Is The Tea Party Movement Like A Pyramid Scheme?

Mother Jones:

There's a book Mark Meckler likes to recommend to reporters and others seeking insight into the tea party juggernaut. Called The Starfish and the Spider, it explores the "unstoppable power" of decentralized and leaderless organizations. "We're like the starfish," Meckler, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, said earlier this year. "There is no head, there is no leader of the organization. There are thousands of starfish out there and they are self-replicating in that way."

It's certainly an inspiring metaphor. If one tentacle is chopped off, the starfish grows a new one, making it a model of resilience. Yet there's another type of organization that's resilient, decentralized, and reminiscent of the Tea Party Patriots, a national umbrella organization that claims to represent 15 million activists and 2800 local affiliates. You can find it in companies like Amway, Herbalife, and others that rely on what's known as multilevel marketing (MLM), a business model some consider to be nothing but a pyramid scheme.

Read the whole story: Mother Jones

Comments

[Ron Forrester]

01:23 PM on 12/14/2010

I was intrigued with the title to this article and decided to read it. As I was reading it I understood that the author really does not know what actually constitutes a "pyramid scheme." Corporate America is a better example of "pyramid scheme" in that a new entry level employee in the mail room, for example, will NEVER make it to the CEO position. It also holds true that only a fraction of a percentage of the TOP management will make it to the boardroom.

YET, a brand new entry level distributor in any home based business company can and often do make it to the very top, passing up any who do not have the work ethic that particular distributor exhibits. Your odds of winning the hallowed halls of super success are much greater in this structure than any other. Check out my notes in Facebook for further discussion or even my blog, http://coachronforrester.com

Ron Forrester

[Countess]

01:54 PM on 10/21/2010

There is nothing extraordinary about the tea party which is simply another wing of the republican party that has had a hard time supressing their racist rage and theocratic theology and has been taking courses in becoming civilized given by republican operatives. They all are working for the same super rich extreme capitalists.

[Lukester]

01:24 PM on 10/21/2010

They got played:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/19/AR2010101906085.html

[CarolinaYankee]

09:36 AM on 10/21/2010

And from the looks of their crowd, it is Elder Exploitation too.

[TeaLady005]

09:28 AM on 10/21/2010

We have attended several Tea Party events and met some wonderful people and had alot of fun. We make our signs on the kitchen table or in the garage, with our friends and neighbors, and we usually carpool to the site.
I have met many nice people who admitted for Hillary and a dozen or so wonderful people who said they voted for Obama, and now regretted doing so. Never have I seen an angry mob mentality. To the contrary,,the gatherings felt more like a football tailgate party than an angry groupt of "extremists". And we always bring along some big plastic bags and pick up any trash dropped before we leave.
The point is, nobody pays any of us to attend a Tea Party rally. Nobody "buses us in" , giving us a free box lunch, or a free T-shirt to wear for the media cameras. Anyone that asserts the Koch brothers, or foreign money, etc. is behind the Tea Party Movement, is simply wrong and obviously has never attended one of our many events. So even if you have your doubts, why not come to a Tea Party meeting and see for yourself that we are just Main Street Americans, who are comprised mostly of the 51% of the population that actually pays taxes.

[thepoliticalcat]

09:31 PM on 10/21/2010

Most of us have seen plenty of video clips and photographs of angry obese elderly people who are clearly on public assistance carrying misspelled and ungrammatical signs full of h8. I saw the te@b@ggers when they hit my Rep's town hall. They were rude, angry, aggressive. They screamed and yelled and made it almost impossible for the rest of us to ask the questions we wanted. Hundreds of local residents had to be turned away because they had wormed their way in. Maybe you're lucky and have found a charming group of people to hang out with. Go right ahead and enjoy yourself. I'm not planning to hang out with the v!0lent b0orz I saw any time soon.

[tempting]

02:17 AM on 10/21/2010

Cue the right-wing wailing and gnashing of teeth: The NAACP has now fully backed up its accusations of racism within the Tea Party movement with a meticulously documented report on the Tea parties' multifarious connections to racists and various far-right extremists.

The report, "Tea Party Nationalism," looks at the relationships and differences between the six major Tea Party organizations -- FreedomWorks Tea Party, 1776 Tea Party, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, and Tea Party Express -- and the various ways that each group has established connections with, and empowers, outright racists and white supremacists, as well we far-right "Patriot" extremists of various stripes.

