New Articles on Amway Global

Check them out: "Life after Amway", "Mother of Mercy, Could This Be the End of Amway?", "Another Interesting Amway Comment," and (via Tex) Another Amway IBO bites the dust.

Updated: Eric Scheibeler's Book Merchants of Deception

When I first read Eric Scheibeler's book Merchants of Deception, it was shocking to me even though I was familiar with Amway. Because Scheibeler was an insider, he knew where the bodies were buried. Now an updated version of the book is available that includes details of recent class action lawsuits filed against Alticor, as well as the companies troubles in Great Britain, India. Here is the web site to receive your copy.

Must Read

Amway--The Dream or the Scheme addresses the sophistry of Amway Global IBOs who say that a college education is a waste of time and money.

Announcing the Amway Global Video Blog

I've seen a lot of good, critical YouTube Videos about Amway Global. I decided that one way to spread the word about Amway would be to start a blog devoted to videos about Amway. Click here to view the new Amway Global Video Blog.

UPDATE: Welcome Alticor! Even though I announced the creation of the Amway video blog yesterday, my Statcounter stats indicate that someone from Alticor--the parent company of Amway Global--was lurking on the video blog this morning.

Must Read

David Brear on the questionable past of Carl F. Rehnborg, the man who established Nutrilite.

The Amway Voo Doo Murder: Convention Organizer Ben Novack Bludgeoned

The Miami Herald has the story:

RYE BROOK, N.Y. -- This needle-shaped suburb on the outskirts of New York City has had just a handful of homicides since becoming a village in 1982.

But now they have a doozy -- a steamy saga of wealth, privilege, kinky sex games, marital disharmony, family dysfunction and vodou, shipped straight from the Sunshine State. Not to mention the latest plot twist: The murdered man was having an extramarital affair, multiple law enforcement sources confirm, although no one can say if it had any bearing on his fate.

The victim is Ben Novack Jr., son of the founder of the Fontainebleau and a successful Fort Lauderdale businessman in his own right.

He was found duct-taped and bludgeoned on the morning of July 12 in Suite 452 of the Hilton Rye Brook, where he was overseeing an Amway convention. His wife discovered the body.

DeVos In-Law Implicated in Murder, Arms Smuggling, Child Prostitution

Erik Prince, brother-in-law to Dick DeVos (son of Amway founder Richard DeVos) and the head of Xe (formerly Blackwater, is implicated in the murder of potential witnesses, arms smuggling, and providing child prostitutes. Jeremy Scahill, who has extensively researched Prince and Blackwater, gives the details.

Prince views himself in an apocalytic terms:

A Virginia court also received sworn statements from former Blackwater employees [August 6, 2009] alleging that Erik Prince, the company’s founder, "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe."

Keith Olbermann is devoting segments to Blackwater/Xe this week.

Amway Versus Costco: There Isn't Much of a Comparison

Click here. Also, check out this hilarious YouTube video comparing Quixtar with Meijer. I'm not a big fan of Walmart (Robert Greenwald has an excellent movie about the company) but the Walton family are enlightened philanthropists compared to the DeVos family and Amway kingpins like Dexter Yager.

Must Read

Quixtar Cult Intervention blog article on the similarities between Amway Global and the Church of Scientology. I have a previous article that looks at Amway, Scientology, and Sun Myung Moon's Unification movement as well as an article on how Amway has a symbiotic relationship with other hierarchies of misery.

Failed MLM Schemer Robertson Has a Book on Financial Advice

I went to a Barnes & Noble the other day and prominently displayed in the window was a copy of Pat Robertson's new book Right on the Money: Financial Advice for Tough Times. It's not enough that in the 1990's, many evangelical Christians lost their shirts in Robertson attempt at network marketing American Benefits Plus. Also, in the previous decade, Robertson had business schemes involving diamond mining in Africa.

When I did a little more research, I discovered that Robertson promoted the book on Fox News. I don't even want those viewers to take Robertson's financial advice.

Must Read Article on "Pro-Sumer" Hoax

Amway Soap Box has a comprehensive article.

Go Lakers!

I don't follow the NBA so it wasn't until last night that I found out that the LA Lakers were playing the Orlando Magic in this year's NBA Finals. The Orlando Magic are owned by Amway co-founder (and one-time president of the scary Council for National Policy) Richard DeVos.

UPDATE: Woo Hoo! The Lakers have beaten the Magic in the NBA finals!

Does the business work if you work it?

No. Amway-The Dream Or The Scheme explains:

Let me make a disclaimer that some people do make significant money from Amway, but most of those folks are tenured diamonds who are almost in an exclusive club. There is only a short list of new diamonds that I know of in the US, and I have heard that even these new diamonds may have had legs in other countries. It would seem that Amway is not growing in the US and Canada. Also of note, Amway did not release figures that are separate between Amway North America and the rest of their overseas operations. . . Few people will even bother to see the plan once you mention "Amway" and for those who are open minded and motivated to register end up having to deal with a hard to sell opportunity along with high priced common commodities such as soap, vitamins and energy drinks. It's pretty easy to see that the business does not work, even for most of those who actually work it. There are simply too many issues with the business that handicaps those brave enough to try. It seems even the fiercest defenders of Amway are unable to provide a shred of evidence that they have actually made a profit from this opportunity.

Also, the blog has a comparison of the cost of Amway Global products with Costco.

Donald Trump Starting a MLM/Network Marketing Company The Trump Network

The Trump Network, which will focus on vitamins and supplements, will launch October 2009.

Hilarious Anti-Amway YouTube Video

Watch it:

The Theocratic Chain of Misery

I have previously discussed the concept of what I have dubbed "the hierarchy of misery." The term refers to organizations or movements in which a tiny parasitic elite benefits on the backs of a large mass of people. I discussed how Amway and the Unification movement embody this category. In this post, I will show that one thing that makes these groups particularly pernicious is that many of them often have a mutually beneficial relationship with other hierarchies of misery. It is a synergistic relationship in which the overall pathology becomes greater than the sum of its component parts.

In the diagram, I have charted how this insidious mutualism has taken place in recent American history with groups that have a theocratic orientation. Let me discuss the players:
1) Amway/Kingpin IBOs. This refers to Amway Global network marketing company as well as some of the more reactionary distributor organizations headed by wealthy reactionary "kingpin" distributors (known in Amway as Independent Business Owners-or IBOs). Here is a newspaper story on the exploitative nature of many of the top Amway kingpin IBOs.
2) The Falwell Organization. This pertains to the various organizations run by Jerry Falwell (1933-2007).
3) Sun Myung Moon Groups. This includes the Family Federation for World Peace, 1000 front groups, and media organizations, notably the Washington Times and the UPI wire service.
4) The Right-Wing Governmental Apparatus. Prominent members of the right who exercise governmental power.
5) The Neo-Confederate Movement. This refers to the white supremacist movement in the United States that usually poses as a movement to preserve "Southern heritage." In fact, this heritage is largely one in which a small oligarchy kept itself in power in the American South for over a hundred years by pitting poor white against poor black--to keep both groups oppressed.

The diagram shows what each groups gives and receives from other groups
1.Amway to Falwell. Falwell's ministry has been receiving significant financial support from Amway kingpin IBO Dexter Yager (more on Yager here).
2. Falwell to Amway. In turn, Falwell spoke out in defense of Amway against critics who were trying to expose unethical practices by Amway and various kingpin organizations.
3. Moon to Falwell. In the early 1990's, Sun Myung Moon funneled $3.5 million to bail out Falwell's floundering diploma mill, Liberty University (quick note: a Brown University student went undercover at Liberty U. and is writing a book about his experiences). Also, when Moon was facing legal problems in the 1980's, he freely gave to various sectarian right groups.
4. Falwell to Moon. Jerry Falwell was not a big fan of Moon when the would-be Messiah was converting young Americans to the Unification Church in the 1970's, Falwell said, "Reverend Sun Myung Moon is like the plague: he exploits boys and girls, and he should be exported [sic]." Falwell changed his tune in a big hurry when Falwell had a chance to line his pockets with Moon's ill-gotten cash. Falwell lavishly praised Moon, giving Moon further legitimacy with the American conservative movement.
5. Moon to the right-wing governmental apparatus. Moon has been the biggest contributor to the American right. Moon has dumped over $3 billion into the right-wing newspaper the Washington Times and has provided workers and funds to right-wing causes. Moon has given lucrative speaking fees to prominent GOP politicians, notable former president George H. W. Bush.
6. The right-wing governmental apparatus to Moon. Prominent GOP politicians, such as Orrin Hatch and former President Bush have given Moon the legitimacy he craves. This culminated in the disgraceful coronation ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in 2004. In addition, the videos of prominent politicians heaping fulsome praise on Moon have allowed Moon to gain converts and bilk money from gullible people.
7. The Falwell groups to the right-wing governmental apparatus. Falwell has devoted massive resources to electing right-wing politicians and causes. Falwell bragged that once a person entered his church the new convert was registered to vote (as a Republican, of course).
8. The right-wing governmental apparatus to Falwell. Falwell has been given legitimacy by every Republican president since Reagan. When Falwell died, Republican presidential candidates tried to outdo each other in praising Falwell.
9. Amway has been one of the largest contributors to the GOP and right-wing causes. In 1994, Amway gave to then what was the largest corporate contribution to the Republicans--$2.5 million. Most of the kingpin IBOs are on the hard right (a recent post on my main blog has a lot of information about the warped ideology of Amway's biggest IBO Dexter Yager). In addition, at Amway rallies, prominent right-wing politicians are paid huge speaking fees to extol the virtues of Amway to distributors; GOP politicians who have spoken at Amway rallies include "former Presidents George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and former Vice Presidents Bob Dole and Dan Quayle, along with other GOP heavyweights like Gingrich, Oliver North, Senator Rick Santorum and even the latest SE Regional Chairman for the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign, Ralph Reed."
10. These de facto contributions to prominent Republicans have been lucrative for Amway. The late Molly Ivins reported that then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich inserted a special tax break in a bill that created a $283 million for Amway's parent corporation Aliticor. It is also worth noting that during the Bush years, nothing was done by governmental regulatory bodies like the FTC regarding the illegal but highly lucrative tools pyramid scheme (YouTube has the Dateline NBC segment here and here that has undercover footage of how the tools scam works--the segment also shows the bizarre cult-like atmosphere of the Amway/Quixtar rallies; quick note: for more of the fucked up shit that goes on at Amway rallies, watch Dexter Yager's wife Birdie speak at a rally here).
11. & 12. I put these two grouping together because, unfortunately, much of the right's governmental apparatus is comprised of neo-Confederates or people sympathetic to the neo-Confederate movement.
13. The neo-Confederate movement has filled the Washington Times' editorial page. I have written about this on my Moon blog. The Southern Poverty Law Center and The Nation's Max Blumenthal have addressed this phenomenon.
14. The Washington Times' editorial page appears to be the last quasi-respectable refuge for white supremacist crackpots. Having white supremacists working for a newspaper in the nation's capital has accorded the neo-Confederate movement a great deal of undeserved legitimacy. A quick note on Moon and white supremacists: I'm not sure what Moon's deal is with white supremacists. Although Moon is Korean, like the white supremacists, he is an anti-Semite and an anti-black racist. I recently asked a prominent academician about this and she told me that she had asked some people and they didn't have a clue).

