Woke Companies At War With Texas

This article is an opinion piece from Bill Lockwood. Catch American Liberty with Bill Lockwood weekly at 11 a.m. Saturdays on NewsTalk 1290.

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Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar divulged a list (August 24) of financial companies that are boycotting, in the name of wokeness or stakeholder Capitalism, the state of Texas. The initial list of 10 financial companies included such heavyweights as the investment firm Blackrock, Inc., the global bank BNP Paribas SA, and the global UBS Group AG Bank.

According to Hegar, “the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) movement has produced an opaque and perverse system in which some financial companies no longer make decisions in the best interest of their shareholders or their clients, but instead use their financial clout to push a social and political agenda shrouded in secrecy.”

What is this ESG movement? Not long ago companies made financial decisions on behalf of their stockholders, those who put their money into the company. This was stockholder capitalism. As of the past five to 10 years companies instead turned to serving what are called “stakeholders.” This is stakeholder capitalism.

Stakeholder capitalism is the “trendy idea that companies should serve not just their shareholders but also other interests and society at large,” writes Vivek Ramaswamy in his book "Woke, Inc."

For example, “Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, the world’s largest investment firm, issued an open letter to CEO’s describing a ‘Sustainability Accounting Board’ that would tackle issues ranging from labor practices to workforce diversity to climate change.”

Delta Airlines announced in 2021 that it would focus on supporting federal legislation that addresses “voter suppression.” The state of Georgia was targeted for their new “voting rules,” which Delta found offensive. Biotech companies likewise called on their CEO’s to avoid investing in states that had enacted these “voter suppression laws.”

Other companies, such as Blackrock, have begun to boycott states like Texas because of their dominant oil-based economy.  The “carbon footprint” of Texas is too big and this is a sin to the green globalists.

The entire stakeholder capitalism mantra is emanating from the globalist government in the making — the United Nations (UN) and the World Economic Forum (WEF). American corporations are obediently falling in line with guidelines sponsored by these world bodies. Banks and investment firms are expected to follow the protocols outlined by the globalist Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS). The NGFS pressures banks to alter their “credit-rating system” to assess for how well a company supports the climate change agenda before extending loans.

The Problems

There are several problems with the ESG movement. First, the primary concern is the fact that corporations advancing a social cause is not a business judgment, but a moral one ("Woke, Inc." Ramaswamy, pg. 18). Not only are these moral decisions that companies make, but these decisions actually can be characterized more as a religious orientation than a business one. Save the planet; save the rainforests, social justice, etc. Almost 100 percent of the time these are liberal causes.

Sounding more like a pulpiteer than politician, Ramaswamy writes in "Woke, Inc." that Al Gore's 2020 opinion in the Wall Street Journal insinuates that "it is no longer optional for corporate executives to practice ESG principles but that they have an affirmative legal obligation to embrace them."

Gore is the grandfather of the environmental movement and in his 1992 seminal work on the environment, "Earth in the Balance," he freely re-wrote the creation account in Genesis to serve the green agenda. He needed to alter the creation account of the world to serve the green agenda.

The entire ESG movement with its “stakeholder capitalism” sounds like a religion. Having rejected the moral teachings of the Bible, our empty-suited culture has opted for an alternative moral teaching — environmentalism.

As an illustration, the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, in a great show of penance, announced with “much fanfare at (of course) the World Economic Forum in Davos a new investment commitment of $1 Billion over ten years into environmental sustainability initiatives to fight climate change.”

What most people do not realize is that just a couple of months later AstraZeneca “received a $1.2 billion grant — not a loan, but a grant — from U.S. taxpayers to subsidize its development of for-profit vaccines,” Ramaswamy writes in "Woke, Inc." All for show.

Lack of Transparency

A second major problem with "wokenomics" is that, as Texas Comptroller Hegar put it, these financial institutions are not transparent to their shareholders but use their “financial clout to push a social and political agenda shrouded in secrecy.”

The list published by the comptroller’s office represents its effort “to shine a light on entities that are engaging in these practices and create some clarity for Texans whose tax dollars may be working to directly undermine our state’s economic health.”

As Ramaswamy has experienced in the corporate world, the prevailing view of these CEO’s is that American free enterprise is the problem. The capitalist system, they believe, creates inequity that systematically rewards white people over black people.

It is highly doubtful that Americans would invest in woke companies if they were aware that their invested money was utilized to further Marxist causes. The entire ESG/wokenomics movement is anti-liberty, anti-American, and certainly anti-Texan.