Amway: 'Masters of deception'

Isn't it interesting how many of these RightWing Kingpins (Moon, Amway's Founders) run cult-like organizations, if not outright cults?
 

Bill Berkowitz writes:

Like many others, Eric Scheibeler and his wife, Patty, were recruited to the Amway Corporation by close friends. Along the "guaranteed" road to success they met powerful politicians, dined with multi-millionaires and spoke to thousands of Amway members at gatherings throughout the world. Then, without warning, their house of cards collapsed:

Eric Scheibeler discovered that the operation was committing massive fraud. When he took documentation to Amway Senior Management, they shut off his income and told him not to have contact with distributors he was revealing the fraud to. Scheibeler, a former federal auditor for the US Department of Energy, refused. He and his wife were threatened, ostracized, and lost all they had built over a decade.

Eric Scheibeler's book, "Merchants of Deception: An Insider's Look at the Worldwide, Systematic, Conspiracy of Lies That is Amway/Quixtar and their Motivational Organization," available free at merchantsofdeception.com, is more than a story about one family's rise and decline under the Amway/Quixtar umbrella. It also exposes the corruption enveloping one of the US's most politically well-connected companies.

[...] 

For nearly a decade, the Scheibelers' prospered: Their business "extended from North America to Europe, South America, and the Philippines." They met House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Iran/Contra figure, Oliver North, Wendy's owner, Dave Thomas, TV Pastor Robert Schuller, Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and many others. Religious leaders like Charles Stanley (a former distributor), Dr. Schuller and Dr. D James Kennedy of Florida's Coral Ridge Ministries, a multi-media multi-million dollar ministry, gave the company and its founder a credibility that seemed to be beyond reproach. Former US Presidents Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush also spoke to Amway distributors.

[...]

Molly Ivins wrote in a 1997 that Amway had "its own caucus in Congress... .Five Republican House members are also Amway distributors: Reps. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, Jon Christensen of Nebraska, Dick Chrysler of Michigan, Richard Rombo of California and John Ensign of Nevada. Their informal caucus meets several times a year with Amway bigwigs to discuss policy matters affecting the company, including China's trade status."

Some Republicans received as much as $100,000 for appearing at an Amway event. "After accepting speaking fees, then-House Speaker Gingrich arranged a reported last-minute modification in a comprehensive tax bill that allegedly provided a $283 million tax break to just one company -- Amway. One report called the tax break a $283 million payoff," investigative reporter Evelyn J. Pringle pointed out in a piece on Amway.

According to the San Antonio Express-News, "The payoff for Amway was not in the original House or Senate version of the tax bill. ... Gingrich intervened at the last minute to help get the special tax break inserted in the bill."

Billionaire Rich DeVos, a regular on the Forbes magazine list of richest Americans and the owner of the National Basketball Association's Orlando Magic, has been a member of the highly secretive Council for National Policy. He once served as the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. He also created a conservative philanthropy for he and his wife called the Richard and Helen DeVoss Foundation.

For more than thirty-five years, the DeVos family has been a benefactor of both the religious right and the Republican Party. In the final weeks before the 1994 election, the Amway Corp. gave the GOP $2.5 million -- at the time "the largest political donation in recent American history," the Washington Post reported. And in 1996, the company donated $1.3 million to the San Diego Convention and Visitor's Bureau "to help fund a Republican cable TV show to be aired during the party's national convention," the Associated Press reported. The program featured ""rising GOP stars as 'reporters,'" and aired on the Family Channel, which was owned by Pat Robertson.

According to Media Transparency, a Web site tracking "the money behind the media," grant-making by The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, which was founded in 1970, grew from $4 million in 1990 to more than $25 million in 2001. "The family provides major funding to Concerned Women for America, Free Congress Foundation, Michigan Right to Life, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and a number of other groups," according to a People For the American Way report. In addition, foundations with the DeVos family name attached to them branched out to include the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation (1990), the Daniel and Pamela DeVos Foundation (1992), and the Douglas and Maria DeVos Foundation (1992).

Reporter Evelyn Pringle pointed out that "DeVos and VanAndel, have been the largest soft money contributors to the GOP on and off for the past 20 years. Together, DeVos and VanAndel gave $4,000,000 to a 527, just 45 days prior to the last election."

For years, the Van Andels have been on the board of the Heritage Foundation seated right next to Richard Mellon Scaife, Holly Coors and Heritage Pres. Edwin Feulner.