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Whoa! R.I.P. for ESG?

Posted on Wednesday, August 30, 2023
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by AMAC, Robert B. Charles
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22 Comments
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Grave yard tombstone with Rest in Peace ESG etched into it

If the horse you are taking is the wrong one and goes the wrong way, maybe it’s the right time to say “Whoa!” – and reverse course or dump that horse. It looks like ESG may be R.I.P.

Ask the average investor or retiree suffering losses from Democrat energy policies, high inflation, and interest rates: Would you like your remaining money used on “wokeness” – “ESG” or “Environmental, Social, Governance” policies, such as paid travel for employee abortions, transgender promotion, ending gas cars, stoves, and water heaters – or to make money, things with “economic merit”? The odds are on “make money, forget ESG.” The message is being heard.

As with much in life, an absence of leadership produces drift, poor decisions, backsliding, and often chaos, a royal mess – followed by sudden course correction, redirection, and finger-pointing.

That is beginning to happen on leftist policies promoted by Biden’s off-course team and politically leftist corporate leaders. From Zuckerburg to Blackrock, the backdraft is hot.

The public has had their fill of transgender beer, intimidation, and fear. They are tired of the government misguiding young boys and girls, and deriding the family. They are tired of rising drug abuse and overdoses, the open border, anti-police, anti-tradition, anti-faith focus of leaders.

The public is done with top-down mandates – fanned to absurdity during COVID, attempts to “transform” them with righteous riots, degrading history, condemning life habits – from how and what people can say, eat, cook, travel, worship, and protect themselves, to how they talk.

They are done with twisting language, culture, and history to a point where “pronouns” are now required, or you get fired, that is, if I think I am “he, she, it, or they” and you say “hey,” or I think I am a cat, rat, or zebra and you call me a camel, you are toast. They are done with that. 

They are done with government and a corporate sector promoting CRT – or Critical Race Theory, essentially teaching reverse racism, or that you cannot escape your skin color, so the American Dream is dead – in schools, or disenfranchising girls in sports, privacy, safety, and life, then telling unhappy parents to sit down and shut up, or be investigated as terrorists.

They are done with government overreach, the insidious connection – call it collusion – between leftist politicians and corporate sympathizers, quick to use your money to promote a neo-socialist, assumptive or dictatorial, at least tone-deaf agenda. 

Finally, they are sick of ESG – another nifty three-letter acronym, pushed like it was your favorite Chevy or motherhood, only it opposes both – one more example of power concentration masquerading as something new.

Truth is, people are tired of having their freedom taken by chips and chunks – prerogatives they value, all-American rights, like raising their children and speaking their mind, worshiping, working and buying what they like, having promises and value of their dollar kept.

As pressure mounts on corporate heads, boards, and leaders – as people stop buying what they cannot tolerate, resist top-down political pressure, and start suing board members – the tide is shifting. You can feel it.

Moreover, the data is beginning to show it. Leading media are featuring articles about the vulnerability of board members – including personally – for violating their fiduciary duty, specifically for pushing ESG politics.

At the same time, lawsuits are being filed by retirement groups to force the reversal – end personal political agendas, including ESG, with public dollars. Some suits, including one filed in June, promise to be pathbreaking, even as leftists try the Sun-Tzu, suing to get more ESG.

So serious is this anti-ESG upheaval, predicted by AMAC and other conservative voices, that Harvard Law School just penned a major article on the topic, “The Developing Litigation Risks from the ESG backlash in the United States.”

If public reporting is true – always a big “if” – internal thinking by corporate boards and investment funds is radically shifting.  Even Blackrock, “the world’s largest asset manager,” apparently “voted against the vast majority of shareholder proposals related to climate change and social issues” last year, dumping 742 of 813 proposals, or “93 percent” of their ESG agenda, for lack of “economic merit.” Imagine that!

The battle is not yet won, the horse is not yet stabled, but you can hear “Whoa!” With continued public pressure, left-leaning corporate boards may pull hard on the reins, giving us R.I.P. for ESG.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.

