'Corporatocracy' bashed at Regis

John Perkins, far-left author of the book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, came to Regis University this week to discuss topics ranging from what he calls a “corporatocracy” and greedy executives to remarkable accomplishments of the likes of Rosa Parks and Barack Obama and the importance of following your passions. Beyond the rhetorical flare of some of the core values that each and every one of us share, the topics John (as he insisted he be called) discussed, his approach to those subjects and his rhetoric raise questions given Regis’s status as an academic institution. Take a look at some of the things he said at this meeting, which was attended by roughly 450 people—so many that they overflowed into another room to watch a live stream:

“Many executives are like thieves, rapists and villains.” “Corporations are here to serve us, not a few executives who make sickening amounts of money.” “Milton Friedman was wrong” about giving executives “free rein and they’ll do the right thing.” “I don’t think the Founding Fathers envisioned strict borders.” And, of course, there is his argument that corporations have to pledge to be sustainable, just and serve common interests (whatever those are) in order to renew their charter.

Never mind the broad brush of the word “many” in that first sentence, or the fact that corporations are here to serve their shareholders, not us and not executives. Nor that Milton Friedman in fact argued that individuals should be granted free reign in a competitive marketplace to make the best of their lives—not just executives, but everyone.

We can also ignore the inaccuracies of his argument that the Founding Fathers did not intend to have strict borders. And that John made the statement that executives are making “sickening amounts of money” without defining what he means or answering a question to that effect.

Moreover, we can ignore the fact that the United States is operated under the rule of law—something called the “Constitution”—and nowhere is the government granted to right to alter the terms of an agreement—a company’s charter—simply because they want to impose a new set of values.

The issue at hand is not whether John Perkins was right or wrong in his analysis, or if his points were reasonable. The issue at hand is whether or not the approach of and the circumstances surrounding the speaker are appropriate.

Regis University is an academic institution. Students have a reasonable right to expect that a widely-publicized event would involve the dissemination of more than just feelings and emotions, but also facts upon which to base one’s opinions.

Many students were either required to watch or given extra credit to listen to a speaker arguing from a viewpoint that is, by any reasonable perspective, rather far to the left. In the case of the former, they had no choice; in the case of the latter, they had a choice, but it was a confined choice.

In the speech, Perkins presented a lot of arguments that could hold merit—if they were backed by facts and not pure conjecture. Take his statement that there is “no question” that less money spent on military and police spending results in less violence. “We know that,” he affirmed. But how do we know that? He gave no factual support for his claim.

One student told me it was a “rah rah” for Obama supporters and liberals—and she was right. The only time an alternative viewpoint was presented was when I stood and asked two questions, one of which was entirely passed over. Other than that, it was corporation-bashing, executive-bashing and so forth, on the whole.

That’s not to say that there was no value in what he said or good points that everyone can rally behind. For instance, Perkins is right: If you have an issue you’re passionate about, you have an obligation to stand up and do something about it; you cannot just sit idly by and expect others to bring about change. If closing down sweatshops is your issue, for instance, you better believe you should start sending letters to companies letting them know that you are boycotting their products until they change their ways. Alternatively, if supporting free market reforms to fix our healthcare crisis is your passion, go for that, too.

It is especially important, as he said, for young people to step out to the forefront and help shape their future, for the world we create now is the world we will inherit tomorrow. And indeed, as Rosa Parks proves, one person can rise from menial jobs in a restaurant to becoming a famous civil rights leader making a huge difference. President Obama also shows how, with hard work and determination, anyone can go from being entirely unrecognized to becoming President of the United States. These are indeed prime examples for the community.

But when students are required or incentivized to go and we are at an academic institution, don’t we have the right to expect that there will at the very least be facts to back up the assertions and help form judgments instead of having to read his book in order to get it? That other viewpoints will be encouraged and brought into the conversation, their questions answered? That, yes, the speaker may bring in strong viewpoints, but the dialogue qualities universities like Regis espouse are actually put into practice?

