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“In Cod We Trust” Brought to Leftington by Canadian Henny Penny

by Mario, Guerilla Reporter

April 11, 2005

Last Saturday morning, in Leftington’s Hyatt Regency, Maude Barlow, a liberal activist from our socialist neighbor to the north, gave a lecture / panel discussion called “Water, The Commons and Corporate Globalization”. This was a FLOW / LUV inspired event officially sponsored by the UK Rockefeller Fellowship Program, a joint program of the UK Committee on Social Theory and the UK Appalachian Center. One could not enter the room without being asked to sign the convoluted and confusing LUV petition. This writer declined.

Wherever there is activity undermining our Constitutional Republic, you can rest assured that a Rockefeller tax-exempt foundation near you is involved, either behind the scenes with their deep pockets, or through overt sponsorship, as in this event. There have been many terrible things funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, not the least of which was pervert Professor Alfred Kinsey’s radical pedophile and homosexual “studies” of sex in the human animal. The Rockefeller Foundation funded the Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana bequeathing to future generations of Americans a radicalized agenda of sex education, relaxed sex crimes laws, and an exponentially growing epidemic of sexual diseases. Such nice civic minded people those Rockefellers!

Co-sponsoring this discussion was the Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice. This is the leftist group that organizes anti-war street protests among other things, from the Peoples Republic of Berea, a hotbed of communism, leftism, socialism, and general liberal naivete; redundant, I know.  Additionally, green activists from UK Environmental Studies and the very liberal Democracy Resource Center were co-sponsors. All that were missing was a homosexual lobby group, an anti-Christian lobby, and a pro-abortion lobby to round out the entire circle of leftist activism.

Herbert Reid, a FLOW participant from the UK Political Science Department, was the moderator and opened up with a short discussion of globalization being un-democratic. Reid is typical of liberals in that he actually said the Heraldo-Liberal [or Herald–Misleader, or Heretic-Liar], perpetrated a reporter-induced fallacy by using the language of the opponents in their editorials. He argued that the other side received lopsided coverage because the concept of equal time when using a “lopsided playing field” is not equal time. This is analogous to saying that the media were pro-Bush in the election of 2004, forgetting of course, Memogate, the attacks against the Swift Vets, Fahrenheit 9/11, and the Richard Clark performance. The Heraldo-Liberal has printed well over 100 pro-takeover editorials using outright lies, slant, omission, and slander, but Reid must think that actually helps this company that is under attack.

Maude Barlow outlined her talk around what she sees as the three points of the water discussion:  scarcity, equality, and water as a source of conflict and power. She told us we are using water faster than it can be replenished, lots of our water is now unusable due to pollution, and California has maybe 20 years of water left while New Mexico only has 10 years left to drink. Maude said that “anarchy” is coming in Asia, the developing world [third world] is hurting, and by 2025 two thirds of the world will have no access to clean water. She claimed that every 8 seconds a child dies of a water-born disease somewhere in the world. As a source of conflict and power, she said water is “blue gold” as oil was “black gold” this past century. I looked to the door to see if Henny Penny had entered the room and could not keep my eyes off the ceiling, expecting it to fall in at any moment. It is clear that “emotion” was the tool being used to pry potential “water activists” off their derrieres.

In what seemed a bit of a tangent and a stretch, Barlow cited Newfoundland’s lack of codfish as an example of what happens with irresponsible amoral corporate fishing trawlers. Change our money to say “In Cod We Trust”, and I think liberals will be happier. Of course, she did not mention how all that fish went to feed hungry people; it wasn’t wasted. So start some cod hatcheries in the Great White North and restock Newfoundland! It is obvious we need the fish.

Henny Penny Barlow argued that every dollar generated by the distribution of water should be put back into clean water, not sent to shareholders. She made the claim that in order to generate profit, quality will be sacrificed, even though Kentucky American Water is an award winning water delivery company; again, emotion over fact! Higher death rates in “for profit” hospitals in comparison to “non profit” hospitals was an example of her theory. Apparently, Barlow is not up to speed on what the pro-takeover folks have been saying, that if successful, they are going to use the money reaped for other purposes outside of water quality and distribution. I call that stealing.