Who loses?
Humanity in general loses when these reactionary and benighted ideologies prosper. However, there are specific victims:
1) New and prospective Amway distributors. Despite claims by Amway kingpins that Amway is the best way to get rich, only one person per 100,000 who joined Amway/Quixtar in 1999-2000 attained an income over $90,000 a year.
2) Moonie converts. These people waste their lives in the belief that a demented megalomaniac is the Messiah. It is very sad.
3) Victims of Moon scams. This category includes not only those who contributed to Moon canvassers claiming to represent charities and youth groups (this practice is know as "heavenly deception" in Moonie circles) but more seriously it includes the "spiritual sales" scandal in which widows in Japan were swindles out of their life savings by church operatives.
4) American journalism. It's bad enough that Moon scammed many people out of their life savings. It's worse when he uses $3 billion of this ill-gotten money to create a rag like the Washington Times. The Washington Times constitutes an assault on journalism.
5) Jerry Falwell's victims. This includes not only those members of Falwell's flock who were scammed by paying huge amounts for Falwell's tapes that purportedly showed evidence that Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved in murder and drug-running but the American people in general. Falwell poisoned American political discourse and he will not be missed.

Amway and the Facts

A saying used by Amway kingpin distributors like Dexter Yager is "If you have a dream, the facts don't matter" (to no big surprise, Amway kingpins were rabidly supportive of George W. Bush). Blogger Joe Cool has some facts that can't be ignored.

How Amway Fraud Makes Bernie Madoff Look Like an Inept Schoolboy

Quixtar Cult Intervention has the details:

Amway has been allowed to operate their form of Ponzi scheme by masking their ‘closed market swindle’ behind a labyrinth of corporate structures, significantly masking the atrocious loss ’independent’ investors have reaped throughout the history of Amway. Exactly as in the case of Madoff, Amway critics have thrown up significant red flags about Amway‘s operation, all an elaborately disguised swindle enriching the cultic initiators and a handful of ‘kingpin’'distributors' operating exactly like the mafia.

Lanny Davis: Glutton for Punishment and Ridicule

When I was doing research for a post on my main blog about why taking on Rush Limbaugh is a winning strategy for the Obama administration, I found some interesting information about former Clinton adviser Lanny Davis. The reason I was doing research on Davis was that early in the Clinton administration, when Limbaugh and other talk radio jocks were running roughshod over the truth and concocting lunatic conspiracy theories about Bill and Hillary being behind the death of Vince Foster, instead of an strategy of aggressively exposing the lies of Limbaugh, Falwell, Liddy and others, the Clinton administration sent out Lanny Davis to appear on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Liddy was one of the top proponents of the various Vince Foster conspiracy theories. He should have been easy to discredit. For one thing, the man is an unrepentant terrorist who had planned to bomb the Brookings Institution. He had Nazi sympathies and was one of the Watergate conspirators. I defy anyone to read Liddy's autobiography Will without concluding that the man is a complete nutcase.

Instead of taking the fight to Liddy, Davis appeared on Liddy's radio show and took the role of the liberal punching bag (good practice for Davis' later role as a Fox News Democrat). Liddy and Davis became fast friends. What a clueless pussy.

Davis is a masochist. He loves being abused by the right. Davis was in George W. Bush's fraternity at Yale and being an underclassman to Dubya, Davis was hazed by the future president. In addition to being an on-air punching bag on Fox News, Davis provides legitimacy to Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times by writing a column for the rag.

One hilarious thing I recently found out, Davis was a victim of the right-wing scam-business Amway (for more information on the Amway Global scam, read my blog devoted to Amway). That's right: Lanny Davis used to be an Amway salesman. This is the nadir of humiliation. Not only was Davis a victim of a scam that helped to fund the radical right but Davis acted like a typical Amway drone. I busted a gut when I read this excerpt from a 1997 Washington Post article by Lloyd Grove on Davis:

After he narrowly lost a 1976 House race, Davis, 51, began evangelizing for the motivational door-to-door distribution company, which markets everything from toothpaste to telephone service. A prominent Maryland lawyer-lobbyist, who refused to speak for attribution, recalled that Davis once invited him to lunch to discuss a "business opportunity."

"We didn't order yet when he started talking, and it was like a switch went on," the lobbyist recounted. "He asked, `Are you interested in making more money?' Well, what lawyer isn't? `Do you want to be in control of your destiny?' And I go, `Wait a minute, Lanny -- is this an Amway pitch?'

"And he says, `Can I finish? I've got these wonderful products to show you.' So he opens this box from the front to reveal a beautiful array of multicolored bottles and packages of toothpaste, dishwashing soap and other stuff. And I said, `No, Lanny. Please. No demonstrations. Thank you and good luck.' I had to virtually push myself away from him, but I got up and left."

This guy is a piece of work. It's just sad that the Clintons trusted him to deal with the right's media.

Addendum: Grove's Washington Post article is not available online so I posted it on the archives of my main blog.

Must Read

David Brear's open letter to President Obama.

Amway and the Movies

On my personal blog, I mention a film that mercilessly lampooned Amway. Read the post here.

Amway Global in 2009: Aiming for a Comeback

One of the big ironies of 2008 is that the recession, largely created by GOP economic policies and an incompetent Bush administration, has created an opportunity for a GOP-dominated Ponzi scheme: Amway Global. In the past few months, Alticor, Amway's parent company has devoted millions to television commercials, newspaper ads, and market research. People who lost their jobs or who fear unemployment are undoubtedly attracted to Amway's slick ads. I think this is a tragedy. The overwhelming majority of people who join will be worse off financially. Amway Global is not as big of a Ponzi scheme as Bernard Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme but it is in the billions.

May 2009 marks Amway's 50th anniversary. Let's hope that the comeback attempt is unsuccessful.

UPDATE: Here's an Associated Press story on Amway's attempt at a comeback.

One More Reason to Dislike Amway

They hired John Tesh. Note: They already have Pat Boone on board.

Welcome to Viewers of the Amway Global TV Commercials

(Updated below)
Yesterday when I was flipping through the television channels, I noticed that Amway had bought some airtime for the NFL games and put on some highly stylized commercials (I also noticed a huge spike in traffic for this site; quick note, this site is in the top ten for a Google search of "Amway Global"--take that, Amway). Getting NFL fans to sell expensive soap? Whatever.

This gives me an opportunity to discuss how the Internet can thwart scams. Many people who saw the commercial did a Google search of "Amway" or "Amway Global" and saw the official Amway site as well as critical sites (not to pat myself on the back but I deserve a lot of credit for pushing critical but fair sites about Amway to the top of Google searches by starting an anti-Amway googlebomb). Information is the enemy of totalistic organizations such as Amway (for more on this, read my post on the Internet versus totalistic movements).

Let me conclude by telling potential Amway distributors about myself and sending a warning. I have opposed totalistic movements such as Amway and Sun Myung Moon's Unification movement. As far as I'm concerned, you are free to join Amway, but all I ask is that you read both positive and critical assessments of the company. I have more about this in my welcome message to readers of this blog.

UPDATE: I checked on my Statcounter stats for this site and noticed that someone from Alticor (the parent company of Amway Global) was checking out this post:

VISITOR ANALYSIS
Referring Link No referring link
Host Name
IP Address 167.23.24.137 [Label IP Address]
Country United States
Region Michigan
City Ada
ISP Alticor Inc
Returning Visits 0
Visit Length 1 min 8 secs
VISITOR SYSTEM SPECS
Browser MSIE 7.0
Operating System Windows XP
Resolution 1024x768
Javascript Enabled
Navigation Path
Date Time WebPage
2nd December 2008 07:18:59 No referring link
destroyamway.blogspot.com/2008/12/welcome-to-viewers-of-amway-global.html
2nd December 2008 07:19:39 No referring link
destroyamway.blogspot.com/2008/12/welcome-to-viewers-of-amway-global.html
2nd December 2008 07:20:07 No referring link
destroyamway.blogspot.com/2008/12/welcome-to-viewers-of-amway-global.html

Really Bad News for Amway/Quixtar/Alticor (It Couldn't Happen to a Nicer Bunch)

Quixtar Cult Intervention has the scoop; also, read their other recent posts.

The U.S. Justice Department Apparently Likes My Blogs

I have noticed that someone from the U.S. Justice Department has been lurking on my main blog and my anti-Amway blog for the past several months (see the addendum for info from my Statcounter page on the Amway blog).

Quick note to Justice Department lurker(s): if you really want to do your job, do something about illegal activity, do something about the illegal "tools" pyramid created by some top Amway distributors which have netted them hundreds of millions of dollars--if not billions of dollars. Also, you could refer to the INS the charges made by Nansook Hong about how the Reverend Sun Myung Moon engaged in immigration fraud to bring an underage girl to the United States to become the unlawful bride of his adult son.

Initially I was amused that the Justice Department reads my blog; however, this morning I listened to Sam Seder's interview of journalist Scott Horton.

Addendum: Info from my Statcounter page for my anti-Amway blog:
Host Name wdcsun27.usdoj.gov
IP Address 149.101.1.127 [Label IP Address]
Country United States
Region District Of Columbia
City Washington
ISP Us Dept Of Justice
Returning Visits 10
Visit Length 54 seconds
VISITOR SYSTEM SPECS
Browser MSIE 6.0
Operating System Windows XP
Resolution 1280x1024
Javascript Enabled

Amway/Quixtar on Countdown: Say it Ain't So, Keith

I was just watching Countdown with Keith Olbarmann and there was a commercial for Amway/Quixtar. To give the devil his due, the commercial had very high production values. I was watching at a friend's home in Powell, Ohio so I don't know if it was a local buy or not. E-mail me if you also saw the commercial in your viewing area.

UPDATE: I should have used Google. Kos mentioned this over a month ago.

Dick DeVos: A Glutton for Punishment?

After getting trounced in the 206 Michigan gubernatorial race, Dick DeVos is planning to run again in 2010, according to the IBO Rebellion.

Bankrupting Amway: A Worthy and Attainable Goal

Would a bankrupted Amway/Quixtar/Alticor be a good thing? Fucking-A!

The following are just a few reasons why a financially ruined Amway would be beneficial to American society and the rest of the world:
· Amway has ripped off millions of people out of billions of dollars. I have disccssed this on this blog and others, notably Eric Sheibeler, have documented this. If you are not familiar with the kingpins "tools" scandal, check out Dateline NBC's segment on Quixtar from a few years ago (Part 1 and Part 2). Amway, Quixtar, and Alticor's other incarnations are nothing more than a duel pyramid scheme comprised of Ponzi schemes surrounding the products and the "tools"--the motivational aids and rallies that have made a small elite wealthy on the backs of their downlines.
· Amway represents just about every characteristic that non-Americans think about when they envision "the Ugly American."
· The owners of Amway and the top distributors (the "kingpins") adhere to reactionary, dominionist, and theocratic politics. Bankrupting the company would be one way to de-fund the radical right.
· Much of Amway is cult-like and is antithetical to freedom of thought and conscience.
· Even though a new distributor has little chance of getting rich--or even breaking even--many of the motivational organizations possess an ugly theodicy that blames the se "failures" not on Amway's corrupt system but encourages these people to blame themselves for their own victimization.
· The rank-and-file of Amway are mostly decent people but the leadership and kingpins are just awful people.
·Killing two birds with one stone. Erik Prince, who heads Blackwater USA, is an in-law of the co-founding DeVos family. Amway's financial problems could lead to financial problems for Blackwater USA.