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PaulE
PaulE
1 year ago

Hello RBC,

Please be aware that BlackRock, Fidelity and the other financial institutions that push this ESG nonsense have NOT walked away from these policies. Per Larry Fink and others in recent comments and interviews, all they are doing is dropping the ESG tag or label, while continuing to push all the exact same policies associated with ESG. They understood the growing public backlash against anything labeled ESG was costing them money, so they simply decided to drop the label but continue to support and drive all the same ruinous policies. These mega scale money management firms continue to exert the same influence on all the companies that they have substantial stakes in. Just look at the recent 10Ks from a number of companies where these firms have seats on the Board of Directors.

Also, if you look at the various pieces of legislation enacted by Congress in 2021 and 2022, along with a number of Executive Orders Biden signed during that time frame, all the regulatory departments and agencies of the federal number are mandated to impose ESG as a standard metric of measure and compliance on every company or institution they regulate. Dropping the ESG label but simply calling the policies something else, does not do away with the ruinous policies or the effects on our economy or investment returns. People continue to be well aware of which companies are being adversely impacted by this ESG nonsense and adjust their investment decisions accordingly.

Shar
Shar
1 year ago

I agree we are fed up but there is power in money, and those pushing the ESG policies have lots of it. The speaking out and boycotting will have little effect when we are up against those that are bought and paid for and know who to target.

Robert Zuccaro
Robert Zuccaro
1 year ago

It’s like we’re actually living a chapter of Atlas Shrugged…

David Millikan
David Millikan
1 year ago

Excellent article.
Go WOKE, ESG, CRT.
Go BROKE.
Add quit Funding Abortions Overseas with OUR TAX DOLLARS and EMPLOYEES INCOME.

Jeri
Jeri
1 year ago

Don’t believe this, they will “circle back” and find another way to bite you in the arse. They have way to much money and power to let this go.

anna hubert
anna hubert
1 year ago

Public is fed up Unfortunately public has no say or sway Matters not what public thinks or prefers Left is pushing it’s agenda and will use the force necessary to accomplish it

Donna
Donna
1 year ago

Thank you Mr. Charles for informing us of a change in direction from the insanity of ESG. God bless.

Terry Serbus
Terry Serbus
1 year ago

Anytime you have lazy people, which is what CIVID did, beware of how they will vote, REMEMBER “The Great Reset.”
don’t hear anything about that since Biden was Elected?

Theresa Coughlin
Theresa Coughlin
1 year ago

If true, the end of ESG claptrap couldn’t come soon enough.

Cindy Hayes
Cindy Hayes
1 year ago

No, They will simply call it something else. It’s about control towards their King/Surf world.
The ESG concept came from “a couple guys at the UN trying to come up with a solution…” like it always is. An organic idea from some normies in 2016, if memory serves. That’s the usual beginning concept of their scams.
On the topic of the Global Green Ponzi Scheme. It appears that the globalist corporations have dropped wind turbines internationally to concentrate on this Carbon Capture scam. Seems to be an urgency that requires our corrupt weaponized EPA to allow states to take primacy away from the feds and back to the states with regulation control over class 6 wells.
Clearly, none think their lives will end in 2030, yet there is an urgency to get these dangerous carbon pipelines installed. They have placed Chinese professors and students over the project, so competency is a must.
These pipelines bust easily due to the compressed carbon that can’t be seen in a leak. They have already tested this problem in a small MS town “mishap” where it sent 45 citizens to the hospital. One man, they though was dead trying to escape in his vehicle that became useless due to the gas, was brought back to life.
Can you imagine a more powerful bioweapon than a dangerous pipeline wound throughout our nation that has the power to kill and/or immobilize an entire population?
The more you know…

Jeanette
Jeanette
1 year ago

hurray for “WHOA” none too soon!

Gabe Hanzeli kent wa
Gabe Hanzeli kent wa
1 year ago

Forget ESG , Don’t be a crusader rabbit. MAKE money leave the social issues to the churches.

Fema.gov Disasters USA Government home page under magnifying glass.
Medicaid text sign on calculator with pills and money. Medicaid text calculatoron American paper money with pills and orange prescription bottle
Vote Here Sign and Line. Yellow sign with VOTE HERE is standing by a line of people wating to get to the polls in Arizona
Miner inside an underground gold and copper mine. Region del Maule, Chile - April 02, 2016: Miner inside the access tunnel of an underground gold and copper mine

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