The ESG Tide. Can It Be Stopped? Tom Sowell - My Hero.

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I challenge you to name any facet of American life, culture. institutions, social fabric that has not been attacked or is currently being attacked by radicals whose sole purpose is to transform America, as Obama told us, or change America in such manner that we no longer can be called a democracy or a republic.

Our freedoms are being eroded by an intrusive government that is supposed to protect and defend us and these sacred right's.

Various government agencies and our court system are being used in unintended ways, our education system is under attack, our religious institutions are being impugned, our corporations are being penetrated by cyber attacks and their proprietary industrial secrets are being stolen. Our military is being forced to adjust to social demands that have nothing to do with preparedness, our elections are being altered by a series of irrational demands. Law and order, the foundation of any peaceful society, is being challenged, our laws are not being enforced, our borders and national boundaries are being overrun and the list continues to reflect what I have written.

When bees swarm from all directions can much be done? Nothing seems sacred and life itself  has been degraded. Witness the school killings and random attacks taking place in Chicago and like cities where there are hundreds of rules and regulations being broken and unenforced because  police are incapable of stopping them due to their hands either tied or they feel intimidated and subject to serious penalties if they act and something unforeseen happens. 

These aforementioned attacks are not random. The recent fires and destruction of private and commercial buildings were torched and destroyed by paid thugs. There are battalions of programed rioters on call at a moment's notice and they arrive equipped with various weapons.

Glenn Beck has written a book (I am on the last chapter) naming three Investor Organizations who primarily control 25% of corporation stockholder voting which they use to enforce their "Wokeness" goals, ie. environmental, social and governance (ESG) in order to transform, control and direct world order.

Their demands are causing corporations, throughout the world, to snap to attention as they embrace these ESG's and it is happening. I daresay, most of my memo readers are totally unaware of these changes that will impact/control their lives, infringe upon their freedoms as big government subsumes their rights and directs their behaviour.

Behind the ESG craze are elites members of The Davos Crowd, The Kerry's, Gore's  and AOC's of this world as well as the Silicon Social Media billionaires.

Stay tuned and watch the ESG tide grow.

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Republicans Can Stop ESG Political Bias

The progressive left is using it to advance goals it could never hope to achieve at the ballot box.

By Mike Pence

I’m old enough to remember when liberals accused big business of consistently being on the side of Republicans. But in 2022 the woke left is poised to conquer corporate America and has set in motion a strategy to enforce their radical environmental and social agenda on publicly traded corporations.

A sudden abundance of liberal shareholders isn’t what’s driving this new trend of woke capitalism, and it certainly isn’t a reflection of consumer demand. Rather, the shift is entirely manufactured by a handful of very large and powerful Wall Street financiers promoting left-wing environmental, social and governance goals (ESG), and ignoring the interests of businesses and their employees.

ESG is a pernicious strategy, because it allows the left to accomplish what it could never hope to achieve at the ballot box or through competition in the free market. ESG empowers an unelected cabal of bureaucrats, regulators and activist investors to rate companies based on their adherence to left-wing values. Like the social credit scores issued by the Chinese Communist Party, a low ESG score can be devastating, making it virtually impossible for a company to raise capital—and that is exactly the point.

Last week the S&P 500 ESG Index delisted Tesla because it claimed the electric automaker lacked a “low carbon strategy.” In reality, the left is likely targeting Tesla CEO Elon Musk because of his commitment to free speech and his criticism of the Biden administration.

ESG scores are not only inherently political, as evidenced by the attack on Tesla and Mr. Musk, but they are completely subjective, and often hypocritical. In one particularly egregious example, Exxon Mobil and Chevron received less favorable ESG scores than Russian energy companies Gazprom and Rosneft, in which Vladimir Putin’s government is a major shareholder. What exactly is the left’s criteria when companies largely controlled by Mr. Putin’s murderous regime are ranked higher than American companies? It is revealing to note that proponents of ESG, despite their altruistic pretenses, almost never refuse to do business with China or Russia—two of the world’s biggest polluters with well-documented histories of human rights abuses.

Finance was always meant to facilitate investment and spur economic growth benefiting the entire country. But President Biden’s regulators are weaponizing the financial system to shut down economic growth in the energy industry in the name of environmental extremism. The president’s climate envoy, John Kerry, is pressuring banks to refuse to make loans to U.S. oil and gas companies, leaving them unable to increase production.

Activist investors in the private sector are all too happy to play along. In one recent instance, an insurgent shareholder, backed by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, forced Exxon Mobil to put three environmentalists on its corporate board.

Without government intervention, the ESG craze will only get worse. Mastercard recently announced that it will begin “linking employee compensation to ESG goals.” In other words, paychecks will no longer be based on an employee’s performance but on how well they conform to the woke political opinions of their supervisors.

In April, a California court struck down state laws requiring corporations to select board members based on race and sex, delivering a victory for the right to equal treatment guaranteed by the Constitution. States, cities and Congress should follow suit by adopting measures to discourage the use of ESG principles.

States with large employee pension funds invested in the stock market would be well advised to rein in massive investment firms like BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, which manage a combined $22 trillion in assets and are pushing a radical ESG agenda. State and local governments should entrust their money to managers that don’t work against their residents’ best interests. States should also pass model legislation developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council requiring government pension-fund managers to vote the state’s shares, rather than delegating that authority to huge Wall Street firms.

Most important, the next Republican president and GOP Congress should work to end the use of ESG principles nationwide. For the free market to thrive, it must be truly free.

Mr. Pence, a Republican, was U.S. vice president, 2017-21, and is the founder of Advancing American Freedom.

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Tom Sowell, always worth a repeat. SEMPER FI!

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THOMAS SOWELL  -  WHAT A CLEVER MAN

He's still alive at 87, but retired. So we don't hear much from him these days. Sowell grew up in Harlem, served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, Masters from Columbia, economist, social theorist, philosopher, author, Senior Fellow Hoover Institution, Stanford University, National Humanities Medal, Francis Boyer award.

MANY COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES ARE OPENLY OPPOSED TO PERMITTING MR. SOWELL TO LECTURE THEIR STUDENTS.