Now, let me see… didn’t Social Security money end up in the general fund for our porkers in Congress to spend frivolously? Didn’t the Kentucky Lottery, marketed to the voters as dedicated to “education”, end up in the general fund also? Isn’t KAPT in trouble and insolvent in Kentucky? Doesn’t the LFUCG Council lose and then find millions and millions of budget dollars as a matter of routine? Did we or did we not just experience a property tax increase in Leftington in order to fund more empty buses running around town so our local liberals can market Leftington as a “progressive city”? Didn’t Leftington recently cut in half the garbage pickup effectively doubling the garbage tax on its citizens? My private garbage collection company has had the same rates for several years and comes twice a week whether or not I want them to, hmmm. No, don’t tell me that Leftington’s government can do a better job of delivering clean water than the Kentucky American Water Company, puh-lease!

The portion of Barlow’s speech that dealt with “water as a commodity” centered on the argument that water should be what she calls a “common”, a right. Now, I agree with that, but I know our government can’t deliver our water to us better than a private “for profit” company that has to answer to shareholders and run itself efficiently so it can put out an excellent product. One only has to look at our public safety departments, our streets and roads, our increasing tax load, our traffic congestion, our overcrowded postage stamp subdivisions, and our partisan city council to see that government does nothing better than the private sector. Stay out of my drinking water, thank you very much!

While the Canadian socialist was here to talk about the local water issue as it relates to the global picture as she sees it, she also gave us a little bio of her activism. It seems she is involved with globalization issues, world financial issues, public health, and is an activist against missile defense. I love how liberals think they are doing something good by making us more vulnerable to attack from the communists, rogue nations, and terrorists. She is quite proud that her mother country of Canada took a stand against the war in Iraq, President Bush, and the missile defense issue. Maude Barlow framed herself as the “Ralph Nader of Canada”.  Now this is a liberal’s liberal!

Besides our Canadian visitor, whose affiliations include but are not limited to The Blue Planet Project, a group fighting to keep water from becoming a commodity, and the International Forum on Globalization, which is basically about anti-corporate protesting, there were three other “panelists” present. Dressed in a very plain communist looking jacket, sporting a goatee, and looking suspiciously like Vladimir Lenin, Jack Herranen, a Rockefeller Fellow, was in from Bolivia where he makes his home as an American “citizen” married to a Bolivian woman. How worldly!

Herranen was present to speak on his experiences in Bolivia where allegedly there have been “water wars”. Jack proudly boasts of being “radicalized” and influenced by Ivan Illych, a writer challenging de-schooling society. He claims to have lived through a “water war” in La Paz near the university and describes himself as a folksinger in activism. Part of his talk centered around what he described as “dirty wars” in South America where the USA and European political forces worked to undermine the people’s autonomy. I could not help but wonder how this Lenin protégé justifies the lack of people’s “autonomy” within all the communist controlled governments now present in South America. Comrade Herranen finished up by telling us water is a “collective” responsibility and we must nurture and allow ourselves to be nurtured. How touchy feely! Communists do love that word “collective”; it is commie-speak for the slavery of socialism.

Next to speak was Wolfgang Natter from the UK departments of Geography and Social Theory, imagine that! Wolfgang has a German studies background which I assume gives him insight on the “amoral” RWE. His point was that corporations are responsible to stockholders, not communities, and water should be de-commoditized and locally controlled for the sake of “democracy”. Ahhh, I knew it wouldn’t be too far into the discussion before some liberal used that word, “democracy”. Before I left, I made sure that two of the LUV people who engaged me in conversation were informed that the USA is not a democracy, it is a Constitutional Republican form of government. I explained that in a democracy, the mob, or 51%, rules, but in a Constitutional Republic, we have a representative form of government, which is rule by law.  They just don’t get it, thanks to decades of government school indoctrination, a very important plank of the Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto.

Wolfgang gave his perspective on RWE, which was an outright attack against the company claiming corruption entanglements with the German government. Allegedly, the Christian Democratic Union in Germany has been taking kickbacks from RWE and enjoying their political donations since the 80s. I didn’t get the chance to tell him that this is America, not Germany! He also claimed the RWE stock is overvalued, an obvious attempt to undervalue Kentucky American Water Company for the condemnation backers. Warren Rogers, President of the Coalition Against a Government Takeover, later spoke and put to rest the argument that RWE stock is undervalued providing numbers to prove that RWE debt has dropped significantly in the past decade.

Next up to the plate was ErnieYanarella, a UK Political Science and UK Faculty Senate individual with confirmed involvement in FLOW, the group pushing for the communistic condemnation of the water utility so the city can steal it through the misuse of eminent domain law. This writer could have predicted that there would be UK sociologists and political scientists on this panel before he arrived. Those departments are the hotbeds of leftist activism on college campuses nationwide, with many communists, socialists, and outright anti-American activists tenured into them. 

