Geo-centrism Debunked

Despite centuries of scientific progress, there are still people out there who believe that the Earth is the literal center of the Universe and that everything orbits our planet.

Never mind that they have no scientific basis on which to base these claims and no explanation regarding how this is supposed to work, aside from "God did it.", they persist in their ignorance in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Here are three (so far) videos posted on YouTube which give thorough explanations as to why Geo-centrism    is scientifically and mathematically impossible.

If you run into someone who actually believes that the Earth is the center of the Universe and everything rotates around it, please forward these videos to them. Depending on how deluded they are, it may or may not change their minds.

Duane Browning

PotentialProstitutes.com = Scam?

UPDATE: the website written about in this blog has been deleted.

I found out about http://potentialprostitutes.com/ from a YouTube video I saw today and I immediately saw that this could be a scam.

The website claims

Currently we operate based on the efforts from motivated members of their local community who have at one point or another come into contact with a potential prostitute online and feel they can be a threat. All of our offenders have been reported by local members who feel these offenders should be taught a lesson before their actions escalate.

The website offers a search engine where you can lookup "potential prostitutes" in your area or anywhere else in the world. Submissions to the site are anonymous, with no proof required that the person being reported is, in fact, a prostitute or a sex worker of any kind. In fact, there is real potential for stalkers to post their victims' names and phone numbers to the site as a form of harassment.

Aside from tormenting their victims, there is no financial motivation to add content to the site, as they do not pay money for submissions.

To have a "report" removed from the site, they require cash payment of $99.95 to be made to them before they will do so. Also, there is nothing to prevent them from simply posting it again in the future. As a result, a totally innocent person could spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to remove libelous posts from this site with absolutley no guarantee that the removal will be permanent.

Supposedly, this site's goal is to help people "protect themselves" from becoming victims of these "potential prostitutes. But, with no verification process to ensure that the people whose information is posted there are in fact prostitutes, it simply serves as a possible venue for harassment and libel against innocent victims.

The website's owners claim to have been sued many times by individuals who were angry over their faces, phone numbers and cities of residence being posted there, but has always won their cases, due to protections afforded them by the Communications Decency Act, which provides them immunity from liability since the posts on their site are from people using it, not the website creators themselves. However, a number of issues show that both of these claims might not be true.

As far as having been sued "on many occasions", the website itself was only recently created, back in October 2012, according to a WHOIS search of their domain. As also noted on the search, their IP address shows that the site is run from Europe, specifically Germany, and so it would be German law, not US law that governs liability. The site's administrative contact is a Swedish national, not an American.

Due to the European source of potentialprostitutes.com, they would be under the legal jurisdiction of courts in their respective countries and not entitled to the protections of US law.

Add to this the fact that they require payment to be made to remove any content, even if the person mentioned on their site is totally innocent of any crime. This can be construed as blackmail, which can have consequences for the site owners in civil and criminal courts of any country.

The site also uses pictures taken by individuals other than either the site owners or the users. Some of the pictures posted were taken either by the individuals named, professional photographers or by a government agency. That being the case, they could find themselves on the receiving end of legal action being taken against them under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, since photographs are the legal property of the person who took them.

Potentialprostitutes is owned by the same people who run http://predatorswatch.com and both sites claim to want to protect people from becoming crime victims. Their Facebook page has already been deleted, but they have a Twitter account available which has not been used siince October 2012.

One possibility of this site's possible future use will be as a save haven for prostitutes who want to advertise themselves, if Backpage is pressured to remove their Adult Services sections. Given that posting is free, while Backpage costs money to use, Potentialprostitutes would look very attractive to pimps eager to save every dollar they can.


Duane Browning

If You Hate the Westboro Baptist Church

First, you need to read about how the Westboro Baptist Church is really just a scam. Their whole angle isn't to hate-on gays and lesbians, it's to make money. They want to provoke people into doing something to them so that the WBC's lawyers can sue them for a lot of money.

Read this
WHY THE WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH IS A SCAM
http://kanewj.com/wbc/

Now that you know what they're really about, it's time to fuck their shit up:

There are several petitions on the White House Petitions website calling for WBC to be designated a hate group and/or for their tax-exempt status as a church to be revoked. Sign-up for an account on the site if you haven't already (it's free) and then sign all of the petitions. After you do that, share the links via Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+ or whatever social media you use.