What can be done to attain this goal?
· Media hacking. Use your computer skills to fight Amway. The blogger Google-bomb I initiated has been a huge success and has cost them a lot of business.
· My idea of providing a multi-lingual series of websites that appeal to non-Americans that emphasize the pro-Bush, reactionary, and Christian theocratic culture of the Amway leadership would go a long way to hurt the company's prospects in the rest of the world.
· Supporting disgruntled former Amway distributors. One of the problems with these former IBOs is that they tend to be conservative and tend not to be familiar with potentially effective direct action tactics (e.g., picketing Amway rallies). An outreach to these people could be very beneficial.
· Encourage progressives to fight Amway. When I talk to progressives about Amway, they often respond the same way that they respond to Sun Myung Moon and the Unification movement--that it's old hat from the 1970's. Progressives ignore Amway and its poisonous agenda to their detriment.
· Enlist the Democratic Party. I list this option last because I have I have given up on the Democrats. As a whole, the Democrats are the biggest wusses in the world. When I look at how Amway and the Unification movement have run roughshod over this country, I point the finger of blame on the Democratic Party for doing nothing about it. It would be nice if a future Obama administration were to appoint members of the Federal Trade Commission who would enforce the law.

The upshot is that a lot can be done with very little.

Must Read

Quixtar - Brainwashed IBOs?

Amway Dodges a Bullet in Great Britain

Bad news: Amway avoided closing its doors in the UK.

Amway/Quixtar Assisting US Government Crackdown on Undocumented Immigrants

Details here

Tools - The Big Deception?

A former Amway/Quixtar IBO gives the details.

Quixtar's Cultish Control of its Downline

On Quixtar:The Dream Or The Scheme.

Quixtar Distributor and Member of Congress Wants to Pull Jimmy Carter's Passport

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC), the subject of a revealing Mother Jones article on her ties to Amway, called for former president Jimmy Carter's passport to be revoked because he recently met with leaders of the terrorist organization Hamas.

More ReasonsWhy the Amway/Quixtar System Doesn't Work

JoeCool of the blog "Quixtar: The Dream or the Scheme" gives the details.

The World's Most Powerful Cult

I have a YouTube video, "The World's Most Powerful Cult." It deals with the Unification movement (here's my blog that addresses the group). I hope you get something out of it:

Okay. . .

I just discovered the blog A Liberal in Amway?

New Link

Quixtar-Amway Infiltrator. This site is dynamite.

Book Review

Here's a succinct review of Eric Scheibeler's online book Merchants of Deception.

A Quixtar Family Tragedy

Quixtar Cult Intervention has the sad details.

Video: "Is Quixtar a Cult?"

Someone spliced together footage from "Mind Control Made Easy" and the Dateline NBC segment (part 2 here) on Quixtar to make this video:

The Web Vs. Cults: The Cults are Losing

A while ago, I did a post on why the Internet is the bane of totalistic movements. I gave examples of three destructive organizations (Scientology, Amway Global, and the Unification movement) that have had a difficult time adjusting to a populace that free access to information at the click of a mouse. John Cook of Radar magazine has a article on the anti-Scientology group Anonymous and their use of conventional protests along with computer-based tactics to put the Church of Scientology on the defensive.

Addendum: Radar magazine interviewed me for its 2007 article on Oscars crashers (I'm mentioned on the second and third pages of the article).

Deception in Quixtar/Amway Global

Quixtar Cult Intervention has a thought-provoking post.

Legal Trouble for Quixtar in Missouri?

The IBO Rebellion thinks so.

Doug Wead: Amway Kingpin and "Compassionate Conservative" (As If)

In the past few weeks, I have read two excellent books that mention Amway/Quixtar IBO kingpin Doug Wead: The Bush Tragedy by Jacob Weisberg and Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom by John Gorenfeld (I discuss The Bush Tragedy here and Bad Moon Rising here). I will write a long post about Wead soon. This guy is a piece of work.

Rich DeVos is the 288th Richest Person in the World

The Grand Rapids reports that DeVos and another western Michgan billionaire Fred Meijer of the retail chain Meijer, Inc. That's amusing that both men are from the same area: Anti-Amway critics posted a hilarious YouTube video comparing Amway prices with those of Meijer.

New Link: Quixtar Cult Intervention

Quixtar Cult Intervention is a blog I just discovered. It has some informative posts. Check it out.

Amway/Quixtar News (and it's not good for Amway)

From the Quixtar Blog:
1) Amway kingpin Fred Harteis resigns from Quixtar. Harteis is a real piece of work; for more information on Harteis, read Eric Scheibeler's take on him.
2) Why people don't like Amway/Quixtar distributors.

Quixtar's Sales Declined in 2007 (I can't wait to see 2008)

According to a press release put out by Amway, Quixtar's sales declined from $1.12 billion in 2006 to $1.072 in 2007.

The Internet as Enemy of Destructive Cults: Three Case Studies

An imbalance of information is the mother's milk of totalistic movements. Conversely, an informed citizenry is the bane of predatory cults. Cults thrive on secrecy. They strive for a situation in which they know much more about a potential mark than he/she knows about the group. This allows the cult members to know what values a person has and makes it easier for them to push the buttons of the novice member. This asymmetrical relationship between the cult and the devotee is the cult's source of power. If increasing numbers of potential recruits have access to critical information about the cult, the cult's power will be significantly diminished. Information is the bane of groups the seek to control people.

In Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, the authors describe how a lone gadfly helped to break the back of the Ku Klux Klan during the post-World War II years. Stetson Kennedy, a civil rights activist, determined that one of the Klan sources of power was its information control regarding its organizational structure and culture. Kennedy infiltrated the Klan and sent information regarding the Klan's mode of operations, including secret code words and rituals, to the writers of the popular Superman radio show. The writers incorporated
the Klan's heretofore secrets radio shows in which Superman fought the Klan. The workings of the Klan's inner operations were broadcast to the nation and, as a result, the Klan was demystified and it has flagged in influence ever since.

With the advent of the Internet, it is a lot easier for those opposed to destructive secretive organizations to expose these groups for what they are. Here are three examples of how Internet activist have exposed the dark secrets of destructive organizations:

The Church of Scientology
I first heard about Xenu, the galactic overlord described to Scientology converts in the highest levels of the cult, from William Poundstone's book Bigger Secrets in the late 1980's (and later in Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard Jr.'s book L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah Or Madman?). When the Internet took off in the early 1990's, the Xenu cat was out of the bag. Anti-Scientology sites popped up exposing the Xenu theology to widespread mockery (the most prominent site has been Operation Clambake which uses the URL Xenu.net). Attempts by Scientology to suppress these sites have been a complete failure--one of the earliest examples of "the Streisand Effect." Although there has been much attention given to the tactics of a group of Internet-based anti-Scientology hackers known as Anonymous (click here for a video about the group), it was the older web-based groups that have set the stage for the mass exposure of the church's exploitation of its followers.

Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Movement
As I have noted previously, Sun Myung Moon and the Unification movement have kept a much lower profile in the US since staging massive public rallies and actively recruiting American members (mainly because because the would-be Messiah is the anti-Obama: the more people are exposed to the cult leader, the more they are repelled). It's revealing the the story about the coronation of the "True Parents" in the Dirksen Senate Office building was broke on an internet site, Salon.com (by John Gorenfeld--whose book on Moon will be available March 1). Other critical web pages and blogs have made it into the top sites for Google searches of Moon's name and Unification-related keywords.

Amway/Quixtar
I have to hand it to Amway. As soon as critical but truthful web sites emerged to counter the company's propaganda, Amway started google bombing--"using its large network of websites to move sites critical of Quixtar lower in search engine rankings." This was ineffectual because a counter-google bomb that I created more than counteracted the effects of the company's efforts to manipulate search engine results. The result: the first page of Google searches for "Amway" and "Quixtar" are loaded with critical sites.

United Kingdom to 86 Amway?

Great Britain will decide soon whether or not to expel Amway. If they do, it will be just one more nail in the coffin of the multinational Ponzi scheme.

Destructive Cults and Legitimacy

First let me apologize for the dearth of recent posting. I have some articles I am writing for this blog and I hope to post them soon. I briefly discuss Amway in my most recent post on my blog devoted to exposing Sun Myung Moon.

Another Amway/Blackwater Family Tradition: Sponging off the US Government

I have previously noted that brothers-in-law, Rich DeVos of Amway and Erik Prince, who runs Blackwater USA, have a penchant for high mark-ups of their products and services as well as a dislike for paying their taxes.

Another DeVos/Prince family tradition is living off of the largess provided by the government. It's no secret that being a recipient of corporate welfare is good work if you can find it. Quick aside: David Cay Johnston, author of Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill), recently appeared on Bill Moyer's Journal.

It's well known that Prince makes a lot of his money from no-bid government contracts. What about DeVos and Amway? As the late Molly Ivins reported in 1997, being one of the top contributors to the GOP is not all give and no take: in fact, Amway was able to enjoy a $283 million tax break passed by the then-Republican Congress. More recently, DeVos and his wife received a windfall from the government for land they own. Although they rail against big government, DeVos and Prince like the government big enough for them to enrich billionaires--namely themselves.

Amway/Quixtar: A Blogger's Humorous Experience

Read Brad Brown's blog

Synchronicity!

Today I went into a men's room in the San Fernando Valley and there was one of those signs telling employees to wash their hands. Someone had engaged in some creative graffiti by scratching out some words and replacing them with others. The sign looked like this:

WASH YOUR HANDS
Brain
Handwashing is The Most Effective Way to Stop the Spread of
Illness
Freedom

Crossposted on the Moon blog.

Retailing in Amway/Quixtar is an Ordeal

The Quixtar Blog on what passes for retailing in Quixtar.

Multi-Level Marketing Mike Huckabee

Christi Parsons and John Chase have the story:

WEST DES MOINES--They came to hear Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee speak, but first the crowd of hundreds had to sit through a soft-sell pitch on the wonders of multi-level marketing.

For half an hour, two businessmen paced the stage where Huckabee would soon stump. They never said the name of the company during their talks, but afterward some members of the crowd shared with others the good news of a company called Quixtar Inc.

Quixtar is a sibling company of multi-level marketing giant Amway – and, according to Huckabee's public schedule, the host of the event.

"We found out later from a friend it was some kind of Internet marketing thing," said Bill Evanich, an avid Huckabee fan who attended the evening event late last week. "I thought it was political, and that we'd get to ask questions."

Read the rest here.

Thorstein Veblen Would Have Had a Field Day

Forthcoming post: "The Ostentatious Cheesiness of the Amway Kingpin Culture."

The Incredibly Shrinking Amway Rally

As I have indicated (also here), Amway/Quixtar is imploding. One of the indicators of this is the drastic decrease in the number of people attending major Amway/Quixtar rallies in the United States. I have some inside information from a reliable source about the rallies for Amway Kingpin Dexter Yager's organization. Each year in the autumn, Yager holds a "Yager Free Enterprise Celebration" (YFEC).

For the 2003 and 2004 YFEC events, there were audiences that numbered from 15,000 to 18,000. In 2005, YFEC was scaled down to 2 shows, one in Cincinnati at the Riverfront Arena which drew about 13,000 and the other one was at the smaller Long Beach Arena in California which drew around 6,000 or 7000. In 2006, the decline was evident: the crowds for the two events were about 4000 and 7000. In 2007, the numbers dropped further to approximately 6,000 and 2,000.

These are the statistics of an organization in serious decline.

