I read recently that the Psychic Friends Network pulls in about $100 million a year. Future doesn’t belong
to the Psychic FriendsI don't know about obscenity on the Internet, but I know obscenity on the telephone lines when I see it. And it's obscene that the Psychic Friends Network is able to bleed this much money from gullible nitwits.
Generally I'm in favor of dummies being separated from their money. It's part of the process of natural selection.
But law enforcement agencies used to put fraudulent fortune tellers in jail. Now, probably because the big telephone companies are in on the scam, prosecutors choose to ignore this nationwide swindle.
In fact, the telephone companies have become the equivalent of Mafia bill collectors, allowing the bogus fortune tellers to use 1-900 numbers. The phony psychics don't even have to hire muscle to collect payments from their patsies; they have the phone companies. The phone companies send out bills and if the charges aren't paid, bingo, no more phone service. Al Capone should have had it this good.
Now, it wouldn't be so bad if the phone psychics just advertised their services as entertainment. If some dodo wants to blow $3.60 a minute to hear some boiler room "psychic" tell him he's going to win the lottery instead of blowing the money on bowling, that's his business. That would be considered harmless fun. But the psychics claim that they can actually see someone's future.
How this is different from the gypsy families cops ran out of town several years ago for bilking money from island residents, I don't know.
Why doesn't Hawaii Attorney General Margery Bronster step forward and demand that the phone psychic companies either prove their extrasensory claims or cease doing business in Hawaii?
If any of the Psychic Friends Network hacks can accurately predict just one specific future event, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Labor Day 1997 or who will win the Super Bowl and what the final score will be, then let them continue squeezing money from Hawaii residents.
They won't be able to. Because it's all shibai.
I've said this before. If people associated with telephone psychic outfits actually could see the future, why in the world would they be working for a small cut of the $3.60 a minute charge? Why wouldn't they be in Las Vegas striking it rich? Why wouldn't they be using their powers to uncover vast hidden oil fields or sunken treasure?
Why don't they help world leaders achieve global peace by identifying future trouble spots? I'm sure some lives could have been saved in Israel recently if one of these hotshot psychics would have called to say where and when the suicide bomber would strike.
Or do they believe their duty is only to use their incredible psychic gifts to separate trailer park residents from their welfare checks?
What kind of a real psychic would allow some poor sap from New York to run up $3,000 in Psychic Friends charges instead of helping investigators get to the bottom of the Flight 800 explosion disaster?
Will I be sued by the Psychic Friends Network for calling it nothing more than a racketeering enterprise engaged in taking money through fraudulent claims? I hope so. I'd like to see some of these "psychics" placed under oath or required to prove that they are for real. I'd like to subpoena the company books and find out exactly how many of their predictions have come true.
I'm no psychic, but here's a prediction: If the Psychic Friends sue me, I'll sue 'em back. And when the legal dust settles, a lot of that $100 million a year they make will be in my pocket.