Investigate the IRS Tax-Exempt Status of the Westboro Baptist Church
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/investigate-irs-tax-exempt-status-westboro-baptist-church/YrKbHYtV

Remove the Westboro Baptist Church's 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, and make it retroactive.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-westboro-baptist-churchs-501c3-tax-exempt-status-and-make-it-retroactive/kmYR4DTL

Revoke the tax exempt status of the Westboro Baptist Church & re-classify Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/revoke-tax-exempt-status-westboro-baptist-church-re-classify-westboro-baptist-church-hate-group/tNVz4V7Q

Legally recognize Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/legally-recognize-westboro-baptist-church-hate-group/DYf3pH2d

Define the Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group due to promoting animosity against differing cultural demographics.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/define-westboro-baptist-church-hate-group-due-promoting-animosity-against-differing-cultural/xHF0d3nq

Kansas Department of Revenue: Revoke tax exemption for the Westboro Baptist Church
http://www.change.org/petitions/kansas-department-of-revenue-remove-tax-exemption-for-the-westboro-baptist-church

Westboro Baptist Church: Lose their tax exempt status.
http://www.change.org/petitions/westboro-baptist-church-lose-their-tax-exempt-status

The Obama Administration: Legally recognize Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group.
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-obama-administration-legally-recognize-westboro-baptist-church-as-a-hate-group-2

The Obama Administration: Legally recognize Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-obama-administration-legally-recognize-westboro-baptist-church-as-a-hate-group

GoDaddy, Inc, Facebook, Inc, Twitter, Inc, InternetBS.net: Disable Social Networking and Domain accounts of Westboro Baptist Church
http://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/godaddy-inc-facebook-inc-twitter-inc-internetbs-net-disable-social-networking-and-domain-accounts-of-westboro-baptist-church

Connecticut Legislature: Please write and pass a bill that deters demonstrations at funerals.
http://www.change.org/petitions/connecticut-legislature-please-write-and-pass-a-bill-that-deters-demonstrations-at-funerals

Change or take down GODHATESFAGS.com!: Take down the domain or change it!
https://www.change.org/petitions/change-or-take-down-godhatesfags-com-take-down-the-domain-or-change-it



I'll add more as they become available.


Duane Browning

Things You Should Have While Night Cycling

When I worked at night, I needed to ride my bicycle to the job site and this meant riding along dark streets that weren't often as well-lit as I would have liked and alongside cars being driven by people who weren't as observant of cyclists as I would have preferred.

To increase my night-time visibility and hopefully decrease my chances of getting hit by a cars, I added a few things to my bike and gear (e.g. more reflectors, better lights, etc) and I must say that I survived every single ride without a scratch or a close-call.

I've decided to mention things that I use and some others I have found-out about since then.

Safety Shirts, Jackets and Vests

These are shirts that have an easily-seen color (e.g. lime/yellow or orange) to them and are equally as good for riding at night or in the day. You can buy them at Walmart or at a store that caters to construction crews, as they are often required wear for employees.

Rather than spend $10 for a shirt at Walmart, I looked around eBay and found someone selling them at a much cheaper price. There are actually quite a few people on eBay selling these shirts in safety yellow, but this is the one I bought mine from. The people at addicted2shirts didn't charge me for shipping, so it was a pretty good deal. They also have a website, which you can find here.

Another website you can visit to look for reflective raincoats and vests is uniforms4all and their selection of reflective rainwear can help keep you safe, yet not cost a lot of money. I've noticed that many people forego buying safety equipment simply because of cost. While money should be no object in regards to keeping you alive and out of the hospital, there's no sense in spending money when there's no need to do so. Visit their website here and their selection of reflective gear is found here. I compared a jacket I found at Sears for $75 with one uniforms4all is selling and quickly noticed that I could buy three jackets from uniforms4all for the price of one from Sears.

I will grant that these shirts, vests and jackets can look rather dorky when you're not riding your bike in pouring rain at night, but when you are, it's better to be safe than well-dressed. I just wish that Chrome sold a jacket like these, but one that would look totally cool while keeping me safe at the same time.

But, if you absolutely must be stylish and reflective at the same time, you can go to We Flashy and browse their selection of shirts and sweaters. The prices are a bit steep, but the shirts are fucking awesome!

Reflective Gloves

One would think that an item like this would have been more widely-available than they are. Seriously, most cycling gloves have a thin reflective strip on them like that little piece of cloth will actually help drivers see you  on the road. As Gorilla Monsoon would say: "Give me a break!".

