Regular readers of the PP Blog know that it supports the efforts of President Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force to weed out the purveyors of schemes who brought the U.S. and much of the world economy to its knees. Obama is a Democrat.
What readers may not know is that the Blog is written by a Republican who celebrates America’s entrepreneurial spirit, its market economy, its job-creators, its Great Defenders of Freedom, its Great Guardians of Liberty.
The PP Blog concerns itself with matters of interest to readers who embrace online commerce and see the Internet as an outlet that is pivotal to future economic expansion. How wonderful would it be, say, if Americans and the other peoples of the world who are living in poverty could harness their entrepreneurial spirits and the power of the Internet to engage in legitimate commerce and elevate the standard of living worldwide?
And how wonderful would it be if companies and individuals who already are benefiting from financial success could use the Internet to create a legitimate turbine that generates sustainable jobs that pay a pride-producing wage and freelance sales and vendor positions that create bright financial futures?
Although the PP Blog focuses on business and generally avoids politics, today it makes an exception: When the President of the United States — regardless of party — is attacked to drive business to an online multilevel-marketing (MLM) firm, it must be noted for posterity that the MLM sphere has reached a new and deeply disturbing low.
To call the anti-Obama, animated screed by an affiliate of MPB Today “tasteless” would be a gross understatement. It harms MPB Today, which is the subject of a “review” by the U.S. Department of Agriculture amid affiliate claims the company has been endorsed by the government. Various government agencies — regardless of what political party controls the White House and the Congress — have warned repeatedly for years that one of the scammer’s most important tools is the shovel that plants the seed that the government endorses a “program” or “business opportunity.”
MLM “opportunities” are infamous for planting this cancer-spreading seed. Members of AdSurfDaily, for instance, planted the seed that President George W. Bush had given ASD President Andy Bowdoin an award for a lifetime of business achievement. Bowdoin fanned the pollination of the seed by taking his “award” on the road with him and even posing with it.
The clear aim of the claim was to make prospects believe that ASD could not possibly be a scam because the President of the United States would not give an important business award to a scammer.
It turned out that the “award” actually was a memento for making campaign donations to the National Republican Congressional Committee. In effect, Bowdoin had made the donations to the NRCC in return for banquet tickets. Records show that Bowdoin made the donations during a period of time in which federal prosectors say he was operating an international Ponzi scheme that perhaps ensnared more than 100,000 people.
It is a virtual certainty that Bowdoin, who’d been charged with felonies in Alabama in a previous securities swindle and was given a suspended jail sentence, used Ponzi proceeds to make the donations.
Harm spreads virally when such bogus seeds are planted and take root on the Internet.
But getting back to the matter of the MPB Today affiliate’s Obama-bashing sales pitch . . .
Walmart and Walmart’s Sam’s Club name now have been harmed because the MPB Today affiliate used the name of Sam’s Club in the animated attack, which painted Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as Nazis — with Obama as a cowering Nazi and Clinton as a drunken one wearing “puke colored” clothes purchased from Big Lots, a discount retailer.
This occurred while other MPB Today affiliates were claiming that MPB, which dispenses Walmart gift cards to winners in the MPB 2×2 matrix cycler, was under “contract” with Walmart, that MPB members were “partners” with Walmart, that MPB sells food “vouchers” that can be exchanged for Walmart gift cards and that the MLM program was “Govt. certified with Food Stamps!”
As incredible as it seems, Michelle Obama — the First Lady of the United States — was depicted in the affiliate’s animation as experiencing an embarrassing gas attack in the Oval Office after sampling “beans” at a Sam’s Club store. A dog depicted in the pitch more or less said that the First Lady was stinking up the joint.
Good grief!
The pitch also harms the image of U.S. business in general because it sends the message that “anything goes” in American Capitalism as long as it returns a profit, the precise message U.S. companies now under indictment or investigation were sending when they brought the financial sector to its knees.
Meanwhile, it specifically harms online business. Much of the world already believes the Internet is one giant cesspit, in no small measure because of the business practices of certain MLM programs and affiliates of MLM programs.
At the same time, it harms the Republican party, which is trying to make gains in the upcoming midterm elections. It would be easy, for example, for the Democrats to seize on the message that the sales pitch for MPB Today is just another example of wretched GOP excess and hatred embedded in code. The most bizarre thing about the pitch is that it seems to presume that it is a perfectly acceptable business practice to alienate MPB members and prospects who might be Democrats and Obama supporters — as well as Republicans who actually respect and admire the President even if they disagree with his policies and do not share his political philosophy.
Even though the MPB Today affiliate’s precise party or political affiliation is not known, it seems clear that the affiliate sees nothing wrong with mixing business with inflammatory, divisive politics, and is not enthusiastic about the current Democratic leadership. In this sense, it also harms the Democratic party. Political pranksters and Obama opponents could paint the MPB pitchman as a Democratic saboteur or a Tea Party activist seeking to create dissension in the ranks, something that could inure to the benefit of Republicans.
