WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) hosted a panel Friday titled “The New Axis of Evil: Soros, Schwab, and Fink,” which focused on the ability of wealthy elites to force far-left policies upon the United States and around the world.
The panel consisted of Sean Spicer, former President Donald Trump’s first press secretary; Andrew Puzder, businessman and senior visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation; and Charles McCall, Oklahoma Speaker of the House.
The title references the influence of leftist financier George Soros, World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, and Larry Fink, CEO of the investment firm BlackRock; but the actual discussion was more broadly about the impact of so-called “environmental, social, and corporate governance” (ESG) standards, a scoring system that incentivizes investing in companies not on the basis of their performance for customers and shareholders but rather on their fealty to so-called “social justice” principles such as diversity and environmentalism.
Puzder explained that the trend began with pressure from entities like BlackRock for corporations to embrace the Paris Climate Accords, “shoving these policies down on the boards of the companies they invest in,” leveraging their power as shareholders to get like-minded ideologues on the companies’ boards.
Noting that ESG funds “underperform the S&P 500, yet a lot of pension money is trying to be seized and directed” to them, McCall recounted how his state recognized the trend last year and took actions to protect Oklahoma pension funds from it. They included a law requiring the state to divest from companies that boycott the fossil fuel industry.
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“ESG is just purely political activism,” he said, a manifestation of the idea that the “man with the gold makes the rules, and Joe Biden wants to use your gold to make his rules.” McCall also confirmed that, even in red Oklahoma, the influence of Soros is “very pervasive…we’ve seen an unprecedented amount of money coming in.”
“Soros figured out that the real action today is at the state level,” Puzder agreed. “He’s not a good person, but he’s not a stupid person either, and he’s got a lot of money.”
Puzder took some time to lay out what ordinary Americans can do to push back on woke corporate influence. He endorsed the website 2ndVote, which rates the ideological leanings of corporations, and urged anyone who owns stock in a company to take an active interest and vote in board elections themselves, instead of letting funds vote their shares for them.
He also urged consumers not merely to stop buying goods or services from activist corporations like Disney, but to take the time to directly inform them why. “As customers, everybody in this room can have a tremendous impact,” Puzder said, because the more pressure they place on these corporations, the easier it is for CEOs to resist the contrary pressure from activists.
For full details of CPAC events this weekend, and to watch the live feed of presentations, click here.
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