"In these ranks, an abiding obsession with Barack Obama's birth certificate is often a stand-in for the belief that the first black president of the United States is not a 'real American.' Rather than strict adherence to the Constitution, many Tea Partiers are challenging the provision for birthright citizenship found in the Fourteenth Amendment," write authors Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, which produced the report for the NAACP.

The heart of the report is the section titled "Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Militia Impulse, which includes some previously overlooked facets of the movement and revealing details:

-- James von Brunn, the white supremacist who killed a Holocaust Museum guard last year, posted on Tea Partner Express partner websites.

-- Mark Williams, not only wrote racist screeds, he made death threats against President Obama,

[kmichal2000]

02:15 AM on 10/21/2010

"..Yet there's another type of organization that's resilient, decentralized.."

The author isn't very bright. Pyramid schemes are very much centralized like gov't or ...the DNC.

[Sean777]

01:44 AM on 10/21/2010

IRONIC most Tea Baggers are retirees and blue collar workers and they are supporting Rand Paul who wants to eliminate Medicare and Medicaid for American seniors. Joe Miller who wants to lower the wages of American workers and eliminate unemployment benefits for all Americans despite the fact that his wife already collected unemployment from Taxpayers. Joe Miller and Christine O'Donnell are lecturing about expending but they are covering personal debts with their campaign founds. Sharron Angle who believes that government should not require insurance companies to cover autism or maternity care despite the fact she is using government health care for herself and her family and the list of anti-American proposals from Tea Baggers Candidates goes on and on. The biggest danger we are facing as Americans is the Tea Party, a movement that suppose to be about fiscal responsibility has emerged as an obstructionist force; instead of resourcing on economists to move a fiscal responsibility agenda the Tea Party is based on racism, hooliganism and predatorily politics we need to stop them on November.

[kmichal2000]

02:20 AM on 10/21/2010

Bull

[thepoliticalcat]

09:34 PM on 10/21/2010

Just today, Dan Maes, TeaParty candidate for Colorado governor, is in trouble for "refunding" himself for $70K worth of "expenditures" on the "campaign." They're all crooks and hypocrites and l!@rz. All of them.

[exile]

01:25 AM on 10/21/2010

we are the starfish
koo
koo
ka
chooo

[flossophy]

01:12 AM on 10/21/2010

The left seems to have a lot of difficulty getting their heads around this movement.

Yes, it is a real grassroots political movement and not one of those Axelrod astr0turfed American IdoI movements that got the kiddos out to vote for the hip candidate with the cool logo.

[marilyn 63]

01:21 AM on 10/21/2010

what? a bunch of racist whites mad because there is a black president??. figured out easily!!. they gave themselves away. when not a one came out with tricorn hats and dangling teabags hanging off their heads screaming at Republicans when Bush was taking the country down cant answer that can you???.

[exile]

01:26 AM on 10/21/2010

yeah
all
neaty
neat
and paid for by the really super rich
with the really super not understanding their paret
as the dumb "workers"

[ProudMilVet]

12:34 AM on 10/21/2010

The Tea Party Movement is like the movement i have every morning after my first cup of coffee & a bran muffin.

[hrpmap]

12:58 AM on 10/21/2010

What's that? from your mommas couch to the computer, as sonon as she goes to work?

[ProudMilVet]

01:33 AM on 10/21/2010

hrpmap : No, from YOUR Mommas Bed !

[marilyn 63]

01:22 AM on 10/21/2010

hahahaha ooooh!! good one!!

[1jdgriff]

12:04 AM on 10/21/2010

In an MLM, only those at the top make the money; Palin is cashing in, which is why she dumped Alaska.

[GerryS]

11:18 PM on 10/20/2010

Of course it is,

the people "running it" get rich, the fleabaggers on the bottom of the pyramid go into the dump......

typical GOPher strategy--------

[markm8128]

10:59 PM on 10/20/2010

(I think the Tea Party folks are a bunch of bozos...)

However, I would like to clarify...that the book "Think and Grow Rich" is a classic in motivational psychology...and was re-published in India, by Mahatma Ghandi, because of its value in helping people rise out of poverty.

Its author....Napolean Hill, was invited by FDR, to come work in the White House, where he developed a program to pull the country out of the Great Depression.

[caribindian]

10:07 PM on 10/20/2010

and guess who is at the top and who is at the bottom...