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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Open Thread: Sen. Sinema, Queen of the Pyramid Schemers

Late Night Open Thread: Sen. Sinema, Queen of the Pyramid Schemers

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… The political action committee associated with Alticor, the parent entity of the health, home and beauty company Amway, gave $2,500 to the Arizona Democrat in late June, as did the PAC for Isagenix, an Arizona-based business that sells nutrition, wellness and personal care products. Nu Skin Enterprises, another personal care and beauty company, gave $2,500 that month, as did USANA Health Sciences, which sells similar products. In April, Richard Raymond Rogers, the executive chair of Mary Kay, a Texas-based cosmetics company, gave $2,500 to Sinema. Herbalife, which also sells nutritional supplements, gave $2,500 in July. All are affiliated with the Direct Selling Association, a trade group that promotes multilevel marketing.

The donations don’t track usual political alliances. Alticor is owned by the DeVos family, one of the biggest funders of Republicans and conservative causes. And, on some occasions, they appear to be rare forays into national politics for the donor entities. Sinema is the only federal lawmaker that the Isagenix and Nu Skin PACs have given to this year. Utah-based USANA Health Sciences has only given to home state Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), home state Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah), a Republican PAC and Sinema…

Sinema does have a personal connection to the industry: Her own mother was a direct seller. But the bigger incentive for multilevel marketers to give to Sinema appears to be her position on labor organizing. The companies face an existential threat from the pro-union Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would make it more difficult to classify workers as independent contractors. According to one industry source, the bill has become the driving issue since Democrats took control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. And Sinema is one of — if not the only — Democratic allies in the Senate.

Unions have pushed for some of the Democrats’ priorities in the PRO Act to be inserted into the reconciliation bill, but for the most part, the marquee labor bill has languished before Congress since passing the House in March. Sinema’s fellow Senate moderate, Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), has already signed onto the legislation, leaving just three Senate Democrats who have yet to co-sponsor the bill — Sinema, Mark Warner of Virginia and Mark Kelly of Arizona. Warner signaled his support for the PRO Act at a rally in Virginia on Monday. And Kelly has said he supports the bill broadly speaking, though he wants to see some changes, including the provision related to independent contractors, according to a Democratic Hill aide…

The threat of a crackdown from the federal government, however, has become more acute in recent years. There’s been renewed criticism of the industry in pop culture, like a recent and heavily critical docu-series on the fashion company LuLaRoe. In 2016, Herbalife — one of the Sinema donors — agreed to a $200 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for deceiving customers about their ability to make a profit from their business. Biden’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra advocated for “restitution and penalties against multilevel marketers” when he previously served as an FTC commissioner.

The industry knows that it can only survive through its relationships in Washington, D.C., Keep noted.

“An industry that is literally built on contract employees — which is what the MLM is — would never want to be considered to be, to entertain the notion of having those independent representatives as employees,” he said. Of the industry’s support for Sinema, he added: “I think that she’s demonstrated a flexibility that they think they can capitalize on.”

Amway’s been notorious for decades; the DeVos family are ‘Christian Reformed‘ believers, i.e., Calvinists. But a bunch of the newer MLM mega-businesses — including, I’d bet, the one Sinema’s mom is involved with — seem to be Mormon-based and Mormon-intensive. I’m getting the impression, more and more, that Sinema’s Mormon upbringing may have influenced her thinking just as much as my Irish-Catholic upbringing imbued me with a particular form of Jansenism. We may no longer be ‘of the Church’ in which we were raised, but it’s really really hard to avoid letting those early lessons control your thinking, even when you can see how much harm it’s doing…

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    Craig

    I don’t understand people’s confusion over Sinemas motivation. She’s just a corrupt politician looking for money. that’s it.

  2. 2.

    sstarr

    Multi-Level Marketing companies, Vitamin companies and Nutritional Supplement companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on Congress people in order to stay free from regulation.

  3. 3.

    HumboldtBlue

    but it’s really really hard to avoid letting those early lessons control your thinking, even when you can see how much harm it’s doing…

    Unless you’re actively supporting the church, this is a bad comparison. Sinema — and those close to her — are getting paid and that’s what controls her thinking. Religious mores are stretchier than a well tossed pizza dough.

  4. 4.

    trollhattan

    If it turns out Sinema is Mormon it will explain a hell of a lot. [MLM = Mormons losing money]

  5. 5.

    Mart

    @sstarr: Pyramid Schemes are illegal in Canada. Liberal radio talking head said we should buy Sinema and Manchin’s vote with small donor money stuffing more money into their pockets than the big money folks. Joking, but makes one wonder if it would work.

  6. 6.

    trollhattan

    Oh, this is just fucking great.

