Tuesday, November 8, 2022
Monday, November 7, 2022
Blogs With Rule 5 Links
The Other McCain has: Rule 5 Sunday: HMS Eskimo
Proof Positive has: Best Of Web Link Around
The Woodsterman has: Rule 5 Woodsterman Style
EBL has: Rule 5 And FMJRA
The Right Way has: Rule 5 Saturday LinkORama
The Pirate's Cove has: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup
ESG Boomerangs on BlackRock
However, there are more important things than money -- even on Wall Street. Some liberal businessmen and investment management firms often sacrifice profits to promote their leftist ideological causes.
The case of the BlackRock index fund is one example of misplaced ideological motives. The company has used its financial muscle to browbeat others into toeing ecological, social and governance (diversity) lines. However, BlackRock is now getting a taste of its own medicine. It is paying the penalty for insisting that others bow before the gods of “woke” culture.
Introducing the ESG Rating System
BlackRock is a major player in the latest Wall Street craze of using a rating system to decide who receives its massive supply of investment dollars. This new social credit scheme evaluates investment possibilities based on their compliance with environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets. A state (e.g., Utah), county, city, or company with a negative ESG rating can see itself choked off credit or investment capital.
On January 15, 2020, BlackRock founder and CEO Larry Fink sent a letter to CEOs saying that he will use its power to ensure “every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change.”
The plight of these targeted companies is made worse by investment managers at index funds like BlackRock, who control vast numbers of shares. They can use the ESG ratings against corporate boards by promoting shareholder resolutions to force management to advance liberal social causes, eco-climate standards, and diversity employment goals. ESG eco-activists especially target fossil-fuel companies that are slated ideologically for extinction.
BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, with index funds worth $10 trillion. With Vanguard and State Street -- all under “woke” management -- Blackrock has been using its massive financial muscle to steer Wall Street down disastrous ideological paths.
A Boomerang for Blackrock
Wall Street and investors are pushing back.
Analysts are saying that making financial decisions on ideology is a risky affair. It cannot be sustained and left unpunished.
BlackRock’s energetic focus on ESG investing is affecting its bottom line. The index fund’s performance is deteriorating, and risks are accumulating. In the face of this situation, UBS Wealth Management recently downgraded ratings for BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) by now listing it as a “Neutral” recommendation rather than a “Buy.” The bank also cut the target stock price to $585 from $700.
The new recommendations were made based entirely on BlackRock’s reckless ESG positioning. UBS says that stubborn insistence on this course could also trigger increased regulatory inspections and investor withdrawals.
Thus, the company pressuring countless firms to adopt more “woke” positions has suddenly found a boomerang coming in its direction. Investors and analysts are now telling BlackRock that ESG shenanigans are bad business and want it stopped.
Feeling the pressure, BlackRock has posted “clarifications” on its website that seek to dispel the idea that it has boycotted fossil fuel investments entirely by highlighting some special funds that feature them. Nevertheless, the firm continues offering a list of other funds that exclude fossil fuels. It still supports shareholder resolutions that promote the ESG agenda.
Abandoning ESG Efforts
It may be too late for clarification. Business executives are questioning the need for the ESG project that BlackRock pushes so hard. A recent...
Joe Biden Ignores ‘Day of Remembrance for Americans Killed by Illegal Aliens’
In October 2020, then-President Trump made a presidential proclamation to honor American citizens killed by illegal aliens. Like in 2021, Biden again ignored the day and instead focused on campaigning with Florida Democrats Val Demings and Charlie Crist.
Meanwhile, Trump welcomed Angel Mom Sabine Durden Coulter to Mar-a-Lago to speak about illegal immigration and its impact on American families like hers. Durden Coulter’s son, Dominic, was killed in 2012 by illegal alien Juan Zacarias Tzun — a twice-convicted drunk driver whom sanctuary state California officials failed to deport.
Earlier this year, Durden was suspended from Twitter for speaking about illegal immigration.
Biden’s insistence to ignore Angel Families, the loved ones of those killed by illegal aliens, comes as his administration has sought to dismantle the protective network of support imposed by Trump.
In 2017, Trump created the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Victim Of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) office to help Angel Families navigate their cases while they make their way through criminal court. In 2020, VOICE’s hotline received about 700 calls from victims requesting assistance.
Last year, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) got rid of the VOICE office to implement the Victims Engagement and Services Line (VESL) to aid illegal aliens. Biden’s VESL hotline will help American victims but also provide services to illegal aliens seeking...
U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal
(Reuters) - Seven years after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans’ telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful - and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.
In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans’ telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional.
“I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA’s activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them,” Snowden said in a message posted to Twitter.
Evidence that the NSA was secretly building a vast database of U.S. telephone records - the who, the how, the when, and the where of millions of mobile calls - was the first and arguably the most explosive of the Snowden revelations published by the Guardian newspaper in 2013.
Up until that moment, top intelligence officials publicly insisted the NSA never knowingly collected information on Americans at all. After the program’s exposure, U.S. officials fell back on the argument that the spying had played a crucial role in fighting domestic extremism, citing in particular the case of four San Diego residents who were accused of providing aid to religious fanatics in Somalia.
U.S. officials insisted that the four - Basaaly Saeed Moalin, Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud, Mohamed Mohamud, and Issa Doreh - were convicted in 2013 thanks to the NSA’s telephone record spying, but the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday that those claims were “inconsistent with the contents of the classified record.”
The ruling will not affect the convictions of Moalin and his fellow defendants; the court ruled the illegal surveillance did not taint the evidence introduced at their trial. Nevertheless, watchdog groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped bring the case to appeal, welcomed the judges’ verdict on...
Bette Midler trashes ‘MAGA Women’ telling them to move to Iran and it goes SO SO SO very wrong
Strange how much people like Bette despise her own country and fellow country-women.
She thought this was smart to tweet out:
So not only insulting to American women but to Iranian women as well.
Thoughtless, nasty, and ugly.
Much like Bette herself.
We are proud mamas.
Yes we are.
Not very feminist of her.
Nope.
HA HA HA HA HA
Too creepy and also too accurate.Yeah, this old lady has a history of saying really horrible and stupid stuff.
Disgusting is putting it nicely.
We can only wish.
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