But, persistence paid-off and I found a cycling glove that can actually get the job done and it's called GloGlove. These little wonder can either be worn alone or over your regular gloves, so you can stash a pair in your bag if you ever get caught out at night.

Flashing Pedals

Okay, these are really nice and they put out a lot of light to the front, sides and back. The lights flash white in the front, yellow in the middle and red towards the back. I'd prefer that they simply flashed yellow, but that's a personal preference. You can them buy at Walmart's online store, Amazon.com or from Pedalite's website.

Bike Brightz

I've blogged about these before, but they bear repeating. These lights are attached to your bike with zip ties and shine colored light downward, creating an aura of light under your bike that makes you very visible from long distances. I found-out about these from an ad they posted on Facebook and immediately bought a pair. Visit their website to check out the available colors, which they are adding new selections to all the time.

I even felt safer when I had these on my bike the first time I used them. Their biggest drawback is that they attach with zipties, which can be easily cut and they can be attractive to thieves. I simply bought a fistful of zipties at the store and would use some to attach them to my bike, cut them when I had to park and used another four to reattach them when I got back on the bike later. Granted, you'll use-up zip ties pretty quick, but you'll avoid having them stolen, which is always a good idea.

Reflective Stickers

I've bought the typical ones that you find at bike shops that are cut into all sorts of shapes, but I soon gave-up on these because they'd wear-out very quickly. Judging by the shapes offered, I suspect that these are aimed more for children than adults. Most cyclists I know don't have reflective stickers on their bikes, even though it would be a good idea to increase the reflective are of their bike frame.

I decided to find a type of sticker for my bike that gave good reflection and would be durable in all kinds of weather. I finally settled on reflective safety tape like the kind used by construction crews and you can see what I mean by going to this link. These tapes are meant to last a long time and can stand up to rain or cold weather and can take more punishment than the kiddie stickers. I didn't order mine online, I just went to Safety Systems here in Honolulu, which specializes in safety equipment and is the primary dealer in this city. I bought and 18 inch long piece for less than $5 and I cut it into strips that I placed on my frame, cranks and wheels. I added them to my cranks and wheels so that the reflective surface would move and attrat attention from drivers. I tend to prefer the yellow/amber color, since these are most often associated with road crews working and red could be mistaken for something else, like another car.

You don't have to have any artistic talent (I don't) to cut them into strips, which makes it easy for the average person. If there's a retailer in your area where you can buy some, pay them a visit. I also think that you can find them at Home Depot. A pretty popular brand is Reflexite Conspicuity Tape, which is widely available online from various retailers. It's often sold by the roll because it's primary customers are assumed to be work crews for companies or government agencies, but you can buy them by the strip. US Cargo Control sells them, if you can't find it locally.

If you want reflective stickers that look nice and you can have a stylish look to your bike as you ride at night, have a look at Ryde Safe Reflective Decals. These are very impressive and you have a good seletion of colors and shapes to let your imagination run wild.

I'll add more suggestions as I find them, so this blog is a work-in-progress.


Duane Browning

My Views of Critical Mass Honolulu

I first got involved in Critical Mass Honolulu (CMH) back in 2004, when I was working as a bike messenger with Crosstown Couriers. While bike messengers have been active with Critical Mass around the world, Honolulu messengers played no part in it whatsoever. I didn't understand why until I began to participate on my own.

At the time, despite Critical Mass supposedly being leaderless and functioning on consensus, the Honolulu ride was actually led by two people. For the sake of not pissing anyone off, I'll refer to them as Agent J and Agent K.

Agent K was a really low-key type of guy. Quiet and unassuming, people would often ask for his advice about how to conduct the ride and he would offer it, even though he made no demands that his suggestions be followed. People liked him and so did I.

Agent J, on the other hand, seemed to view the ride and CMH as extensions of himself. He left no one in the dark over how he felt that he was the "spiritual center" of Critical Mass Honolulu and fully expected his "opinions" to be taken as divine commands. Before every ride, he would make a speech on some bullshit that he wanted to talk about that day and only after he was finished rambling could the ride take place. If anyone started-out before the speech or while he was speaking, they would be told to stop and that they had to listen to Agent J until he was done.

This situation wasn't popular with most of the people attending and a lot of people stopped participating, rather than have to make obeisance to a self-appointed leader of a supposedly leaderless event. On the other hand, I made no secret of my opposition of Agent J's behavior and I began to oppose him quietly, then later openly. The beginning of the end of Agent J's attempt to establish a cult of personality for himself at the Mass was when several of my coworkers from Crosstown attended the ride with us. One of them had ridden with Critical Mass on the Mainland and he wanted to see firsthand how it was done here and he was not impressed.

