Posted on 02/06/2004 8:59:04 AM PST by Gritty
Glenn and John were both born in South Carolina, to parents of modest income, Glenn in 1934 and John in 1953. Glenn's dad worked in the depression era WPA (Works Progress Administration) while John's dad worked in a textile mill. Both have an extraordinary ability to persuade a small group of people to do things that are not in their best interest, and both exploited that ability to accumulate enormous personal wealth.
The exploitation of their talents came in different flavors, however. Glenn W. Turner went on to create and run pyramid marketing companies (Koscot Interplanetary, Dare to be Great, etc.), preying on people who seek to get rich quick, while John Edwards became a tort lawyer, preying on all of us. Tort lawyers are currently fleecing the American public at an annual rate of $233 billion. That's $809 per person.
Pyramid marketing (called network marketing by its supporters), is a scheme where people pay for distributorships to sell a product, like perfume or soap, and then earn big commissions by signing up other distributors. Usually they sell very little of the actual product, concentrating on selling distributorships, which yield the high dollar commissions.
For example, a person might pay $5,000 for a distributorship, and then earn 20 percent for every new distributor he recruits, or $1,000 each. All he has to do is recruit 10 suckers, and he doubles his money. And, the guy at the top of the pyramid gets $5,000 from the first sucker, and $4,000 each from the others, for a total of $45,000. This is an oversimplification of the complex structure of an organization like Koscot, and I used made-up numbers, but you get the drift. It's basically a chain letter.
Both men have ardent supporters - read the reviews of Turner, Turner, Turner: The King of Network Marketing and related books on Amazon.com. I didn't find a single negative comment about Glenn Turner.
Turner's activities were soundly rejected by state legislatures, with many of them writing laws specifically aimed at the basic structure of Koscot. Turner was driven out of business and eventually served a few years in jail.
But, travel with me now to the thrilling world of "what if." As everyone knows, practicing law is the preponderant occupation of state and federal legislators. In the U.S. Senate, 59 of the 100 senators are lawyers. Imagine the fate of Glenn Turner if 59 senators were pyramid marketers, with a similar infestation of pyramid marketers in the state legislatures as well. There would be no laws against pyramid marketing.
In this scenario, Turner could well have spent the last two years flitting around the country on the private jets of fellow pyramid marketers, running for president of the United States.
In his stump speeches, Edwards proudly declares that during his 20-year law practice, he stood up for regular people. Well, that sounds like an invitation to look at the numbers. In Senate documents, he lists his current net worth as somewhere between $12 million and $60 million. Adding the $6 million that he spent buying a Senate seat, we can infer that his net worth at the end of his stint as a lawyer was between $18 million and $66 million.
Next, let's estimate his hourly wage. It is reasonable to assume that most of the wealth accumulation took place during the last five years, when he had his own law firm -- five years at 40 hours per week equals 10,400 hours. Dividing the accumulated wealth by 10,400, we see that Edwards earned between $1,700 and $6,300 per hour "standing up" for regular people. I don't know about you, but I'd even stand up for "irregular" people for that kind of money.
In campaign speeches, Edwards correctly states that advertising expenditures by drug companies are passed on to consumers. When that line was added to the speech, the discussion in the staff meeting might have gone something like this:
STAFFER: But, Senator, if you include that in the speech, won't the voters be smart enough to know that the exorbitant fees drug companies pay for liability insurance, thanks to tort lawyers, are also passed on to the consumer? And, won't the voters be smart enough to realize that increased taxes on corporations, called for by Democratic politicians, are actually paid by the consumers as well?
EDWARDS: Smart enough? We're still in the primaries, so these voters are Democrats. Any other questions?
That's an interesting accusation.
Care to elaborate a bit?
A modern Day Horatio Alger, May 4, 2002
Glenn W. Turner is truly a modern day Horatio Alger and probably the greatest rags to riches to ruin to recovery story ever. I couldn't put this book down. It is awe inspiring. And not just for Network Marketing either. You think you have some problems? Check out what this great man has been through, survived, became extraordinarily wealthy, lost it and came back and blessed the lives of millions of Americans in the process. Glen Turner may have been named American of the Year in 1972, I think he should be named the American of the Century.
Even the likes of clinton has "ardent supporters", but "fanatical" would be more accurate!
You wrote: "Glenn Turner is a conman and a crook and he took thousands from people who couldn't afford it."
How does that make him any different from John Edwards? According to folklore, Turner helped create more than 800 millionaires. As far as I know, Edwards only created one millionaire--himself. So as I see it, Turner is the better of the two crooks.
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