I don’t usually do topical stuff but this one is too good to pass up.
Minnesota’s current big scandal is the Tom Petters pyramid scam. A major player in the scandal was an ex-con, professional criminal, and evangelical preacher named Frank Vennes:
Janet Leck, 79, said she and her late husband met another Petters investor, Frank Vennes Jr., in the mid-1980s when they helped arrange religious retreats in prisons through a nonprofit entity called Charis Ministries. Vennes was in the Sandstone Federal Correctional Institution on money-laundering, drug and firearm charges at the time.
Vennes became an evangelist in prison and after he got out, steered unwitting investors to the Wayzata businessman. On his advice, investors, including faith-based organizations, put $1.2 billion into the hands of Petters and the company he controlled, Petters Co. Inc. For his work, Vennes, 52, allegedly collected commissions totaling $28 million, according to government documents.
Vennes traces his redemption to an interview with a Christian prison visitor who taught him gratitude:
That was more than a dozen years ago, and now Vennes’ story resembles that of Joseph, who was brought out of prison and placed in a position of influence. He now manages his own multi-million dollar company, financing accounts receivable. As the business prospered, he and his wife sought direction from God on where they should place the money He had entrusted to them. Faith Studies International was one of the answers. “I could put it in human terms,” says Vennes. “It’s an extremely effective ministry with verifiable results. They use the money wisely and efficiently. But what it really comes down to is following God’s leading—and He pointed us to Faith Studies.”
If you should care to support Frank Vennes’s work, Faith Studies International can be found here.
Watchdog report on Faith Studies International: Five Stars
Michelle Bachmann and Frank Vennes
Norm Coleman too (remember him?)
Trollblog 
November 13, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Hey, the Weblog gals, good xtians, might find that interesting.
You might expand on Evangelicalism, Emerto, ala Max Weber sort of speculations. I’m pretty convinced Calvinism unleashed demons across the world .
November 18, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Protestantism was in essence a fiduciary movement, JE. Weber suggests that as well (see his amusing discussion of Ben Franklin). No more of the otherworldly, catholic sort of reflective BS: with Luther and Calvin, Christ’s been drafted into the prussian army (tho’ yes the Reformer gallic–sort of Le Pen of 16th century). Then, given the turks advance into Hungary, sort of expected.
Luther in fact waffled on fighting the Turk for a few years; while he considered the Prophet “the first born of Satan” or something, he hated the papists nearly as much (and jews at times as well), and didn’t seem overly concerned with the siege of Vienna. He also applauded the execution of the anabaptists and the displaying of their heads on the gates of various Westphalia towns.
November 24, 2009 at 6:44 am
Emerson,
I read in a previous thread that you
are no longer posting at CT.
I have been reading CT for many years
and my impression was that although you
annoyed many people, you were actually
appreciated (by commenters and the lords
of the blog) there.
I have been reading your comments on CT, delong and Berube (I think) for many years.
I tend to think that you are better off
getting along (at least just the necessary) with people in other blogs like CT than engaging endlessly with the tedious and paranoid drivel of well-read trolls like Horatiox.
I rarely, if ever, post on the blogs I read. But I just wanted to say that it is a pity you are retreating to a little corner in the internetz. For what is worth: I enjoyed more your comments around other companies than the present.
November 24, 2009 at 12:21 pm
I still post at DeLong. I left Unfogged voluntarily and CT by invitation. The lords of the CT blog have always had mixed feelings about me but there was a tipping point about a month ago.
I find the liberal intelligentsia and Horatiox about equally annoying. Aministratiove liberalism, the multiuniversity, and the liberal consensus are invulnerable, and I could post on CT, etc., for another ten years without changing anyone’s mind. Their criticisms will always favor anti-popular politics and in-house solutions, and they are happy to devote themselves to a slowly retreating resistance to the right wing.
November 25, 2009 at 3:45 pm
In other words, Emo, be a good “Aministratiove liberal” (your words)and play nice, like Dylan, the CTsters, DeLong (mo’like Winston Churchill-lite), the unfogged par-tay peeps.
Dylan’s drivel suggests he’s probably another crypto-WASP or zionist-crat who doesn’t care for someone informing him that calvinism (if not most species of monotheism) should be read as a type of pathology. So you don’t care for Weber–your old mentor Ez “E-azy E” Pound (rather than, oh, Keynes or King Kong) knew the score on dat. In the Cantos EP placed Calvin down where the fevers grow (Hades, a possible world, as philosophasters say).
November 26, 2009 at 9:14 am
John, are you “Number 4” in Chris’ recent pissy meta thread? Do you read that post, as I do, as sour grapes at losing a debate? Maybe I’m biased, but otherwise it seems to come from nowhere.