On that ride, all of the Crosstown riders started riding out while Agent J was still speaking. When Agent J called us to stop and come back, we ignored him and kept going. At the sight of us brushing-off Agent J, almost everyone else hopped on their bikes and followed us out. Agent J was forced to stop his speech in the middle and come after us. During the ride, Agent J kept criticizing us for how the ride was being conducted: we were going too fast, we were going too slow, we were taking the wrong route, etc. This became so tiresome that the normally unassuming Agent K finally told him to quiet-down.

After that ride, Agent J was rather pissed-off and made an attempt to take back control, but it was to no avail. Someone had challenged his authority and gotten away with it. The ride would never be the same and he soon stopped attending in-person.

I started a website and discussion forum for Critical Mass Honolulu and Agent J would offer his opinions on why we should go back to doing it his way. But, by that time, no one was listening. Agent J started mouthing-off at me over how I was being disrespectful to him, but I brushed him off and so did everyone else. He soon stopped participating altogether.

But, CMH was already in a downward spiral of active participation. Those people who hadn't already quit soon had other things to do with their time, such as work or school and ultimately it came down to either just one or two people showing-up or no one would come at all. Even Agent K stopped coming.

One guy in particular - I'll call him Bob - was the ultimate True Believer for Critical Mass. He wanted to obstruct traffic, have confrontations with the police and be a general nuisance on the road. Usually, Agent K would keep him in-line, but after K's departure, there was nothing holding Bob back. There's no telling what would have happened if he had even taken some leadership role in CMH, but it ended in Honolulu before that could occur. Bob would write on the message board that he was doing One Man Critical Mass every month and inviting someone, anyone, to join him.

This was the state of Critical Mass Honolulu for quite a long time. I would offer my opinions on the message board about we should all take an active role in cycling activism. Some people felt that the Hawaii Bicycling League was too slow to accomplish much beyond taking whatever crumbs were offered by the City of Honolulu or State of Hawaii government officials. HBL was under the control of a director who held the post for quite awhile and it generally moved in whatever direction he felt that it should. Months and years would pass while HBL lobbied for a new bike path, while there was a notable lack of proper bike racks around the city. While HBL did make some things better for cyclists, some of us felt that more could and should be done. Issues like bicycle theft were almost never discussed in the pages of HBL's newsletter or on their website, for example.

I felt that CMH members should take an active role themselves as individuals in trying to make things better for all cyclists and some of my ideas included:

1. finding places around the city which needed bike racks installed, making a list and presenting it to the appropriate city department. The contact person was discovered and he seemed quite eager for the added input from cyclists.
2. reporting abandoned bikes locked to bike racks and other places around the city so that they could be removed and the space opened for people to lock their bikes. Long periods of time would go by while abandoned bikes remained locked to racks and were stripped of parts by thieves or simply left to rust where they were.
3. reporting potholes on city and state roads that posed a danger to cyclists. Potholes can be particularly dangerous, since they can cause a tire to blowout, damage a wheel or even knock someone off their bike. Reporting them and getting them fixed would make it safer to ride on our streets. The city and state departments that handle these things often repaired potholes within a few days of my reporting them. If all of us in CMH did the same, the roads would become much safer for everyone.

Well, Bob didn't like any of my ideas and remained fixated on the notion that the purpose of Critical Mass was the ride itself, not any kind of activism on behalf of cycling or cyclists. He seemed content to harangue the message board on the lack of parking for bikes around the city and all the potholes on the roads, but would not lift a finger to even try to fix these problems by contacting the people who could get it done. He was content to simply complain. Critical Mass Honolulu languished like this for quite some time.

Suddenly, one day Critical Mass Honolulu was back out on the road! A new face arrived on the scene (I'll call him Agent D) and he would take CMH into a new and far more dangerous direction.

Agent D's philosophy was that CMH wasn't confrontational enough. In his view, masses of people should take to the roads on the last Friday of every month and be as obnoxious as possible and this included blocking entire lanes of traffic on the busiest roads in town at the busiest time of day. Naturally, Bob loved this plan.

I rode with CMH once after Agent D took the lead and never again afterwards because I knew what the end result would be. Sadly, my predictions were proven true.

Angry drivers called HBL to complain about us. HBL promptly and justifiably disavowed us entirely. The website contained links to HBL and assorted bike shops, who all contacted me via email to remove their links from the site immediately, which was done.

