CalPERS staff is seeking to complete a de facto board takeover through a set of measures presented outside the board last month. Not only are the substance of these proposed changes contrary to the US and California constitutions, as well as the law governing CalPERS and the fiduciary law, but in accordance with these proposals as the administrative equivalent of a coup d’état, the workers have advanced the plan in secret. method, designed to reduce the power of participants to protect their interests and prevent these programs.
Although the proposed changes are substantial and are intended to prevent oversight of CalPERS employees, they are still stricter than would be the case in a healthy organization. Despite the diligent efforts of a handful of board members who clearly support performance, the CalPERS board has already been drilled.1 Most of the complacent board is always in awe as the employees always do nothing in defiance of the position, such as refusing to provide documents and organizing things, even when they are asked in a public meeting by the president of the board and the chairmen of the committees; giving evasive and unreliable answers when asked simple questions; ignoring emails and usurping board members’ authority by entering their correspondence and even sending replies on their behalf without review or approval.2
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1 If you really must know, here’s how:
For the world’s worst examples of mind control, look no further than science fiction. Instead, go to a tropical country like Brazil, and go deep into the jungle. Find a leaf that hangs about 25 centimeters above the bush, no more and no less. Now look under it. If you’re lucky, you might find an ant clinging to the midrib of a leaf, jaws clenched for dear life. But this ant’s life is already over. And its body belongs to Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a zombie-ant fungus.
When a fungus attacks a carpenter ant, it grows in the insect’s body, depriving it of nutrients and hijacking its brain. Within a week, it forces the ant to leave the safety of its nest and climb a nearby plant stem. It places the ant at a height of 25 centimeters—a place with the right temperature and humidity for the fungus to grow. It forces the ant to permanently lock its poles into the leaf. Finally, it sends a long stalk to the ant’s head, growing into a ball full of spores. And because an ant usually climbs a leaf that hangs over the paths of its foraging colony, the spores of the fungus descend on its sisters below, causing them to deal with it.
2 Board member Margaret Brown stopped mail hijacking and identity theft in response without permission, but that proved to be an exception to the rule, as she had to publicly embarrass employees to get them to stop the abuse; private protests got nowhere.
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