You gotta love it every time “liberal media bias” plays itself out right in front of your eyes. On debate night, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien had a group of voters that were supposedly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, plus a group of undecided voters.

She asked: “How many thought Joe Biden won the debate tonight?”

There are still plenty of people searching for “Shop to Earn scam,” ShopToEarn fraud, “is Shop to Earn legitimate,” Shop To Earth scam, and the like. The company has, for the most part, avoided negative commentary on the internet.

It seems important, therefore, to go over some of the finer points of this newer multi-level marketing (MLM) company that is being promoted as the next big thing. Let’s review…

• MLM is not revolutionary - This outdated business model has been around since the 1960′s. People are still joining because they’re being sold a dream… the dream of financial independence and owning their own business. Yet 99% of people involved in MLMS lose money.
• It’s not “direct selling” – The term direct selling, at one time, might have been accurate. In the early days of MLM, there was a focus on actually selling a product directly from a distributor to a customer. Not anymore. The whole focus is really on recruiting new marks into the schemes, but the term direct selling is still used to confuse the public and shift the focus away from the recruiting.
• Online shopping is not new – The founder of Shop to Earn, Patrick Welsh, brags that it took him ten years to come up with this idea. While he was twiddling his thumbs, online shopping has developed into a huge industry. ShopToEarn offers nothing new in this regard. In fact, all it really does is use the success of already established online sites to collect fees from its representatives.
• You don’t really own your own “store” online – When you join Shop to Earn, you’re not getting your own store. What you’re getting is a page of links to retailers. That’s it. There’s nothing revolutionary about this.
• You don’t even own anything – All you get when you pay your $448 fee is the right to have a ShopToEarn / ShopToEarth page for as long as the company allows you to, and you have the right to recruit other people to have a page. What is that page? Simply a collection of links to real retailers. You don’t own the page. You don’t own your downline. You don’t own a darn thing!
• Fees, fees, fees – Do you know how ShopToEarn representatives make their money? It’s through the fees you pay when you sign up. Yes, there is money to be made from shopping, in theory. But they’re not really in it for shopping. The name of the game is recruitment. $448 to start. $119 a year to renew.That’s where the real money is, not in actual shopping. (Yes, the shopping generates money in theory. In reality, the people in STE are making their real money from recruiting.)
• You could do the same thing on your own for free – Want to make money from people shopping online? You can get access to the exact same stores STE had by signing up for Commission Junction and LinkShare. (That’s all STE has done, after all.) You could host your web page and set up the actual page for a very minimal cost, and all you’d have to do is create links to each of the stores you sign up with through CJ or LS. If it’s really all about the shopping, then this is the way to go because there’s no $448 signup fee, no annual fee of $119, and no monthly minimum of $100.
• Look how many people have already joined! I don’t want to miss out! – This one reminds me of the old “If everyone was jumping off a cliff, would you?” It also reminds me of the saying that there is a sucker born everyday. Yes, thousands of people have already signed up for Shop to Earn. In fact, millions of Americans sign up for all sorts of MLMs each year, as they are sold a dream of financial freedom. But almost none of them will get there. So the fact that people are signing up for STE means nothing.
• Getting in on the “ground floor” - Worried about being left behind? Heard those stories about the guy who signed up when the company first started, and now he’s making millions? Well it is true that those who sign up early are more likely to be part of that 1% who turns a profit. Still, most will lose money, and even being in early won’t stop it. And don’t worry, if you miss your chance with Shop to Earn, there will always be another MLM right behind it to give you that chance to get in on the ground floor!
• Endless chain recruitment – In endless chain recruitment schemes, a steady stream of new blood is needed to keep the business model going. Haven’t you ever wondered why people in MLMs like Amway, Mary Kay, Usana, Herbalife and the like are spending all their time trying to recruit you? If what they’re selling is so good, why don’t they just sell it? Because selling isn’t the name of the game. Recruitment is. That’s where the MLM insiders will tell you the “real” money is. And that’s true… even though very few make any money in MLMs, the ones who do are almost always heavy recruiters.
• Minimum purchases required to get your commissions – In order to get your money from recruiting and shopping you have to have at least $100 in shopping purchases on your site. Some STE representatives say that it’s simple… if you don’t have any commission coming, you don’t buy the $100. Except it’s not quite that simple. The contract says “…$100 of monthly business volume must be generated to qualify for next month’s commissions.” That means you have to spend $100 this month, in order to get commissions next month. How do you know if you’ll have any commissions coming next month? You don’t. So many will spend the $100 this month just to be safe. MLMs make sure to get money out of you with these minimums. Sure, you could get people to shop on your site to make the minimum (or in the case of other MLMS you could sell $100 of product). But the sad fact is that most of the representatives aren’t able to do that, and will instead put their own money in to meet the minimum. They hope they’ll recover it via commissions, but 99% won’t.
  
