"They're coming round the Clubhouse turn..."

The Unkillable Appeal of Multilevel Marketing

Recently, when the billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman made headlines for militating against the thought crimes of Harvard undergraduates, the coverage disinterred memories of what had previously been Ackman’s most famous moral crusade: his five-year campaign, during the twenty-tens, to short-sell Herbalife, the dietary-supplement company. Herbalife can be politely called a “multilevel-marketing” or “direct-sales” or “network-marketing” firm, but Ackman and many others called it a pyramid scheme. They believed that, in the words of my colleague Sheelah Kolhatkar, “the company’s real business was recruiting people to recruit more people to recruit more people to sell its products.” These recruits, who are attracted by promises of earning easy paychecks in their spare time, will only make money if they amass a “downline” of sellers beneath them. To maintain their standing in the company, they have to keep buying sketchy, price-inflated inventory, which keeps cash flowing toward the top of the pyramid—the “upline”—even if those pills and potions never leave the would-be seller’s garage, and they often don’t.

A few years into Ackman’s short-sell offensive, the Federal Trade Commission sued Herbalife, asserting that it “deceived consumers into believing they could earn substantial money selling diet, nutritional supplement, and personal care products.” The F.T.C. found that, even among Herbalife members who attained “Sales Leader” status, half were making less than five dollars a month, and half of those sellers were actually losing money. Herbalife eventually settled the suit for about two hundred million dollars and agreed to restructure its operations; in return, the F.T.C. stopped short of calling the company a pyramid scheme, and Herbalife stayed in business. Herbalife’s “nutrition clubs,” where the company lures new members with mysteriously expensive protein shakes and “loaded teas,” continue to haunt storefronts across America. In 2018, Ackman finally abandoned what was reportedly a billion-dollar bet against Herbalife.

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Under Review
The Unkillable Appeal of Multilevel Marketing
The M.L.M. presents an ingenious—and very American—marriage of prosperity theology and conservative gender roles.
By Jessica Winter
March 20, 2024
Illustration of multilevel pyramid. Money and products stashed under pyramid as a trap.
Illustration by George Wylesol

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Recently, when the billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman made headlines for militating against the thought crimes of Harvard undergraduates, the coverage disinterred memories of what had previously been Ackman’s most famous moral crusade: his five-year campaign, during the twenty-tens, to short-sell Herbalife, the dietary-supplement company. Herbalife can be politely called a “multilevel-marketing” or “direct-sales” or “network-marketing” firm, but Ackman and many others called it a pyramid scheme. They believed that, in the words of my colleague Sheelah Kolhatkar, “the company’s real business was recruiting people to recruit more people to recruit more people to sell its products.” These recruits, who are attracted by promises of earning easy paychecks in their spare time, will only make money if they amass a “downline” of sellers beneath them. To maintain their standing in the company, they have to keep buying sketchy, price-inflated inventory, which keeps cash flowing toward the top of the pyramid—the “upline”—even if those pills and potions never leave the would-be seller’s garage, and they often don’t.

A few years into Ackman’s short-sell offensive, the Federal Trade Commission sued Herbalife, asserting that it “deceived consumers into believing they could earn substantial money selling diet, nutritional supplement, and personal care products.” The F.T.C. found that, even among Herbalife members who attained “Sales Leader” status, half were making less than five dollars a month, and half of those sellers were actually losing money. Herbalife eventually settled the suit for about two hundred million dollars and agreed to restructure its operations; in return, the F.T.C. stopped short of calling the company a pyramid scheme, and Herbalife stayed in business. Herbalife’s “nutrition clubs,” where the company lures new members with mysteriously expensive protein shakes and “loaded teas,” continue to haunt storefronts across America. In 2018, Ackman finally abandoned what was reportedly a billion-dollar bet against Herbalife.


