credit that some of his messages are not full of venom at the left and are good for all ears to hear, but THEN he *inevitably* will launch into teh crazy, and I have to roll my eyes and turn the dial.
I’m feeling neutral and calm and reflective today, so I’ll say it: I get it. There are a lot of people on the right who buy into the extreme and not-so-extreme positions because they are suckers, and it doesn’t surprise me that the religiously faithful fall into this category because they seem to have the kind of willing ignorance of reality/observation that primes them to accept pretty words. Glenn Beck is fantastic “preacher”-type, and he charms those people. However, not everyone whose ideology overlaps with what some of the Beck-ian ideologue contains, is that kind of sucker. As democrats, we/you might view them as unenlightened stupid fools who are buying into those ideas, but the truth might be that they were raised with different values than us, values which might seem amoral to someone who doesn’t understand them, and they might also be thinking-type beings who can articulate why they believe what they do.
I have to remind myself, and so I tell you now, too, that I don’t have a normal outlook. I was raised in the northeast by educators and am an over-educated girl in my 20′s and I don’t associate or hang out with the stupid people. Some of my friends are rednecks, but they don’t fit the standard image. I came upon my views and defected to the center from the far-left, on my own terms, mainly because I discovered upon moving from MA to TX, that I’d been indoctrinated to believe that anyone who didn’t vote democrat was a backwoods, knuckle-dragging untermensch, and I discovered that this was just not the case.
As T knows, when we first started talking, I had no idea who Glenn Beck was, or how big he was in some spheres. I’m still not sure how big he is, because I don’t hear him come up much in conversation, but that could relate my previous point – I don’t hang out with stupid people.
I liked Obama initially because when I first heard him, giving the key note address in 2004, I thought he would be a uniting force. The hippie peace activist in me doesn’t like seeing fighting, and right now, railing against the right wing with the intensity that is shown by KTK in many posts, freaks me out. I’ve been in more of a “getting along” mood lately, and you get really intense with it dude, even more so that what I witness on occasion from the right-wingers that you’re attacking. It makes you seem like a left-wing nut job at times, you get a little mouth-foamy. Now, you seem like an intelligent guy to me, and, well, hey, have you maybe given thought to the fact that you might be scaring away people who would listen better if their eyes didn’t start to bleed? This post of yours was one of the more appropriately spiced rants I’ve read, and with some good sarcastic banter, too, but – advice I should take myself, too – it can be hard to actually “hear” you through the abrasive combativeness that you regularly employ.
I’ll read this later, but I’d like to point out I’m assuming that this means Biz Markie, Slick Rick, and Big Daddy Kane (or, as I shall now annoint him because of his apparent economic genius, Big Daddy Keynes) had the right investment strategy all along. Of course the right wing and the church was out to bastardize hip hop – they wanted to appropriate their investment strategies. Dookie gold ropes, biyatch!
Oh, and @ Dennis Miller – when the fuck did was this ad filmed? Paris Hilton and the dog as a touchstone pop culture reference? Step out in the aughts, Dennis. It’s fun here, we don’t have to watch pron of 56K connections anymore!
SB:
Thanks for your temperate response.
You’re not the first to complain about my tone, but I never really understand it. Coddling wingers isn’t goint to solve the problem. Nobody likes proctologists, but somebody’s got to do the work.
KTK – you’re welcome. I know deep down that you and I have some things in common: you like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I, too, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series).
No, no, I’m not suggesting coddling the wingers. More like using your literary skills to…well let’s stick with your proctologist example: you’re not just a proctologist, you’re like the mean proctologist with a fetish. At least offer up some lube! No need to lessen the blows, but I bet you could coyly add some verbal camouflage. Let me introduce another medical analogy: when I was a itty bitty kid, the doctor would use some kind of distraction on me while the nurse took a blood sample, that way, I wouldn’t kick and scream and cry, thus resulting in the doctors getting more blood out of me than if they had said, “hey kid, look at this shiny needle that we’re about to jab in your vein.”
SB/KTK,
Not to take sides, but I think the whole anal-ogy stinks.
<Run away!>
[...] July 30, 2010 kevintkeith Leave a comment Go to comments Shoothouse Barbie bestows the ultimate accolade: You’re like the mean proctologist with a [...]
Well, he started it.