People also called the police, who responded by assigning officers to escort CMH on the rides from start to finish. When word got to us that HPD was going to begin doing this, Bob (who was the loudest one calling for confrontation until this point) and all the other instigators of the trouble on the rides under Agent D, stopped attending the rides. Now that the police were there, their courage failed them. CMH declined in attendance again, until only one or two people would show-up and eventually no one was coming.

Before the crackdown, I warned Agent D of the likely result and asked him to rethink the direction he was taking it in, but he wouldn't listen. Critical Mass Honolulu would take the form he wanted it to and nothing else. The crackdown was the result and Agent D stopped participating, too.

The message board soon grew silent and I closed the website down, due to lack of traffic and the fact that no one was offering to post content or help with paying for the site.

Recently, someone restarted CMH for the third time. I don't know who it is, but people were naturally concerned over a possible return of the CMH behavior under Agent D, but I didn't hear of anything bad happening this time.

Looking back, I see Critical Mass Honolulu as being a wasted opportunity. So much good could have been done for cyclists and cycling in Honolulu, but it wasn't because a few people wanted to make CMH into their own image, rather than truly working for the benefit of cyclists, which is what Critical Mass was supposedly first created to do.

A lot of people participated in Critical Mass Honolulu in order to raise public awareness of cyclists' right to the road. Many of us have been hit by careless drivers who weren't paying attention while driving and some of us have even been assaulted for simply riding our bikes. There have been incidents when a cyclist was purposely hit by objects thrown at them by passing cars whose passengers thought that hitting a cyclist with trash was rather amusing. Things like that inspired a lot of us to participate in the first place.

However, when Critical Mass Honolulu got mired in personality conflicts and got taken over by troublemakers who were unconcerned over the real issues affecting cyclists, the whole thing degenerated into something that no one could really get behind without losing their credibility. People who got involved, started-off caring about CMH and wanting it to succeed and be something that inspired. Most of them quit when it became obvious that the people who elected themselves to be its leaders were more concerned about simply being in-charge than about accomplishing anything.


Duane Browning

Well, Ain't That Something?

Back in October, I wrote about a textspam message I received from some jerk advertising electronic cigarettes. I noticed recently that traffic to that entry had decreased quite a bit, so I got curious whether he had given-up or had simply reincarnated himself as an even lower form of life.

It was the latter. Actually, it seems that three of the links that were being distributed by text spam were no longer linking to the e-cigarette company site, but were redirecting instead to a different type of shitstain on the Internet.

Remember my post on Profit Masters Academy? The first time I talked about Angela Bussio? If not, here's the link.

Remember now? Okay. Well, while it seems that while Angela has apparently moved on to spamming Facebook, the people behind the "(insert name of city) Mom makes $8000/month" scheme have likewise moved-on to using another "author and TV personality", but this time, it's Michelle Boudreau.

The link they're redirecting  to is Home Job Tutorial, a website registered anonymously and whose servers are located in the Netherlands. This site serves as an advertisement for yet another "make lots of money working from home" scheme.

You may be asking yourself, "Who is Michelle Boudreau?" and that's a good question. The ad quotes "Melissa Johnson" as stating

I asked her about how she started her life-changing journey. "It was pretty easy", I saw an ad by Michelle Boudreau about a kit called Online Income Kit. I knew about Michelle Boudreau from TV and knew she was legit, and since they offered a "365 Day Money Back Guarantee" - I figured I really had nothing to lose. so I invested in the kit.

Well, I'll be hornswoggled! She remembers Michelle Boudreau from TV, so Michelle must have been so famous and involved in so many TV shows that the name just jumped out at her right?

No, not really. According to Michelle Boudreau's page at IMDB.COM, she really hasn't been on TV very much at all, beyond some bit parts. Of the three characters she played, two of them didn't even have a name! Here they are:

• Murphy Brown (TV series) in the 1996 episode "Underdogs" as the "Beautiful Girl"
• In the 1996 motion picture Executive Decision as the "Party Girl"
• Head of the Class (TV series) in the 1991 episode :The Last Waltz" as the character "Colleen"
• walk-on roles in other TV shows and movies.

Mostly, she appeared on TV commercials and lately, she's moved into making infomercials. I'll grant that she is an attractive woman, but I don't think she counts as a TV personality, by any stretch of the imagination.

