The Daily Signal - Consumer Group Exposes BlackRock's Ties to the Chinese Communist Party

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

Nike, Coca-Cola, and American Airlines are just a few of the companies Consumers’ Research is targeting over their woke business practices. Consumers’ Research, an educational organization seeking to highlight issues concerning to consumers, now has a new target: American investment firm BlackRock and their ties to the Chinese Communist Party. "Where [is BlackRock] investing your money? China. Pouring in billions, propping up Chinese communist leaders, putting money into surveillance companies used by the Chinese military. Even left-wing billionaire George Soros knows BlackRock is harming U.S. national security," says Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research. Hild joins the show to talk about Consumers’ Research's new campaign targeting BlackRock's Chinese ties and to discuss other woke businesses. We also cover these stories: Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon surrenders himself to law enforcement. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announces he will not seek reelection in 2022, putting an end to his nearly 50-year career. Judge Bruce Schroeder dismisses a misdemeanor charge against Kyle Rittenhouse for possession of a dangerous weapon by a minor.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, November 16th. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Doug Blair. Nike, Coca-Cola, and American Airlines are just a few of the companies targeted by consumers' research over their woke business practices. Consumers Research is an educational organization seeking to highlight issues concerning to consumers, and it now has a new target, American investment firm BlackRock and their ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Executive Director of Consumers Research Will Hildon. joins the show to talk about their new campaign targeting BlackRock and discuss other

woke businesses. But before we get to Doug's conversation with Will, let's hit the top news stories of the day. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon surrendered himself to law enforcement Monday. Bannon is facing two charges of contempt of Congress after a grand jury indictment Friday. The charges are over his refusal to cooperate with the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Bannon would neither turn over the documents requested by the committee, nor would he appear for a deposition. The January 6th committee is composed of seven Democrats and two Republicans, Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger

of Illinois. Earlier this year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's pick of Representative Jim Banks of Indiana and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, leading McCarthy to ask all five Republicans he'd asked to join the committee to quit. According to the Justice Department, charges for contempt of Congress could result in 30 days to a year in jail and fines ranging from $100 to $100,000. The Senate's longest-serving member, Democrat Patrick Leahy from Vermont, announced Monday he would not seek re-election in 2022, putting an end to his nearly 50-year career. Here's Leigh announcing his retirement via C-SPAN.

Marcel and I have reached the conclusion that is time to put down the gavel. It is time to pass the torch to the next Vermonter. We'll carry on this work for a great state. It's time to come home. Leahy, who is 81 years old, has served in the Senate since 1975 and will finish his eighth term in 2022. Commenters from both sides of the aisle weighed in to wish Leahy a nice retirement. Vermont's Republican Governor Phil Scott tweeted,

Senator Leahy has committed his life to serving the people of Vermont, and he will be missed as one of our voices in Washington. He has made immeasurable contributions to our state and nation, and nobody is more deserving of a long and half. happy retirement than the senator and Marcel. Vermont's sole congressman Democrat Peter Welch said in a Monday statement, no one has served Vermont so faithfully, so constantly, so honestly, and so fiercely as Patrick. As the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, the Wisconsin teenager facing charges over killing two men during the riots in Kenosha last year continues. Judge Bruce Schroeder opted to dismiss one misdemeanor charge. Via Fox News,

this is the dialogue between Schroeder and the prosecutor. If the barrel length is less than 60 inches or an overall length less than 26 inches, then I'll deny the motion. If it does not meet those specifications, then the most defense motion will be granted. We are not disputing that the barrel length is appropriate. Isn't legal?

It is not a short-barreled shotgun or a short-barreled rifle, yes. Either by barrel or by overall length? Correct. All right. And then count six is dismissed. The specific charge was that Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, possessed a dangerous weapon as a minor. Austria has enacted a strict new lockdown policy.

