Personally I Think Mike Church is a Scammer

How many of you know that right wing radio hires fake callers to call in and make the hosts look good or set hosts up so they can spin a preferred narrative. That's not terribly surprising. The goal is profits. Maximizing market share. It makes sense then to try and persuade people of your impressiveness with deception.

I could be wrong but I think I just heard Mike Church do exactly that.

Mike Church is a right wing Ayn Rand worshiping radio talk show host on Sirius and he has a caller that says his name is "Howard" from Pennsylvania and he's decided to close up his small business because he's sick of paying all this tax money to the government. He paid a million dollars in taxes, but he's going to go in today and tell his 30 employees that he's done and they need to find new jobs because they can't work for him any more. He's not going to be a slave to the government. Now the world, and his employees, will have to suffer on without him. Big government has stifled the small businessman and now we're all worse off. If only we were allowed to be free.

Church asks no questions that would permit us to confirm the veracity of this story. He nonchalantly says after he hears the story "We refer to this as 'Going Galt'". In other words Ayn Rand has this story about a guy, John Galt, that is exactly like that. Surprise, surprise, this well spoken and articulate caller fits the narrative perfectly.

I think it's fake. What kind of a person would do this to 30 employees in this economy and with tax rates as modestly progressive as what we have today? Church's questions seem unnatural. There is no "What do you do? What options will your customers have? Do your employees have children?" He doesn't sympathize with him on the one hand but then ask him to consider the suffering of his employees on the other or if there are other ways of making the point. He just takes it all in stride.

Incidentally Rand has another story about a guy named Howard. In this case Howard Roark. Again, I just don't believe it. I could be wrong but the glove seems to fit too nicely.