What about as an author? Well, she does have one book to her credit, unlike Angela Bussio, whose sole writing credit is as one contributing author among dozens. Her book "Debt Rescue Reduce Debt Build Wealth" came out in 2008 and doesn't seem to have sold very well. In fact, the only review of her book on Amazon had this to say:

Purchase of this book entails a "free 30 day trial" and "information packed website" then automatic fees ($39.95)are charged to your Credit Card if not canceled within 30 days????
I would have preferred this book, if actual "tools and charts" were included in its pages, without having to access websites for the information and endure membership fees.
The principal of the book was lost in the fine print freebies! It seems contradictory to be promoting "Debt Relief" when charging a "Credit Card" fee for information that should be included in the paid for pages of the book! shabby sales techniques.

So, she wrote a book which told you to access websites, instead of giving you the information within its own pages? Plus, they're charging stuff to your credit card, thereby giving you more debt when you supposedly bought the book to help get yourself out of debt?

What the hell??!!?

PROTIP: Ms Boudreau might not want to tout herself as an author so much, considering that Amazon no longer offers the book for sale on its site and you can buy a new copy for as little as $1.55 or a used copy for 95 cents. It's actually cheaper to buy the hardcover than it is to buy the paperback, which is pretty sad.

So, now Michelle's doing this "work-at-home mom makes a pile of money" thing, huh? Fine, let's see what it's about.

The first thing I noticed is that, even though the initial ad was originally working for Profit Masters Academy, the company the ad is now advertising for is completely different. The new company is called "Paid To Place" which claims to pay you to place ads. The person behind all this  goes by the name "Kathy Garcia", which you are told is merely a pen name

In keeping with Kathy Garcia's wishes to safeguard her family's privacy the name Kathy Garcia is her pen name and Kathy's family images on this web site are stock photo's for obvious privacy reasons. Thank you for understanding. Just so you know, the results she has achieved are not what can generally be expected. (source)

While "Kathy's" pictures don't display on either of the two websites, we're told that the company uses stock photos anyway. Hey, it's not like they're hiding something, right? Right.

Oh, but it gets better. From the same Disclaimer page I quoted from

While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this system, Paid to Place will not assume any responsibility for errors, performance, consequential or any other damages, contradictory interpretation of the subject matter herein. Any slights of people or organizations are unintentional.

So, if something bad happens, we're not liable. But, there's more

Each individual's success depends on his or her background, commitment, desire and motivation. There is no guarantee that examples of past earnings can be duplicated in the future. We cannot guarantee your future results and predict your future success. There are some unknown risks in any new business venture that COULD AFFECT YOUR RESULTS.
The use of this information, products and our software should be based upon your own due diligence and you agree that Paid to Place "the company" is not liable for any success or failure of your business that is directly or indirectly related to the purchase and use of this information and products.

So, if you don't make any money: it's your fault, not theirs. But, they do give you fair warning

Anyone who buys a program about making money will not necessarily make money simply by purchasing the program. Who knows you may never make any money.

Nice to be told that upfront.

If you read the disclaimer itself, it seems to change back-and-forth between "Kathy Garcia" speaking and another person, which is rather creepy. It also refers to Kathy's blog, which we are never given the link to read for ourselves, as if it would be reliable in the first place.

Reading through the Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions is rather difficult. Not because I can't read English, but because of the spelling errors, improper grammar, lack of appropriate punctuation and changes in tenses, not to mention the weasel words and terminology used throughout. It would have been a good idea to have had an attorney write this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just copied and pasted the whole thing from another website in order to save money on legal fees.

So, the core question is: can you make money with Paid to Place or is it a scam?

The short answer is: It's most likely a scam. Aside from Paid To Place, there are two other sites - howireplacedmyjob.com and milliondollarincomes.com - which "Kathy Garcia" is mentioned as having made money with her system. Instead of actually showing Kathy Garcia in their ads, they put up either stock photos or Ms Boudreau. This shows that something fishy is going-on and that people shouldn't trust any of these websites to actually help them earn a reliable income. All of these sites (see lists below) are run by the same people out of Utah. So, it looks like these people have had to cast as wide a net as possible, unlike a legitimate company that typically only needs to have one.

For the long answer to that, read this excellent post, this posting and then read this forum discussion and this one.

If you're wondering if you can really make money by simply placing ads: the answer is probably not. Real companies that want to advertise themselves have much better and time-proven ways to do so. Aside from radio, television/cable and print ads, there is a growing trend of companies using social media (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) to spread the word. Larger companies often will employ their own staff of advertising professionals or will outsource the work to professional marketing and advertising agencies. They won't have a bunch of people off the street with no experience splashing their ads all over the place willy-nilly.

