I am at a point where I feel that our government is stealing from the citizens. Taxes are out of control. Once upon a time, there were no taxes in the United States. Then little by little, the government started enacting tax laws. At first the taxes were just meant to pay for services that the government felt were necessary to provide to citizens. (Think military, jails, police, and the like.)

Recruiting for multi-level marketing companies has become a game of strategy. How many times have you been invited to hear about “an opportunity,” but the person inviting wouldn’t tell you the name of the company? We’ve all heard about this tactic… The recruiters don’t want anyone to “pre-judge” or show up with opinions before they’ve heard the sales pitch.

My friends at ShopToEarn and ShopToEarth have figured out this part of the MLM recruiting equation too.

The world of mommy blogging is all aflutter. Bloggers have been criticized and those responsible for dishing out the criticism must be shamed or sued or both!!!

For those of you who aren’t hip to what mommy blogging is… it’s blogging done by moms. Lots of them are just using blogging as a creative outlet or for a way to let friends and family know what’s going on with them and their children. Others like Heather Armstrong (Dooce) make obscene amounts of money doing it. And others like Sandi Benson are unusual sorts seemingly looking for attention and validation.

So here you have many women blogging about their personal lives, and that (naturally) means they’re going to have some critics.

A few months ago, I posted a rant here about my hate for everything Quickbooks and Intuit. The problem is, however, that a lot of people use it (so that means I have to use it in many of my investigations) and there aren’t many good alternatives.

Intuit immediately got their PR people on my situation, and in no time flat I had my refund and a free piece of Quickbooks software. It didn’t make me like them any better, however. I knew it was simply an attempt to appease a loudmouthed blogger. (Yes, me.)

UPDATE: On February 17, 2010, Medifast Inc. filed suit in US District Court, Southern District of California, alleging defamation, violation of California Corporations Code, and unfair business practices. On March 29, 2011, Judge Janis Sammartino dismissed all of Medifast’s claims against me in her ruling on my anti-SLAPP motion.

Earlier this year, Barry Minkow and Fraud Discovery Institute railed on Medifast, a company with a weight-loss plan being marketed with a multi-level marketing plan. The company was built primarily through marketing of the weight loss program through physicians. The Medifast executives realized that the MLM structure was their golden opportunity.

Eight years later, and the emotion of September 11 doesn’t go away. I remember how I felt that day. How friends and I leaned on each other as we tried to understand the terrible act that was carried out.

Earlier this week I wrote about the MonaVie lawyers going after bloggers who do unflattering critiques of the company. Their premise was silly: You can’t use our name in a URL. Here’s exactly what they said in their threatening letter to blogger “Lazy Man”:

When will companies learn? Trying to silence critics of them with bogus threats of legal action just isn’t effective. We have something called “freedom of speech” here which guarantees us the right to speak our minds, so long as we’re being truthful. Yet that doesn’t stop multi-level marketing companies from trying to bully their critics.