Most of all, though, the pitch hurts America. Much of the world looks to America for both financial and moral leadership. What the world got in the context of the promotion for MPB Today is yet-another impossibly ham-handed attempt to sell an MLM product at any price — even at the price of American prestige.
Segments of the MLM trade already are infamous for their inability to sell products without lying, for resorting to gutter tactics, for using sales pitches to reimagine products as something they are not and for setting the stage for tens of thousands of people to get fleeced in one spectacular scam after another that goes “viral” on the Internet.
Today the PP Blog received a request from a person who described herself as the sponsor of the MPB Today affiliate who produced the anti-Obama screed to “delete” the Blog’s stories on the reprehensible sales pitch.
“The animated short video on MPB with Hilary and Obama was created by a member I sponsored into MPB and the film has since been taken down,” the sponsor noted. “The member agrees it may have been in poor taste and chose to delete it. Please do the same.”
Welcome to the often-bizarre world of MLM — a world in which the affiliate who authored a political attack on the President of the United States to gain payments from a 2×2 cycler matrix pushed on known Ponzi forums such as ASAMonitor “agrees” only that the pitch “may have been in poor taste” and the dutiful sponsor seeks to make sure the the record gets deleted.
Although the PP Blog verified that the sales pitch had been deleted from the animation site, the Blog is declining to delete its coverage of the matter. All people engaged in MLM need to see it. If they are interested in being taken seriously, they need to condemn it.
MPB Today should issue a statement that condemns it.
In May 2009 — just days after the Obama administration announced a crackdown on international financial fraud — the PP Blog received a request from KINGZ Capital Management to delete a story about the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf’s claim that it had secured KINGZ as an offshore wire facilitator to make it easier for Americans (and other peoples of the world) to send money to an obvious Ponzi scheme that had risen from the ashes of ASD, yet another Ponzi scheme
The PP Blog declined the request. KINGZ later was banned by the National Futures Association for turning a blind eye to the actions of Trevor Cook, a now-convicted felon who operated an international Ponzi scheme that caused investor losses of at least $158 million. The scheme traded on religion. A federal judge called it “wretched, tawdry and cheap.”
History will record that AVG made the claim about its new relationship with KINGZ on the very same day in May 2009 that Obama himself announced the fraud crackdown. By June 25, 2009, AVG suspended autosurf cashouts, taking an unknown sum of money sent in by members with it. It is known that many AVG members also were members of ASD, the subject of a racketeering lawsuit and two federal complaints that sought the forfeiture of more than $80 million. The government won both forfeiture cases. The decisions by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer now are under appeal by Bowdoin.
It also is known the ASD victims have been targeted in promotions for MPB Today. If that’s not enough, it also is known that at least one MPB Today affiliate’s pitch page includes links to at least 100 “surfing” programs, as well as a link to Data Network Affiliates (DNA).
DNA, yet another MLM program, purports to collect license-plate data that can aid law enforcement and the AMBER Alert program rescue abducted children. Even as DNA and affiliates are claiming to be interested in helping law enforcement, the company says it is selling a spray product that prevents cameras from snapping photographs of license plates at intersections that use electronic systems to enforce traffic laws.
As DNA is doing this, it also is telling churches that they have the “MORAL OBLIGATION” to recruit affiliates for a purported mortgage-reduction program targeted at people who are facing foreclosure. Meanwhile, MPB Today also is targeting foreclosure subjects in sales pitches, and some MPB affiliates are using religion in sales pitches to attract MLM members.
Both MPB Today and DNA are operating in Florida, which has one of the highest concentrations of foreclosures in the United States and is near the top of the list in U.S. bank failures.
So, no. The PP Blog will not delete its coverage of the MPB Today affiliate’s attack on Obama.
All of America — all of the world and all of the MLM universe — needs to see that the President of the United States was right in May 2009 when he announced the fraud crackdown and was right in November 2009 when he announced the formation of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force.
The PP Blog has no doubt — none whatsoever — that corrupt elements within the MLM universe are doing everything in their power to use the Internet to bleed wealth from hard-working Americans and other hard-working peoples of the world, and that the corrupt transfer of wealth is leading to losses of billions of dollars globally. Simply put, these reprehensible — if not downright criminal business practices — are a money grab on a colossal scale.
Proceeds from fraud schemes are difficult to trace. Money moves at the speed of an electronic impulse. Any number of nefarious enterprises, including narcotics traffickers, organized crime and terrorist groups, could be tapping into the fraud stream. There is no doubt that some of the criminal enterprises are dressed up as legitimate MLMs or employ a direct-sales business model that pays commissions to attract new money.
Stand strong, Mr. President. Your efforts to turn off this criminally gushing Ponzi and fraud spigot not only are commendable, but also are in the interest of U.S. national security, the safeguarding of which is your highest duty to the American people.
The photos below are for posterity. We are publishing them even as we wonder if nothing is off limits if it helps an MLM offer convert — and even as we wonder why the MLM trade seems so willing to repeatedly attribute its image problem to only a “few bad apples” while simultaneously calling the industry’s critics “haters.”
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