Not only did it carry the masthead of The Australian (which I am 100% confident didn’t authorise the use of its logo on this affiliate ad), it introduced us to Kelly Richards. Hmm. Haven’t we met her before? You know, I feel like I know this work-from-home mum that makes a fortune in her spare time.
Determined to get to the bottom of it, I dug deep into my archives and voila! I HAVE met Kelly before. I feel like we’re old friends; our paths seem to cross all over the place.
Kelly Richards, bless her cotton socks, has made a fortune from EZ Money System, hot on the heels of the fortune she’s already amassed from the Home Income Cash System AND Automated Home Profits.
Boy, she gets around.
Of course, the big question is, IS EZ MONEY SYSTEM A SCAM?
“Well, it’s hard to say whether the EZ Money System is a scam, because at no point in time on their website do they even tell you what the EZ Money System is. Apparently, it’s one of a thousand systems that people are using to make money on the internet these days, but you don’t know if it is affiliate marketing, sales, multi level marketing, ad posting, mystery shopping, auction listing… The list goes on and on.
The EZ Money System is set up so that you must give TheSecretOnlineIncome.com your credit card number and allow them to charge you money before you can even see what their business is. Can you even imagine heading into an interview room and accepting a job from a company with no idea what your responsibilities will be, no idea what type of work you’ll be doing, or what your pay might be?”
Okay, so I’m gonna head out on a limb here.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, chances are excellent that it is, in fact, a duck. If it looks like a scam, smells like a scam, chances are excellent that it is, in fact, a scam.
Scamwatch, the Aussie government website, reckons that the only people that make money out of these schemes are the people actually running them. The suckers that hand over their credit cards, well, it’s a case of buyer-beware, ain’t it?
You should have read my blog before you parted with your money.
Naming your new bundle of joy Lucifer has been effectively banned by New Zealand’s names registrar after three parents had the odd request knocked back.
The country’s Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages has been cracking down on mums and dads getting too creative with their children’s names, ruling out punctuation marks such as . (Full Stop), * (Asterisk) and / (presumably “Slash”).
The list of 102 names rejected in the past two years includes Baron, Bishop, Duke, General, Judge, Justice, King, Knight and Mr, all deemed too similar to titles.
Messiah was also turned down, as was 89, and the single letters, C, D, I and T, although q and J were accepted after being queried.
One little girl was so traumatised by her name, Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii, that she had it legally changed at age nine.
At the time, the authority tried to defend its lax approach by pointing out it had rejected names including Fish and Chips, Yeah Detroit, Sex Fruit, Stallion and Twisty Poi, a staple food in Polynesian cuisine.
According to ABC News, the problems continue to pile up for the Pennsylvania woman who became the unwitting star of a viral video after she fell into a mall fountain while text messaging.
Cathy Cruz Marrero had a moment in the ABC News limelight before crashing back down to Earth in a court appearance for a status hearing on charges of five felony counts, including theft by deception and receiving stolen property.
The 49 year old was charged with using co-workers credit cards to rack up $5000 worth of purchases at Target and a jewellery store in October 2009. $1,055 of those purchases were dismissed from the case in previous hearings.
Anyone else remember Prof. Dr. David Bellamy? He is a rather eccentric botanist from the UK, who used to be on TV when I was a kid. Anyway, according to David Bellamy, CO2 (the stuff that Julia Gillard wants to tax the bejeezus out of) is plant food and the world would be a whole lot better if we had more of it. But I digress. We should head back to basics, not down my memory lane.
This whole Carbon Tax thing (which isn’t really a carbon tax, it’s really a Carbon Dioxide or, what the hell, Oxygen Tax) is proving to be a tough sell for our Jools.
Prior to the federal election back in October last year, with her political neck dangling precariously close to a noose, Gillard solemnly promises not to lob a Carbon Tax ugly upon Australians. If you are one of the very few who hasn’t seen the evidence that this really happened, watch this:
Some weeks later, with the federal election behind Australia (where Gillard gets rescued by a couple of country bumpkins who are now apparently detested by their electorates), and a deal has been struck with minority party The Greens, Gillard stands on a Canberra balcony to announce that Australia needs this Oxygen Tax. It’s was time to move forward. Apparently, and unbeknownst to most of them, Australians had voted for change.