• Is $500 a lot of money to you? – For some people, $500 means nothing. But for many of the people signing up for MLMs like Shop to Earn, it is a lot of money. They’re already struggling, and $500 could go a long way toward feeding their children, putting gas in the car to get to work, or paying down their credit card bills. If it’s a lot of money to you, ask yourself if you’d go and put that $500 on a table in Las Vegas. The odds of turning a profit on that $500 are higher than the odds of turning a profit in an MLM. If you wouldn’t put it on a table in Vegas, why would you give it to an MLM?
• If it was illegal it would be shut down… – If I had a dime for each time I’ve been told an MLM must be legal because if it wasn’t the government would have shut it down. Surely consumers with an ounce of common sense realize that each day, there are tons of scams that are carried out in the business world. They haven’t been shut down because they haven’t been caught. Or because the peopel in charge choose not to go after them. In the case of MLM, we have a government agency called the FTC that has chosen to almost never prosecute MLM schemes. Does that mean they’re legal? No. It means only that they haven’t been prosecuted. The Direct Selling Association (DSA) is a huge and powerful lobby that MLMs belong to. They spend millions of dollars each year convincing lawmakers to leave MLMs alone. Sadly, law enforcement agencies like the FTC can be bought.
• If the MLM structure is so bad, why do companies keep using it? - One simple reason: It’s very lucrative for the company’s owners. There is a ton of money to be made in selling dreams to consumers who are looking for an answer to their financial problems. MLM is very lucrative because the costs are low, and many of them are variable (i.e. Commission is only paid when the company gets money from distributors.) Companies like Usana and Herbalife have shown us that there are millions to be made from consumers with these schemes, and since the FTC isn’t stopping them, new MLMs are popping up constantly.
• But people are making money promoting Shop To Earn! – Yes, in any MLM, you will always have people who are profiting. They couldn’t sell their dream otherwise. But they’re profiting at the expense of those below them. Everyone at the bottom is paying their fees and making minimum required purchases, and the money is flowing up the pyramid-like-structure toward the people at the top. It is a money transer from those below to their upline. That doesn’t mean it’s right or good. If I reach into someone else’s purse and steal $100, I’ve “made money” on the deal, but it doesn’t mean I’ve done something right.
• It’s not a get rich quick scheme – The promoters of Shop To Earn use this phrase to make you think that everyone who failed at MLM did so because they were lazy. They wanted to “get rich quick” and didn’t really want to work at their MLM. Having personally communicated with thousands of former MLMers, I’ve found that simply not to be the case. I’ve found very few who wanted to get rich quick (of course there will always be some who get in for this reason), and many who worked very hard doing exactly what their upline instructed them to do. Why did they fail? Because MLM is systematically flawed and designed so that almost everyone involved will lose money.
• High failure rates demonstrated over and over - I often repeat the statistic of 99% of people involved in MLMS losing money. Why? Because I don’t think most consumers realize the failure rates are that high. Robert FitzPatrick is an absolute expert on the MLM industry and has been studying it for years. Over and over, he studies the numbers companies release about their distributors. And over and over, he finds that 99% of people involved spend more on fees and minimum purchases than they will ever recover in commissions. It’s an important statistic. (And although the distributors could earn profits from retailing products, the studies have also shown that almost none of the distributors are able to do that. So still, no profits.)
• Continuous recruiting - Do you really want to try to make a living by talking your family and friends into joining? Do you enjoy seeing people cringe when you walk up to them? Do you wonder why they never answer the phone when you call? Believe me, there is little honor in trying to recruit anyone and everyone into an MLM.
• Who cares if others lose money, so long as I get mine! – I suppose it’s possible to say that you don’t care how many thousands of people lose money on this “business opportunity,” so long as you don’t lose any money. That’s not how I was raised. I was raised to care if people got scammed out of their hard-earned money. I was raised to not cheat others out of money so that I could profit. If you don’t have a personal moral code, then there’s not much I can say to change your mind.

Can you read all of the above and really come to the conclusion that Shop to Earn and Shop to Earth is something you should be involved with?

Note to those who want to leave comments on this thread: No personal attacks. No links to your sites. No income claims unless you’re prepared to send me your bank statements to prove your claims. Keep your comments limited to factual statements only.

