Free Republic

Not too long ago, Gavin Newsom got caught with his hand in the cookie jar of political cronyism. In response to a draconian law passed raising fast-food worker wages to $20 an hour, known as A.B. 1228, Newsom carved out a little exemption for his friends at Panera Bread on the laughable grounds that these establishments bake bread on the premises. In reality, the owner of several Panera establishments was a high school buddy who was a really good donor to his campaigns. Once caught, Newsom backed off, but right when he thought no one was looking, he went right...

A constitutional battle is shaping up over whether the U.S. government can force the owners and top employees of small businesses to send their addresses and photo IDs to federal financial crime investigators. The Biden administration has appealed a decision by a federal judge in Alabama, who ruled this month the Corporate Transparency Act exceeded the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution. The government says the information collected from small businesses will ferret out shell companies and help law and intelligence officers foil human smugglers, drug traffickers and terrorists. The appeal has a good chance because courts rarely strike...

If what these groups and these asset managers were doing was so righteous, why are they running from it now?’ says Montana attorney general.. Wall Street titans appear to be having an increasingly hard time reconciling the conflicting goals of progressive activism and shareholder returns. Until recently, many banks, asset managers, and insurers portrayed these goals as complementary, asserting that climate risk is financial risk and that the competence of management can be assessed by its commitment to social justice goals. Today, however, those narratives are rarely heard. BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, and State Street recently exited from Climate Action 100+,...

Three corporations own 19,000 homes in the metro Atlanta area. “A recent study by Georgia State University researchers found that three corporations own more than 19,000 homes in Atlanta’s five metro counties,” WSB-TV in Atlanta reports. The study found that “Invitation Homes, Premium Partners (which operates Progress Residential), and Amherst Holdings (which operates Mainstreet Renewal) own around 11 percent of all single-family homes for rent in the state.” “In smaller neighborhoods, sometimes that’s upwards of 50 percent,” GSU professor Taylor Shelton said. “Just a decade ago or so ago, none of these companies even existed.”

A coalition of diversity groups is pushing large corporations to continue race-based programs in the face of mounting legal pressure, according to a letter shared by consumer freedom advocate Will Hild. Hild posted a letter Wednesday on Twitter written by organizations committed to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) to Fortune 500 companies urging them to withstand pressure caused by lawsuits and political opposition. “We believe it is imperative that CEOs and other company leaders are able to make strategic decisions for their companies without threats of frivolous lawsuits and political pressure, and we will be here with support, every step...

The SEC’s rule… [i]f finalized… could be the most ambitious and expensive mandate in the history of corporate finance regulation. This 500-page rule serv[ing] as the centerpiece for the SEC’s agenda on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing… exceeds the agency’s statutory authority. It also undermines the agency’s existing disclosure-based framework.

President Ronald Reagan had been slowly chipping away at affirmative action since taking office in 1981, but it was six months into his second term that his administration saw its chance to deal it a decisive blow. Reagan and his Cabinet viewed his resounding electoral victory against Walter Mondale in 1984 as a mandate to end the Lyndon B. Johnson-era policy requiring all government contractors to take “affirmative action” to end discrimination at their firms. By the mid-’80s, that meant some of the country’s largest companies — such as General Motors, IBM and Merck — had implemented robust affirmative action...

This is the feminist director of the next Star Wars film saying that her goal is to “make men uncomfortable”: https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1742583950944432607 >alienate fan-base. >pander to audience who doesn’t give a sh*t about it. Always a good tactic.

A couple years ago, I wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal lamenting how companies I patronize have turned increasingly political and woke. Many speciously echoed Democratic Party claims that Georgia’s recent voting law is racist without specifying how so. Others have been woke for a long time and are becoming more political by the day. I received many dozens of messages—more than I’ve ever received about anything I’ve ever written—and the piece generated nearly 2,000 comments on the WSJ website

Although artificial intelligence is in its early stages in the health-care industry, it already has triggered legal action. A class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday alleges that UnitedHealthcare used an artificial intelligence algorithm to wrongfully deny coverage under Medicare Advantage health policies. The insurer made health-care determinations using its nH Predict algorithm, overrode physician recommendations, and denied elderly patients’ claims for stays in extended-care facilities, according to the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. The plaintiffs also alleged the technology lets the company “aggressively deny coverage, because they know they will not be held accountable for...

