Are the teabaggers ready to stop throwing tomatoes and start growing tomatoes? Glenn Beck’s latest sponsor, The Survival Seed Bank, is banking on Tea Party paranoia to sell a product it calls the “Full Acre Crisis Garden.” As Stephen Colbert noted last Wednesday, “nothing moves product like the hot stink of fear.”
For $164, you get a vacuum-sealed tube of PVC pipe filled with enough seed “to feed friends and family forever,” because, “in an economic meltdown, non-hybrid seeds could become more valuable than even silver and gold!”
But hang on to your credit card! It turns out that the folks flogging the Full Acre Crisis Garden are nothing but horticultural hucksters, as Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas revealed.
The Survival Seed Bank claims to offer “the peace of mind knowing that if things were to get scary, that you and your family could still eat.” But those vacuum-packed seeds “will be dead within the first year,” according to Seed Bank Scams, because “seeds need an airtight, but not airless environment…if you take away all the air, you will kill the seeds.”
Glenn Beck has made a fortune by stoking his viewers’ sense of persecution and their fear that shadowy, corrupt forces are hard at work conspiring to rip them off.
And he’s right, of course; there’s no shortage of greedy, dishonest individuals and companies eager to profit by preying on people’s worst instincts. Take Bill Heid, the guy behind the Survival Seed Bank. The Federal Trade Commission fined him $400,000 “in consumer redress” back in 2005 for making “false and unsubstantiated claims for the “Himalayan Diet Breakthrough.”
Heid made $4.9 million in sales off The Himalayan Diet Breakthrough, a dietary supplement containing “a paste-like material” called Nepalese Mineral Pitch that “oozes out of the cliff face cracks in the summer season” in the Himalayas. Heid promised buyers that this miraculous product would enable them to achieve rapid and substantial weight loss without dieting or exercise, while still consuming unlimited amounts of food.
Who could possibly buy the notion that you could sit on your ass all day eating crap and still lose weight by ingesting some mysterious substance harvested in the Himalayas?
Maybe the same folks who think that slashing taxes and shredding regulations is a dandy way to shore up our crumbling bridges and highways, boost our children’s flagging academic performance, clean up our environment, guarantee affordable health care, protect consumers from makers of defective products (like, say, cars that accelerate unexpectedly, or a diabetes drug that’s known to cause heart attacks); and prevent financial institutions from ripping people off through fraudulent, predatory practices.
If you buy into all that, I’ve got a seed-filled PVC tube to sell you.
The Full Acre Crisis Garden is a twisted variation on a victory garden, tailored to folks who fear a laundry list of perceived threats: a “world wide government agenda;”; “a belligerent lower class demanding handouts”; “a rapidly diminishing middle class crippled by police state bureaucracy”; “an aloof, ruling elite that has introduced us to an emerging totalitarianism which seeks control over every aspect of our lives;”; and the ever popular “Big Government.”
It would be bad enough if the folks who wrote this stuff actually believed it, but Heid’s history proves that he’s just a cynical con artist looking for suckers to help him make a quick buck. And he’s found them in Beckistan.
The Survival Seed Bank gets one thing right: seeds are “more valuable than silver or gold in a real meltdown…” After all, they’re the source of all life.
To us sustainable ag advocates, seeds are sacred. Ken Greene, co-founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Library–note that it’s a library, as opposed to a bank–said it best:
Seeds are, by nature, about sharing. They are community resources. Saving seeds is about survival, both of the plants and people who depend on them, but this is survival through cooperation, not competition. Through the Seed Library we are trying to change the way people think about and treat seeds. We are trying to move seeds from being seen as commodities to be traded or profited from, to cultural and nutritive resources to be protected, shared, and celebrated.
As opposed to, you know, making them the foundation for your get-rich-quick scheme to pick the pockets of paranoid Tea Partiers. Not to get all biblical, but as ye sow, so shall ye reap. So skip the fear mongering fraudsters and get your seeds from the companies and collectives dedicated to promoting kitchen gardens as a source of empowerment and abundance. In their search for suckers, the swindlers at the Survival Seed Bank have apparently sucked the life right out of their seeds.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Richard // Mar 24, 2010 at 5:17 pm
I came to this website after seeing Food, Inc. and hoped that, as a conservative I would not find a bunch political BS that would turn me off. Oh well, I guess now I realize that your movement isn’t really open to us “tea-baggers” as you so eloquently refer to those of us who believe we are over-taxed by an increasingly more and more corrupt US Govt. I found that movie to be extremely eye-opening and I hope that, for the greater good, you would lighten up on the insults to those of us on the right. The movie seemed to me to say that the solutions to our problems were essentially in the hands of the consumer, which is where conservatives believe it should be. I know that I will no longer purchase anything from any of those 4 or 5 meat processors again and I will seek out restaurants and markets for locally grown items. Conservatives prefer personal liberty and small government. As much as you want to make it out that we are a bunch of racist, homophobic, money-grubbing, fear-mongering, stuffed-shirts, we are usually sure enough of ourselves to know that isn’t true. So, this tea-bagger hopes that the government will stay out of my life and let me tell everyone I know about what a great movie Food, Inc. is, (despite the usual conspiratorial theme underlying anything to do with G Bush), and we as consumers can put McDonald’s and Perdue and whoever else out of business for being such major douche bags.
