The members of the DeVos family are civic covenant breakers. That assertion will be loudly and strenuously denied and will anger many people who are supporters or admirers of the family because of the obvious acts of "charity" which the DeVoses have been seen to have bestowed on the public.
On a deep and fundamentally flawed level the DeVoses have worked ostentatiously to present a generous and giving persona to front for the public's acceptance of their nouveau riche lifestyle and as a softening of their aggression against local government, public schools, unions, reasonable taxation and the promotion of a cornucopia of other ideological precepts that are detrimental to the common good and un-civic.
More of the Essay Civic Covenant Breakers below...
Links to the "Doctrine of Dick DeVos" series:
Part 1:
The Doctrine of Dick DeVos
Part 2:
The DeVos Doctrine: Mission ala D. James Kennedy
Part 3:
The DeVos Doctrine: Wife Betsy DeVos Deliberately Gagged
Part 4:
The DeVos Doctrine: Tithes that Buy the Christian Right
Part 5: The DeVos Doctrine: Heritage Neo-Mackers' "Mandate for Michigan" (in process)
Recommended:
You don't know Dick (Metro Times)
Recommended:
Profile of Dick DeVos (Russ Bellant)
"Theodore Roosevelt warned a century ago of the subversive influence of money in politics. He said the central fact in his time was that big business had become so dominant it would chew up democracy and spit it out. The power of corporations, he said, had to be balanced with the interest of the general public. That warning was echoed by his cousin Franklin, who said a "government by organized money is as much to be feared as a government by organized mob." Both Roosevelts rose to that challenge in their day. But a hundred years later mighty corporations are once again the undisputed overlords of government."
- Bill Moyers in Austin, Texas, October 1, 2005
Essay continues...
The show projects that the DeVoses have laid the seed money to start were projects where the public contributed far more to the performance hall, the exhibition hall and other public projects than did the DeVoses. The idea of titling everything of civic prominence with rich family names, based on this kind of seed money, has grown ludicrous and obscene in provincial Grand Rapids.
This family's immense wealth has been used as a cudgel to coerce and punish those who are not in line with their social conservatism, quasi-Christian Nation notions (See The Doctrine of Dick DeVos Series: Mission ala D. James Kennedy and Tithes that Buy the Christian Right) and their Libertarian fantasies about a watered down, diluted, and anemically shrunken government and infrastructure. They're fabulously wealthy, and their mantra is predictable; fewer taxes, less government and decreased public service.
The hard facts are that Amway/DeVoses are predatory capitalists. Their wealth has been and is now being augmented by a pyramid system only barely legal, if that. Using a shrewd and crafty logic; they have -- since early on -- used their newly acquired influence and money to win friends and officials in high places. Thus enabled, they have moved forward even when convicted of massive international fraud and fined for violations of FTC regulations. This is because Amway/Alticor is rich enough to hire the most brilliant kinds of defense and attorneys, combined with political cover and clout, so as to fix any problem, should it arise.
Currently, Amway/Alticor is harvesting multi-billions in China and Asian markets by recruiting and operating in their notorious trademark style. This was made possible by congressional intervention, using friendly Republican leadership. Now Amway can enrich itself via virgin inductees--who won't initially realize what the system is designed to do to them. Amway continues to harvest the hopes and dreams of individuals by playing to their greed and desire to become rich and powerful (as the system has perennially promised the raw newcomers.)
The shame of it all is that the system called the "American Way" which it is clearly not.
Worldwide, great harm to the perception and respect given the hard work and ingenuity of generations of Americans-- honor and esteem built by workers and soldiers who have made the country what it is--is being done to our national reputation and image by the spread of this multilevel blight and the backlash it creates. Their business models are a failure.
Long ago there should have been, and there must still be, a day of reckoning coming for Amway's patent use of religion and psychological manipulation that is endemic to the Amway recruitment and expansion system.
Did Amway have insider information about the timing of the opening of the China market--which occurred within days of the stock buy back settlement--thus preventing the investors from receiving their rightful share of the profits?
Had not local GOP friendlies now on the Michigan Appeals Court have been able to cite the Bermuda off-shored registration and headquartering of Amway's Asian operations; hundreds of investors, many local, might have had a day in court to recover over one billion dollars they allege Amway wrongfully deprived them from recovering in a suspicious buyback scheme.
In the end tens of thousands of foreign individuals living in their native lands will eventually be burned over and abandoned in their efforts and finances which are contributed to a system that cannot and does not deliver consistently on a honest, functional business plan--one that is practical or sustainable. For over 90% of those who enthusiastically join up and attempt to make the Amway system work for them there is only failure.
As P.T. Barnum so accurately quipped in a bygone era, "A sucker is born everyday." The Amway system we are asked to honor and from which we expect noblesse oblige because of its enormous wealth and political power, has been built and sustained on plundering the hopes and dreams of thousands of unwitting suckers.
While the Amway organization by any other name may survive or morph into something all together different and even more genuinely businesslike and sustainable, it cannot deny its clouded origins.
Local citizens, who have seen this scheme develop, know people Amway has harmed, and have turned the other cheek to their plight. Some have chosen to ignore Amway's abuses in lieu of the "gifting" back, which Amway has done. Clearly Amway is far better know for its marketing methods and recruitment than it is for its products. Therefore, they are guilty of allowing an infectious aristocracy of power and elitism to corrupt and manipulate Michigan. The aggressive privatizing and tax starving of our governmental units--funded and promoted by Amway and its cohorts--is a death knell for sustainable community.
Rabbi James Rudin has said,
"A specter is haunting America, and it is not socialism and certainly not communism. It is the specter of Americans kneeling in submission to a particular interpretation of a religion that has become an ideology, an all-encompassing way of life. It is the specter of our nation ruled by the extreme Christian right, who would make the United States a 'Christian nation' where their version of God's law supersedes all human law -- including the Constitution."
To allow the DeVoses to dictate our social and moral standards through targeted legislation is an affront to our constitutional, hard won liberties. The DeVoses seem dedicated to the purpose of betraying the institutions they live under. Theirs is a betrayal of the spirit. Dick DeVos' ambitions go beyond words to those ideologies that strike at the heart of what it means to be a member of a community, a neighborhood, and a nation.
The acrimony has grown so bad of late, in the entire country, that even House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, a horary cultural warrior himself, was quoted as saying, "I wonder if, after this culture war is over that we are engaged in, an America will survive that will be worth fighting to defend."
That it's monetarily possible to build, construct, and to engineer a multi-million, self-funded campaign to put Dick DeVos Jr. in charge of Michigan government, enabling more of this civic covenant breaking to dominate and suppress the workers, the families, the public institutions and faculties is a damning commentary on our careless willingness to be led like sheep rather than be men and women of noble ideals.
On November 7th the citizens of Michigan will decide if Dick DeVos and his backers will continue on their path to national power. Michigan is but a whistle stop. Man the barricades the fight is here and now.