Has CTUP Brought BlackRock to Heel?

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Unleash Prosperity Hotline – Weekend Edition
Issue #819
07/21/2023, 07/22/2023, 07/23/2023
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1) Has CTUP Brought BlackRock to Heel?
Just a few months ago the Committee to Unleash Prosperity released our landmark report card ([link removed]) on how the 40 largest money management firms with collectively more than $10 trillion under management were voting on ESG shareholder resolutions. We found that most of these firms – including BlackRock, State Street, and UBS – were potentially violating their fiduciary duty to their investors by proxy voting for resolutions that could hurt the profitability of the companies they own.

The results of our report were widely picked up by the media – including a full spread in the Wall Street Journal – causing much embarrassment and even a withdrawal of clients’ money at many of these firms.

Now just eight weeks later, the leader of the ESG band, BlackRock (whose CEO Larry Fink is a far lefty on climate change issues), is backing off big time.

This headline bowled us over and made our day, our week, our year:

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July 17 (Reuters) – The world's top asset manager BlackRock said it will offer proxy voting choices to U.S. retail investors of its biggest exchange-traded fund, expanding a strategy that could blunt criticism of how the firm considers environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters.

BlackRock said it plans to announce on Monday that investors in its iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV.P) will be able to choose among a range of policies to determine how the fund votes their shares at corporate annual meetings.

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In a corporate press release, Salim Ramji, Global Head of iShares and Index Investments for BlackRock, commented: "The expansion of Voting Choice for this ETF would bring $2.3 trillion of BlackRock’s total index equity AUM – more than half our index equity AUM globally – in scope for participation in BlackRock Voting Choice."

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$2.3 TRILLION has been liberated. Not $2.3 BILLION. $2.3 TRILLION.

WOW! This is a gigantic win for shareholders and the free market movement. This is also a huge blow to the radical ESG movement and the leftwing shareholder activists who are trying to steer corporate America in a radical direction on issues like climate change and race and gender issues that have no place in corporate boardrooms.

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2) Federal Employees STILL Not Back To Work
Corporate America is having trouble getting its workers to come back to the office, but that’s nothing compared to the federal government.

The Government Accountability Office reports federal office utilization ranges from a shocking low of 9 percent occupancy at USDA, HUD, GSA, OPM, SBA, and SSA up to a still-not-very-high high of 35 percent occupancy at Commerce, Homeland Security, DOJ, State, and Treasury.

Hello, Uncle Sam! Covid ended two years ago!

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Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser says the empty desks are creating a downtown Washington D.C. that resembles a ghost town. She is telling the Feds that if they won’t get their employees back to work, they should turn over their building space to the city or any private entities "willing to revitalize it."

We’re fine with Washington DC becoming a sleepy old southern town again. As Donald Trump so famously declared: “Drain the Swamp.”

The federal bureaucracy is easily twice as large as it needs to be. The federal payrolls are roughly $300 billion a year. Is it asking so much for these workers to get back on the job?

We also like the idea of moving the FBI to Alabama, the Interior Department to Denver, and the Agriculture Dept. could be relocated to Kansas City. Any federal workers would be a severance package if they refused to relocate.

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3) Biden Ramps Up His War on American Energy
The Biden war on American energy just doesn’t stop. Biden’s first order as president was to kill the Keystone XL pipeline. Just yesterday we learned:

The Biden administration has proposed new rules that would make oil and gas leasing on public lands more costly for developers, but which it said would "ensure fair return to taxpayers." The proposed rules, unveiled yesterday by the Department of the Interior and Bureau of Land Management, revise a number of financial requirements for onshore fossil fuel leasing including bonding requirements, royalty rates, and minimum bids. Under the proposal, the lease bond oil and gas developers are required to pay will be hiked from $10,000 to $150,000 and statewide from $25,000 to $500,000, the DOI said.

These drilling fees will rise 10 to 20-fold!! Our oil and gas industry sources tell us this will kill new production on federal lands. This comes after federal leases have already fallen dramatically as the Wall Street Journal reported late last year:

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Who is writing these rules? The OPEC ministers? Vladimir Putin?

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4) Julie Su's Nomination Failed – But She Is Still on the Job
Biden's radical Acting Secretary of Labor, Julie Su is a disaster. As Labor Secretary in California, she was the force behind the AB5 law in California that reclassified independent contractors as employees so the unions could force them to pay dues. She was behind super-minimum wage rules in CA for fast-food restaurant workers. She is a lead supporter of Biden’s plan to cancel right-to-work laws in 26 states.

Thankfully, she is never going to be confirmed, with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema now publicly opposed and several other Democrats almost certainly hiding behind them.

But that doesn't mean she's leaving the job any time soon.

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Fortunately, Su's old nemesis from California Rep. Kevin Kiley is fighting back:

A lawsuit is coming. We also have a plan to use the power of the purse to dislodge Su from her illegal post.

We’re using the same strategy to prevent the nationalization of AB 5, one of Newsom’s most odious “model” policies. In the Appropriations bill, I’ve secured an amendment directing “no funds may be made available” to enforce Biden/Su’s order attacking independent contractors.

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This is a blatant abuse of power by the White House and an override of the Senate’s advice and consent powers. The House GOP majority should use the power of the purse to check Biden's abuses and send Su back to wacky California where she belongs.

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5) Summer 2023 Temperatures Are Fairly Normal in U.S.
As we mentioned the other day, the Washington Post, The New York Times, and CNN have been howling with banner headlines that this is the hottest summer in not 100, or 1,000 years, but even in 100,000 years.

Yes, the last few weeks have been scorchers with temperatures reaching as high as 112 degrees in Phoenix and Las Vegas.

But overall, so far this summer hasn’t been especially hot, though the media won’t report that:

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Source: Ryan Maue ([link removed])
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6) Sound Advice?

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