It should come as no great surprise that parts of the media cried foul, accusing her of lying, taking votes in the election fraudulently. This led to stuff up Number 1 (and that’s only if you don’t consider the original announcement to be a stuff up).
Gillard responds to the outrage by accusing the media of playing semantics and word games.
The media counter punches by playing back her solemn pre-election promise, over and over, until everyone in Australia knew they’d been told a pre-election porker. Round one was decisively won by the “shock jocks”. Voters are pissed.
Realising that voters are angry (which is really not ideal when you rely on them for your job), Jools sets about making amends, which catapults her straight into stuff-up number 2.
“It’s the big polluters that will pay!” she declares. “Consumers will be compensated. Some might even be better off.” Swan and Combet, like well behaved choir boys, chime in to the chorus.
Meanwhile, the electorate, not believing a word that’s being uttered, thinks:
“Hmm, if you slug a great big new tax on companies, they will pass this onto me. If you compensate me, it won’t change my consumption of energy which is, apparently, the objective of all this pain anyway. You cannot be serious when you assert that I might actually PROFIT from this tax? If you’re gonna take my money, only to give it back, why not just leave it with me in the first place?”
Hard to argue with that logic.
Across town, the big polluters, employing plenty of union members, shrug their shoulders, smile sweetly and say: “That’s okay, you bring in this Oxygen Tax and we’ll just move our jobs overseas.”
Paul Howes (one of the now infamous faceless men) hops onto talkback radio and declares that not one union job is to be lost to this tax. Compensation for big polluters is now on the table and The Greens look set to start squealing like Banshees.
To add to the mounting woes, the UN comes along with its hands outstretched. “We’ll take a share too,” they tell Australia. “How much will you give them?” asks the Opposition.
Gillard offers up one of her now-famous non-answers.
By now this tax, which some commentators think is intended to balance the books by 2013, is starting to look like a useless money-go-round or some kind of socialist-driven wealth redistribution scheme. There doesn’t seem like they’ll be much left over to balance books once everyone has their compensation paid out. Across Australia, the Oxygen Tax concept is sinking faster than the Titanic.
To clear the mind and unwind, Jools makes a dash to the U.S. to rub shoulders with Obama Man. She nicks a speech from Bono, sobs a bit in Congress, rent-a-crowd stands up clapping, and she somewhat inelegantly kicks a Sherrin footy around the Oval Office.
Meanwhile, back in OZ, Newspoll is out there asking people what they think. It asks them what they think of the Oxygen Tax. Voters tell Newspoll the Oxygen tax sucks. Labor’s primary vote has sagged miserably to 30%, the lowest ever recorded for Federal Labor. The short answer is voters think it’s time for an election.
Oh you know I don’t listen to polls, she giggles when confronted.
Not classified an official stuff up, but definitely odd given that polls were the reason old Kevvie was knifed. Needing mates, Jools takes herself off to visit a friendly Aunty.
Tony Jones, who many would like to whack over the head with a wet piece of lettuce, is not exactly a hard-hitting journalist. Gillard makes a number of declarations – most notably the one relating to the end of coal-fired power stations in China.
They are shutting them down! she announces to her eager audience. Slight problem, though, China is shutting down older, smaller power stations and replacing them with much bigger ones, and it’s got them coming online at least one per week.
The inevitable claims of another porker abound. Another stuff up. Another loss of credibility. Australia’s first female PM who nobody believes anymore. Is this as good as the first female PM gets?
The Oxygen Tax is a fizzer. She should give away sales, it’s not her thing.
SO WHAT’S THE TRUTH?
Hey, glad you asked.
There are a few facts that everyne should know when it comes to making up their minds about the Oxygen Tax.