UPDATE: Someone e-mailed this post to a lot of people because I've received many hits from emails . . . I couldn't believe that there would be such a freefall in Yager rally attendance considering such coherent rally speeches such as this one by Birdie Yager . . . Perhaps the decline in rally attendance is not only that there are fewer Quixtar recruits but that the ones who have been attending rallies have wised up. Former Amway Diamond Bo Short (who was featured in the Dateline NBC show on Quixtar) once mused that in the typical Amway rally, the people in the audience change (due to high turnover) but that the people on the stage stay the same (largely because these people got in when the getting was good).

Forthcoming Post
"The Incredibly Shrinking Amway Rally"

A Message to Readers of my Sun Myung Moon and Amway Blogs

A couple months ago, when I decided to create separate blogs addressing Sun Myung Moon and Amway, my aspirations were modest. In terms of reader hits and attention from the right people, both blogs have exceeded my expectations dramatically.

I can't take full credit for this. There have been a small number of dedicated people who have helped to promote both blogs. All I'm asking is for a little more help. If you think the messages on one or both of these blogs should be spread, you can do one of the following things:
1) If you're a blogger or have a web site, you can do a post on these blogs. Also, you can ad these blogs to your list of links.
2) Go to you e-mail contacts and send a brief e-mail telling people about the blogs.
3) If there's a post you find particularly compelling, link to it on a newsgroup or Internet bulletin board.
4) Write your member of Congress about abuses by one or both of the target groups and mention the respective blog.
5) Write members of the mainstream media about Moon or Amway and provide a link to the respective blog.
6) Help out with my outreach to Amway's Global Community Program (details here and here). If you are proficient in the following languages and want to do a little translation, e-mail me at scoobiedavis77@yahoo.com: Chinese, Japanese, Javanese, Hindi, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, or Korean.

Amway and the Unification movement are destructive cults that hurt people psychologically, emotionally, financially. My blogs provide information that cannot be found elsewhere on the Internet. Every little bit helps. Thanks in advance.

Amway is Imploding: Some Evidence

I wrote about it a while ago. The IBO Rebellion has some recent evidence such as its report on the Achievers 2007 meeting and the drastic decrease in new distributor (IBO) signups for Amway/Quixtar:

The number one issue on the table today is that Quixtar is not only bleeding from lack of sales, but in fact sponsoring is down substantially. Multiple CWPF's have reported to me that Quixtar would usually add new IBO's at the rate of 1000-1200 IBOs per day. As we have outlined here before Quixtar relies heavily on sponsoring and the volume generally associated with it. My CWPF's say that current numbers have fallen to the approximately 600 IBOs per day. This is a dramatic decrease.

RIP British Amway?

Amway may be on the way out in the UK. Read the story in News Corps' London TimesOnline.

Working on an Anti-Amway Page in French

In my post on countering Alticor's global community program, I mentioned that there should be more critical web sites in languages other than English. Since I used to be fluent in French, I decided to create a critical page in French. The page is not finished and I'm sure there are a lot of mistakes to fix but I just let you know that I'm working on it.

Cult Deception: A Recent Personal Case Study

On my two anti-cult blogs dealing with Moonies and Amway, I emphasize that cults use deception about who they are to potential recruits. A recent personal experience is revealing: I was in Hollywood and a man was passing out free tickets to the "Psychiatry: An Industry of Death" Museum on Sunset Boulevard. When I asked, the man claimed that the museum was not affiliated with the Church of Scientology. A quick Google search finds that he wasn't telling the truth. Information and totalitarian cults like Scientology, Amway, and Unification are incompatible. That's why the Amway Google bomb was so powerful.

Note: This is crossposted on the Sun Myung Moon Blog.

How Destructive Cults Recruit and Control People

Mind Control Made Easy (or How to Become a Cult Leader)a film by Carey Burtt:

The Family Tradition of High Markups, Part Deux
Rich DeVos is selling his five-bedroom, 8.5 bath home. As I mentioned previously, the DeVos family has a tradition of high markups (also click here). According to the IBO Rebellion blog, the house is overpriced, too (make sure to read the comments section--it's priceless).

Amway/Quixtar Loses in Court
(Via Ed Brayton) A Kent County (Michigan) judge sided with members of Team of Destiny (Orrin and Laurie Woodward, Chris and Terri Brady) against Amway's parent company Alticor. TEAM includes many disgruntled former Amway/Quixtar distribuotrs.

Tell Us Your Amway/Quixtar Story
I have not encouraged the use of the comments sections of this blog. Here's a chance to use them. Tell us about your experience with Amway/Quixtar. This applies to whether you have been a distributor or not.

I'll start things off with my own Amway/Quixtar experiences
1) When I was in grad school, a woman from Uganda lived in my apartment building. She was walking in the building with a clean-cut looking young man. I later asked her who he was. She told me that he was offering a great business opportunity called Amway. I told her that it was a big mistake. I told her to research the company on the Internet. She did and she wanted nothing to them. She asked me to help give the guy the brush-off. She told him that she couldn't do Amway but that I was interested. I figured what the heck so I acted like a live one. He gave me the spiel and a tape by financial adviser John Sestina, probably the only financial planner who ever recommended Amway as a business opportunity(Sestina quote: "In Financial planning you trust no one; in Amway, you trust everyone." Yeah, right). When I got tired of the guy I told him flat out that I wasn't interested.

2) In 1998, I had an administrative job in an office with a bunch of gossipy mother hens. I didn't fit in to the office environment in a big way. One of the women in the office was in Amway. At unit meetings, she would weave into the conversation that she would be retiring in about 18 months due to Amway. When we had group lunches, she would take Amway vitamins and do a pitch about how they helped her. When I was given two weeks notice, she came up to me an offered me the Amway business opportunity. I ignored her. I checked her office website recently. Nine years later, she still works at the same office.

3) Once I was in the Columbus Public Library. I was walking in the hallway and a recent immigrant from Poland introduced himself and then asked me if I would like to do Amway. I told him I didn't want to do it. He moved on.

Tell us your Amway/Quixtar experiences.

A Strategy to Address Amway's Global Community Program

One thing I have noticed is that the critical web sites dealing with AmQuix are in English and are focused on the United States. I believe this is short-sighted for the following reasons:
1) From information I have received from multiple sources, Alticor's management is focusing less on the United States and more on markets in foreign nations (Amway calls them their "Global Community Program"). This makes sense because the corporation's fortunes are declining in North America. In the United States, Amway is a punchline; in many countries, Amway is a new phenomenon and many people in these countries don't know about the company well-deserved bad reputation.
2) Amway is the amplification of everything that people around the globe hate about certain aspects American culture: (1) Conspicuous consumption; (2) Greed being treated as a virtue; (3) A Christian Recontructionist world view and a desire to create Christian theocracies around the world (4) Republican Party values (5) Jingoistic Militarism (especially the case considering the DeVos/Prince family ties); (6) Bigotry and homophobia (e.g., listen to Amway Crown Ambassador Dexter Yager on "the queers") (7) Exploitation of the Third World in the guise of helping it.
Critics of the Amway cult should emphasize these aspects of their corporate culture to people outside of North America.
3) Informing people around the world about Amway is a way to show good will to the global community.

Here are some easy-to-implement tactics to appeal to the global community:
1) Non-English web sites that are critical of Amway. Critical blogs in Chinese, Japanese, Javanese (the most popular language in Indonesia), Hindi (the most popular languages in India), Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Korean would be especially helpful.
2) Web sites that are nation-specific that appeal to Amway IBOs and potential recruits.
3) Publicizing the Prince/DeVos family connection. Amway is the corporate embodiment of the Ugly American archetype and Blackwater USA is Amway on steroids.

Fortunately, with the advent of the internet, these tactics can be done by anyone, anywhere. Think globally but act locally!

What Scares Amway and the Kingpins: Picketing Rallies
When I wrote this post on the tactic of picketing Amway/Quixtar rallies, it generated a lot of attention. I noticed in my Statcounter stats that many people came to this specific post based on the link being e-mailed to them. I strongly suspect that many of the people who received the e-mail were people affiliated with Alticor who were concerned about this.

Why? For one thing, picketing is a high visibility tactic that is cheap. In addition, if picketers were to have some of the picket signs that have short, easy-to-remember URLs on them, it would encourage new IBOs attending the event to check out the web sites. If the web sites have accurate information about the many problems with Amway, then it could lead to problems for the company. That's all there is to it.

Amway and the Unification Movement: Hierarchies of Misery

When I started my main blog, it was more media-oriented. I monitored the right's media and devoted a lot of time and energy to exposing deception in the right's media apparatus. Recently, I have devoted a lot less time to media analysis and have been focusing on bizarre cult-like organizations--specifically, Sun Myung Moon's Unification movement and Amway.

Someone recently asked: why the switch? For one thing, when I started this blog in 2002, there wasn't a good web site out there monitoring the right's media. That changed in 2004 with the advent of Media Matters for America (when MMFA's David Brock was first interviewed when MMFA started out, he praised me for doing "a great job of pointing out some of the media’s failings"). I'm glad that Media Matters is out there. Taping and transcribing Rush and Hannity was not much fun.

I decided to have more of a niche blog. I have been concerned with the effect that Sun Myung Moon's media outlets were having on the national discourse (Moon's Washington Times--though rightfully dismissed as a journalistic monstrosity-- is an integral component of the hard right's media apparatus). The more research I did into Moon's organization, the more I discovered that the man is a demented megalomaniac. In addition, more recently, I have done extensive research into Amway, a major funding source for hard right and Christian reconstructionist causes. I discovered that the Unification movement and Amway have a lot in common.

Amway and the Unification Movement: Hierarchies of Misery
Amway and the Unification movement are two of the biggest funding sources of the contemporary American right and both have dominionist goals. However, that isn't where their similarities end. As I researched Amway and the Unification Movement, I discovered that their organizational structures were exploitive, controlling, and deceptive.

Let's discuss some of those similarities in depth:

1) Both organizations are hierarchies in which a tiny few at the top live like kings while the overwhelming majority live modestly (while doing the work to provide the lavish lifestyles of the elites in their organization). In Amway, most of the top distributors make most of their money, not from Amway sales or sponsorship, but from the ancillary tools business--selling the dream to lower level distributors in the form of books, tapes, and rallies. Likewise, in the Unification movement, new recruits are sent out on 15-20-hour days selling flowers and trinkets to support the Moon family's lavish lifestyle and Moon's desire to become a Washington power player.

2) A corollary to the first similarity is the paradoxical situation in which those at the top are jaded and cynical and those at the bottom are the most fervent believers in the cause. Nansook Hong, Moon's illicit daughter-in-law, wrote in her memoirs about how Moon's children were treated like royalty but viewed their father's religion as a money-making scam. On the other hand, former Moonies have said that they would have killed for Moon. The pumped-up Amway distributor who thinks that he/she will become a millionaire is a sad spectacle that most of us have witnessed. The kingpin distributors who provide the motivational services to these new distributors--at a hefty price--certainly know that their promises of wealth to those who work hard are a pipedream. The monthly reports these kingpins receive from Amway about how their downline members are doing contradict what they tell these people at their rallies. I can think of few better examples of cynicism than people who make most of their money telling people that Amway is the best opportunity out there when their own tax returns show that most of their money is made from selling tapes, rallies, and functions, not from Amway sales.

3) Deception in recruiting. Both Amway and the Unification movement have a pattern of deceiving potential recruits about who they are. Moon has hundreds of front groups that do recruiting. Many former Moonies and people approached by UC members have reported that the recruiters were vague about their group and often sidestepped the issue about the name of their organization and that they represented Moon. Many people in Amway don't use the words "Amway" or "Quixtar" during the recruiting process.

