CTUP Releases New ESG Scorecard/Study – How Woke Is Your Investment Company?

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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #773
05/16/2023
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1) CTUP Releases New ESG Scorecard/Study – How Woke Is Your Investment Company?
Our new Committee to Unleash Prosperity study of proxy voting behavior by large investment firms finds that the majority are likely violating their fiduciary duty to their clients and putting political ideology over achieving the best returns for investors. The study is featured in the Wall Street Journal today.

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The study ranks the 40 largest money management firms – from Fidelity to State Street to Blackrock - on their proxy voting on ESG resolutions at shareholder meetings of the companies their clients own stock in. We examine the 50 most intrusive ESG shareholder resolutions - such as bans on fossil fuels and racial quotas for hiring. All of these resolutions were OPPOSED by company management and are incidental to, or in most cases harmful to, shareholder returns.

Our goal is to alert investors – from mom-and-pop investors to billionaires – to which companies are playing politics with their retirement income. This may lead to investors moving their money from woke investment firms like State Street and UBS to companies that focus on achieving the best returns. The list of firms that received an A grade includes Dimensional, Vanguard, and Fidelity.

We will update this report card every year – and these firms are now on notice that someone is watching their proxy voting behavior.

As the study notes, most Americans want to get the best return on their lifetime savings. They don’t want their money put at risk by money managers who are trying to save the world.

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Read the full study here: [link removed]

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2) New York Wasted $64 Million on Cuomo's COVID-Vaccine Verification App
So much for the magic of "public-private partnerships."

Back in early 2021 then New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a new app that he said would provide a "secure and streamlined" way for people to attend live events and attend restaurants without carrying around a vaccine card.

It would be built by IBM, and it would cost $2.5 million. Then after Cuomo resigned in disgrace, his successor, Kathy Hochul boasted that the app would have a "transformative impact on our economy."

Then the price skyrocketed to $17 million a few months later. And then to $30 million and the latest cost estimate is $64 million.

The app was hardly ever deployed – does anyone use it? (If so, email us!) – and when it was made available, it only became a further excuse for the government to discriminate against the non-vaccinated.

The Times Union in Albany notes that IBM and its consultants Boston Consulting Group and Deloitte made millions. Now they want people to use it so the government can know who has had their booster shots – the first, the second, the third…

Folks, this is a case study in what happens when you mix big government with big business.

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3) Earmarks Are Back…and So Is the Corruption That Goes With It
In 2020 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brought back pork projects for member districts – also known as earmarks – and Republicans approved earmarking when they took back the House in January. They all agreed it was good for the local communities, and everyone promised that the scandals and waste that went along with these white elephants were a thing of the past.

Sure.

It’s only been four months, but The Messenger magazine has already found that four members of Congress have sponsored pricey projects for organizations that employ their spouses over the last two years. The offenders so far are Reps. Pete Aguilar of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Mike Thompson of California, and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. All the members claim they or their spouses will derive no direct financial benefit from the projects.

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Rep. Thompson delivered a giant ceremonial check for $1.8 million to a local hospital in his district. “It’s where I was born and it’s where I left my tonsils,” he boasted. It’s also where his wife works as a nurse...

Rep. Aguilar was the sole sponsor of a $750,000 grant to the University of Redlands, his alma mater. His wife works as a student financial services director there.

Rep. Crow is a serial earmarker when it comes to the medical school at the University of Colorado, where his wife works as a professor.

Senator Kaine was the prime mover behind two grants totaling $3.5 million to George Mason University, where his wife was interim president and now serves as a professor there. It helps to have spouses in high places.

Is this déjà vu all over again? In 2012, the year earmarks died in the House, 38 members of Congress — 24 Democrats and 14 Republicans — had sent earmarks to a family business, employer, associated nonprofit. That’s more nepotism than this year, but remember, this is only May.

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4) The Unending Hypocrisy of the Biden Administration on Raising the Debt Ceiling
Did you know that the White House is now saying that unless Republicans cave into Biden on the debt ceiling, there won't be enough money to secure the border?

This belongs in Ripley’s Believe It or Not:

Everyone knows the Biden Administration’s border policy is a costly and humanitarian fiasco. Biden has basically signaled to migrants all over the world – get to the Mexican border and you’ve got a hall pass to come in and stay. Biden has spent two years stripping away the Trump enforcement policies, including stopping the building of the wall.

Last week saw 83,000 migrants (that we know of) illegally crossing the border, the highest amount ever recorded during a seven-day period.

So now the Biden administration is with a straight face claiming that if the Republican budget is passed, the Immigration Service won’t have enough money to secure the border.

A memo from Andrew Bates, the White House’s deputy press secretary claims the GOP plan would eliminate 2,000 border patrol agents, slash the Drug Enforcement Agency, terminate 500 agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and “allow an additional 150,000 pounds of cocaine, nearly 900 pounds of fentanyl, nearly 2,000 pounds of heroin, and more than 17,000 pounds of meth into our country.”

As if this weren't enough, the memo claims Republicans want to “single-handedly trigger a recession unless they can deliver this gut punch to the men and women who guard our border.”

Do they REALLY think the American people are THAT stupid?

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5) Where Is the COVID Economic Recovery?
We’ve made the case that the economy should be in an absolute boom given the giant contraction of the economy in the first half of 2020 when Covid and lockdowns shrunk the GDP from January – June of 2020 by more than 33%. We did have a big comeback in the second half of 2020, but then the recovery stalled out last year.

The latest quarterly GDP numbers were just released and this wonderful recovery that Biden has been touting delivered a Q1 growth rate of an anemic 1.1%. Even more pathetic is that for five straight quarters, average quarterly GDP has expanded by one measly percent.

Surely, America can do better than this.

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6) Hello Down There

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