Much like today, Delaware in the early 20th century wasn’t known for a whole lot. The state maintained a small service sector and an even smaller industrial base. Without any real natural resources or tourist attractions, the state scraped by trying to leech business from those traveling between New York and Washington. But just over a century ago, in the early 1910s, Delaware spied an opportunity. In neighboring New Jersey, then-Gov. Woodrow Wilson took office pledging to clean up New Jersey’s corporate sector, which had transformed the Garden State into the go-to destination for corporations across the country looking for...

We know that the horribly-flawed Bidenomics doesn’t work, unless you are a large corporate donor in green energy. For the rest, particulary small companies, Bidenomics is a total bust. Under Bidenomics (the Soviet-style command economy), small companies are paying reconrd interest expense WITHOUT a major boost from interest income. Well, ain’t that a kick in the head … to most companies. Pension funds that invested in “safe” MBS are finding that MBS isn’t so safe under inflation. Look at the 10Y-2Y yield curve since Covid. I had a slight surge by March 2021, then has flattened then inverted as The...

White people were seemingly passed over for jobs following the civil unrest of 2020 as major corporations gave more than nine out of 10 available positions to non-white applicants, according to a new report. After the death of George Floyd on Memorial Day 2020, many of the nation’s cities were consumed by rioting and protests. Soon, major corporations and sports leagues got behind the Black Lives Matter movement. But according to Bloomberg, corporate America responded to the unrest with more than donations and statements in support of the neo-Marxist group.

The world’s corporations produce so much climate change pollution, it could eat up about 44% of their profits if they had to pay damages for it, according to a study by economists of nearly 15,000 public companies. The “corporate carbon damages” from those publicly owned companies analyzed — a fraction of all corporations — probably runs in the trillions of dollars globally and in the hundreds of billions for American firms, one of the study authors estimated in figures that were not part of the published research. That's based on the cost of carbon dioxide pollution that the United States...

China’s economic recovery seems to have stalled, and the CCP’s standing at home still depends on Xi Jinping’s government creating a “Chinese dream” of a middle-class lifestyle. The end of Covid restrictions, just eight months ago, seemed to mark the start of a powerful bounceback in consumption; travel agencies were besieged by people booking holidays they had been denied for nearly three years. But in the past few months there have been more worrying signs. Youth unemployment is growing: about one in five of China’s 16- to 24-year-olds were unemployed in June. Many university graduates have had to take jobs...

f you want to know why a transgender media influencer in a bubble bath appears in a Bud Light ad; why big companies shell out money for radical, Marxist charities like Black Lives Matter; or why de-facto racial hiring quotas exist under the euphemism of “diversity,” you need to know something about the business of “DEI.” It’s the acronym for the nearly $10 billion Diversity, Equity and Inclusion industry. It’s part of every large company’s ecosystem these days, enforced through increasingly progressive corporate HR departments that have distorted the term diversity to mean endless pride celebrations at the office, and...

At best, they have no idea what they're doing. At worst, they're supporting evil causes. wait in line for the self-checkout even when a line for an in-person cashier is unoccupied. It's not that I dislike human cashiers; it's just that I prefer being in control of the check-out process and the typical convenience of the self-checkout. There's another reason that I prefer the self-checkout: I never get solicited by a cashier at a self-checkout. It seems that retail, fast food, financial corporations, and the like are in the business these days of asking their customers to donate to one...

The Trevor Project, whose mission is to “end suicide among LGBTQ young people,” has partnered with common household brands to develop their respective pride-themed collections and has, in some cases, received seven-figure donations from corporate sponsors. The major corporate partnerships, which include iconic clothing brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch to fast food chains like Chipotle, come despite the organization’s unsafe online practices. The youth-oriented LGBT activist group hosts an anonymous online chat forum “Trevor Space,” which allows adults to communicate with minors, National Review previously reported. The organization hosts multiple age-segregated chatrooms but has no age-verification system in place,...

Many corporations are putting progressive activists and their dangerous agendas ahead of customers. They'll only succeed if we look the other way.

A conservative consumer group has launched a system for users to receive 'Woke Alert' messages to warn them about large corporations supporting far-left initiatives. The idea from Consumers Research comes after a backlash against Bud Light when they signed up trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote the brand. The Washington DC-based group, run by Executive Director Will Hild, launched the new idea on Friday. It will allow shoppers to receive text updates on companies which Consumers Research feels have gone too far to the left in their marketing. Anyone can sign up for the alerts by entering a phone number...