4) Blind faith and the taboo against questioning. In Moon's organization, it is taught that Moon is the messiah and that his word is not to be questioned. In many organizational groups within Amway, there is a culture of not questioning one's upline. I have heard of many reports of this culture within Amway.

5) Megalomania. Moon literally thinks he is the messiah who has been blessed by "[t]he founders of five great religions and many other leaders in the spirit world, including even Communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin . . . and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin . . ." Similarly, there are self-styled leaders within Amway such as Dexter Yager who have a Messiah complex (former Amway IBO Eric Scheibeler has audio of Yager's various rants that clearly indicate a power-hungry and delusional person.

6) A theocratic agenda under the guise of "American values." Moon views America as "Satan's harvest" and believes in an authoritarian theocracy in which he rules; anyone who dissents against Moon's rule will be "digested." Similarly, Dick DeVos is a member of the Council for National Policy, a secretive dominionist group that seeks to make the United States a Christian theocracy. Despite both groups' undemocratic agendas, both groups wrap themselves in the American flag. Founders DeVos and Van Andel named their company Amway as a contraction of the "American Way." Similarly, the editors of Moon's pseudo-newspaper, The Washington Times refer to it as "American's Newspaper" (which is especially ironic since most of the Times' editors have more allegiance to the Stars and Bars that to the Stars and Stripes).

This list is far from exhaustive. I believe the best way to look at both organizations is through former Moonie Steven Hassan's BITE model. Hassan's BITE analysis of Amway is here, here, here, and here.
One thing is certain: both groups are pathological and are responsible for the misery of many people.


Note: This article is cross-posted on The Real Sun Myung Moon.

Robert Kiyosaki and Amway: Birds of a Feather

In my research of Amway and Quixtar, I have learned a lot about financial self-help author Robert Kiyosaki--best known for the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book series. What I have learned is not pretty. John T. Reed, a real estate investor who rates real estate and financial gurus on his web site, has done painstaking research on Kiyosaki and has found that the emperor wears no clothes: Kiyosaki is a fraud and is "primarily a creature of Amway."

In agonizing detail, Reed exposes the following: how Kiyosaki's approach to financial matters is hazardous to your pocketbook; Kiyosaki's phony backstory about his two dads; how Kiyosaki was propped up by his association with Amway; and Kiyosaki's fictional past.Furthermore, on Reed's site, it is explained how Kiyosaki got his first big break when his Rich Dad, Poor Dad book began being used as part of the tools scheme by an Amway kingpin distributor.

Certainly, one huge strike against Kiyosaki as a financial adviser is that he has appeared at Amway rallies and endorsed the Amway business "opportunity." That alone is enough for sane people concerned about their financial affairs to put as much distance between themselves and Kiyosaki. This is horrendous advice that has been responsible for many people losing their shirts.

What makes Kiyosaki frightening is that the initial boost in book sales he received by the Amway masses encouraged non-Amway people to embrace him. This has helped to give him mainstream credibility. For instance, Kiyosaki has plugged his books on Oprah Winfrey's show. I think it's ironic that Oprah has taken great pains to denounce the fictionalized biography of author James Frey when she has accorded legitimacy to another author with a fictional biography who also gives terrible financial advice that can have real, negative consequences for those who follow his advice.

In addition, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has given Kiyosaki legitimacy. Kiyosaki has appeared on PBS duirng their pledge drives touting the philosophy of this Rich Dad, Poor Dad series. PBS's ombudsman is Michael Getler. I don't have much confidence in Getler (Getler was ombudsman for the Washington Post when I and others informed him about journalistic misconduct committed by one of his reporters and Getler did nothing about it). However, to Getler's credit, he has addressed controversies surrounding Kiyosaki.

Anyway, it's worth a try. Click here to register your concerns about Kiyosaki to Getler.

Amway: The Next Enron

Since writing this post, I have received much more evidence to support my contention (with a couple qualifications) that Amway is in big trouble. I will write about these matters in the next few weeks.

Google Search Results Amping Up!
This site is getting a lot of hits from Google searches. I just found out that this site is number one for a Google search of "amway ethically questionable."

Another Family Tradition: Tax Evasion

I have noted that a tradition in the Prince/DeVos Family is the practice of huge markups to the consumer. Another one is tax evasion. Blackwater essentially takes the Amway approach to business by viewing many of its employees as independent contractors. Amway likewise has had a little trouble with paying their taxes.

Blog Name Change
In the short life of this blog, I experimented with a few names for the blog. I decided to change its original name.

UPDATE: I changed it back because this name would be better for attracting web surfers.

Picketing Amway/Quixtar Rallies: An Effective Strategy

there are a lot of disgruntled former Amway/Quixtar distributors out there. Amway sued some of these disgruntled distributors who were using the Internet to air their grievances (even though their web sites are amateurish, they were effective enough for Amway to go to the trouble of taking them to court).

This is a message to these disgruntled former distributors. Do you want to know an easy way to stick it to Amway? 1) Create one web site that contains plenty of critical but truthful information about Amway/Quixtar. Make sure that the site is easy to navigate and is user friendly. Give it a short, easy-to-remember domain name; 2) Go to Amway/Quixtar and exercise your right to picket. Make sure that the domain name is on some of the signs that picketers hold.

It doesn't get much easier than that.

UPDATE: I was thinking about why disgruntled Amway people haven't done this in the past. I think the answer is obvious: the makeup of the Amway distributorship is overwhelmingly Republican and right-wing. These are people who, for the most part, haven't particupated in union activities or protests. It has hurt them not to use this potent tactic.

Bush Authoritarianism: Blackwater+Amway=GOP, Pt.

DHinMI who blogs on the Daily Kos web site has some important information on Amway and Blackwater.

Here are Parts One and Two.

UPDATE: Here's part Four

Bill Moyers Interviews Author Jeremy Scahill about Erik Prince and Blackwater USA
Watch the video here.

UPDATE: Whitebread Blackwater? Undernews on Blackwater's hiring practices.

Targeted by Amway?
click here for more details.

Someone in the U.S. Department of Justice is Interested in this Site

A few months ago, I found out that someone in the US State Department came to my main blog because of a Google search for pictures of Michelle Malkin (and getting paid by the taxpayers for doing it). More recently, someone in the Justice Department was surfing the web and came to my main site apparently looking for dirt on Al Gore (and possibly violating the Hatch Act).

I checked my Statcounter stats and found that for the past three days, someone from the US Justice Department has been checking out this blog. Don't they have some criminals to catch?

A quick note: since I've started this blog, I have noticed from my Statcounter stats that Amway's parent company Alticor has been monitoring this blog on a daily basis.

Amway Is Imploding!
A while ago, on my main blog, I asked the question: is Amway imploding? Since then, I have done much research and I have compelling reasons to believe that it is. There are many causes of this forthcoming meltdown. Here are just a few of the reasons:

Over the past quarter century, Amway's products has become less competitive
Amway's products are overpriced (click here, here, here, and here). This situation has increased over the past 25 year since the advent of warehouse stores and competitive pricing over the internet. Amway distributors pay high prices for Amway products because they view it as the price they have to pay for the elusive goal of becoming rich. Because the prices are so high, most distributors do not retail the products to others nor do they continue to consume the products once they almost inevitably fail to become rich through Amway and quit the business. This is not just a problem for the obvious reasons but it also opens speculation that Amway is an internal consumption pyramid.


For the past ten years, Amway and its Kingpin distributors have had decreasing information control over lower level and potential distributors
As cult expert Steven Hassan has pointed out, predatory groups depend upon the monopolization of information as well as a situation in which there is an imbalance between the amount of information the cult has on its victims and the amount of information that cult victims and potential victims have about the cult and its leaders.

That's what makes the Internet so dangerous for Amway and the kingpin distributors. People who know the score have created web pages that inform prospective and new Amway victims about the nature of the organization and the kingpin organization (the blogger Google bomb helped to bring these sites to the top of many search engines). Alticor's attempt to intimidate anti-Amway blogs will certainly backfire.

The Media
Amway is a faith-based corporation in that people who enter have to convince themselves that they will succeed despite the overwhelmingly evidence that there is little or no chance of making a living from Amway, much less becoming wealthy (only one person per 100,000 who joined in 1999-2000 attained an income over $90,000 a year). I have learned from several sources that recent stories in the national media such as the Dateline NBC story have made it difficult to recruit new pigeons (Listen to Quixtar kingpin Larry Winters vent against NBC at a recent rally).

Saturation
Amway has reached a near-saturation level in North America. Amway apologists point out that the company is nowhere near saturation because fewer than one percent of the United States population is involved as distributors. This is sophistry. Amway has reached near-saturation because there are a dwindling number of people who are receptive to the Amway "opportunity." Reasons for this: 1)There are many former Amway IBO's out there who know that there is an infinitesimally small chance of making it in the business. They know and their family and friends know it; 2) Those distributors out there often engage in activities that raise questions to prospective distributor. Everyone I know has a story about an Amway person they knew--few are positive; 3) Because the culture of Amway is overwhelmingly dominionist and right-wing, it turns off at least half of the population; 4) Amway has a bad reputation. Whenever I bring up the subject of Amway and ask people what they think about it, they respond without exception with negative comments like, "They're pushy people who never make money" and "It's just a pyramid scheme." Quick note: The Amway Statistics Page has more about saturation.

The Unraveling of the Tools Scam
Amway has one of the stingiest compensation plans. Eventually many of the more established Amway distributors created motivational systems (rallies, books, tapes) that they sold to their downline as a second source of income. What happened was that many of these kingpins began making more from selling these "tools" than from the Amway business itself.

This has led to some problems: 1) the tools business is an illegal pyramid (somethings that Amway was forced to acknowledge in internal memos); 2) It has led to a paradoxical and ethically-questionable situation in which make the majority of their money from a system that tells people that the best opportunity out there is Amway; 3)This has led to many disgruntled former distributors who were saddled with attics full of books and tapes--Amway co-founder Richard DeVos tried to address this problem but failed); 4) The tools scandal has led to negative media attention, namely the Dateline NBC story; 5) Reforms in which the kingpin distributors will no longer be allowed to profit from the tools business will only hasten the mass exodus from Amway.

The Tipping Point is Imminent
For these and other reasons, Amway is in trouble. The Orrin Woodward fiasco is just the beginning. Expect other mass desertions to happen soon. Let's hope that a free fall occurs soon.

Amway's War on Bloggers

As cult expert Steven Hassan has pointed out, information control is essential to a cult like Amway. Many new Amway recruits have been told by their sponsors not to watch TV, listen to the radio, or surf the Internet (this last component became more difficult when Amway became web-oriented with Quixtar in 1999). With the advent of the Internet, lower level Amway distributors as well as prospective recruits have plenty of critical information about the corporation (my Google bomb helped to make this information more accessible to these people). This is great because accurate, critical information is a bane to mind control groups like Amway.

More recently, there has been a lot of infighting between the company and disgruntled distributors. This has led to these distributors creating blogs such as Quixtar Lost My Cents, Free the Quixtar IBO log, The IBO Rebellion, Free the IBO, Crazy World, Save Yourself Dick DeVos, and many others.

In response to these new waves of criticism, Alticor, the parent company of Amway and Quixtar, has filed a series of lawsuits against many of these critical bloggers. Such lawsuits are known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP). They are filed in order to chill public expression by bankrupting the defendants. Bloggers and others concerned about freedom of expression should stand up for these targeted blogs against corporate bullies like Alticor.

