Rob’s journalism looks fine to me.

The product is called Ephedra-Free Green, not Ephedrine-Free Green. Herbalife has also added a product called Total Control, which is Ephedra-Free.

I enjoy the dissenting opinions, though I disagree, because this is a great country and we all look at things with our own opinion-formed consciences.

Herbalife works for me and I sure am glad we don’t do signs anymore.

But, we are splitting hairs here. I spent some time trying to find out what the difference was. The FDA has issued one warning to cover both. Ephedra and Ephedrine both have the exact same nasty side effects, including heart attack, stroke, tachycardia, paranoid psychosis, depression, convulsions, coma, fever, vomiting, palpitations, hypertension, and respiratory depression.

I guess if I vomit while having convulsions, I’m bound to lose some weight.

so anything containing ephedra contains ephedrine.
anything ephedrine-free cannot contain ephedra.

If he wants to lose money building a website to portray his interests, and issues he’s concerned about include visual pollution, then let him.

172

Whoopsie, my mistake. In MLMs like Herbalife (and Amway) you don’t have friends: you have potential customers and distribution recruits.
It’s the recruits that make people rich, since the cheap vitamins “distributors” are trying to hawk are purchased through their upline, the guys who put up enough signs saying ‘WORK FROM HOME: $1200/WEEK PART-TIME’ to rope in fresh meat.

There is NO MONEY in multi-level marketing “home-based businesses,” at least not from selling the products to consumers. The heavy moolah only rolls in when you’re selling the products to the bottom of the MLM food chain, the ‘downline’: the ones trying to convince everyone they know their lives are incomplete without Cellular Nutrition® with Thermojetics®, N-R-G Tablets, and Thermojetics® Ultimate Green Program with Total Control™ program packs. (A great way to have a positive influence on aquaintances and co-workers: “Looks like you need to cut some weight; have I got a product for you!”)

Okay, so maybe Mr. Peterson has actually developed a downline. Commission checks now actually have three, maybe four digits on the left side of the decimal point. However, it’s my considered opinion that if the hours devoted to clawing a little further up the pyramid had been spent working a normal, ‘non-enterprenurial’ job, he would have more money to show for it.

Sure, people make shitloads of money from MLMs: They’re the ones who got in early, before every car in California began sporting “Lose Weight Now - Ask Me How!” bumper stickers. Hats off to ‘em; they’re living The American Dream… Which has never had much to do with choices of concience.

And - lest anyone assume this is an attack on H/L distributors or Mr. Peterson - you’re wrong. This is a head-smack, yes… One that will hopefully make would-be MLM millionaires sit still for a minute, take a couple of deep breaths, and ask themselves a few questions, and really think about the answers:

“Am I in more debt, or less, than I was before I began hawking Quixtar/HerbaLife/Amway[etc.]?”
“If this is part-time work, why am I so stressed out and tired?”
“In the past three months, have I had to choose between paying a bill and purchasing materials from my upline? And what was my decision?”

Like the Dead Kennedys said: “[Y]ou can get rich / But your boss gets richer off you.”

And lastly… I was never involved with any MLMs: The math didn’t work. The admittedly savage opinions I hold of MLMs are the result of research done on how the psychology of individuals is manipulated in controlled, cult and cult-like settings. MLMs, the big ones, hold the qualifications to be considered cult organizations, namely:
Critical inquiry is not tolerated.
Financial accountability for the highest echelons is murky or unavailable.
Anyone who leaves is a failure.
The organization is ALWAYS right.
Non-members who question or criticize the organization are trying to destroy the organization and/or the member.
The only way to succeed is the organization’s way: other methods that are attempted (or even suggested) are dismissed as certain to fail, blasphemies.

Mr. Peterson’s post, sadly, exhibits signs of a ‘True Believer.’ Obviously, Rob Cockerham is evil: he questioned the behaviors of the organization! He is part of a larger conspiracy to discredit and destroy the organization. May I quote and correct:

“I wonder where this Cockerham gets all the money to “slam” people about their home-based businesses.”
Web hosting, even for a big site like cockeyed.com, ain’t that much money a month: $30 at most.
“It takes some money to post all over google –”
Mr. Peterson is unclear on how search engines work. Cockeyed.com has no paid listings on Google.
“I wonder if he is reporting his annual income?”
Why would he do that? Oh, because he’s funded by a Conspiracy against the Organization. Silly me.
“It would be nice for someone to write an article about him and his “journalism” — ”
Several people already have written about Mr. Cockerham; you’re responding to an article about him, remember? Also, Mr. Cockerham doesn’t claim to be a journalist. He is a prankster, a webmaster, and he has an inquisitive mind. The cockeyed.com article which worked you into a tizzy was the result of him satisfying his own curiosity about ass-ugly signs appearing on telephone polls. It wouldn’t have mattered if the signs were the product of HerbaLife, Amway, Walgreens, Fat Vinnie’s Pizzeria, or the Republican National Committee: when he got his answers, he published ‘em.
“I find it insulting!”
You’re insulted easily, and inexplicably. Mr. Cockerham’s article reported on how a large corporation is indirectly responsible for junking up roadsides all over Sacramento, not how Paul Peterson is responsible for junking up roadsides… Are you?
“The website that he has constructed just shows what kind of crap this guy is involved in.”
Yeah. Boy, I hate it when people mount styrofoam chickens in malls, put up cryptic sidewalk signs, lampoon fast food ads, and calculate the number of ping-pong balls that will fit in a Chevy Blazer, then publish the results on their website. He must be some kinda godless commie.