Note to Shop to Earn lawyer Gerry Nehra: If I’ve made any errors of fact above, I’m happy to correct them. Please send me notification of those errors along with documentation proving the facts. I’ll make the corrections immediately.

Someone has put together a list of the lies and rumors being promoted by the left about soon-to-be Vice President Sarah Palin. It’s quite remarkable when you read the whole list… All these rumors in one place really show how horrible and hateful the left has been in smearing her and her family to no end. Take a look, check out the support for debunking these claims, and decide for yourself.

I urge you to go read the whole list yourself, but here are some of the most important:

• Yes, as Governor of Alaska, she’s the Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard. And yes, her professional military subordinate is quite impressed with her in that role.
• And yes, the New York Times says the job of Governor of Alaska is one of the harder, and more powerful, jobs in state government.
• No, the Downs baby (Trig) isn’t Bristol’s kid, and no, the kid wasn’t born with Downs because (a) Palin flew on an airplane (b) went home to have the baby after an amniotic leak (c) because he was the result of incest between Todd Palin and Bristol.
• No she wasn’t a member of the (wild-eyed libertarian) Alaska independence Party, although her husband once was
• No, neither the (Canadian) National Post, nor Marc Armbinder at the Atlantic have troubled themselves to issue a correction. Yes, the New York Times did finally correct their story of September 1 — on September 5. And on page 14. This was after Elizabeth Bumiller was quoted by Howard Kurtz as saying she was “completely confident about the story.” Yes, that was after the New York Times’s source retracted the story. Yes, this should embarrass the Times, Bumiller, and Howard Kurtz. No, there have been no signs of embarrassment.
• No, she’s not anti-semitic. In fact, she has an Israeli flag in her office. (Contrary to popular belief, the usual Evangelical thinks Israel has a right to exist, granted by God.)
• No, she’s doesn’t believe that the Iraq War was directed by God. Yes, she did pray that proceeding with the war was God’s will: “they should pray ‘that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that’s what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.’” (Ever hear the phrase “Not my will, but Thine, be done”?) Yes, this apparently freaks some people right out.
• Yes, she was apparently pregnant when she got married
• yes, her 17 year old daughter is pregnant; no, the baby’s father is not an eighth grader; no, having sex at 16 is not statutory rape in Alaska. And no, there’s no way that a 17 year old can be 5 months pregnant as a result of having sex before she was 16. Learn to count for God’s sakes.
• yes, she did fire the public safety guy — but he said in the Anchorage paper that, for the record, she never, and no one else in her administration ever, tried to make him fire her ex-brother-in-law
• and yes, the state trooper (her sister’s ex-husband) she was worried about did: tase her 10 year old nephew; drive his state patrol car while drinking or drunk; did threaten to “bring her down”; and did threaten to murder her father and sister if they dared to get an attorney to help with the divorce.
• yes, the state trooper was suspended when he was put under a court protective order
• no, the trooper wasn’t fired
• yes, she did fire the Wasilla Chief of Police as Mayor; yes, it was because he was lying to the City Council.
• Yes, she did try to cut her own salary as Mayor by $4000 a year; yes, she had voted against the $4000 a year raise while on the City Council.
• No, she didn’t cut funding for unwed mothers; yes, she did increase it by “only” 354 percent instead of 454 percent, as part of a multi-year capital expenditures program. No, the Washington Post doesn’t appear to have corrected their story. Even after this was pointed out in the comments on the story.
• No, she didn’t cut special needs student funding; yes, she did raise it by “only” 175 percent.
• yes, she did try, clearly unsuccessfully, to get Bristol married off to her fiancee before the story came out
• yes, she did ask the librarian if some books could be withdrawn because of being offensive; no, they couldn’t; yes, it was “rhetorical”, at least as was reported contemporaneously in 1996 ((and thanks to Cecil Turner@ Jusr One Minute for this)) ; yes she did threaten to fire the librarian a month later; no, that wasn’t over the books thing but instead over administrative issues; no, the librarian wasn’t fired either; yes, the librarian was a big supporter of one of her political opponents; yes, the librarian was also the girlfriend of the Chief of police mentioned above; no, this is not the first time in the history of civilization that someone has been threatened with being fired over a political dispute
• no, it wasn’t won’t be [bad tense, hasn't happened yet] a shotgun wedding; Bristol and Levi been engaged for a good while according to Levi’s mother. It was either an accident or just an unconventional order.
• yes, she’s an was an Assembly of God Holy Roller. No, she doesn’t attend an AoG church now. Yes, she did leave the AoG because they were getting too weird for her.
• No, she’s not anti-Mormon. No, not all AoG churches are anti-Mormon. (AoG is even more hard-core about allowing each pastor and congregation to make their own decisions than the Baptists are.) (Thanks to AnonAmom in the comments.)
• yes, she apparently believes in some variant of Intelligent Design
• no, she didn’t try to force the schools to teach it; she said if someone brought it up, it was an appropriate subject for debate.
• No, she doesn’t believe in “abstinence only” education. Yes, she thinks abstinence is an effective way of preventing pregnancy. Duh. Yes, she believes kids should learn about condom use in schools.
• yes, she has on occasion, as Mayor, tried to get money from the federal government.
• yes, she did finally turn down the money for the bridge. Yes, that meant changing her mind about it.
• yes, she was vetted extensively, not just in three days — I’ve got links to press reports about people coming to Wassila on 29 May, and we had her on our Veepstakes at PJM from the first day we ran it.
• yes, she want to a bunch of colleges before getting a degree. No, that’s not illegal. Yes, she seems to have made something of herself anyway.
• no, they didn’t talk to a lot of the R’s power structure during the vetting; that probably has to do with the fact that she beat them in elections and sent a bunch of them to jail.
• Yes, contrary to press reports, Sarah Palin’s mother-in-law plans to vote for her and the R ticket (on Inside Edition this evening.)