UPDATE: Crazy World has a list of the sued bloggers.
If you want to watch the YouTube videos that Amway/Quixtar finds so threatening, click here. The videos with the Hooded Angry Man are hilarious.

Amway's Approach to Internet Critics
Click here to read about Amway/Quixtar's SLAPP lawsuits against Internet critics. For a humorous but informative response from a blogger, click here. I will have much more later.

The Collapse of Amway?
A while ago, I pondered this question. I'm not the only one thinking this might be the case. Read this article on Amway infighting and the tools scam. I'm glad to have been a part of Amway's troubles (this post also succinctly explains the kingpin tools scandal--a Dateline NBC report also explains this phenomenon).

Welcome Alticor Lurkers!

I just checked my Statcounter stats and found that someone from Alticor, the parent company of Amway, was lurking on this site. Check it out. You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Four Easy Things You Can Do about Amway
1. Be a part of the Amway/Quixtar Google bomb.
2. If you are approached by someone trying to recruit you into Amway, don't just blow the person off. Find out if they are new. If they are new, encourage them to research Amway on the internet. Encourage them to watch Dateline NBC's segment on Quixtar.
3. If you are on a message board, encourage readers to read this website and other sites critical of Amway (a Google search of "Amway" will yield many good sites).
4. If you have some spare time, go to an Amway meeting and act like a live one. The more time they waste on you, the less time they have to recruit uninformed people.

An Open Letter to New and Prospective Amway/Quixtar Distributors

This is a website that is highly critical of Alticor, the parent company of Amway and Quixtar. I want you to make an informed decision about whether the decision to become affiliated with Alticor is the right decision for you. Don't believe a word that anyone says or write. Like any smart entrepreneur, you should do your homework and weigh the evidence. Accordingly, ask your (potential) upline hard questions and demand proof. Here is a list of questions to ask your upline. Do a Google search and read web sites that are both pro- and anti-Amway. Then make an intelligent decision.

Let me first put my cards on the table. There are several reasons that I am opposed to Alticor and many of the Amway/Quixtar Kingpins. The primary reason is humanitarian. I believe that Alticor is a scam. An American starting out in the business has an infinitesimally small chance of making any money--much less become financially independent. Many of the people you see on stage at the rallies are people who are making the majority of their money from the "tools" business--the selling of rally tickets, books, and tapes to their downline (for more information, see the Dateline NBC investigative report on the Quixtar tools scam).

In addition, I am thoroughly opposed to the hidden agendas of the corporation and many of the top distributors, namely Dexter Yager. These are benighted, reactionary hatemongers (e.g., listen to Yager spew hate to his downline). On top of it, those who run Alticor are hypocrites; they talk about the virtues of free enterprise but received sweetheart tax breaks from the US Congress when it was led by the GOP (it's no coincidence that some of the highly-paid speakers at Amway/Quixtar rallies have been Republican members of Congress).

I am also opposed to Amway because many of the kingpin distributors create an atmosphere for their downline in which critical thinking is discouraged. Steven Hassan, a former member of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, has more information on this phenomenon (note: I also have a web site that exposes Sun Myung Moon).

One good place to start is the front page of this web site. If you have any questions, e-mail me at scoobiedavis77@yahoo.com. Good luck.

Sincerely,

S

A Family Tradition: The Amway/Blackwater Markups

[Note: This blog post is reprinted from the October 2, 2007 edition of Scoobie Davis Online]

Dick DeVos, former CEO of Amway, and Erik Prince, the CEO of the Prince Group and Blackwater USA, are brothers-in-law (also click here). Both Prince and DeVos are reactionaries with ties to the sectarian right and dominionist causes. Both are businessmen who provide goods and services with very high markups. Here is some information about Blackwater charges. Here is what Amway charges for some of its products (also here and here). The main difference is that Blackwater charges its outrageous prices to the US taxpayer while Amway charges its out-of-sight prices to its mostly Republican distributors (who are taught to blame themselves when they almost inevitably fail at the Amway business). However, what is most important is that DeVos and Prince profit from other people's misery.

Addendum: I have some other posts on Amway/Quixtar/Alticor: 1) On the blogger success against Amway's scams (check out the new addendum I added recently); 2) An update on the success against Amway/Quixtar; 3) Why Democrats are chumps for not taking on Amway; 4) I mention the Proctor & Gamble suit against some prominent Amway distributors for spreading the Satanism rumor here; 5) A short post on Amway's troubles; and 6) 2006 was not a good political year for Amway.

UPDATE: Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army has an article about Blackwater in The Nation appropriately titled Blackwatergate."

UPDATE II: The Death of Irony. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA): "[Erik] Prince is on his way to being an American hero just like Ollie North was."

[Note: This blog post is reprinted from the September 11, 2007 edition of Scoobie Davis Online]
Another Victory Against Amway/Quixtar/Alticor
At the beginning of the year, I wrote about how the blogger Google bomb against Amway/Quixtar/Alticor had been a huge success in terms of educating people who were considering investing in this scam.

In the past several months, I noticed that a lot of traffic has gone to the post based on quite a number of keyword searches (e.g. the post is ranked high for a search of "Dexter Yager"--Yager is one of the Amway kingpin tools scammers). What is great is that over 95 percent of the hits are from either red states or third world nations.

Why third world nations? Because Amway has reached the saturation point in the US and the areas of growth are places in which people haven't heard of them and their shady business practices. Why the red states? The simple fact is that Democrats and progressives are not generally susceptible to the Amway scam--it is a con that is directed at Republicans/conservatives. If the typical progressive were to attend an Amway rally and be exposed to their theocratic/right-wing propaganda, he/she would make a hasty exit (also read Eric Scheibeler's free online book Merchants of Deception for more examples). The kind of people who get scammed by Amway are the same types of people who were conned by Jerry Falwell's phony videotapes (click here and here) claiming that Bill and Hillary were bumping off anyone who got in their way.

That's the power of the Internet: it allows people to better weigh their options--something that should lead to a huge decline in business for Amway.

UPDATE I: (via The IBO Rebellion) A hilarious undercover video of an Amway IBO prospecting.

UPDATE II: I've received some inquiries about the attention I've been bringing to Amway/Quixtar. The general tone is: what's the big deal about Amway? For one thing, it is one of the most reactionary businesses out there. The Amway founding families, the DeVos and Van Andel families, have a stingy compensation plan for their distributors but their purse strings aren't tight when it comes to funding wing-nut causes such as creationism, dominionism, and the scary Council for National Policy.

Many of the kingpin distributors are just as reactionary as the main corporation. Listen to these clips of kingpin distributor Dexter Yager (click here and here). Yager and other are using their ill-gained wealth to undermine the U.S. political system (also here).

However, the most important thing about the work that bloggers have done is to help inform prospective Amway distributors about the perils of joining the
organization. That's what is so great about the internet is that information is anathema to mind-control cults like Amway. When I and other bloggers manipulated the search engine results to allow for more critical sites to appear for keyword searches of "Amway" and "Quixtar," it better allows these potential recruits to reason and to ask tough questions of the people who want to sponsor them. As former Moonie Steven Hassan has pointed out, cults thrive when the control of information is in their favor. We helped to even the playing field.

What exploitive cults like Amway do to their recruits is unseemly. They sell their victims--often young couples who want nothing more than a better life--a bill of goods, front-load them with over-priced "tools," and when they fail, blame them for their victimization (blaming the victim is a hallmark of most cults).

This isn't just about politics; it's about freeing people from the tentacles of nightmare organizations like Amway.

A Victory Against Amway/Quixtar/Alticor!

[Note: This blog post is reprinted from the January 4, 2007 edition of Scoobie Davis Online]


I am totally stoked! An omen that 2007 will be a great year is my discovery on New Year's Day that Amway acknowledged that the Google bomb of Amway/Quixtar I started about a year ago has been successful. Recently on the official Amway/Quixtar web site set up to counter negative (but truthful) "criticism of Amway on the internet, it mentions and links to my December 2005 call for a blogger Google bomb of the words "Amway" and "Quixtar."

This Google bomb has been a huge success. Right before I did the G-bomb, if my memory serves me, there were three critical web sites in the top ten Google search results for both "Amway" and "Quixtar". Largely because of the Google bomb, now there are eight critical sites in the top ten Google searches of "Amway" (Including the Wikipedia entry) and seven critical sites in the top ten Google searches of "Quixtar." I'm not telling you this because I'm bragging about messing with a billion dollar scam operation that funds the GOP. I'm telling you because this is a story about how a group of bloggers helped to give accurate information to prospective members of this pernicious business cult. Information is anathema to mind control cults like Amway; I and other bloggers who did the Google bomb helped to provide useful information to prospective Amway victims. The success of the Amway G-bomb is the cherry on top of a disastrous year for Amway and its attempts to subvert America (click here also).

Amway: A Hierarchy of Misery

Amway is a freakish business cult that distorts American business ideals. Founders Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel named it Amway as an abbreviation of "the American way." The people behind this scam no more represent the American way than the Moonie-owned and neo-Confederate-edited Washington Times is "America's Newspaper."

Rather, Amway is a classic hierarchy of misery: an organization in which those on the top,the kingpin distributors, shamelessly benefit by standing on those beneath them (their downline). Former Amway Diamond Bo Short, who was featured on the Dateline NBC segment, once said that Amway is an army in which the troops feed the generals. What is most insidious about Amway is that the people who are recruited (and exploited) are generally good people who, when they almost inevitably fail to become wealthy, are led to believe that they only have themselves to blame--that's the prevailing theodicy of this supercilious quasi-religion.

The Dreamstealers

Nobody in Amway represents this mentality more than Amway kingpin distributor Dexter Yager (quick note: Amway uses the terms "Independent Business Owner" or "IBO" instead of the term "distributor"). Yager is one of the top distributors who makes most of his money, not from the Amway business, but by the hidden market: selling high-priced motivational tapes and seminars to his downline through his company InterNET Services Corporation and International Dreambuilders' Association/Digital Alliance(the Dateline NBC's story on Amway "In Pursuit of the Almighty Dollar" gives more information). As former Amway Crown distributor Leonard Hall said, "Tools in Amway organizations are a major source of income. The Amway pay plan is one of the worst in the industry so tools help make up the difference." As a consequence, Amway distributors are front-loaded with tapes and materials--which either languish in their attics or are sold on eBay for pennies on the dollar (Douglas Wead, an associate of Yager and a former special assistant to Bush who ironically coined the phrase "compassionate conservatism", discussed how cracking down on the tools scam will take money away from him and others). What is so insidious about Yager is that he makes most of his money by selling tapes, books, and seminars that tell prospective and new distributors that the real way to wealth is Amway. The victims are the IBO's (independent business owners) who want nothing more than a better life.

In addition, Yager is a virulent homophobe with a messianic complex (click here and here). According to a story in Mother Jones, Yager sent the following voice mail message to his Amway downline members:

If you analyze Bill Clinton's entire inaugural address, it is nothing but a New Age pagan ritual. If you go back and look at how it was arranged and how it was orchestrated, he talked about forcing the spring. So what they're trying to do is...force the emergence of deviant lifestyles, of a socialist agenda, and force that on us as American people.

It wasn't surprising to me that Yager has a cozy relationship with another peddler of overpriced tapes: Jerry Falwell (see Addendum for more on Yager and Falwell). Yager has contributed generously to Falwell's ministry--allowing Falwell to fraudulently sell high-priced (and worthless) tapes to his flock claiming that then-President Clinton was involved in drug smuggling and murdering anyone who got in his way (Falwell's anti-Clinton operation was enabled by the generous financial help of another hierarchy of misery: the Unification Church). Falwell, in turn, has defended Amway against critics who have been trying to expose the scam. It was a marriage made in hell.

