Stacking the deck.

STANDING in front of cheering GOP delegates and directing his remarks to his fellow immigrants, Arnold Schwarzenegger stressed how Republicans admire ambition, encourage dreams and believe in the future. "If you work hard and if you play by the rules," exclaimed the California governor, "this country is truly open to you. You can achieve everything."

Those are nice words befitting last week's coronation, but in the real world, they don't exactly tell the whole story. Because the real world is studded with inequities that hard work and rule-playing just don't overcome.

How else to explain the goings-on at Hollinger International Inc., the Canadian media empire with lots of U.S. tentacles, where an internal investigation concluded that controlling shareholders Conrad Black and David Radler looted more than $400 million from the company in what was described as a "corporate kleptocracy." The investigation, which was headed by former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Richard Breedon, charged that both Black and Radler "made it their business to line their pockets at the expense of Hollinger almost every day, in almost every way they could devise."

There was the $42,870 tab at New York's La Grenouille restaurant; the $23 million to lease and operate aircraft used to fly to homes in Palm Beach, London, New York and Toronto; and the $390,000 to lease and repair luxury cars--all of it courtesy of Hollinger cash.

Little of this, it seems, was detected by a do-nothing board that included Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state; Robert Strauss, former ambassador to the Soviet Union; and Richard Perle, former chairman of a controversial Pentagon advisory board that helped influence the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. Oh, and Perle also received $5.4 million from the company through a nifty arrangement in which he profited from winning investments through an Internet division without having to pay out for bad investments that resulted in losses. Some might call it "Heads I win, tails you lose."

In its ironic response, the holding company controlled by Black and Radler said that Breedon has squandered $25 million of Hollinger's money in an inquiry that "persecuted and defamed the men and women who created the value they are now vandalizing." The statement also said there were lots of inaccuracies too numerous to mention.

There probably were some inaccuracies. I mean, $400 million is a lot of moolah to account for. Already, The Wall Street Journal ran a correction, noting that Black repaid Hollinger $90,000 that he had used to refurbish his Rolls.

But it's hard for Black to slink away from his wife's purchases of handbags, jogging attire and exercise equipment that somehow wound up on his corporate expense report. Black also expensed food, cell phones and other living expenses. All this and nepotism too: Hollinger paid Mrs. Black $1.1 million a year for a position that did not require her to do anything. And Radler, according to the report, insisted that her daughter Melissa be given a raise from $38,000 to $62,000 for a reporting position at the Jerusalem Post, one of Hollinger's properties.

"This story," the report notes, "is about how Hollinger was systematically manipulated and used by its controlling shareholders for their sole benefit."

It's the same litany of deceit, arrogance and obfuscation that unfolded at Enron, Tyco, Adelphia and HealthSouth. If Arnold Schwarzenegger ever took the time to examine the expense reports at these and other companies, would he still be insisting that hard work and rule-playing wins out in the end? Isn't it more likely that, Sarbanes-Oxley notwithstanding, wealth and privilege stack the deck in ways we would rather not talk about?

Mark Lacter is editor of the Business Journal.