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 in 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 getting into Amway (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."