UPDATE I: Why the Democrats don't take on Amway--they're stupid!

UPDATE II: Amway and the Procter & Gamble satanism scare.

UPDATE III: Another victory against Amway!

UPDATE IV: Amway and Blackwater: A Family Tradition of High Markups

Addendum: Notes on Amway and Network Marketing:
My experience with Amway distributors is that they speak in cant: "It works if you work it" and the word "job" is an acronym for "just over broke." I hate people who, if asked a question, answer with frozen smiles and robotic sloganeering. Probably the most inane Amway Quixtar slogan: "If the dream is big enough, the facts don't matter". . . If you haven't read it, read Eric Scheibeler's book Merchants of Deception--it can be downloaded for free. It's shocking and eye-opening to those not familiar with the Amway cult. . . I'm not against network marketing. I have met people who have made a substantial and honest income through MLM. What I am against is deception, mind control, and fraud--hallmarks of Amway . . . I think Chris Hansen should do a follow-up on the Dateline NBC story on Amway/Quixtar. There are a lot more Amway scandals that should be exposed. Watch the Dateline NBC segment here. . . Bill Britt, who headed Britt World Wide (BWW) and who was featured in the Dateline NBC expose, gets caught with his pants down--this is especially funny since Britt is a fundie who preaches at rallies for men to be faithful to their wives. . .Eric Scheibeler on Fred Harteis. . . Amway and Blackwater: The Marriage made in Hell. . . Apparently, some of the Quixtar kingpin distributors became unhinged because of Hansen's Dateline NBC expose; here's a priceless audio of kingpin distributor Larry Winters of Leadership Team Development (LTD) at a Quixtar rally on what to do with those meddling investigative journalists. Winters also characterized the Dateline story as a "satanic attack". . . Winters' wife Pam is the Imelda Marcos of Amway because of her "over 300 pairs of shoes". . . Hilarious extrabiblical revelation by Dexter Yager's wife Birdie at an Amway rally (note: people paid something like $90 for the rally in which this speech is given). . . Former Amway Diamond Don J. Lorencz has a succinct critique of Amway. . .The movie Go has a hilarious vignette about Amway . . .A practical reason not to buy Quixtar products: they're a bad deal for the consumer. . . Here's Pat Boone's song, "We Were Amwayed" [Warning: not for the faint of heart]. . . Yager and Former Bush assistant Doug Wead co-authored the ironically titled book, Don't Let Anyone Steal Your Dream and another of the "tools" that new Amway distributors are told is essential to success in the business, Becoming Rich: Eleven Principles of Material & Spiritual Success. . . An amusing video detailing how Amway/Quixtar products are overpriced compared to products available at retail stores. . . Here's another post on another of my victories against Amway. . . Here's a post on why the Democrats are chumps for not taking on Quixtar. . . Consequence of the tools scam: new distributors wind up with a shitload of worthless tapes and books. A case in point, some poor wretch who was saddled with $2500 worth of Amway tools tried to sell them on Ebay with a opening bid of $175 (that's seven cents on the dollar!) and didn't receive one bid. Here's a video that addresses this and takes on Yager and the tools scam:


ADDENDUM II: Excerpts from Eric Scheibeler's online book Merchants of Deception about Dexter Yager and Jerry Falwell. From Chapter 9:

Dexter [Yager] came out and spoke of many of the trials of the hard days. He launched into a talk that was like many we had heard before. Again, we had come out of desperation to hear new Diamonds talk and learn some logistics to move our business forward. Instead, Dexter delivered one of his usual stream-of-consciousness talks. He would tend to cover topics God had told him to say (God speaks directly to him), such as Hillary Clinton’s sexual preferences, Communism, Socialism, loyalty, castrating rapists, Gospel Films, Jesus, wealth, knowledge, life lessons, relationships and how many girlfriends he had in Rome, New York. Despite the fact that these meetings started with prayer, he felt comfortable using crude references to "crap" and "shit" in some of his more enlightened teachings.

A frequent topic of the speakers, particularly Dexter, during one Go Diamond weekend was a disease he had named HUB. It was an acronym that stands for Head-Up-Butt disease. Who had it? It seemed that his answer was anyone that would not agree with him, Amway, or the system. If you were a Democrat or not going Diamond, you had it. If you had a job, you had a serious HUB. It seemed to go on and on. We were so tired in those meetings. It was a bizarre scene to have a few hundred Emeralds and Diamonds who were trying to sit in rapt attention, when most all of them were fighting to stay conscious. People’s heads would be nodding as they dozed off to sleep out of total exhaustion. Some fell asleep sitting up and actually started drooling on themselves.

At one of these Emerald and Diamond meetings, Amway Diamond Bob Howard was lying prone across four chairs next to me with his arms folded across his chest. He looked like a corpse and was completely out. Birdie Yager talked about how tired she was at one of the meetings. Dexter was prodding her to speak, and she did not want to comply. They were both on stage, and he told her to go off stage and get her notes to speak. She said that she hadn’t slept in something like 20 hours.

The most bizarre of Dexter’s teachings, in my opinion, were his sex talks. Remember, as you read this, that neither the general public nor the average distributor were ever made aware of what went on at these leadership meetings. By the time people got to these meetings, they had been well indoctrinated. Also, remember that these meetings were normally started with a prayer. At one of our first few high-level leadership level meetings, very late at night, Dexter decided to share a business secret that a woman Diamond had passed on, regarding the success she and her husband enjoyed. The advice he passed on to the ladies present concerned how to relate to their husbands. The advice was to "screw their brains out." People were actually taking notes!

From Merchants of Deception, Chapter 9, Jerry Falwell speaks to an Amway gathering:

Jerry Falwell came in and spoke at an Emerald and Diamond-only meeting for Dexter. He was charismatic and well spoken, despite the picture that the media had painted of him as someone on the religious lunatic fringe. It seemed as if any of us that were going to do something good for our family, our God, or our country were going to be subject to criticism. My respect for Mr. Falwell grew tremendously as he spoke. He talked of enjoying talk shows where it was just him, Jesus, and a bunch of liberals slugging it out. He spoke highly of our Amway business leaders and the foundational principles that Amway was built upon. He described socialism as "shared poverty." We epitomized the exact opposite of that.

The Devil You Say! The Satanic Panic/Clinton Body Count Nexus

[Note: This blog post is reprinted from the March 21, 2007 edition of Scoobie Davis Online]


On Monday, a federal jury in Salt Lake City awarded the Procter & Gamble corporation over $19 million in its defamation lawsuit against several former Amway distributors who spread the rumor that P & G was controlled by Satanists. On the surface, it was justice applied to unscrupulous people who tried to get ahead by spreading baseless rumors about a competitor. On another level, one could say that it was logical for the Amway distributors to spread this longstanding rumor about P & G because Amway/Quixtar/Alticor is a quasi-religious cult and it made sense--at least from their perspective--to view the competition as being in league with the devil.

When the Amway/Satan verdict came in, I was working on a post that noted that many of the people involved in the "satanic panic" that had its heyday in the 1980's were the same people who promoted the "Clinton Body Count" in the 1990's. Let's discuss these phenomena:

Satanic Panic
During the 70's and 80's, a group of self-described experts on Satanism emerged--some of the more prominent of these "experts" were Mike Warnke, Lauren Stratford, and Michelle Smith. They and lesser-known fundamentalists spread sensational tales of highly organized satanic covens engaging in horrifying acts of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA). These highly questionable reports were reported in the mainstream media by journalists such as Geraldo Rivera and Tom Jarriel (who interviewed Warnke for a 20/20 report in 1985). In many areas around the country, this lead to what social scientists call "a moral panic." Tales of satanic ritual abuse fueled real charges of child abuse. However, a 1992 FBI report found that claims of organized covens of Satanists coordinating abuse and sacrifices were completely unfounded.

The Clinton Body Count
Soon after Bill Clinton entered the White House in 1993, reports emerged, mostly in the fundamentalist Christian and right-wing media, that Bill and Hillary Clinton were cold-blooded killers who were bumping off dozens of political enemies and political friends (e.g., Vince Foster and Ron Brown) who knew too much. These incredible tales became known as the "Clinton Body Count" (CBC). The Clinton Body Count was spread on web sites like the Free Republic and on right-wing talk radio (notably on Rush Limbaugh's and G. Gordon Liddy's shows). Jerry Falwell sold CBC-themed VHS tapes on his Old Time Gospel Hour television program. Billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife also funded efforts to spread this hoax. Although much of the right wants to forget about it, CBC is still a staple on Internet sites like Free Republic and on talk radio. (8/07 Update: Sean Hannity has revived the Vince Foster canard on his radio and television shows).

Overlapping Conspiracies
What I find interesting is that many of the people responsible for creating a wave of fear and hysteria in the 1980's regarding supposed satanic sacrifices were the same people in the 1990's who claimed that Bill and Hillary Clinton were killing people left and right. This makes sense because both the Satanic panic and the Foster conspiracy theories are both examples of urban legends. Here are some of the main players involved in both modern legends:

Patrick Matrisciana and Jeremiah Films. Matrisciana runs Jeremiah Films, a company that produces fundamentalist and right-wing videos. Some of the satanic-themed videos include Devil Worship: The Rise of Satanism and--no, I'm not making this shit up--Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged However, Matrisciana became well know in political circles when he produced a series of anti-Clinton tapes--the most being The Clinton Chronicles-- that claimed that the then-president was involved in murder, drug smuggling, and other heinous crimes.

WorldNetDaily. WorldNetDaily is run by Joseph Farah. Farah was one of Scaife's main operatives. Farah has openly endorsed the CBC--even recently. WND is one of Matrisciana's top supporters On of WND's columnists is Hal Lindsey who, back in the 1980's, cashed in on the satanic panic with the book Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth. Lindsey is the brother-in-law of Johanna Michaelson, an alleged former shamanic healer who now works to expose the worldwide satanic conspiracy.

Representative Robert K. Dornan (R-CA). During the Clinton years, Dornan was a substitute host for Rush Limbaugh and, like Limbaugh, Dornan spread rumors that the Clintons were behind the death of Vince Foster. Back in the 1980's, in order to deal with the problem of "backwards masking" (many fundamentalists believed that rock music had backward messages that sent subliminal messages to American youth to worship the Devil), Dornan introduced HR 6363 which would have required suspect rock albums to have a label that read "Warning: This record contains backward masking that makes a verbal statement which is audible when this record is played backward and which may be perceptible at a subliminal level when the record is played forward."

Representative William Dannemeyer. Dannemeyer, like Dornan, was an extreme right-wing member of Congress from Orange County. He appeared in The Clinton Chronicles and advocated the impeachment of bill Clinton. Also, "[i]n 1994, in a letter to congressional leaders, former Rep. William Dannemeyer listed 24 people with some connection to Clinton who had died 'under other than natural circumstances' and called for hearings on the matter." More recently, Dannemeyer wrote a letter to California Attorney General Bill Lockyer claiming that convicted murderer Scott Peterson was innocent and that the real killer was a member of a satanic cult.

Marlin Maddox and Bob Larson. Maddox and Larson did fundamentalist radio shows in which they railed against supposed satanic conspiracies during the 90's and 90's. During the 1990's, both men devoted entire programs to many of Matrisciana's anti-Clinton conspiracies.