Now that I've given you more stuff to read, let's talk a bit about Michelle Boudreau some more. She's got a pretty good Internet presence with her own website http://michelleboudreau.net and http://www.MichelleBoudreau.TV, which redirects to the other site for some reason. A total of 32 people have clicked "Like" on her homepage, which should tell you how much traffic she must be getting. Her site offers a free download of Michelle's e-book “Michelle Boudreau’s Guide To Great Credit in a SNAP!”, for which I could find no impartial reviews online. I'm wondering if she decided to give this one away since nobody seems to want to buy her first book. She also runs http://healthyhabitsofwealthywomen.com which has pictures of happy people and piles of money, implying that you could be happy and rich, if you take her advice.

She's on Twitter, where she's got over eleven thousand followers, though she's only posted slightly over a hundred times and was recently active there. Her tweets seem to become less common in the middle of October with her posting once every couple of weeks since then.

Interesting Twitter handle: mbwealthguru. Really, Michelle? Really?

She can be found on Facebook, too. She's got over four thousand "Likes" there, to her credit.

Let's not forget her YouTube channel with 28 videos posted and over 700 subscribers. Her videos uploaded up to October 1st each have thousands of views each, but videos posted after that haven't come close to 100 views yet. In the description boxes of a couple of the videos, I saw this

Tune in to TheMichelleBoudreau on YouTube, become a subscriber and get the Healthy Habits of Successful People video free every week!

Well, she's not posting every week. She hasn't uploaded a video in over a month and the last one was a demo reel. For those who've never worked in broadcasting: a demo reel is what you send out to potential employers where you're looking for a job. She may be trying to expand her income base by auditioning to companies looking for people to appear in TV or Internet commercials. This could explain why she's endorsed Paid To Place or it could be as a means to expand her financial guru status, in the hopes of making her name and face more recognizable to potential financial clients.

According to an interview she did, she went through a nasty divorce some time ago (we're not told who her ex-husband is) and she found herself in dire financial straits. She then took charge of her own financial well-being and emerged on top of The Game.

Well, good for her.

But, a pretty face and good on-camera persona doesn't make you a financial guru, especially when you attach your name to an enterprise as questionable as Paid to Place. Seeing as her first book has been consigned to the Amazon dustbin, she's obviously not in high demand as any kind of financial authority. If she were, she'd have more than one book out there and wouldn't need to endorse  Paid to Place, at all.

This wouldn't be the first shady operation she's been associated with, having appeared in an infomercial for John Beck Amazing Profits, LLC. That company was the defendant in a civil case brought against them by the Federal Trade Commission back in 2009. Ms Boudreau was not a defendant in that case, but it is indicative of Ms Boudreau's character to pal-around with people like that. More information can be found about that case here.

Okay, so I've already mentioned the decidedly-negative reviews of the company and its rather amateurish website, along with its use of a relatively unknown Hollywood has-been. What about their homepage?

Well, a Google search reveals that their home site is paidtoplace.com and a WHOIS search reveals that the registrant is listed as Tiger Paw Media dba Paid to Place, which means that for all intents and purposes Tiger Paw Media is Paid To Place. They are supposedly one and the same.

But, when you do a WHOIS for Tiger Paw's website, it tells you that the website registrant is mdhmarketing, inc. Okay, so who are they?

Answer: they are a marketing company located in Miami, FL and their anonymously-registered website is located here. Note that Michelle used to work at a TV station in Florida.

However, when you go to paidtoplace.com, it takes you to trust.securedwebserver.com instead. That website is registered to John Saver in St George, UT.

John Saver is also listed as the registered owner of these websites

1.  7-ways.com (how to make money online)
2.  careertrendsreview.com (advertises for Paid To Place)
3.  consumermoneywatch.com (advertises for Paid To Place)
4.  hawaiian-sexy.com (domain parked)
5.  hawaiislim.com (weight loss product)
6.  ineedwomen.com (domain parked)
7.  maxdpl.com (lead generator service)
8.  securedwebserver.com (advertises for Paid To Place)
9.  simplyclickprint.com (how to make money from home)
10. vemmabuzz.com (domain parked)
11. verifiedhomeincome.com (advertises for Paid To Place)
12. milliondollarincomes.com (separate from Paid To Place but also featuring Michelle Boudreau. This business has received an F rating from the Better Business Bureau)

