The Monday News Round Up

Some of my top recommendations to read this morning

If you are going to read one article to make you smirk your way through the morning, let it be this one.

Media Hacks Pout As Republicans Treat Them Like the Trash They Are

Townhall, August 01, 2022

The media is our enemy and it is wonderful to finally see Republicans treating reporters as what they are – digital vermin whose sole function is to shrimp the toes of the regime. There has been a rash of media handwringing because GOP superstars like Ron DeSantis are not allowing the media access to candidates or events. At the Sunshine Summit the other week in the Free State of Florida, Ruthless Ron and his superstar comms staff simply refused to allow the mutants in. Dave Weigel, apparently back on the job after his utter humiliation at the hands of some fussy girls at WaPo, was rejected and ejected and sat outside the velvet rope away from the action.

Good.

Honestly, it is worth clicking away from here to read this article in its entirety. It is hilarious.

Just to say it, these so called reporters, who are paid for by the state-sponsored media to write a one sided narrative - deserve to be ostracized. Advocacy journalism has taken over main-stream media - real reporting is dead and gone at such institutions.

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Below, is an editorial from the Federalist on our youth being impacted by the trans community via social media. Transgender “influencers” are romanticizing the idea of children “transitioning.” They are doing this to “sell” children on the idea that “changing” gender at a young age is a way to achieve happiness and acceptance. These predators are using social media venues, such as Tic Tok to do this. They are promoting such nonsense, which is often sexually explicit to our children - this is not ok in any way, shape or form.

Fighting these efforts and exposing them for what they are is something we should all be doing. These are predators.

We need to get back to teaching our children traditional values.

Parents need to regulate their children’s online use as transgender influencers continue to thrive on social media apps like Tik Tok.

The Federalist, August 01, 2022

The message they send to youth is, “if you feel uncomfortable in your body or feel like you don’t belong, just transition your gender and it will solve all your problems.” And what young teen in the throes of navigating puberty and body changes, as well as traversing difficult social dynamics, feels comfortable in their body and confident in who they are? Teens, especially girls, are ripe for recruiting to the trans cause.

One mom whose daughter began to transition was determined to get to the bottom of it and found out teens were making fake social media accounts that appear innocuous so as not to raise any alarms with their parents. These children’s — young girls — real accounts, on the other hand, were full of strangers sending self-made masturbation videos, kids sending each other erotica, people talking with each other about which drugs do what, talking about how they were assigned a different gender than the one they identified with, and discussing “top surgery” and “packers.” 

Parents are the only ones who can protect kids from trans influencers and other harmful content online. You are the ones on the frontlines, and circumstances are increasingly demanding that you “go nuclear.”

Consider completely keeping your children off of all social media until they are in their late teens. Delay social media use as long as possible. There certainly may be practical challenges to not allowing your children to have such accounts, but they should be balanced by a recognition of the enormous dangers and social pressures that are introduced by having them. At best, it is far easier to delay their introduction than it is to cancel them once introduced. In particular, TikTok has been shown to be the worst app for serving up explicit content to children unbidden.

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The article below on the history of ESG is important, or at least it is to me. This information has been hard to find and fills in a lot of the missing pieces.

My small criticism with the article is that the authors don’t go into as much detail about how ESG scores are being used to control corporate governance through the “social and governance” portion of the scoring system. For instance, corporate leaders are now fearful of making political donations to Republican candidates. They worry that such donations will hurt their ESG scores.

My own opinion is that this could backfire on corporations if the Republicans gain control in the midterms. What happens if both the House and Senate are red AND Congress is not beholden to as many corporate donors? We could see some very interesting dynamics - and new voting patterns emerge more inline with the the people who actually voted them into office want.

The article also doesn’t mention how even countries are being scored and how this scoring is being used for control by the UN, World bank and transnational corporations. Remember, most small nations take on a lot of debt and they need credit and good interest rates.

However, getting to the bottom of how the ESG nonsense started is important and shows just what a house of cards the whole ESG system is built upon.

ESG is a monster that the UN/WEF and even the President of the United States can and have used to control nations. It must be stopped.

They helped create ESG. Two decades later, some see a mess.

Climate Wire, 07/26/2022

What started as a half-baked idea among low-level staffers at the United Nations has grown into the green Frankenstein of Wall Street. ESG investing is now worth nearly $2.8 trillion in assets worldwide, according to one estimate.

A big reason for the explosion is that the three-letter acronym has morphed into a vague symbol with few guidelines surrounding what it means. Put another way: It’s as if farmers could market vegetables as organic but without restrictions on genetic engineering.

All of this surprises ESG pioneers.