What do you think? (No the comments section below is not for more rumor-mongering, nor is it for linking to more lies or smear sites.) If you hae a legitimate comment or observation, feel free to leave it below. (Sockpuppets not invited.)

Tonight I called in as an expert on CNBC’s “On the Money.” The show is all about consumer finance issues, and tonight we were (of course) talking about the bailout bill that the House passed today and President Bush signed into law.

One of the provisions of the bill included a “fix” for 2008 for the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). The AMT was created in 1970 to make sure that high-income individuals paid income taxes, even if they had lots of deductions. In its first year, only 19,000 taxpayers paid AMT.

Oh, I know we’re not supposed to call it “pork.” It’s now “sweeteners.” And it’s not a “bailout.” It’s now a “recovery” bill. I get it. It’s all about marketing, and to properly market it to Americans (i.e. Get them to “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”) we have to use better words..

Well check out the pork anyway. Here’s the obnoxiously long full text of the bill. Pages 261 to 263 give a nice list of the pork…. Some of the tax provisions make sense and should be passed separately from this bill. Most of the pork is just ridiculous. Check it out and I’ll add some commentary later:

As if it wasn’t bad enough to go on a trip to Philadelphia paid for by taxpayers, but not attend the conference and instead make it a vacation…. Milwaukee Public Schools board member Charlene Hardin is now caught wasting more taxpayer money.

Daniel Bice at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that over the last 1.5 years, Hardin has gone on seven out-of-state trips paid for by the taxpayers, and costing them $8,500. What did those charges include?

• $400 to rent a Chrysler 300 Touring for two days… which was driven 85 miles total, for a cost of $4.70 per mile
• A stay at a hotel with a $400+ rate per night
• A $300 charge for smoking in her room in the completely non-smoking Marriot in Washington D.C. (These penalties are common and guests are told about this before they light up.)

The story keeps getting better and better, though. Janie Hatton, a former MPS principal and now contract consultant for the district went with Hardin on several of the trips. The documentation in support of many of Hardin’s expenses is scant.  One example: $125 she says she spent on parking, school visits, and a community lunch… but she had no receipts for any of them and couldn’t even remember the name of the restaurant.

And other board members don’t go on nearly as many out-of-state trips. They each average about one a year.

Reminder: This is the type of person we have deciding how to run the district and how to spend taxpayer money. Pathetic.

..not be passed through because of other legislation that the taxpayers deserve to have regardless of whether it’s attached to to bailout.

This $700 billion (probably more like $1 trillion or $2 trillion) bailout that was passed by the Senate last night is really no better than what the House voted against just a couple of days ago. But lawmakers are sure they’ve sweetened the deal enough to get the House to vote in favor of it.

Guest post by Pyramid Scheme Alert

In a letter to a Director of  Pyramid Scheme Alert, the chief of police in one of India’s largest states, Andhra Pradesh, wrote that a criminal case has been booked by the government’s Criminal Investigation Division against Amway India for promoting a “Money Circulation Scheme” in the disguise of Direct Selling. He stated, “Now the case has been charge sheeted and it is proved that Amway is nothing but Money Circulation Scheme. Andhra Pradesh Government now has issued a G.O. against Amway under sections 8 of the Prize Chits & Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978.”