That title up there is the opening line of the song "Alien Youth" by the Christian rock group Skillet. Here's the chorus:
We're taking over the world
We're the Alien Youth
We're coming for your souls
We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna
Shake the world
We're the Alien Youth
We're taking over, over, over
Alien Youth
The audio engineer of that song and the former manager of Skillet is the nearly unknown Republican Jonathan Steitz, who has tried to brand himself during his current run for the Wisconsin Senate as a fiscally conservative, libertarian-type. He is challenging "Wisconsin 14" Senator Robert Wirch, whose distinguished record of public service is a mile long.
The problem for Steitz is that being an extreme fundamentalist doesn't play well when trying to win an election in Wisconsin's 22nd Senate District, which is why he answers every question with robotic, meaningless phrases about free markets and government spending and freedom and apple pie and the troops and doing it for the children. (He's probably kicking himself for admitting he would like to phase out Wisconsin's "Seniorcare" program, which provides low-cost prescriptions for senior citizens on fixed incomes.)
It also doesn't help that he has spent most of his waking hours in the last decade outside of Wisconsin, or that he's a Chicago lawyer who works for a firm that specializes in junk bonds.
He does sleep in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, though, so he is eligible to run for the state Senate. The special recall election in District 22 is August 16th.
Why do I bring up the Skillet connection? I have written previously about Steitz's aversion to anything or anyone non-Christian, so it's not just that he worked for Skillet. He believed in their mission. If they sang about their desire for worldwide Jesus domination, Jonathan Steitz was right there with them, making sure their battle cry was heard loud and clear. That's certainly his right as an American, just as it's mine to denounce the arrogance and religious bigotry that is implied in a call for worldwide Jesus domination.
So, who does he associate with now? I've already written about the racist blogger who donated to the Steitz campaign, and the large group of his donors associated with Living Light Church in Kenosha, Wisconsin - donors who also give freely to far-right, anti-abortion, anti-gay groups. Let's look at another donor to Steitz's campaign.
Marc Hujic is the owner of Prophet Asset Management. I am going to assume that the "Prophet" referred to is not Mr. Hujic, who has no ability to foresee the future. As a member of the Kenosha school board, he was instrumental in convincing the board to borrow 37.5 million dollars and invest it in high-risk debt instruments that eventually lost 90% of their value. Here is what he said to NPR about it in 2008:
"Regarding our transaction, um, unfortunately, what we thought we bought and what we bought are two separate things," he says. "And consequently we have an asset, an investment, that is valued at a great deal less than it was initially..."
"It was, you know for me personally, I would say a very embarrassing moment," he says. "I do this because I want to help my community. And on my watch we did something that turned out to be very foolish."
Hujik plays up the country bumpkin victim angle with NPR, but here is how Les Leopold described the school board meetings in his book "The Looting of America", when Hujik pressured the other members to approve the investments:
In this affair, several key board members helped the process along. On the Kenosha videotapes, for example, one board member, Mark Hujik, a hulking, ex–Wall Street player who now owns a Wisconsin financial advisory service, repeatedly sealed the deals. The self-confident Hujik never asked a question he didn’t already know the answer to. He made sure everyone knew that he knew the ins and outs of finance. At a key meeting before Kenosha signed on to its first deal, he stressed that the tens of millions in loans the board would be taking out were “moral” but not “contractual” obligations on behalf of the town. He implied that if things went wrong, the town really wasn’t on the hook for $28.5 million in loans. (Unfortunately, he didn’t mention that the town could still be successfully sued and see its debt ratings plummet if it defaulted on its “moral” financial obligations. And when a town’s debt rating falls, it faces higher interest rates for all its other borrowing needs, assuming anyone will ever lend to it again.)
Together, Hujik and Noack wooed the parties with intimate bankerspeak that conveyed confidence and expertise. They whispered financial sweet nothings: LIBOR rates, basis points, spreads, mark to market, cost of issuance, static and managed investments, arbitrage, tranches, letters of credit, collateralization ratios, and standby-note purchase agreements. After a while the board members started using the same language. Words like “million” and “dollars” disappeared from their vocabulary; instead they referred familiarly to “twenty” and “thirty” (as in thirty million dollars). Perhaps the slang and technical lingo distracted the officials from the risky nature of their financial decisions.
Perhaps Mr. Hujik should have sent his recent Steitz campaign donation to the school district instead.
You are known by the company you keep, and the companies that keep you. The campaign of Jonathan Steitz appeals to people like Mark Hujik.
The Steitz campaign appeals to people like donor Jeff Lauer, the Pleasant Prairie politician who conspired to try to close the local police department against the wishes of the village residents, and who rails against government spending but owns an assisted-living facility that has received government payments.
Steitz appeals to people like donor Raydene Edenhofer, founder of the Tea Party group 912 Patriots of SE Wisconsin. They have a song, too. It plays when you visit their home page. Here are some lyrics:
Wake up America
before it’s too late
They are trying to make you fade away
they are trying to kill your faith
In the name of greed they are selling your future
but there’s still hope for you America
now it’s the time to wake up and fight...
now it’s the time... or you will die
I can't tell if they are calling for worldwide Jesus domination, or warning against it.