I do find it possible to get through to the CT folks. Quiggan has conceded that he may have gone too far in blaming labor for the stagflation. A while back I got him to reconsider his position on the Pinochet prosecution. And Chris may not be happy about it, but I think he has been forced to see the problem with using “populism” as a pejorative. As far as dramatic changes to their entire world views, it is events that achieve that, not arguments.
November 26, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Yes, #4 here.
What the CT people dislike is my hijacking threads onto a different topic. I’ve been doing that for several years, and they’ve collectively had strongly mixed feelings about it, but more negative than positive.
Only recently have they, in effect, requested that I quit, with an implied threat of some sort of ban. I’ve never questioned site owners’ rights to delete and ban, and in fact have always recommended that they be more aggressive in their moderation. I won’t fight it. (They COULD have made me a posting member on condition that I not hijack, but what were the chances of that?)
Bertram wanted to have a nice mild talk about a specific event, and when I switched the thread to his use the word “populist” his specific topic got lost. I don’t think that he believes that he lost the debate, but in any case he didn’t want to talk about that.
It’s been a revelation to me in the last two years or so how anti-popular most liberals / social democrats are — I saw vivid warning signs as long as 20 years ago from Portland Oregon city government, but I wasn’t thinking about populism at that time. Most of them do affiliate weakly with some sort of socialism, but of the exper-administrator kind. What they oppose is going directly to the populace, unmediated by disciplined interest-group organizations, with an “emotional appeal” pitting the ordinary folk against the rich and powerful.
I’ve had some influence on Digby, I think, who now says “right populism” where before she’d just say “populism”. I’m working on Brad DeLong, who’s a stereotypical centrist Democrat but is much more curious and receptive to contrary ideas than others of that ilk. (Most recently:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/11/did-ezra-klein-just-say-that-tim-geithner-should-be-pitched-over-the-side.html#comments). He occasionally responds to me in a friendly way.
I’ll still post at Open Left from time to time, though I’m taking a break at the moment: http://openleft.com/userDiary.do?personId=9071. I can’t remember if you’ve been over there before.
November 26, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Chrichton is so incredibly full of shit that in the absence of other information, I’ll go in the other direction. Dyson seems like a bit of a narcissist too.
I neither despise the CT people nor disagree with them very much. I think that they’re impeded politically and to a considerable extent intellectualism by their professionalism, even-temperedness, and comfortable positions in life.
November 26, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Crichton is my example of a smart, very-well-educated, hard-working guy who produced only crap because of cheap ambition, conventional goals, and bad character. It’s possible to got through the present university system up to the MD-PhD level (in unrelated fields) and still be the sunstantive equivalent of a tabloid journalist.
November 26, 2009 at 6:27 pm
And I forgot to mention, an enormous ego.
November 26, 2009 at 6:54 pm
I’m glad and surprised that you feel you’re having success with Delong. I stopped hanging over there because he seemed to me more close-minded and rude towards dissenters than anyone at CT. Also he has been very active policing economics to keep anyone from straying to the left of Clintonomics. Maybe he’s improved lately, I don’t know.
November 26, 2009 at 7:04 pm
John, I don’t see in the thread you linked to above where Delong responded to you at all. Do you have an example where he seems to have shown some open-mindedness?
November 26, 2009 at 7:07 pm
I just happen to have gotten on his good side. I also don’t argue about econ as such any more, but about politics. He has an enormous political blind spot, like all neoliberals, Hofstadterians, and wonks.
“Blind spot” is too weak. Economics models bracket out state, society, flesh-and-blood human beings, and the physical environment, and you have to whack economists with 2x4s occasionally to remind them that such things exist. To them all non-market forms of organization are either defective forms of market organization (to be fixed sometime in the future) or else simple illusions of perception.
I’m not at all sure I’m getting through, but he doesn’t ban me and responds occasionally, and I do communicate with other commenters. No one at all supported Brad in his Geithner piece..
November 26, 2009 at 7:11 pm
He’s promoted me to the front page at least 3 times. He does read his comments. Whether he ever will change his mind I have no idea.
November 27, 2009 at 12:42 am
Yeah, I suppose you would get along better with Delong if you don’t talk economics. I don’t suppose he appreciates back talk from on that from people he does not regard as his peers. Unfortunately, economics has political implications.
November 27, 2009 at 11:07 am
But I do criticize him severely on politics. He really has a tin ear on politics. I hope that he’s learning.
His post defending Geithner didn’t get a single favorable response out of 20. He does read his comments and for whatever reason, he has an ear open to people who disagree with him.
The people he’s banned or deleted were as often right as left of him, and many were trolling, the way I trolled CT. I don’t troll DeLong, I stay on-topic, very seldom use insults, and don’t hijack threads.
November 28, 2009 at 6:08 am
Well maybe the lack of trolling, rather than the merits of Delong, is why you get along better there. Nonetheless, maybe I’ll give Delong another try.