The catch? It only applies to the unvaccinated. The Austrian government announced Sunday. that anyone 12 or older who had not been vaccinated or recovered from a previous COVID infection was forbidden to leave their home, accepted by groceries, get health care, or travel to school or work. The government said that the measures were temporary, but did not give an end date to the restrictions. During a Sunday news conference, Austrian Chancellor Alecender Schallenberg told a crowd of reporters, our task as the federal government is to protect the people of Austria.

We are fulfilling this responsibility. In a separate interview with Austrian radio station 01 reported on by the Associated Press, Schadenberg admitted that his aim was to force vaccinations. Schallenberg said, My aim is very clearly to get the unvaccinated to get themselves vaccinated and not to lock down the vaccinated. In the long term, the way out of this vicious circle we are in is only vaccination. Austria has one of the lowest rates of vaccination in Western Europe, with 65% of the population,

vaccinated against COVID. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Executive Director of Consumer's Research, Will Hild, as we discuss his company's new ad campaign highlighting investment firm Black Rock's ties to the Chinese Communist Party, as well as other businesses participating in woke capitalism. Do you have an interest in public policy? Do you want to hear lectures from some of the biggest names in American politics? The Heritage Foundation hosts webinars called Heritage Events Live. These events are free and open to the public.

To find the latest heritage events and to register, visit heritage.org slash events. Our guest today is Will Hild, Executive Director of Consumers Research, an educational organization seeking to highlight issues concerning to consumers. Will, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. Your organization, Consumers Research, is in the process of launching a campaign about U.S. investment firm BlackRock. and their connections to the Chinese Communist Party. So what do you want us to know specifically about this relationship? Absolutely.

Two things, namely that Black Rock is taking American investment dollars and they're funneling them into companies controlled by the Communist Party in many cases. And as many people know, China has become our greatest geopolitical adversary. At the same time that they are funding investments for Chinese companies, sometimes Chinese companies that are being used to oppress the Chinese people. They are hamstringing U.S. corporations here in the United States, bullying them, trying to get them to divest in some cases their main product, oil and gas. In other cases, just getting involved in bean counting around race and gender board diversity quotas,

that kind of thing. So they are at the same time that they're advantaging foreign corporations, namely Chinese corporations that we're competing with, they're hamstringing U.S. corporations here at home. And why should this matter then? You mentioned that some of the corporations here are being, you know, Hamptych and Americans here are being Hamptych. But like what about this relationship to the Chinese Communist Party should concern Americans? Absolutely.

Well, let me take a step back just to say consumers research is the nation's oldest consumer protection organization. We try to protect and educate consumers in all ways. And there's actually twofold problems here for U.S. consumers. One is that the – I'd say – let me start with the – most important one. All of this, the effect of all these things that BlackRock is doing to U.S. corporations, trying to get them to divest oil and gas, trying to distract them from their business model and focus on, you know, like I said, bean counting on race and gender. It's going to drive up the price and drive down the quality of the goods that these companies

producing. Let me give a specific example. BlackRock was just instrumental in getting elected two, excuse me, three activist board members to Exxon's board. Those, those. director's stated purpose is to get Exxon to focus on meeting the Paris Accord Agreement targets, which would effectively get them out of the oil and gas business within the next few years. Well, this is at a time, obviously, when we're seeing energy prices skyrocketed an unprecedented way. The American consumer is already having to tighten their budget because of inflation, and this is only going to make things worse. Energy is a cost of production for pretty much every good or service.

and so if the price of oil and gas goes up because of lack of exploration or recovery, we're going to see prices go up across the board. So that's number one. We'd like BlackRock to cut that out because we think it's really bad for the American consumer. Number two, often American consumers are also American investors. That's why they call them retail investors, right? And we thought that they needed to know how their money was being used in ways against their own interests, as I just noted. their money as investors was being used against their interests as consumers but also as Americans.

