Business Guru Wants Acid Test For Globalization

John Templeton Armstrong Forbes Says 'Globalization' Is Buzz Word For Slavery

by Winsip Custer CPW News Service

John Templeton Armstrong Forbes has made his fortunes in leading socially responsible businesses that thrive in a world where 20 cent per hour sweat shop workers make products that cost $5 and sell for $120.00 for a 2,400% rate of return.  So where does all that return go? "It returns to the fat cat executives at Walmart or Nike or IBM or GTE or GE....any company that is willing to turn a blind eye to unquestioned greed.    It certainly doesn't go to little Maria in Honduras, Li Wu in Singapore, Sung Tu in Vietnam, or fourteen year old Madrina in Indonesia.   Globalization is another name for slavery," said Forbes from his Spartan office on Main Street in Beaverton, Colorado.

Forbes who is only distantly related to the Forbes of New England and the Forbes Magazine publishers and to Sir John Templeton of the Templeton Fund, loves poking a thumb in his relatives eyes.  "I strong arm 'em", Forbes is fond of saying pointing to the Scottish tartan plaid of the Armstrong clan hanging on the wall in his fifteen by twenty foot office.  "You see, the Scots would have been enslaved by the Brits were it not for our brassy, ballsy, bullish gumption. Slavery sucks a big one," said Forbes.  "You have to give up the very things that make life worth living.....freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom from taxation without representation....and don't think that the nations that provide the muscle to enforce sweat shop conditions don't tax the holy crap out of their people on multiple levels."

I asked Forbes what the answer was to changing the tide of the globalization that produces cheap goods on the back of America's historic freedoms and the new slaves of the global industrialization model that he abhors.  "Simple," said Forbes.  "If I were President I'd hang the CEO of any company that produces goods from any nation that uses labor where these historic freedoms are disregarded. Period. I would move immediately to outlaw the traitors and hang them, perhaps dropping them from gallows intentionally built too high so that their heads pop off and I'd put the event on Youtube.  It's cruel and unusual punishment to allow them to run roughshod over the face of the earth.  Then I'd spread around the 2,400 percent rate of return across a broader segment of the workers without gutting the free market system and the financial incentives that we know work, but I'd run this godless greed out of town on a fat rail," said Forbes. 


I asked Forbes about the fact that many of the Founding Fathers were slave owners.  "I know that Washington, Jefferson and others owned slaves, but they also created the greatest freedom loving nation on earth.  Washington was moving quickly to free his slaves and Jefferson said "greater things will you do than I have done.'"


I told Mr. Forbes that I thought it was Jesus Christ that said that and not Jefferson.  "What difference does that make?  Jefferson believed that he could walk on water like Jesus, too, so why not follow his lead?" asked Forbes.


 "You'd all remember my Presidency as a turning point and if I got the job done of setting the course in one term I'd not run for a second.  That would be all I'd need. During that time I'd create a national back to work program that would employ twenty million new workers building a canal from the Mississippi River below Memphis, Tennessee to the Southern tip of California and create a new Imperial Valley in America's wastelands.  Global warming has effected the annual snow pack in the Rocky Mountains upon which farmers in the West have depended for over 100 years.  This would help bring back smaller farms and I'd fight for laws that prohibit food being used as a weapon, but for Christ's sake, we'd have to influence responsible population growth and management figures or wake up one day to find that we live in total chaos in spite of all our advances.  This means that certain religions must really step into the 21st Century and wake up!  Roman Catholic birth control policy is about as effective as their pedophelia restrictions.   A similar canal would be dug from the Columbia River in the Northwest to bring water to northern Nevada and Arizona," said Forbes who seemed to relish in the thought of reigniting America's penchant for greatness.

"I'd turn the wetlands of Louisiana into the nation's new algae biofuel region....hell, the fertilizer nitrate runoff from the heartland farms down the Mississippi has killed a huge swatch of that region anyway and I'd make New Orleans the new terminal for compressed natural gas tankers and make us oil free in twenty years.  Since Louisiana sits on top of the underground storage pockets for our strategic oil reserve we'd fill it with the new algae biofuel....a clear statement of our energy independence and a nip tuck of the Globalist's stranglehold on energy.  We'd reclaim regions along the Gulf Coast as natural habitat and protective zones.  We'll need a new group of high tech naturalists for that undertaking.  I'd put our teachers back to work shipping them to any nation willing to embrace our freedoms while learning from them the English language, computer and math and engineering skills.  Like it or not our penchant for freedom flew on the back of the English language and it is now the best vehicle for the continuation of freedom and progress," said Forbes.  "Do you think the world will trust that job to the Russian or Chinese language?  To French or Spanish? German?  Japanese? Aramaic?  Then I'd tell Mexico to cure its drug wars or we will...and I'd tell our drug lords....and believe me we have them....the very ones who currently pass laws to prohibit street sales profit from our drug policies...I tell them on both sides of the border to clean it up in two months or they'll drop, too. In the wings I'd have another twenty million of our people who'll join twenty million of theirs to get the job done and the streets of El Paso, Tijuana, Monterrey, Mexico City will all be safe for our children and elderly" said Forbes.