This is my disappointment and frustration. Regis University is an educational establishment. Education is about the acclamation of different facts and ideas in order to form independent judgments. But if no facts are given to support arguments and no variety of viewpoints exists, that mission is not accomplished.

Jimmy Sengenberger is a political science student at Regis University in Denver, a 2008 honors graduate of nearby Grandview High School, a national organizer for the Liberty Day movement, online radio host, and a columnist for the Villager suburban weekly. He is also College Liaison for BackboneAmerica.net, working through the Backbone Americans group on Facebook.

Off with their heads!

One of the hallmarks of revolution -- particularly of the socialist variety -- is retribution. My previous posts about the Obama brand of "retributive justice" have focused on the systemic penalties that his policies have on those who produce wealth. They are punitive -- bot not focused on specific individuals. Until now, I was of a mind that not even in Obama's "new America" would we be stringing up capitalists to cries of "off with their heads". I guess I've underestimated the zeal of the anti-business zealots in the Congress. Last week the House voted 328-93 to slap a 90% tax -- ex post facto -- on the bonuses of anyone at every bank receiving $5 billion in TARP money who earns more than $250,000 a year. A draft Senate version is even broader. This tax applies to income earned last year and under legally binding employment contracts. It is confiscatory and punitive to the extreme, and targets many talented and innocent executives who have been working in good faith and have had nothing at all to do with the melt down at their companies.

Keep in mind that many of the banks who took TARP money did so under pressure from Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson, who famously gathered them into a meeting room at Treasury and twisted arms until they took Federal bail out funds whether they wanted them or not. Now the government apparently has these companies where it wants them: having forced them to take the money, they are now confiscating the wealth created by the individuals who run them. Its a classic nationalization power play worthy of Hugo Chavez. And it is patently un-American and unconstitutional.

The The Wall Street Journal has an important lead editorial on this today -- I won't repeat it here. But this is a salient paragraph from it that is worth keeping in mind:

The financial system will suffer in particular, just when the Obama Administration is desperately seeking more private capital to ride out future losses. Facing such limits on the ability to reward talent, every bank CEO will try to pay off the TARP as soon as possible, whether or not this leaves the bank with a weaker capital base. Hedge funds and other investors that Treasury needs for its new Public-Private Investment Program, or for the Federal Reserve's TALF, will also be warier, if they'll play at all. Treasury may promise nothing punitive for these programs, but that's also what it said about the TARP.

America is quickly becoming a banana republic with executive fiat taking precedence over legal contracts. It will fully undermine our system -- and reflects the total lack of understanding that our government has about how incentives influence business and how markets work.

Viva la revolucion!!

With a whimper?

If anyone has ever wondered how our democracy will end, it is now clear. Step 1, flood the country with millions of illegal immigrants that all vote Democratic. For example, consider this. Succeeding steps and symptoms would include the following:

o Politically, the country would become a one party State. Elections would become the rubber stamp variety, the Saddam Hussein 90% approval sort, with no real opposition.

o The center-right middle class would be disenfranchised and impoverished with inexorable governmental wealth transference taxation.

o The "middle class" would disappear, to be replaced by one large "Government Dependent Class".

* With absolute electoral plurality, Presidential term limits can be removed. The young President Obama would be President for life. (This has been seriously proposed by a US Congressman, and Chavez in Venezuela recently won such a plebiscite.)

* The cult of personality surrounding President Obama would transform America into a Peronista-style quasi-dictatorship

* Continually manufactured "Crises" will mobilize and manipulate the people, making the Government all important and all-powerful. Non governmental organizations would fade, including private charities, private businesses, rotary clubs, and churches.

The unknown underlayment in this scenario is the role of Islam. Islam is waging Jihad against us to subjugate us to Shari'a Law. The Progressives are currently allied with them to pull down the center-right middle class, seemingly ignoring the Jihadist threat. Ideologically, there has to be an eventual mutual betrayal.