We're obviously locked in sort of a frenemy situation with China that's growing in its bellicosity, and it doesn't look like it's going to slow down anytime soon, and the Chinese seem bent on making sure that's the case. So we don't think it's wise at a time like this that American dollars, investment dollars, BlackRock, would be taking those embedding on China at the time times they're hamstringing U.S. corporations. Now, we do have that ad, and we're going to actually play it right now for our listeners. Black Rock, the biggest American money manager. Where are they investing your money?

China, pouring in billions, propping up Chinese communist leaders, putting money into surveillance companies used by the Chinese military. Even left-wing billionaire George Soros knows BlackRock is harming U.S. national security. CEO Larry Fink loves to tell Americans how to live, but he negotiated against America. sucking up to China. BlackRock, taking your money, betting on China. Having heard the ad, who are you targeting with the campaign? Is it specifically BlackRock?

Is it the consumers? Is it both sort of what? Absolutely, that's a great question. There's, again, two intentions here with the ad. One is to send a message to BlackRock that we're paying attention. They're being named and shamed. BlackRock is a company that most Americans have never heard of, and we didn't want them to get away with what they were doing because of their obscurity.

In other words, because of how little known they were, they were sort of getting away with virtue signaling on Wall Street here in the U.S. And yet, clanging up to one of the most authoritarian regimes, you know, U.N. would say, worst human rights abuser in the world. The second one is to educate consumers so that they know what's going on, how their money's being used. There's a number of different states that have pension dollars that are being managed by BlackRock. So in some cases, you may have citizens of states whose own pension money is being. invested in China in risky investments, and then here it's being used against their interest as consumers. They're being double ripped off by Black Rock. And so we just thought it was very important that consumers be aware of this because up till now, it's sort of been an inside

secret in Wall Street, and the average American needs to know that. It's a dual-pronged approach. Absolutely, absolutely. So I'm curious as to how you became and your organization became aware of the dealings between Black Rock and China. What was the process like to get that information? Right. Well, let me take a quick step back. We launched the consumer's first initiative, which is aimed at telling woke corporations to stop cozing up to woke politicians and focus on their consumers. We launched that in June. And in the lead up to that campaign, we really, you know, we spent over a year just

really digging in to the ecosystem, what was happening, why the, why did we see so many weird things going on in corporate America? What were the incentives? And we kept coming back to this one company that seems to be pushing this. And the one CEO, Larry Fink, who was mentioned in the ad, of course. And we looked at what they were doing. And lo and behold, just like some of the Americans. American corporations here that are going woke in order to cozy up to woke politicians

and namely distract from the bad things they're doing, the failures, their misdeeds, their mistreatments of their customers in cases like American and Coca-Cola and Nike. Sure enough, BlackRock is doing the same thing. Here in America, they're virtue signaling, they're talking about all the things they're going to make American corporations do. They say are great things. But you look at their dealings in China. They're investing in companies like IFLYTECH and HickVision.

These are two surveillance companies that have actually been blacklisted by the American government, is it legal for U.S. persons to trade with these companies because they are surveillance companies being used to oppress the Chinese people on behalf of the Communist Party, and yet BlackRock actually increased their investment in these companies after they were blacklisted. So you have, at the same time, like I said, they're virtue signaling here. They're out in China, cozing up to one of those authoritarian regimes in world history. So the campaign has been out for a little bit now, and have you received any responses to it? Are people resonating with it?

How is it going? Well, we've just been floored by the overwhelming feedback we've gotten people. There seems to be a real reservoir of anger at this type of action. We've received thousands and thousands of emails and support from across the country and really from across the political divide. The people, you know, some people would like to say this is a political action. We actually think it's the opposite. We've gotten feedback from people left, right, middle, up, down.

No matter who you are in America, no American consumer likes to be preached at. by the company that supposedly worked for them, producing the goods and services, them. They don't want to be told, you know, what to think or how to think or how to talk about politics. And so we've just really been floored. Now, some of the companies have come back, you know, on Friday, BlackRock responded. They attacked us. I will note they didn't deny a single fact in the ad. They can't.

