90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

The ‘ESG’ Scam Rates Slave-Using Chinese Firms Higher Than Clean American Energy Producers

A firm in China that uses slave labor has a better ESG score than an American firm that pays landowners who freely sell their mineral rights.

Expecting publicly traded companies to do more than simply return shareholder value — their fiduciary responsibility — is a fairly new development in Western capitalism. The idea that corporate leadership and shareholders should explicitly care about environmental, social, and corporate governance (known as ESG) issues beyond how they might affect the bottom line has been around for only about 30 years.

But now, ESG investing has become a big driver in steering capital to corporations deemed to be good stewards of subjective principles. By 2025, financial management firms that claim to invest with ESG principles are projected to account for $50 trillion of a total global value of $140.5 trillion — more than a third of managed investments.

But is ESG investing trustworthy? Does it really do what it claims to do?

MSCI is one of the world’s largest investment support services firms, with $2.1 billion in revenue. It offers an ESG rating service. I noticed that my Charles Schwab account recently started to display MSCI’s ESG ratings alongside that of the more traditional ratings services — services focused on a company’s profitability.
Comparing U.S. and Chinese Companies’ Ratings

Curious, I looked into the rating of a firm I own some stock in: Texas-based Brigham Minerals (NYSE: MNRL). Brigham looks for land that could produce oil and gas, and owns mineral and royalty interests in 7,909 oil wells and 688 natural gas wells in West Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, and North Dakota. MSCI rates Brigham Minerals as a B, the sixth lowest of seven ratings that range from AAA to CCC, labeling it a “laggard” in the industry with an overall score of 2 out of 10.

I previously wrote about ESG investing’s blind spot for China three years ago in Fox Business, pointing out that investment firms playing in the ESG space were also bullish on China — a nation with terrible air and water pollution (the “E”), horrendous human rights abuses (the “S”), rampant corruption, opaque accounting standards, and rule of law only at the forbearance of the Chinese Communist Party (the “G”).

Not expecting the financial industry to have changed for the better, I looked up three China-based energy companies and compared them to Brigham Minerals. They were Xinyi Solar Holdings (OTC: XISHY), China Resources Gas Group (OTC: CGASY), and China Coal Energy Company (OTC: CCOZF). All three beat the American energy company in their overall rating.
Buying Into CCP-controlled Enterprises

Now, it’s important for investors to understand that you really can’t own shares in a Chinese corporation. When you buy shares in a corporation based in China, you’re really buying American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) that represent shares issued by companies in the People’s Republic of China. As such, your ownership rights are more theoretical than real and are subject to the whims of the Chinese Communist Party.

Further, many Chinese firms that have ADRs traded in the United States are themselves subsidiaries of state-owned enterprises — meaning that if you buy these ADRs, you are directly investing in an entity fully controlled by the Chinese Communist...

A drag queen in Pennsylvania faces over 40 criminal charges, including 25 felony child pornography charges, following the conclusion of a two-year investigation.

According to The Post Millenial, Brice Patric Ryschon Williams allegedly uploaded and shared at least 135 videos on photos of child pornography.

In May 2020, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children submitted a tip about sexually explicit files including minors to the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General’s Child Predator Section.

The files were allegedly uploaded to a Dropbox with an email registered to Anastasia Diamond, or Ana D. This is the name Williams used when performing drag. At least 49 of the 76 files were found to contain children under 18 performing sexual acts, Tri-State Alert reported.

In July 2020, NCMEC submitted another tip about 10 more explicit files uploaded by the same user. Authorities determined at least 9 of those files contained child pornography.

A search warrant was eventually issued to Dropbox concerning Ana D’s account, and authorities found a total of 135 files containing child pornography, Tri-State Alert reported.

Two more files were uploaded to the Dropbox in December 2020, and authorities were able to validate one of them. Investigators finally tracked the home suspected of uploading the illegal files in 2021.

Investigators confirmed Williams was living in the home, and he was allegedly performing in drag as Anastasia Diamond, which matched the name associated with the Ana D email address. A recovery email address for the Ana D Dropbox account also included Williams’ real name.

Special Agent Travis Nye was finally able to obtain a search warrant for the home on June 22. Authorities carried out the warrant the next day and escorted Williams out of the house while they did so.

Williams initially denied any involvement with child pornography, even as investigators found his phone number matched the backup phone number listed on the Ana D Dropbox account.

Investigators found at least 25 child pornography files on Williams’ phone, which Nye said was just a small sample of the explicit material on the phone. Williams finally admitted to searching for, possessing and sharing child pornography after his devices were found.

He told investigators he was first exposed to child pornography in 2014, and he subsequently began using cloud storage applications to receive and distribute it with others. He was arrested and...

Visage à trois #327

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #494

Chevron selling Bay Area headquarters, paying for employees relocate to Houston

Plenty of tech companies have moved their headquarters out of the Bay Area in recent years, from startups like Coinbase to industry pioneers like Hewlett Packard and Oracle. Elon Musk has been one particularly outspoken voice decrying California’s business conditions. Now, one of the East Bay’s legacy companies is joining the trend.

Chevron announced it is shuttering its San Ramon global headquarters and even encouraging some employees to move to Houston, the Wall Street Journal reported. The oil company will cover relocation costs for those voluntarily leaving for the Texas office, which has been growing and employs nearly 6,000 people. Meanwhile, the San Ramon office buildings have experienced dwindling numbers in recent years.

When Chevron vacates the 100-acre campus in 2023, freeing up prime real estate for the area’s growing life-sciences industry or developers looking to build apartments, it hopes to move into a smaller space in San Ramon, which will remain its headquarters, the Wall Street Journal said.

There are deep roots in California for Chevron going back to the late 1800s. While company leadership has pushed for a permanent move to Texas in the past, the oil company’s legacy in the state coupled with the location of its Richmond refinery in the East Bay has kept the company in California, sources told the Wall Street Journal.

"The current real estate market provides the opportunity to right-size our office space to meet the requirements of our headquarters-based employee population," a spokesperson told SFGATE. "The move is expected to occur during the...

The U.S. Army announced on Thursday it is removing its requirement for potential recruits to have a high school diploma or GED certificate to enlist, in an effort to improve recruiting numbers.

The Army has met 40 percent of its recruiting goals this year, Military.com reports:

[T]he service announced that individuals may enlist without those previously required education certifications if they ship to basic training this fiscal year, which ends Oct. 1.

Recruits must also be at least 18 years old and otherwise qualify for a job in the active-duty Army. They also must score at least a 50 on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, an SAT-style quiz to measure a potential recruit's academic ability.

A 50 on the test is a relatively low score, with 31 being the minimum to qualify for service.

The Army's "sister services" seem to have a similar issue with low recruiting numbers "hitting the entire Defense Department," according to Military.com.

Military Throwing Cash at Recruiting Crisis as Troops Head for the ExitsFor now, the services are leaning on record-level enlistment and retention bonuses meant to attract and keep America's military staffed and ready -- bonuses that continue to climb.

WWW.MILITARY.COM
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/05/13/bigger-bonuses-pentagons-top-weapon-combat-recruiting-crisis-troops-head-exits.html

Why do you think they are having a hard time convincing...