As for Glen Beck’s little advertising deal with some little seed person who got fined for something 5 years ago, well…the guy is a bit much for me but there are worse things he could be hocking.
PS – you wrote:
“Maybe the same folks who think that slashing taxes and shredding regulations is a dandy way to shore up our crumbling bridges and highways, boost our children’s flagging academic performance, clean up our environment, guarantee affordable health care, protect consumers from makers of defective products (like, say, cars that accelerate unexpectedly, or a diabetes drug that’s known to cause heart attacks); and prevent financial institutions from ripping people off through fraudulent, predatory practices”
Look at the list of things you expect from your government. Wouldn’t you feel better if you would take it upon yourself to make sure that you 1-quit worrying about the 1 in 3 million chance that you will have a bridge collapse beneath you; 2-realize that parents are mostly responsible for our flagging academic performance and throwing more money at it wont fix it; 3-where is all of this nasty environment you guys are always complaining about…it is beautiful where I live; 4-find a way to pay for your own healthcare so I don’t have to..if it is that important to you, drop your cell phone or your cable TV to afford it and try shopping around…do it yourself; 5 – I can’t go on, I have to get back to work since we are rapidly approaching a situation in America where there are more people riding in the cart than those of us pushing it. Good luck man, with your attitude, you will need it.
2 Shipoopi // Apr 30, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Richard is hilarious. Props for the unintential comedy from GlennBeckistan
3 Shipoopi // Apr 30, 2010 at 2:49 pm
also, since Richard is a teabagger who loves personal liberty, I’d love to know what his thoughts on drug prohibition, don’t ask don’t tell, gay marriage, and the Arizona police state are.
4 Kevin // May 3, 2010 at 2:02 am
Wow, Richard. Seriously.
That was, honestly, a very bad layout of your arguments. I don’t even necessarily disagree with you, but the way you wrote it… I disagree with you. It was cogent and everything, but…
First off, don’t allow yourself to be swayed too much by any piece of media. I mean, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle did an amazing thing, but you have to find out for yourself whether or not the food you eat is safe, and what the alternatives should be. Don’t just assume that “locally grown” means better. Do you live by a farming community? How local is local? Do you really think there’s going to be a section at Safeway where they have totally old-time farm raised produce that you can buy for only slightly more than the “big farm” stuff?
Ok, that aside, go ahead. Buy whatever food you like, but…
1 – This country’s infrastructure is OLD. I mean, really old. I mean, like, Edison old in terms of some things, and at least 5 decades for others. Yeah, well, you might not fall when a bridge collapses. But someone will. Are you ok with that?
2-Parents are responsible. But, throwing money doesn’t mean what it used to. It doesn’t take so much these days to turn (again) old and ailing systems into something that can motivate kids. A computer at every desk? POPPYCOCK! In 1985. Now… well, why not? Take all the textbook money and put it towards the things that kids are used to anyway. Interactive learning. The world is growing up, Richard. Will we do it? I dunno. Soon, I hope. I grew up hiding in the library to learn stuff. Now it’s all right in front of me. Or them.
3 – It’s beautiful in a lot of places. IN FACT, a lot more places because a lot of things have changed since environmentalism began. The world was kind of a giant mess through the 70s-80s… I remember it. We cleaned it up. We changed things. When was the last time you heard the term “Acid Rain”?
(Oh, and by the way: “It’s beautiful where I live” is about the jerkiest thing I’ve heard anyone say in a while… Not saying you personally are a jerk, but… That’s an jerkish thing to say. Not to mention casting total skepticism on the validity of the rest of your arguments. That’s like saying to someone from Sudan: “I don’t know why you morons choose to starve! There’s plenty of food where I live!” Yeah, best to save that argument for people who already agree with you. Just sayin)
4 – I had a cell phone, cable TV, and a good job. And I couldn’t get health insurance because every place rejected me because I was on medication. It’s not all what you think.
5 – Yeah. Me too. I’m up too late responding to an argument that uses so many obvious logical fallacies that there will probably be no getting through to you. But if you can just start thinking about it, and maybe base your opinions on your own research, then… well, maybe we’ll see. You started off ok, then just went into the same points we see over and over again. Maybe I did too. But I’ve looked over the ideas and the numbers and the philosophies and I have made my own opinion. I don’t even necessarily disagree with you on everything. But your points were not well made and you ought to at least try to clarify.
Good night.
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