None of it. All of it's been cited by very reputable mainstream media stories. So they completely ignore that and just go ad hominem against us. And I think that to me is the most telling thing that they couldn't quibble about a single fact that we allege. It was more that they were just, you know, hey, why did you expose this information? Well, basically they said I don't care about the issues that they care about. They're right. I don't care about, you know, growing their profits and aggrandizing their power at the cost of the American consumer.

So given that this is getting results, it seems like you've gotten people engaged, you've gotten people responding to this ad campaign relatively positively, BlackRock themselves came out and gave a response to it. What would be the successful resolution to this campaign? What would you like to see? Well, there's a lot of different options there depending on who you're talking about. Obviously, in a perfect world, I'd like to see BlackRock cut it out. I'd like to see them focus on providing good investment management advice and services to their clientele that doesn't involve cozing up to an authoritarian human rights violating regime and doesn't put this country at a disadvantage long term against that regime as we compete. And doesn't drive up costs for consumers of some of the very consumers that they, whose money they're investing.

So that would be namely number one to get obviously to just stop being villainous. But short of that, I would like the American people to really understand what's going on to, I think there's a lot of growing frustration. You see these, I see some of the results of Black Rocks activities and don't know who to, like, where is this coming from? Why, you know, why is there less oil and gas expiration driving up energy costs? Well, we hope to explain that. And that's one of these things that's going on that I would hope coming out of these ad campaign people would understand.

Now, beyond the BlackRock campaign, consumers research has also run campaigns on other companies that have been doing woke capital, as you refer to it, including Coke, Nike, American Airlines. What results came from those campaigns? Are we seeing similar things coming from this one as well? Well, it's interesting. Again, been floored by the amount of feedback we've gotten, positive feedback. I can't go into the deep. I don't know everything that the companies have done since, but I'm pretty sure most of them have more or less stayed out of issues of politics

that are not germane to their business and that they have no expertise in, which was always our goal. Say, listen, we understand there are issues that you, you know, may talk to politicians about related to, you know, sugar taxes or in the case of Coca-Cola or, you know, shoe rubber or whatever, but you're waiting into issues that you don't know anything about. And it's clear that you're only doing this to cozy up to woke politicians for favors and for virtue signaling to cover.

And we've seen that decrease to a large extent with a lot of these companies. So we're happy to see that. At the same time, sadly, so what we haven't seen is them fixing their problems. So you look at an airline like American who was already struggling and was going woke to cover from that. Basically, since we've launched our campaign, it's been an unending string of bad news for that company, mainly focus on their incompetence and their inability to run an airline just over the weekend. They had to cancel thousands of flights and the pilots union representative that spoke on the topic said, you know, basically they just don't, they are failing at the most basic aspects of running an airline,

which is attached staff and pilots to these flights and get them in the air. So, you know, it makes you question, you know, are they, you know, is the CEO, Doug Seymour and the CEO, Doug Parker, are they in a room somewhere talking about woke politics when they should be running the airline or or what. But we hope that they will either them or their board or ultimately the shareholders will take more seriously the management of that company and get them focused away from politics and back to the task at hand, which is running an airline. Now you mentioned that certain businesses maybe aren't responding in the ways that we've liked, but there are certain responses that are coming out at all. Are you saying that maybe it's more

the consumers that are responding to these campaigns? Yeah, we've had an overwhelming response for consumers thanking us for speaking up for them. that's one of our missions at consumers' research is to speak up for the consumer in the marketplace and to educate them about issues that are important to their interests. But I don't want to downplay it. I mean, we have seen, I think, when the campaign launched back in the summer, it seemed like every day some corporation or group of corporations was coming out and speaking on some issue that wasn't germane to their business. And that does seem to have decreased, I think, fairly significantly. And so, you know, it's always hard.

