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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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."
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
[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-known 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 nonexistent 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."
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 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.)
[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.
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.
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.
[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:
[Note: This blog post is reprinted from the December 11, 2006 edition of Scoobie Davis Online]
Pyramid scheme and success cultAmway/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.