M.L.M.s as we know them originated in the early nineteen-fifties, when the eventual founders of Amway were building up a pyramid of food-supplement salesmen and a sales rep named Brownie Wise was organizing the first Tupperware parties. Despite the decades of bad press and costly litigation that ensued, pyramid schemes—or, to be precise, the ostensibly law-abiding companies that happen to be dead ringers for pyramid schemes—appear to be an immovable pillar of the American economy. Part of the problem is one of political will: the elected representatives who appoint and confirm F.T.C. commissioners are often recipients of M.L.M. largesse. And, in any case, the agency is not necessarily the final arbiter of what shape a pyramid can take. In September, a federal judge in Texas, Barbara M. G. Lynn, rejected an F.T.C. lawsuit against Neora, a multilevel marketer of dietary supplements and skin-care products, despite evidence that Neora had misled consumers about the “lifestyle-changing income” they could earn by hawking its products. Lynn was unimpressed by an F.T.C. witness who estimated that ninety-six per cent of Neora’s “Brand Partners” lose money by participating; maybe, Lynn wrote in her decision, these folks just wanted to buy stuff. “Put differently, we may ‘walk away poorer than we started’ after a trip to the grocery store,” Lynn went on, “but because we obtained valuable goods or services in return for our money, that exchange is not characterized as a loss.” The judge’s grocery-store analogy might work better if “we” had a basement full of rotting produce that we tried and failed to sell to all our Facebook friends even though they could get nicer, cheaper fruit at the supermarket down the street.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-unkillable-appeal-of-multilevel-marketing

THE VESSEL is reopening, but you won't be ab;e to kill yourself.

Cori Bush trailing Democratic primary challenger by 22 points: Poll

Ocasio-Cortez Never Steered Money to a Key Arm of Her Party. Until Now.

Source: New York Times

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has made her first-ever contribution to the campaign arm of House Democrats — a $260,000 donation that is a milestone in the New York Democrat’s long and complicated relationship with her own party’s political establishment.

In an interview, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said her decision to give to the campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was driven primarily by the dire threat of Republicans staying in power. She feared a Republican-controlled House would not certify a potential re-election of President Biden this fall.

“The entire country saw a terrorist attack on the United States Capitol that was predicated on not certifying the duly submitted results of a presidential election,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said of the riot on Jan. 6, 2021. “And if anybody thinks that that was not a dress rehearsal for what they may try to attempt in January of 2025, I’m sorry to say, but I think that’s a very naïve assumption.”

The transfer of funds is a symbolic moment in the 34-year-old lawmaker’s own evolution inside the Democratic Party. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said the cash transfer represented her assessment that House Democratic leadership had changed sufficiently to now merit her money. It comes nearly six years after she first won her seat by ousting a top House Democrat in a stunning primary upset.


Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/us/politics/aoc-campaign-contribution.html

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Governor Katie Hobbs just called me...

On top of the improved situation for Biden and Gallego, the State Legislature (currently R+2 Senate, R+2 House), which just turned down an effort to repeal the 1864 abortion law, is now seen as winnable. Will pass along details on specific seats and support opportunities when I get them.

Wisconsin Supreme Court liberal won't run again, shaking up race for control

Source: Washington Post

MADISON, Wis. — The longest-serving member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s 4-3 liberal majority announced Thursday she would not run for reelection next spring, shaking up a consequential race in a swing state and improving the odds that conservatives can retake the control they lost last year.

Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who has served on the court since 1995, told The Washington Post ahead of her announcement that she is confident someone who shares her judicial philosophy can replace her after she completes her term. But her unexpected retirement sets the stage for an intense race for control of the court two years after candidates, political parties and interest groups spent more than $50 million in the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history.

In recent years, the court voted 4-3 to confirm Joe Biden’s win in the state’s last presidential election, ban ballot drop boxes and end a Republican gerrymander of the state legislature. Soon, by a similar margin, it could determine whether abortion remains legal in one of the country’s most closely watched presidential battlegrounds.

Bradley, 73, spent most of the past decade and a half writing dissents for a court run by conservatives. That majority upheld limits on labor unions, approved a voter ID law, limited the powers of the state’s Democratic governor and shut down a campaign finance investigation of Republicans.


Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/11/wisconsin-supreme-court-justice-reelection/

Tradwives, stay-at-home girlfriends and the dream of feminine leisure