Maddow & Olbermann were both on fire last Wednesday night, and I just wanted to underscore and expand upon something else Maddow dealt with: the fact that Newt Gingrich is basically just a cheesy scam artist at this point in his life. Or maybe he always was, and now he's simply stipped everything down to the basics. Here's an excerpt of her segment on him:
Just because he doesn't have a real job, does not mean that Newt Gingrich isn't making a lot of money in politics. The closest thing he has to a job is heading up the organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future. What is American Solutions for Winning the Future? What does it do? Mostly, it promotes Newt Gingrich. An AP analysis determined that American Solutions has spent nearly all of its money raised over the last two years on administrative expenses and personal expenses, including chauffeur services. Newt's group raises money to spend money and it spends money on raising more money. It's a Newt Gingrich promotional vehicle. Also, it's sort of a chain letter scam.
You may remember we first got worried about Newt's organization last fall, when they reportedly tried to give a fake scam business award to a strip club in Texas. The owner of the strip club got a very nice letter from Mr. Gingrich. The letter said she had been selected to receive an entrepreneur of the year award at a special dinner with Newt Gingrich himself in Washington. All she had to do was send a check immediately for $5,000. which she did immediately. Then Mr. Gingrich's group rescinded the invitation and award saying they did not realize they sent it to a gentleman's club. we got to create the best graphic we've ever created, "Live Newt Girls"....
Sam Stein, a reporter of the Huffington Post has unveiled the newest iteration of Newt Gingrich's moneymaking sham operation. Now, Newt Gingrich has moved on to trying to hustle doctors under the ruse of opposing obama care. It turns out that reporter Ssam Stein's mom is a doctor. She's a doctor who was selected to receive a totally awesome super exclusive award from Newt Gingrich. Mr. Stein inquiring mind that he is, called up the number listed on the letter for more information, and wouldn't you know it, his mother's awesome doctor award was going to cost her $5,000.
This fake $5,000 doctor award is being marketed in the same way as last year's fake business but not strip club award. That's the invite sent to the strip club owner on the left. On the right, the invite that went out to Sam Stein's doctor mom. They both have handwritten notes to the award recipients in exactly the same handwriting. Exactly the same handwriting. It looks like handwriting, it's a font. It's a cheesy, made-to-look-like-handwriting font. And it's the same font from scam to scam from year to year.
The reason I quote it at some length is that I want to give the flavor of it--and that cheesy handwritten font, which was really pretty impressive back in 1985 or so (back when Gingrich probably first used it), is just the sort of telling detail that gives the full flavor of Newt's Glen Garry Glenross charm.
What's most pertinent from a functional perspective is that Gingrich's operation gives the appearance of being a sort of incidental spin-off of something much more serious--Gingrich's ever ongoing crusade to save Western Civilization (from people not named "Newt Gingrich" evidently.)
But, in reality, the incidental spin-off is all there actually is to it. You are being given a prize paid for by you by an organization that gives prizes to people who pay for them themselves. This is the scam, and it is very much like a chain letter: There's no there there, only the constantly perpetuated belief that there's something there.
This is also a sort of kissing cousin to a ponzi scheme.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a diary, "Three-Card monte politics", in which I commented on a Think Progress resport, "Tea Party Leader Dick Armey: Social Security Is A Corrupt 'Ponzi Scheme'". Now, I'm a great believer in over-determination and multiple causality, so I would never suggest that this is the whole story to what's going on here. But it does seem quite evident that ponzi-like manipulations come quite easily to Republican politicians in our day and age, and that accusing others of their own sorts of actions comes just as easily as well.
Gosh! Who'da thunk it?
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