Ernie gave a glowing reference for Maude’s book and asked her to “stay Canadian”, a reference to Maude’s expressed love for our Central Kentucky horse farms. I read this to mean the Ernie thinks being Canadian is somehow more “evolved” than being American, and he did claim to be a “student” of the Canadian political system. The folks in my row knew that to mean socialism, and understand the fallacies of such a governmental system, but Ernie is from the group of people that ignore fact and strive to remake America after the socialist societies of Europe and Canada, which are failing.

This “political scientist” also gave a glowing report on Chetan Talwakar, the paid FLOW activist who was caught stealing Councilman Jay McChord’s yard signs and soon resigned in disgrace, but continued to work behind the scenes for FLOW. Ernie praised FLOW and LUV for their “grass roots” and self-taught and well-fought battle against the evil “well-oiled” giant RWE, while pointing out that the “opponents” of condemnation, that’s Americans who still believe in free market capitalism, exploited the local police problem and used the deep pockets of developers to gain an edge. I don’t know why, but Ernie also said that FLOW was unsuccessful in courting the “African American” part of the community, as if African Americans cannot think for themselves and must act as a “group” to be used for the political agenda of these liberals.

He used the familiar “follow the money” argument in bashing the opponents of condemnation and said that FLOW made a tactical error by using the “vocabulary” of the opposition. Hellooo Ernie, the word “takeover” was put to use by the coalition because that is exactly what it was, an attempted takeover. The water company was not, and is not, for sale. To misuse eminent domain law, for the “common good” to steal a well run privately owned company that has nothing wrong with it, provides excellent service and product, and is not for sale, is not only a “takeover”, but it is downright un-American in nature. State ownership of the means of production is yet another plank of the Communist Manifesto Ernie, but I know that you know that.

Questions were fielded by the panel and Herbert Reid specifically asked for questions from the anti-takeover crowd. A gentleman from the LUV group had a fantastic question involving the tendency of the FLOW people to frame their discussions in such a way as to condemn private company involvement in water. I was shocked and pleased at the same time. Warren Rogers successfully killed the overvalued stock issue, brought up the overwhelming anti-condemnation attitude of the people of Peoria, IL who are going through a similar fight, and described the FLOW / LUV agenda as “marginalized”. One lady actually went into tears over that one, but the ‘piece de resistance’ was the question from Dawn Cloyd, a Coalition Volunteer.

Dawn opened stating that she also did not want to see anyone die of cholera from tainted water and moved into asking if any of the panelists were familiar with “The Tragedy of the Commons”. The panel appeared stumped. Dawn said that the cod in Newfoundland disappeared because nobody owned the cod. There was nobody to take responsibility for it and care for it as opposed to what an ownership arrangement offers. Then Dawn used Maude’s number, 85% of the water in the USA being municipally owned, to state that maybe it is the fact that there is “public” ownership instead of private ownership that caused this alleged crisis.

The free market economic system offering free market pricing would allow supply and demand to correct the problems associated with water we are experiencing due to the unbalanced price structure that municipal ownership produces, was Dawn’s next zinger. Then she went into exposing the fact that governments do not protect property rights. She called it a mistake to think that corporations and businesses don’t care; no company wants to kill its customers. I thought how that would not please the stockholders one bit.

Barlow argued that our governments have betrayed us by turning over the “commons” to private corporations, and I couldn’t help but notice the hypocrisy in that statement. Here is an avowed liberal socialist who is calling for a government takeover of a private company, yet she says that our governments have betrayed us. When did she suddenly gain her trust in government back, when she saw the opportunity to help make it bigger and more controlling over our lives?  I knew Dawn had her in a full nelson now.

One thing patently clear is that the FLOW / LUV side of the aisle is involved in emotion and baseless anti-corporate thinking and the anti-takeover side is about property rights, liberty and the free market capitalism that has produced the most prosperous nation the world has ever seen. I will put my chips in with the liberty side, thank you very much. Cod fish and chips anyone?

See www.notakeover.com for in depth discussions of all points in this contentious issue. See the “Heraldo-Liberal” for left leaning propaganda and libelous attacks against the water utility. See www.bipps.org for information related to “ownership society vs. plantation society” and see http://www.bipps.org/article.asp?ID=171. See Condemnation-Gate for an expose of the fraud involved with the city’s contracted appraisal of the Water Company.

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