    The racists next door: Inside a California church that preaches a whites-only gospel

    [Texas, they’re not sending their best]

    Stephen McNallen’s path to founding a racist, whites-only church now headquartered in the foothills north of Sacramento started with fantasy novels and, eventually, found a measure of infamy through the discovery of an ancient skeleton.  McNallen, the 73-year-old founder of the Asatru Folk Assembly, was an avid reader of sword-and-sorcery novels like “Conan the Barbarian” when he was in college in the late 1960s in Wichita Falls, Texas. One summer in a corner of a bookstore, he found something that would put him on the path to creating a U.S.-based church that worships Norse gods such as Thor and Odin and preaches a racial ideology so extreme the Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed it a hate group. The book by Edison Marshall was called “The Viking” — historical fiction that became the basis for a 1958 film starring Kirk Douglas. The story centers around the expansion of Christianity in Northern Europe and its violent challenge to pagan Viking traditions.

    “You had protagonists of both faiths contesting each other and interacting with each other,” McNallen said. “And by the time I finished that book, I knew which side I was on.” Nearly three decades later, McNallen would have a revelation after a nearly 9,000-year-old skeleton was discovered in a shallow stretch of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington. “Kennewick Man” fascinated anthropologists, who at first believed he could have been part of an undiscovered race of people with caucasoid features who traveled to North America prior to the ancestors of Native Americans.

    For McNallen, the bones proved that the white race — his “Folk” — had been in North America first and was wiped out by those who came later. Advances in DNA analysis proved McNallen wrong several years later, but that didn’t stop him from proselytizing that the white race is threatened with extinction. Asatru’s 700 members also are taught that mixed-race families “are contrary to the values” of the church and transgender people have “a tragic mental illness.” Homosexuals are banned from the church “for the safety and health of our children,” according to Matthew Flavel, Asatru’s “Alsherjargothi,” the equivalent of the church’s high priest.

    McNallen said he was at Charlottesville “as an individual, with no connection to any of the organizations which were there.”

    https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article255292666.html#storylink=cpy

    And that’s just science.

  7. 7.

    Yutsano

    It’s not just Sinema. Both Mike Lee and Willard get copious amounts of money from the MLM industry. It’s a huge business in Utah.

  9. 9.

    206inKY

    Welp, we found the thing that finally makes me hate Sinema. This is such a profoundly exploitative industry. I highly recommend the podcast The Dream on the history of MLM schemes.

  10. 10.

    Lacuna-Synecdoche

    Yutsano:

    It’s not just Sinema. Both Mike Lee and Willard get copious amounts of money from the MLM industry. It’s a huge business in Utah.

    That’s kind of the point though, isn’t it?

    I mean, at least there’s an argument that Republican Utah Senators Lee and R-Money are representing their constituents – wealthy Utah business interests.

    But what’s the case for a Democratic Arizona Senator protecting Utah MLM’s?​​

  11. 11.

    Major Major Major Major

    I forget who I saw say this, but I’ve been thinking about it lately. She used to be a “both parties are just corrupt corporate shills” type Green: perhaps it’s not a surprise that somebody who thinks politics is only that would behave this way.

  13. 13.

    Anne Laurie

    @trollhattan: If it turns out Sinema is Mormon it will explain a hell of a lot.

    Her Wikipedia page says she grew up Mormon (LDS).  It’s no secret in her district:

    … What makes Sinema an uncomfortable fit with the mainstream Mormon image is not merely her political party — there has always been a strong, if overshadowed, tradition of Mormon Democrats — but more her stance on gender and sexuality. Harry Reid, the Democrat Senate majority leader known for his sharp barbs at Republicans, was just as vocal about his Mormon faith as Romney and even spoke on the topic at BYU. But as a white, straight man, and not at the forefront of the fight for same-sex marriage, Reid still possessed a number of cultural markers that allowed him to pass safely in the Mormon community. Sinema, on the other hand, as a bisexual woman who fought strongly for LGBT liberties, could not maintain that connection.

    When I googled Sinema + Mormon, one of the first links was a Reddit thread by an ex-Mormon, wondering just how ‘ex’ Sinema actually was…

    I’m the last person to pretend there’s anything wrong with being LDS, or otherwise religious!  But growing up inside a particular religious philosophy tends to affect how you see the world, no matter how much your thinking evolves.

    As I understand it, the LDS church emphasizes that ‘believers’ are a persecuted minority, whose best recourse is to associate only with others who share the same faith.  People who do this will be rewarded, first in this life and later in the next.  So, even if Sinema has cut herself off from the daily practice of the LDS, this impression that righteous people will always be oppressed by the worldly may, just possibly, have something to do with her conviction that every Democrat but her is just wrong.

  15. 15.

    opiejeanne

    @HumboldtBlue: 
    I wanted to thank you for posting the Bach piece last night; it was very nice and the musicians were top notch. I was very impressed that they using period-correct instruments, and even period-correct bows, and I wanted to get my hands on one of those oboes to have a closer look at them.

  17. 17.

    HumboldtBlue

    So, even if Sinema has cut herself off from the daily practice of the LDS, this impression that righteous people will always be oppressed by the worldly may, just possibly, have something to do with her conviction that every Democrat but her is just wrong.

    And maybe she just gets paid. She was fine doing a Ted Lasso skit with Romney.