Partisan in chief

Everyone knows that Barack Obama went to Columbia and Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Law Review. And though he may lack real-world experience -- so-called "life experience" -- he certainly got a good education. Much was made during the campaign of Obama's thin resume and his lack of leadership experience. But in reality, Obama is like many in the Congress for whom government and public service is not a new phase of their career, it is their career. Obama didn't enter politics after a successful decade as a corporate lawyer, judge or businessman. Rather, he came to politics in his mid-30s after spending time working the voters and religious organizations of Chicago's South Side, all as part of a coordinated plan to be a politician. . His success -- becoming President of the United States at the tender age of 47 -- is unprecedented. But rest assured that if it had taken another 20 years, Barack Obama would have stayed in the United States Senate, preparing and planning for a run at the White House. So, you'll have to forgive Mr. Obama for not knowing much about the practical, business side of economics. You see, Barack has never had a proper job in a corporation, had to hire or fire anyone or had to look at his balance sheet and make tough choices about strategy. And, of course, that goes for a large percentage of those in the U.S. House and Senate -- many of whom have been there for decades and don't have much experience at running anything. Our political class is largely divorced from real work of the kind that most voters do, and of the kind of economic challenges that most voters face. For them it is either an academic or an ideological exercise: throwing money at the problem makes people feel like something is being done. And if you can satisfy your social engineering agenda and pet projects in the process, so much the better.

And so it is that the new President and the Democrats in Congres have pushed through a "stimulus" package that has goodies for every pet cause, from environmental protection to family planning. In the process it rolls back many of the practical effects of welfare reform, and makes what is only a down payment on massive new spending on health care, alternative energy and redistributive social programs. The left now has a blank check to redesign our social structure the way it "should be" -- on the basis of equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity. It isn't enough to provide a level playing field; vast sums will now be spent to ensure that those groups that have been historically oppressed now have the opportunity to get their just desserts. Call it justice, retributive style.

Retributive justice thus explains why decisions are now being made that defy both economic logic and historical precedence. Everyone knows that trying to stimulate the economy by using massive government spending while forcing banks to loan money to those who can't repay it is a recipe for an even greater disaster -- where the cure is worse than the underlying disease. And history shows clearly that past experience with this kind of centralized control of the modes of production and credit -- both in Japan in the 1990s and during our own Great Depression of the 1930s -- only makes things worse. Surely, those who now advise Barack Obama know these facts better than anyone.

And of course it doesn't matter, because what we are witnessing now is a march of hubris fueled principally by a desire to remake the nation in a kinder, gentler form, with social justice for all. Obama's choices on the stimulus package show clearly that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, he sees his role as partisan-in-chief rather than as a sober steward of a nation with serious, systemic problems. What Obama, Pelosi and the liberals in Congress have done now won't help the economy, but it will further the liberal political and social goals that they are so certain this country wants and needs. Eventually -- three, five or ten years down the road -- the economy will recover, albeit saddled with $ trillions in additional debt. But the social goals that this stimulus makes a down payment on will live on forever.

I wrote often of my fear of Barack Obama and the Democrats during the campaign. Turns out now that I wasn't nearly scared enough.

Seductive ideology takes over Jan. 20

The modern political persuasion called Liberalism can be compared to a beautiful seductive temptress. Alluring and destined to feel good for a while, but after a fling with this wily ideology one is left realizing that the intoxicating goddess was more like a cheap prostitute. This seducer of the mind and soul leaves one intellectually and spiritually bankrupt, and infected with a life long hatred of tradition, morals and values. The Liberal or Progressive ideology is definitely a feel good political philosophy. As the Bible so wisely warns us to resist the temptations of the flesh so must we resist the emotional temptation and seduction of modern Liberalism. Liberalism is full of great sounding ideas such as inclusion, acceptance, dignity, equality, social justice, human rights, and diversity. It seduces the naive and the idealist with its promise of compassion and tolerance. Who doesn't want peace, harmony and justice? Who doesn't want to feed the hungry and house the homeless? Such simple sentiments stir the hearts of the masses. It is a slippery slope philosophy that sucks one in with statements that are hard to disagree with but the Utopian dreams lead to social engineering, the nanny state and the abandonment of common sense.

