I am sure that most of us are all too aware that the tea party is a movement that is predicated on using a narrative of government strangling the interests of the people (used by rich thieves in the night to convince the middle class to eat each other), but this latest application of the meme stands out as the most fascinatingly brass-balled version.
A few weeks ago, some family members of mine were pondering a turbulent stock market's future for their money. These are die hard tea party anti-republicans. They looked into new ways of making money. A friend of a friend comes up to them with the idea of Zeekrewards. This idea was bitten on, despite my protests that it was surely a ponzi scheme (the revenue model made no sense, among a million other things). I was countered with, "with what Obama's done to the economy, the money is gone no matter what, may as well try this." I was not shocked to hear that it was a giant ponzi-scheme, but they were.
Even when they thought they were lucky enough to get their money back, they were thwarted by the cashier's check that they sent being held by the bank (it wasn't cashed, but the funds are locked). Well, they've started doing conference calls today, and the claims that they are making are beyond outrageous, but I must say they know their audience.
First, they are stating that the man who was operating it has been away for a few months while he was dealing with a family emergency. The person who was working there was questioned by the SEC about some stuff, but they didn't know enough about the business model to explain it. It was then that the assets were frozen. They claim that the government is acting irresponsibly and this is a case of big government killing a good thing. They claim that their name has been tarnished by this unjustly, but they have top representation that is confident that it can be salvaged. They say their only problem is that they didn't do the bookkeeping well, but everything is perfectly legal.
Second, they were telling these people, who were ripped off by them, that their funds are being held from the government, keeping them from being able to get their "profits" so that the government can steal their money. They are pushing that the government are the real thieves here. They are saying that the only reason the government is investigating was to freeze and steal the assets from their brilliant enterprise (tea party's belief system). In their words, they will prove that the government is irresponsible and incapable of overseeing businesses. They try to claim that this will be a case where regulation comes out with egg on its face for standing in the way of profits for the private sector.
During this call, they used the key words like, "we weren't offering investments, the government is ignoring that." The government just doesn't understand that you are buying bids, not securities. That is supposedly where the government made their mistake, but they "promise to fight this to get their affiliates their money and win this thing."
Here is the REALLY ballsy part, they claim that they are low on funds, so they need help paying the attorneys to defend their affiliates' earnings. They were actually asking these people who just lost everything from them to donate to them. I listened in shock as some of the victims of the scheme were asking for where they could give, talking about how just $20 more per person could give them $20 million, so they could definitely beat this big government conspiracy. It sounded like a pathetic infomercial. I have to hope these people that were saying they had thought it was just the government all along were paid for their input, but they supposedly have 5,000 people signed up to help them so far, so it could be true. They were giving out links to Paypal accounts where people could donate on the call, but they made sure to point out that they would have to click "buy now" instead of donate due to them lacking non-profit status. It is a perfect execution of tea party rhetoric to exploit the clueless.
I knew the tea party was about rich people using people as puppets, but this has become sickening, criminals are using it to re-victimize those they have beaten. It is like watching a parastoid victim on a nature show trying to protect its little murderers. We have to find a way to stop this meme... it is too dangerous and powerful... it is really doing harm to innocent low-information people.
