The Amway, Blackwater, Focus on the Family Tree

Bill Berkowitz reports that Amway is getting ready to make a comeback.
What superb timing.
Just as we are getting used to the idea that much of the financial markets is one giant ponzi scheme, a company roughly based on the pyramid chain letter is set to rebuild its brand : a multi-level marketing scheme based on selling cleaning products to yourself while buying motivational tapes from the person up the chain who talked you into it.

Don't sneer. Amway made over $7-billion in 2007, having exported 80% of its business abroad to China, India, and Russia - where presumably a whole new batch of "distributors" is out looking around for people willing to buy their motivational tapes.
It's all about the networking.
Berkowitz reminds us of Amway's own networks and Muckety provides a nice interactive family tree with many more links than I've pillaged here :

• Amway co-founder Richard DeVos was chair of the Republican National Committee and former chair of the Council for National Policy.
• His son Dick DeVos, billionaire former president of Amway, is married to Betsy DeVos, former chair of the Michigan Republican Party and founder of the National Right To Life Committee.
• Betsy is the older sister of Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater USA.
• Betsy and Erik's mom, Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, is a director of the Council for National Policy along with Grover Norquist and Paul Weyrich and FotF's James Dobson, and a board member of Focus on the Family herself.

As Amway co-CEO Doug DeVos put it : "We thought, well, if we’re going to build a brand, build the brand that everybody knows already."

Fun fact : While the Mormons took the brunt of the coverage for their anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 campaign in California, the Colorado Independent reports that our Focus on the Family tree pumped more than six times as much as the Mormon church did into the Protect Marriage campaign - $1.25 million .

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Steve and Sandra and Grover

And here's the article : Harper's 'nation of shopping centres'

"Tom Flanagan, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's longtime confidant and former chief of staff, is delighted at the Conservatives' success in "tightening the screws on the federal government" to dramatically reduce its significance in the daily lives of Canadians.
The Conservatives' three budgets have left Ottawa financially incapable of offering any new national social program like affordable housing, higher education or day care. Although overall spending went up, mostly on the military, measures were taken to deplete revenues to the point future governments' hands will be tied unless they raise taxes or run deficits, both prescriptions for political suicide.

Flanagan is impressed that Harper managed to execute his stealthy revolution in Canadian public policy with barely a whimper from the public. But that, too, was the strategy according to the University of Calgary professor and Reform party founder.

"Part of the execution of the plan was that there would be conservatives attacking him, like John Williamson (of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation) and Gerry Nicholls (Harper's successor as head of the far-right National Citizens' Coalition). That's extremely useful, to have that kind of pressure there, berating the prime minister for not doing enough."

Grover Norquist in his own bathtub

"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

~Grover Norquist

Terrific post from the Rev, and I mean a really terrific post, "Swiftboating Obama", up at both The Woodshed and The Galloping Beaver :

"Norquist and his masters believe that government is simply an often unavoidable impediment to them making money....They have appointed incompetents to vital positions to ensure that the government departments involved fail when called upon ("Heckuva job Brownie"). This helps undermine people's faith in government and provides ammunition to show that the work of government should be privatized. Think about the arguments for school vouchers, or look at the "shock doctrine" privatization of things like water systems, power grids and transportation systems around the world, and it becomes clear the motives are to make a profit for corporations and their wealthy shareholders and to ensure that none of that profit is ever handed back to help those who are not wealthy."

Why isn't this commonly referred to as 'looting'?

Back in May '06, the Rev left me the following comment : "If only someone would drown Grover Norquist in his own metaphorical bathtub."

There ya go, Rev.

Bonus : 900 Foot Jesus : SPP and the death of public service or

why having fans of Norquist running the Canadian government is not working out for the rest of us.

Maurice Vellacott - unplugged

First, a little recap.
Remember that bizarre non-apology Maurice "unplugged" Vellacott gave when forced to resign the post Harper gave him as Chair of the Commons Aboriginal Affairs Committee? He had made shit up, attributed it to a Chief Justice when in fact she said the opposite of what he claimed, and then resigned with a statement which included an entirely unrelated reference to his right to "defend women and the rights of the preborn".

On Wednesday, there he was defending women again - this time holding a press conference with American anti-abortion activist and breast surgeon Angela Lanfranchi, whom he had invited up to Canada to inform us there has been a 40-per-cent increase in the incidence of breast cancer in the last 30 years.

Angela Lanfranchi :
"It's the women of the Roe v. Wade generation that account for most of this increase. Dramatic lifestyle changes brought about by the sexual revolution and the women's liberation movement are largely responsible for the rampant breast cancer we see today."

So, according to Lanfranchi, breast cancer is caused by abortions which are caused by feminism - a theory also also known as 'it's your own fault, bitches'.
Lanfranchi was referring to the "research" of born-again anti-abortionist Dr. Joel Brind, discounted ten years ago by the National Cancer Institute in the United States, the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (and their U.S. counterparts), as well as the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Breast Cancer Network, as being entirely without merit.

OK, we're up to speed now.
Undeterred by this refutation from their colleagues, Brind and Lanfranchi have launched a website called "Breast Cancer Prevention Institute". The home page states their mission :
"Our website is dedicated to providing the most up-to-date and accurate information to medical professionals and the general public on how to prevent breast cancer. Our on-line publications, as well as our list of other resources, are all designed to provide you with knowledge of practical, risk-reduction strategies."

Mostly consisting of abstinence and the rhythm method.

But then rather puzzlingly, after an ad for a fundraiser for the site, the entire rest of the main page - and I mean the whole rest of the main page here - is devoted to a plea from Dr Joel Brind to help prevent the passing of anti-lobby legislation currently before the US Congress. He urges the reader to visit www.lobbysense.com to see what you can do about it. So I did.

LobbySense states that free speech and the rights of lobbyists are at risk if this legislation requires them to have to register as, you know, lobbyists.

LobbySense is outraged that Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is supporting this anti-free speech legislation after all the help they have given him in his bid to open up Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling :
"In the ultimate attack of irony, just yesterday, a coalition of organizations (some of whom are members of the LobbySense coalition) sent a comprehensive letter to House and Senate leadership outlining reasons to open ANWR to drilling."
Later on the same page they report that Senator Stevens has come around to their way of thinking.

LobbySense lists its members : Grover Norquist, Paul Weyrich of "Coalitions for America", Gary Bauer of "American Values", Phyllis Schlafly of "Eagle Forum", and a dozen other high profile right-wing life-hating assholes.

Last week, Vellacott countered a rebuke for lying about a chief justice with some completely unrelated codswallop about his mandate from his sky monster (TM - Dave's Random Gibberish) and the rights of the preborn. I can hardly wait to hear what grand non sequitur he will use to defend his right to be duped by a front group for rightwing American extremists.

When LobbySense member Grover Norquist famously quipped, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub", he made no provision not to throw the baby Jesus out with the bathwater.
Vellacott might want to think about that.
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