13.  paidtoplacescam.com (a website set-up warning people about websites that say Paid To Place is a scam)
14.  privatecashsecret.com (appears dead)
15.  shellydell.com (appears dead)
16. howireplacedmyjob.com (different make-money-from home scheme, also features Michelle Boudreau)


On the Terms of Service link I gave you earlier, here is the mailing address given by Paid To Place:

Tiger Paw Media dba Paid to Place™

765 N. Bluff St. Suite K2

St. George, UT 84770 

support@paidtoplace.com

Customer service: 1-866-439-6817 

Customer service - 9am-5pm, MST M-F

A Dutch website advertising for a Utah-based website that is owned by another Utah-based website, which itself is owned by a Florida company. Makes perfect sense.

Paid to Place even has a YouTube channel with a grand total of 38 subscribers, but only one video posted. The video is a rather amateurish one that unsurprisingly tells viewers how great the program is. The video has over 2000 views and more than 50 comments, which all tell him what a great video he's made. They look like canned comments and are all suspiciously posted within a very short time frame  which makes me doubt that they were posted by anyone other than Paid To Place members. None of this is really relevant, since the channel hasn't been accessed since August 23, 2012 and only on that day, nothing since. What is very interesting is that the channel page says that it's run out of the United Kingdom.

They even have a Twitter account. Here is their one and only tweet, sent out over a year ago

Paid to Place ‏@PaidtoPlace

Woo Hoo Paid to Place is on the air!

Way to go! My hat is off to you, sir.

To summarize, Paid to Place is just another get-rich-quick scheme where the only people guaranteed to make money are the people running it. Everyone else is basically on their own, with little if any chance of making any real income. They're using a little-known former Hollywood bit-player who doesn't even mention them on her own website or in her videos, which should tell you how little she really cares about Paid to Place. I'm guessing that Paid to Place bought  the right to use Michelle Boureau's name and image on their website, in order to try to get some Star Power to backup their product, for whatever good that will do.

My advice is to avoid these people like the flesh-eating virus.


Duane Browning

Angela Bussio's Latest Scheme

Remember the Profit Masters Academy that I wrote about before?

Well, things didn't seem to be working-out and they changed the name of it again. Now it's called the Home Profit System. I found several spam messages on Facebook advertising it, which read as follows:

My best friend's half-sister makes $65 hourly on the internet. She has been out of a job for 6 months but last month her paycheck with bonus was $21762 just working on the internet for a few hours. Read more here http:\\goo.gl\ILuMH

I went to the link offered and was sent to wiki60.com, an anonymously registered website. The fact that the website's owner doesn't want you to know their physical address should be an immediate red flag for you, if you weren't already skeptical,

Anegela Bussio is styled as an "Author and TV Personality" on the site, but I could find no listing for her at IMDB.com, which lists everyone involved in movies and television, including people who work behind the scenes. Angela doesn't bother to even tell you herself what TV shows she works on. She may be talking about her appearances in a grand total of six videos on the "At Home With Maria" channel on YouTube.

Angela Bussio's claim to be an author was already dealt with in the previous blog, so I need not go over that again. On her website, she claims to be a co-author of "How Did You Do That", but going to that book's Amazon page, you'll see that the book's author is Gail Kingsbury and Angela Bussio is not mentioned, even though other contributors' names are listed. By the way, while Angela claims that the book went to #1 in its first week after publication, there are a grand total of two reviews on Amazon, one is a five-star and the other gives it one star, so how great can it be? If it did go to the top spot, it didn't stay there for long.

Her Internet presence seems to be limited to her Twitter account (her last post was back in October), a page on Amazon as a book reviewer (she has no page listing her as an author), the home page of her company Real Stress Solutions and a YouTube channel where her each video has less than 100 views and the channel has only four subscribers despite the channel having been created over a year ago. I've got a YouTube channel and even I have more subscribers than she does, even though I seldom post videos there.  She also claims to be a host on the "Women's Information Network", but that show is apparently so successful that the website is offline. She also used to have another website for “5 Minute Stress Solution”, but that's offline, too.

That's quite a list of "accomplishments", Ms Bussio.

There are a number of videos on YouTube where Angela does appear, either being interviewed or where people debunk her claims about how she can help them make money. It seems that the only person making money is Angela Bussio.

I have no doubt that Home Profit System is as much a load of crap as Profit Masters Academy. If it wasn't, she wouldn't have to keep changing the name of it, would she?


Duane Browning