These are:
Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, is a block-buster drama from Hollywood. As such, it shouldn’t be confused with real life.
There is NO EVIDENCE to link CO2 to driving any increase in world temperatures. In fact, the evidence from ice core records and other data sources suggests that CO2 levels follow temperature increases although there is a lag of up to 800 years. In other words, if the world’s temperature goes up, 800 years later, CO2 levels may increase as a result.
This torpedos the basis of the alarmist argument which rests on the premise that CO2 drives up temperature. The primary culprit for the world’s temperature is most likely the sun (and clouds).
When people think “carbon” they think black sooty stuff. But what Jools wants to tax is Carbon Dioxide or CO2. CO2 is a naturally occurring, harmless trace atmospheric gas. Remember David Bellamy?
Carbon and Carbon Dioxide are not the same thing. The use of the word Carbon is misleading since Jools wants to tax CO2. We measure CO2 in parts per million, it’s that small. It’s the stuff you breathe out. It’s plant food. It’s not a pollutant nor is it an environmental villain. Fact is, we all need CO2 to live.
Those big cooling towers you see on TV spewing out stuff from chimneys? The stuff coming out is steam. Water vapor. Nothing polluting about that either.
The polar bears are doing just fine and Al Gore has bought waterfront California property, which rather suggests that sea rises will not be catastrophic, despite what his movie says.
Even if you shut down Australia altogether, stripped all living creatures so there was zero emissions (at least from us), it would result in a saving of 2mm sea rise and a drop in temperature of 0.0123°C.
In Australia, the Oxygen Tax has already killed off the following leaders – Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull and Brendan Nelson. My prediction is that Julia Gillard is next.
Australia produced 1.38% of global human emissions of CO2 in 2011. (EIA, 2011a)
Each year global emissions increase by twice Australia’s total annual output. (2.8%/year (EIA, 2011a). If we all emigrated and left a bare deserted continent, it puts off the warmer Armageddon by just six months.
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? If the answer is YOU (and you haven’t landed a berth on the game show), read on. Maybe this is something of interest.
The millionaires society is a private members-only online club. Through their website they provide 24/7 access to their Internet Marketing secrets, mentoring, video training, blueprints and 1 on 1 support that will allow members to build a successful online business from home.
Okay, being a millionaire these days isn’t such a big deal (anyone who owns a home in Melbourne is pretty much there given the cost of property), still being a millionaire is a whole lot better than being a pauper.
According to the founders of the website, its goal is to teach you every single thing you must know to build your own 6 or 7 figure online business. If you want to make money online, they say you should join the society before it’s too late. It looks to me that what they do is pretty much plain old common sense.
And I should admit it, I couldn’t resist writing about the Millionaires Society now that I know there is an enterprising MAVERICK lurking behind the scenes.
I stumbled across a webpage today that looks remarkably familiar to me (you can check it out here) because it was just a little while back that I posted a piece on the Home Income Cash System.
It’s been a busy time for Cathy Cruz Marrero, who has shot to YouTube fame for texting on her phone, while not actually paying any attention to where she is headed, before spectacularly tumbling head-first into a Pennsylvania shopping mall fountain.
According to the NY Daily Times, the 49-year-old took to the media this week to let everyone know how embarrassed she was, even though only a handful people even knew it was her before she appeared on TV. Now she’s thinking she’ll sue the mall, although it seems her past has created a bit of a fly in the ointment.
After attracting attention to herself by appearing on ABC’s morning show, Cathy (with lawyer in tow) spent the next few hours in court for a status hearing on charges of five felony counts, including theft by deception and receiving stolen property.
It turns out, Cathy is accused of using a credit card belonging to a work colleague, without permission of course, to rack up $5,000 worth of merchandise debt from Target and a jewelry shop.
According to ABC, Cathy has a colourful past, convicted for theft five times (four of them retail theft) in New York between 1997 and 1999, and once for retail theft in York County in 1999. She also received 12 months of probation after being convicted of a hit-and-run charge in 2009.