The goal of ESG investing was “to try and create a positive virus that we could plant in mainstream finance and investment to start a different conversation that these issues are real, they’re material, and they affect your long-term investments,” said Paul Clements-Hunt, the former head of the U.N. Environment Programme Finance Initiative, or UNEP FI, which played a crucial role in popularizing the idea.

“Little could we believe that ESG would end up where it’s ended up,” he added, “for good or for bad.”

Taking ESG to ‘the next level’

So how did it all start?

There’s no one clear answer. But generally speaking, experts say a key inception point was in the early 2000s, inside a bare-bones office at the United Nations.

As the head of UNEP FI (note note: United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative - which was a very small UN endeavor at the time), Clements-Hunt and his team had an ambitious idea: to mobilize the world’s largest investors to act on major global issues. The idea went that the priorities of the United Nations were actually aligned with the needs of long-term investors — insofar as a stable environment and world generally contribute to a more prosperous economy.

‘Absolute market mania’

Less clear is how ESG went from a wonky idea at the United Nations to a concept that has transformed Wall Street’s marketing strategy, spawned a new industry of sustainability data providers, garnered trillions of dollars in assets and drawn fire from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Indeed, “global sustainable fund assets” have ballooned to about $2.77 trillion globally, according to research firm Morningstar Inc. Other estimates put that figure even higher.

And according to Deloitte, the number of investment managers that reported at least one ESG fund in their portfolios has grown nearly 300 percent since 2016 , while ESG-aligned assets could represent “half of all professionally managed assets” by 2024.

Clements-Hunt thinks a combination of events spurred the growth. The 2007-2008 global financial crisis drove down public trust in the financial system, he said, and ESG marketing offered the industry a tool to patch some of the damage.

“The finance sector globally needed to rebuild trust. They needed to have some mechanism where they could reconnect; they needed a social license to operate,” he said. “And I think ESG provided part of the answer.”

But he and others also said they think intensifying extreme weather events, rising public concern about climate change and the 2015 Paris climate accord contributed to “absolute market mania” around ESG.

That, in turn, they say, may have contributed to a false public impression that ESG ratings, research and funds provide objective answers about which companies are the most beneficial — or the least harmful — to people and the planet.

“They’re not trying to give you an absolute judgment on how sustainable the companies are. They’re trying to give you a universe of companies that are relatively more sustainable on these metrics than their peers,” Gifford said.

What is particularly compelling in this article is the idea that ESG is simply a “wonky idea” of a few staffer at the UN created -that has gone wildly out of control. That the theory behind ESG is Vaporware. There was no big study, no scientific consensus behind ESG. That there was not a significant contribution by a thought leader early on. It is just an “idea”, created by a low level office at the UN over 20 years ago- that went viral. That ESG was implemented without data but the idea was swept up by “experts” in the UN as being the path forward for the world (kind of sounds familiar - what comes to my mind is the Covidcrisis propaganda and now the war with Russia…).

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Florida again leads the way in fighting back against the UN’s progressive agenda and bullying tactics.

Governor Ron DeSantis Announces Initiatives to Protect Floridians from ESG Financial Fraud

DeSantis Press Release, July 27, 2022

TAMPA, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced legislative proposals and administrative actions to protect Floridians from the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) movement which threatens the vitality of the American economy and Americans’ economic freedom by targeting disfavored individuals and industries to advance a woke ideological agenda.

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Another excellent article on the issues with ESG:

An Inconvenient Truth: ESG Is Fueling Inflation Woes

By Gabriella Hoffman
July 29, 2022

And much to the Biden administration’s chagrin, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is the largest driver of inflation. Additionally, Democrats refuse to admit their push for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), especially in energy policy, in both the public and private sectors is also a major problem. As more financial leaders scrutinize so-called sustainable investing, there’s ample evidence suggesting ESG exacerbated the 9.1% increase in the consumer price index…

Of the three ESG prongs, the “E” factor⁠—which accounts for environmental stewardship and natural resources development in business practices—is primarily contributing to inflation.

Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Global, calls this phenomenon “greenflation.” In fall 2021, Shah warned how the push to transition away from fossil fuels, notably in the form of advancing net-zero policies, “created a chain reaction resulting in higher energy prices and, ultimately, higher consumer costs.” She also explained how “en-flation” (environmental inflation) is adding to uncertainty by way of carbon credits, harsh penalties for companies that fail to meet U.N. climate targets, and increased investment in technology along with research and development (R&D), for instance. 

American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers blamed the Biden administration’s “misguided” energy policies, namely their decarbonization push, for compounded inflationary pressures.

Ultimately, consumers will be burdened by “en-flation” as costs are naturally passed down to them. Columbia University’s Lucas Toh explains the transition to 100% wind and solar energy will be expensive, writing: “The reality is that wind and solar are only cheap during the early stages of transition.”

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That it folks, have a great rest of the day!

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