Hostile Takeover

by

A Very Concerned UM Employee

 

 

By the time you read this, the game will likely be over. 

 

No, not the Missouri-Kansas football game.  Rather, the game that the Republican Right’s been running on the University of Missouri for the past 20-plus years. 

 

It's a game called "Hostile Takeover." 

 

Why do I hear Governor Blunt and his wealthy cronies chuckling with glee—chortling at the poor suckers who trusted them to protect the public welfare, rather than sell it off to the richest bidder?  

 

Because Blunt's appointment of Gary Forsee, his handpicked candidate, to be the University of Missouri’s President, culminates the GOP’s long campaign to seize control of––to corporatize and “Republicanize”—an institution which the Right distrusts, denigrates, and despises.

 

After two decades of financial starvation and political bludgeoning, Republicans judge that UM is ready for their final solution.  Forsee is the Blunt instrument chosen to subvert and transform the University into something that its godfather, Thomas Jefferson, would have found repugnant.

 

Who is Gary Forsee, anyway?  Does he have any qualifications for this post?

 

Well, he’s rich.  Very, very rich.  Rich enough to buy his own university (and maybe that’s what’s going on).  According to the Forbes website, Forsee made nearly $16 million last year as CEO of Sprint Nextel, the nation’s third largest telecommunications company, and that sum doesn’t include multi-million dollar “bonuses” and perks. 

 

Also, Forsee’s allegedly a “successful business leader.”  The Republican Right’s always argued that UM needs corporate-style leadership by a guy like Forsee, who will run UM on a “business model,” ensure its resources are used "wisely and efficiently," and thus win "public trust."

 

Wisely and efficiently?  Judging from recent experience, the Republicans’ “business model” is “crony capitalism”—think Enron, Halliburton, Jack Abramoff, today’s house-mortgage fiasco—rotten with corruption, scandal, incompetence, and total contempt for the public welfare. 

 

Public trust?  Last time I looked, polls showed the American people’s trust in corporate leadership was deservedly rock-bottom, just slightly above their respect for the Saudi Arabian royal family.

 

Sure, Republicans love to apply business terminology to UM.  In their jargon, top administrators are the University’s CEOs, the public are its shareholders, the students are its consumers, and the faculty and staff are (or should be) just employees to hire and fire at the CEO’s discretion. 

 

OK, let’s try that jargon out.  How does Forsee’s record as CEO predict his performance as UM President?

 

A few months ago, Sprint Nextel fired Forsee as its CEO.  Why?  Because under his brilliant stewardship, Sprint’s profits and share values tanked.  Stockholders and Wall Street alike screamed for his head on a platter.  Of course, Forsee got a $54 million severance package (yes, you read that right—$54 million), but he left Sprint belly-up and gasping for air.  So much for shareholder satisfaction! 

 

What about Sprint’s consumers?  During Forsee’s management they were in full-blown rebellion, deserting Sprint for its competitors by the hundreds of thousands, because of what they called overcharging and lousy service.

 

And Sprint’s ordinary employees?  Well, during Forsee’s tenure they got wage freezes, shrinking benefits, and vanishing pensions.  Yet despite their “sacrifices” for the “good of the company” (not to mention for Forsee’s outlandish salary), their jobs were out-sourced en masse to India.  Five thousand layoffs in just one day!  Heck of a job, Gary!  

 

Is this the “business model” in UM’s future?     

 

Probably.  Blunt's Republicans never saw a public institution they didn't want to "re-structure" or "privatize" out of recognition or existence, while milking all its assets for their and their corporate cronies' profit.

 

Think FEMA and about what happened to post-Katrina New Orleans's public schools, public hospitals, libraries, housing, etc.    

 

But, hey, it gets even worse!  Forsee's not only part of the GOP corporate kleptocracy.  He also helped the Bush Administration break the law and trash the Constitution.  

 

Sprint Nextel—and BellSouth (also formerly under Forsee’s benign guidance), along with other telecom giants—shredded both the legal code and the Bill of Rights by secretly giving millions of ordinary Americans’ phone records and other private data to the Bush’s now infamous warrant-less spying program. 

 

Scores of lawsuits by outraged citizens are now pending against Sprint and its CEOs.  Will UM's presidential mansion be big enough for Forsee to hide in?  Will his Right-wing political connections and contributions—including $1,000 to something called the “Texas Freedom Foundation” (I couldn’t make that up)—protect him from justice?    

 

Look, Forsee’s probably not a bad guy, at least by today’s standards of bloated plutocracy.  The fundamental problem here is not Forsee, personally.  It’s not even the Robber Baron culture of private greed and public theft that reigns in Washington and Jefferson City. 

 

The big but unspoken issue is that there are (and damn well should be) fundamental differences between public institutions, especially higher education institutions, and private corporations. 

 

UM’s job is to educate Missouri's public and enlighten its citizens.  Neither UM nor any other university can do that job unless its faculty can carry out their appointed mission.  Naïve though it may sound in this prostituted world, that mission is to study, teach, and publish what they discover and believe to be true—whether about science or business or social studies—and do so without fear of retribution from the powerful, who often depend on blatant untruths (Remember Saddam’s WMD?  Global warming denials?) to promote their interests.

 

Sprint Nextel and other corporations have a different job, and their CEOs have a different mission:  to make the biggest profits and the biggest executive salaries possible, by virtually any methods this side of jail.  If that means screwing consumers, employees, even shareholders (not to mention the environment or the long-term public good), so be it.  If that means disregarding the truth or outright lying—or conspiring with the government to break the law—so be it.    

 

As far as Blunt and many Republicans are concerned, however, these fundamental  differences don’t exist.  To them, higher education’s mission is meaningless or downright dangerous.  For them, considerations of power and profit are all-consuming. 

 

Fortunately, higher education, like the internet (source of the data for this article), remains one of the few American institutions not yet under complete GOP and corporate control.  Fortunately, Missouri still has a real university—not as good as it could be, more expensive for students than it should be, both thanks to GOP cuts in taxes for the rich and in funding for public services—but still reasonably true to its mission.

 

The economic hit-men have not yet won the game.  

 

I suspect that’s why the Republican Right still hates and attacks the University of Missouri.  And, unless we can stop their Hostile Takeover, I bet that’s what Gary Forsee will be appointed to change at UM forever.