And finally, a mixed bag:

Geraldo Rivera. On the one hand, Rivera was one of the key figures in the mainstream media who gave credence to implausible tales of SRA. On his syndicated talk show, Rivera gave credence to wild claims of satanic sacrifices. Rivera wrote the forward to Jerry Johnston's sensational book, The Edge of Evil: The Rise of Satanism in North America. On Rivera's 1988 TV special Devil Worship: Exploring Satan's Underground, he made unfounded claims about the supposed satanic threat. However, in the late 1990's--especially during impeachment--Rivera was a voice of reason against the anti-Clinton hysteria of the American right. However, it wouldn't last for long: in 2001, Rivera joined the Fox News Channel, headed by Roger Ailes, one of the more prominent of the Clinton conspiracy theorists of the 1990's.

UPDATE: Eric Rauchway has a good article in the New Republic on how the GOP is demonizing the Democrats.

UPDATE II: In a 1987 episode of Geraldo Rivera's syndicated talk show Geraldo, Rivera made the following panic-inducing claims:

Estimates are that there are over one million Satanists in this country. The majority of them are linked in a highly organized, very secretive network. From small towns to large cities, they have attracted police and FBI attention to their Satanic ritual abuse, child pornography, and grizzly Satanic murders. The odds are that this is happening in your town.

(Source: Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend by Jeffrey S. Victor, pp. 32, 33.)

The Democrats are Chumps: Two Case Studies

[Note: This blog post is reprinted from the January 18, 2007 edition of Scoobie Davis Online]

The next time I update my voter registration, I'm going to switch my affiliation from Democrat to independent. Don't get me wrong, I will still vote for Democrats and support Democratic candidates. It's not like I will be voting for the GOP or the Get Republicans Elected Every November Party. I believe that on the issues, the Democratic Party represents the mainstream of American society--by default (Bush's extremism has caused many centrists and even some right-of-center people to defect to the Democrats). Nevertheless, I can't remain a member of an organization of people who don't know the score.

Let me give two examples:

Case Study Number One: The Democrats' Kid Gloves Approach to Amway

I have received a lot of feedback about my recent post on Amway/Quixtar. Generally, people told me they had no idea that 1) Many of the largest Amway/Quixtar distributors are involved in an illegal tools business--that Amway co-founder Ricard DeVos admitted was "an out-and-out illegal pyramid"; and that 2) Amway and many of its kingpin distributors--such as tools scammer Dexter Yager--are a major funding source of the Republican Party as well as anti-progressive forces such as Jerry Falwell. Most people told me they thought of Amway the same as a quaint vestige of the 1970's--an odd group of people who engaged in cult-like motivational rallies. Even though the Federal Trade Commission under Bush is not doing anything about the illegal tools operation, there is a lot that Democrats could have done to address this. For one thing, they could have used the media to call for investigation of the tools business. They could have contacted U.S. Attorneys to investigate the scam. They could have used the media to denounce the scam (for instance, they could have used used the publicity from the 2004 Dateline NBC story to generate more media interest in the scandal). None of this happened because national Democrats don't know the score.

Case Study Number Two: The Non-Arrest and Non-Deportation of Sun Myung Moon

After I had written posts about Sun Myung Moon, the response was similar to what people said about Amway: they just viewed Moon as a throwback to the 70's who jumped the shark decades ago. These people had been shocked to find out that 1) Moon is currently more powerful than he ever was in the 70's by dumping billions of dollars into a reactionary media empire that is an integral part of what David Brock called the Republican Noise Machine (e.g., here); 2) Much of Moon's money that he uses to court the American right has been derived from scams such as the Spiritual Sales scam in Japan that netted Moon billions of dollars; and 3) Moon has committed immigration fraud and statutory rape as an accomplice--both crimes that are easily verifiable and make him subject to deportation.

About a year ago, I contacted the office of my House member, Susan Davis (D-CA) and requested that she direct the INS to investigate the completely verifiable claims that Nansook Hong made that Moon engaged in immigration fraud to bring Hong (then 15 years-old) to the United States to be the illegal bride of his son, Hyo Jin. I wasn't expecting a Congressional Medal of Honor but I didn't even receive a form letter from her office.

Let's suppose you're a political novice and I tell you that a friend of your political opponents is spending large amounts of money, like say $3 billion, to slime you and it turns out that the friend of your enemy is an enormously unpopular cult leader who is an resident alien who has committed verifiable crimes that make him subject to deportation. The icing on the cake of this scenario is that many prominent members of the opposition have sucked up to this megalomaniacal lowlife(click here and scroll to paragraph five). If you're a political novice and you don't respond that a good strategy would be to refer the case to the proper authorities and have the person deported and to then publicize how your political opponents curried favor with this sexual predator, then you need to get into another line of work.

This is precisely what I think about professional Democrats. They leave vast amounts of political capital on the table because they're clueless. If progressives and Democrats went after a huge fraud operations like Amway and Moon's Unification Church the same way that the right goes after Hollywood, they could move mountains.

Finally, one of the ironies of Moon is that he was sent to jail for tax evasion primarily because of the activities of a Republican, Bob Dole. Go figure.

UPDATE: Here are some videos: Here is the trailer for the documentary film The Downline Movie. . .John Gorenfeld narrates this short video of prominent politicans sucking up to Moon. Note that Pat Boone was the MC for a Moonie event; Boone has shilled for both Moon and for Amway: . . . Here's an interview with former Moonie Steve Hassan:

Additional Update: Great news! There's a new class action lawsuit against Quixtar and some of the kingpin distributors (notably Bill Britt who was featured in the Dateline NBC story) over the tools scam.

Google Bomb Amway/Quixtar/Alticor

[Note: This blog post is reprinted from the January 18, 2007 edition of The Google Bomb Project]

1/07 UPDATE: Welcome to those of you who got here through the links on the Google Bomb Wikipedia page and on the post on the official Quixtar blog. I am Scoobie Davis of the blog Scoobie Davis Online and I set up the anti-Amway/Quixtar Google bomb (which, by the way, has been a huge success). On the Wikipedia page, it originally claimed that my rationale for the Google bomb was that Amway/Quixtar/Alticor is a major funder of the GOP. While this is true, it is an incomplete explanation for the g-bomb. Let me state for the record that there are overarching reasons for the g-bomb: Amway/Quixtar financially exploits people and has most of the earmarks of a mind control cult. In addition, many of the kingpin distributors teach a worldview that is marked by hate, fear and reaction. Don't believe me, listen to the words of top Amway distributor Dexter Yager. Another top distributor, Bill Britt, told distributors that "women being in submission to man, to her husband" is what God's Word [says].

Accordingly, I set up the Google bomb to counter Amway propaganda and to let prospective Amway distributors know what they're getting involved with. If you're thinking about being a part of Amway or are new to Amway, don't believe a word I write. However, don't believe a word that your upline tells you either. Demand answers from your upline. Here are just a few questions to ask.

Original Post:As I have pointed out on my main blog, Amway/Quixtar is a huge operation that is also a de facto ATM machine for the Republican Party. By google bombing Amway/Quixtar, we can not only keep unwitting people from being scammed but we can defund the right (the fewer people who become part of the Scamway machine, the less money Amway can give to the GOP). Let’s google bomb them:

1. Copy and paste the following to your web site or on an internet bulletin board:

<a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/">Amway</a>
<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4375477/">Amway</a>
<a href="http://www.merchantsofdeception.com/">Amway</a>
<a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/blakey_report.pdf">Amway</a>
<a href="http://www.rickross.com/groups/amway.html">Amway</a>
<a href="http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/a/amway/">Amway</a>
<a href="http://skepdic.com/amway.html">Amway</a>
<a href="http://www.ex-cult.org/Groups/Amway/otherside/links.htm">Amway</a>
<a href="http://www.apollowebworks.com/amway/">Amway</a>
<a href="http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0412/S00079.htm">Amway</a>
<a href="http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19039">Amway</a>
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/best/2001/0625/040.html">Amway</a>
<a href="http://www.webraw.com/quixtar/">Amway</a>
<a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/">Quixtar</a>
<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4375477/">Quixtar</a>
<a href="http://www.merchantsofdeception.com/">Quixtar</a>
<a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/blakey_report.pdf">Quixtar</a>
<a href="http://www.rickross.com/groups/amway.html">Quixtar</a>
<a href="http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/a/amway/">Quixtar</a>
<a href="http://skepdic.com/amway.html">Quixtar</a>
<a href="http://www.ex-cult.org/Groups/Amway/otherside/links.htm">Quixtar</a>
<a href="http://www.apollowebworks.com/amway/">Quixtar</a>
<a href="http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0412/S00079.htm">Quixtar</a>
<a href="http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19039">Quixtar</a>
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/best/2001/0625/040.html">Quixtar</a>
<a href="http://www.webraw.com/quixtar/">Quixtar</a>

The results will look like this:

Amway
Amway
Amway
Amway
Amway
Amway
Amway
Amway
Amway
Amway
Amway
Amway
Amway
Quixtar
Quixtar
Quixtar
Quixtar
Quixtar
Quixtar
Quixtar
Quixtar
Quixtar
Quixtar
Quixtar
Quixtar
Quixtar

12/06 UPDATE: Thanks to the person who included this link on the Wikipedia entry on Quixtar.

Biggest Unreported Story on the 2006 Elections: A Huge Setback for Amway/Quixtar/Alticor

[Note: This blog post is reprinted from the December 11, 2006 edition of Scoobie Davis Online]


Pyramid scheme and success cult Amway/Quixtar is a microcosm of the Republican Party's vision for America: it has a small elite at the top who are multimillionaires but the vast majority of its distributors make very little or lose money. In fact, its structure is similar to another dysfunctional organization--the Unification Church: both Amway and the Moonies have a small elite who live like royalty but most of their members work their fingers to the bone to ensure that the elites retain their lavish lifestyles. Ironically, those at the bottom rungs of both groups tend to the most enthusiastic members--their enthusiasm (cynically drilled into them by their leaderships) apparently is all they have. Both have a theocratic view of American government (click here and here. Amway and the Moonies are also similar in that the hierarchy of both groups gives massive financial support to the Republican Party.

Anyone who has been to an Amway rally knows about the cultish nature of the group (Dateline NBC did a report on Amway and the videos of the Amway rallies are scary--click here and click on the top link--also read former Amway insider Eric Scheibeler's online book Merchants of Deception). Despite these reports, Amway continues to run a quasi-criminal enterprise with relative impunity and is able to maintain a veneer of respectability in the public's mind (though my Google bomb of Amway helped educate web surfers).

There is some recent great news about Amway/Quixtar: 2006 was an unmitigated disaster for the group:
1. Dick DeVos, son of Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, was soundly defeated in the Michigan gubernatorial election. Although DeVos' campaign spent $41 million (that's not a typo) on the campaign, he garnered only 42 percent of the vote against incumbent Jennifer Grandholm. DeVos is a hardcore theocrat who hold reconstructionist/dominionist views and a member of the notorious Council for National Policy.
2. Former Amway distributor Tom DeLay not only was indicted and resigned his seat but his seat went to Democrat Nick Lampson.
3. Amway distributor Richard Pombo (R-CA) lost his House seat.
4. The MLM Liberal Blog reported that many of the GOP members of the House and Senate who lost their seats had received money from Amway.

Amway's defeat is a victory for America.

UPDATE: Minddig sees parellels between Amway and the Jehovah's Witnesses.