    You can go to the altar all day, she’s getting paid.

  19. 19.

    JWR

    I read the Politico story last night and so Googled “congressional MLM caucus” to see if Sinema had anything to do with them, and this 3 year old Reddit thread identifies Sinema as a member of the Direct Selling Association, (the MLM industry’s congressional caucus), but on this DSA site, (updated February 19, 2021), she’s nowhere to be found. So she was a member of the DSA until she wasn’t. Probably no matter. She’s raking in their moolah and looking after their interests.

  20. 20.

    Ten Bears

    I’ve been fifty-five years away from The Church ~ in my case the Holy Rolling Four Square Pentecostal Baptist Church of Jesus Christ Alive! in Pearblossom California* ~ and still routinely find myself asking “where did that canard came from and how it ended up in the here and now.” That’s what so insidious about it, can’t escape it, it’s the very language we use. Yeah, I make jokes about rolling on the floor babbling incoherently ~ been there, done that, all I got was a psychosis.

    I’ve looked for a long time to find a way to talk about religion in a language not rooted in religion.

    *And if you’re downright disgusted and just don’t give a damn, get a girl … with far-away eyes …

  21. 21.

    Baud

    Ok, I dislike Sinema too but that excerpt had no information about what Sinema is doing and the contribution amounts are tiny. And given that Warner and Kelly may oppose the bill and every Republican will oppose the bill, this just reads like a hit Politico piece on a favorite target of scorn.  I didn’t click for obvious reasons, so apologies if there’s actual information in the article.

  22. 22.

    Gvg

    @Baud: I agree. Those amounts are tiny. It doesn’t seem like a big enough amount to make her loyal to them.

    I dislike her so at first was inclined to believe the article, but now I am not so sure. Wait and see. Also if anyone is her constituent, perhaps start lobbying her on the whole package, labor rights being good and MLM being bad. It might take time to bring her around.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @Gvg:

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Saying Sinema will hurt us on this is a decent prediction.  I just hate being manipulated by a media that wants to play to our predispositions for clicks that have no substance.  That how Fox News viewers behave.

  28. 28.

    Kay

    Sinema’s donors are the same people who are donating to Republicans to take back the senate:

    Stan Hubbard, a Minnesota billionaire who since at least 2000 has regularly written six-figure checks to the RNC and who supported GOP presidential hopefuls like Scott Walker (before giving to a pro-Trump super-PAC) wrote Sinema a $2,900 check on Sept. 29. And both Jimmy Haslam, the owner of the Pilot truck stop chain and the NFL’s Cleveland Brown’s, and his wife Susan gave Sinema’s campaign $2,900 a piece on Septemeber 30. Haslam is a reliable GOP donor who has given at least $425,000 to the Senate Leadership Fund—a super-PAC set up by allies of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell to help the GOP take control of the Senate—as well as regular maximum donations to the GOP’s House and Senate party committees.
    Another recent Sinema donor who also has previously supported the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, is Marc Rowan, the billionaire CEO of private-equity giant Apollo. Rowan and his wife, Carolyn, both each wrote two $2,900 checks to Sinema’s campaign on September 29. Previously, Rowan has written $250,000 checks to the Senate Leadership Fund and to a secretive super-PAC that backed Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Rowan was also a major donor to Trump’s reelection efforts and personally lobbied the White House to loosen restrictions on certain COVID-19 programs to allow them to benefit Apollo.
    Anthony De Nicola, a private equity executive who previously wrote a six-figure check to the Senate Leadership Fund and made regular maximum donations to the GOP’s Senate party committee, donated $2,900 on September 30.

    There’s no way to deny it anymore- the Republican Party is propping up this Democratic Senator. They’re her backers.

    If she loses Emily’s List she won’t have any Democratic donors at all.

  29. 29.

    Kay

    Haslam is a reliable GOP donor who has given at least $425,000 to the Senate Leadership Fund—a super-PAC set up by allies of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell to help the GOP take control of the Senate—as well as regular maximum donations to the GOP’s House and Senate party committees.

    It’s such a bad deal for Democrats. Sinema gets $2900 from the same people who donate half a million to beat other Democrats. I say “other Democrats” but they’ll happily try tp replace her with a Republican, just as soon as she’s not longer useful to them.
    She’s a net loss.

  32. 32.

    mvr

    I had/have a friend who went in for Amway several decades ago. Went to a community college class on “entrepreneurship” and got hooked in by his instructor. It struck me as a cult. Also did a number on the friendship since I did not like it when my friends try to sell me stuff I don’t need in order to make money. Just could not listen to me anymore.

    The dormancy of the friendship is probably also somewhat my fault for not following up after several years to see if the tide had waned. Sometimes I’m lazy when I’m uncomfortable.

  33. 33.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Lacuna-Synecdoche:

    But what’s the case for a Democratic Arizona Senator protecting Utah MLM’s?​​

    There are quite a few Mormon’s in Arizona as well so it totally makes sense.

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