Its taint touches every issue. It begins with calls for responsible pet ownership but soon leads to an animal bill of rights, pet guardianship and the picketing of KFC. Legitimate condemnation of brutal attacks based on hatred leads to homosexual high schools, same sex marriage, and gays in the military. Sympathy for the plight of migrant workers somehow compels us to accept and support the millions of illegal immigrants filling our schools, hospitals and prisons and the accompanying multi-billion dollar tax burden. The call for celebration of other cultures is revealed to be a mere mask fueling the fires of racial and class divisions. This dismantling of Western civilization continues unabated under the guise and tutelage of smiling bureaucrats.

Far too many people inclined to the conservative cause have been lured into compromise and eventual abandonment of their creed by the siren's song. It is a trap too easily sprung upon the unwary, uneducated and even the occasional weary veteran of the culture wars. Overwhelming in its pervasiveness and unending in its preaching it is a difficult ideology to stand against. For those in politics or the public eye it becomes even more difficult. Principle is abandoned for practicality. Cooperation becomes compromise. Public relations become political correctness. And the path of least resistance leads to surrender.

There is no doubt that behind the appealing bumper sticker slogans and picture perfect ideals there is a sinister agenda of massive government regulation and control of our daily lives. It is an agenda that shreds the moral fabric of society. One that seeks to destroy nationalism and sovereignty, promote internationalism and globalism, and carry out its own jihad on tradition, authority, respect and all things Christian. Its idea of acceptance leads to perversion, compassion to idiocy, inclusion to self-destruction. The shrill cry of tolerance, tolerance! no matter what the cost or how absurd it may be is the mating call of this ideological temptress. It demands the complete suspension of judgment with no regard for consequences or the damage caused to society.

The ultimate goal seems to be some Frankenstein cross between the state of California and the modern day public university. The enshrinement of the immoral, uncontrolled immigration and massive government giveaways of California combined with the speech codes, white guilt, political correctness, and ideological intolerance of college campuses. A frightening vision to say the least but one that is being successfully foisted upon the American people and wholeheartedly adopted by the elite of media, education, entertainment and popular culture. The seductress has been successful in her conquests but the ugliness that lies behind the mask of compassion is slowly being revealed.

We have seen the daily attacks upon the Boy Scouts, the Ten Commandments, the pledge of allegiance and heterosexual marriage. The institutions, symbols, and traditions that have been the heart of the American culture and society are under constant assault as they are dismantled one by one.

Environmentalism, humanism, feminism, anti-capitalism, multiculturalism and all the allied isms of the Left are among the greatest threats to the Republic since secession tore it apart in a bloody civil war. These ideologies are perhaps even more insidious for they seek not to separate themselves from the rest of us but seek to conquer us. Not just physically but emotionally, mentally, culturally and spiritually as well.

The Liberal ideologies that seek to destroy the dream and vision of the Founding Fathers deserve to be ruthlessly fought, exposed and defied at every opportunity. Beneath the thin veneer of civility lies an iron fisted philosophy that wages an unending war on all that is good, holy and moral. It is a topsy turvy view of the world where wrong is right, God is mocked, perversion is normal, infanticide is liberation and the profane is praised. They have had their chance to shape our culture. The results have been disastrous with the American family paying the price. There is still a glimmer of hope if the lies of the Left are exposed for what they really are and the American people choose to flee from the lair of the temptress.

David Huntwork is a conservative activist and freelance columnist in Northern Colorado, where he lives with his wife and three daughters. You may view his bio and past columns at http://DavidHuntwork.tripod.com.