If you haven't seen Anthony Weiner's appearance last night on the O'Reilly factor---you must.
I'm not usually a fan of the style of dialouge that takes place on the Bill O'Reilly Show, usually because it makes it impossible for his guests to get a word in edgewise. That's the beauty of Anthony Weiner--he is so well versed in combative style political debate that nobody, not even Bill-O can keep him from making his point. See the video and some commentary after the jump.
Some Points:
- You know you've been trounced when you are forced to admitt that you wouldn't buy from goldline personally and that you don't care if they are selling gold above market value. That's like saying it's OK to price gouge in the wake of a terrorist attack.
- Anthony Weiner is dead on about the LA Times story and the Better Business Burueau being for sale. Take a look at the story for yourself:
If you check out Wolfgang Puck's Spago restaurant on the Better Business Bureau's website, you'll discover that, under the organization's new rating system, the world-famous Beverly Hills eatery merits a grade of B-minus.
Why? That's hard to say. The online report says the bureau has received no complaints about Spago from customers and is unaware of any government actions against the restaurant
Now check out the considerably less prominent Cafe Santorini in Pasadena. It too has prompted no complaints to the bureau and has no government actions outstanding. It gets a grade of A-plus.
One big difference: Cafe Santorini pays the bureau about $350 a year to be listed as an accredited business. Spago makes no such payments and is thus an unaccredited business.
The private, nonprofit Better Business Bureau insists there's no "pay-for-play" component to its new rating system.
But a random search of the organization's database of about 4 million North American companies seems to show that the roughly 400,000 accredited businesses, even those that get numerous complaints, very often receive higher grades than unaccredited companies with spotless complaint records.
Moreover I can add some personal experience to this. I clerked for Legal Services as a 1L and my boss would often point out how shady car dealers and rip off time share companies would attempt to buy BBB scores to maintain the aura of running a squeeky clean operation and keeping AG offices off their back. For them, it was merely a cost of doing business as I suspect it is with Goldline (though I admittedly do not know for sure).
- I would love to see Weiner debate Lonesome Roads Beck on this topic. Weiner accepts the proposed debate at the end of the segmant, we'll see if Beck shows up. My guess is he won't.
- If Anthony put just a little more thought into this he would have done some research on other gold companies too. It does seem a little partisan. However, as Weiner points out, partisan or not--the facts speak for themself and they aren't pretty. Beck and O'Reilly will brush this aside as a partisan witch hunt to avoid getting to the merits of Weiner's claim---because the merits are there for everyone to see.
UPDATE: If you haven't been following the story here is a link to Weiner's original report
http://weiner.house.gov/...