I'm not in those rooms. Obviously, they're not going to invite me in any time. But it does seem to be from the, I should say, tempo and volume of, you know, political speech, you know, on these issues coming out of corporate America has decreased since we launched. I feel like we've scratched the surface on some of the issues that are resulting from companies that are going woke like American Airlines. Obviously, we said that there's quite a bit of problems going on right now. But sort of at a larger level, what are the real dangers in companies like Nike, American Airlines, BlackRock, engaging in woke capitalism? Absolutely. Well, I mean, it's the same danger that exists anytime you have bad actors who try to use grandstanding and virtue signaling to cover from what should be the focus, which is fixing their problems. I think broadly speaking, you know, we have a free market system here in the United States, and that's based on the idea of calling balls and strikes.

In other words, when instead of, you know, like a planned economy, like state economy, like our, friend of me, China. You know, you don't really have much of a say if you don't like the products, you know, what a company's doing, not just in the products and the services they're providing, but what they're doing to your community or doing to your society or that kind of thing. You have to go to some political official and hope that he'll hear you out and then he'll, you know, issue some dictat. Here in America, the idea is that we have a right as Americans to, not just not buy the goods. I think too much of a focus gets made on that, where it's all about money. It's not. You have a right,

in a democracy to discuss whether you think something's a moral decision or whether a company should be shamed for doing something. And I think that's an important aspect that has been, not lost, but certainly not been fully represented in the American marketplace, this idea that consumers can come together and say, you know what, we really just can't stand listening to you bloviate

from your ivory tower. In the case of Doug Parker, you know, here's they got a guy whose airline required a multi-billion dollar taxpayer-funded bailout. The same year, he gets a 10 million-plus paycheck in the form of stock options, courtesy the American tax player. And then he's bloviating on politics and waiting on issues he doesn't know anything about. And I think that is something that at a higher level, Americans are kind of waking up

and saying, you know what, we're sick of this, and we are going to tell you that we don't like the cut of your jab. You should be ashamed of what you're doing. It's not seemly. Now, I want to highlight something you just said is that they're, they're blue. about politics and morality. Does politics have any place in business at all? I'm curious if it's the problem here is that woke capitalism is the issue or it's just that politics and business should not mix. That's a good question. The phenomenon that we saw was that politics was being,

woke politics was being used as a, as a, you know, a shiny object to shake while you were using forced labor in China or, you know, subsisting only on government payouts while you eight-figure paychecks, go to your CEO, Doug Parker. And so, to us, that was the focus. And a lot of times we get interviewed and say, well, they kind of want me to, like, write a whole list of rules for corporate America.

And it's sort of like, I just want them to cut out this fraud. Like, just stop doing this thing where you got really shady stuff, you got skeletons in your closet. You may have actively, you know, have your business model failing in the case of American Airlines. And yet, you know, you won't just

deal with the problems. So I would say generally as a rule, consumers should have this expectation. Companies should be focused on politics as it pertains to their business model. Is it something that they need to talk to a congressman because, like I said, there's a sugar tax issue or tariff or something like that. That is in the mission of serving the consumer because they're trying to figure out how do I produce the highest quality good for the lowest price for the most amount of people, right? Every business is trying to basically do that. is very suspicious, and in this case I think, you know, very villainous, is when they get into politics, not anything to do with serving the consumer, only to serve themselves at the expense

of the consumer. So, you know, if American Airlines is talking about Black Lives Matter, that really has nothing to do with the airline business. Right. You know. Absolutely. So most people don't get up, in this way, it is extremely suspicious if they are, because most people when they, Doug Parker loves to brag about the fact that he does not get a

salary. He gets a stock option. He gets bonuses based on stock compensation. Okay. So, at least in theory, his compensation is performance-based. Doesn't seem to work out that way, but, you know, whatever. Most people win there, you know, you don't see most, let's take another example of something that's performance-based. Most car dealers, when you go in to buy a car, you say, hey, I'm here to buy a car. Let me tell you about Black Lives Matter for the next 15 minutes, right? Because their paycheck is reliant on the fact of them selling, getting you into the vehicle on that dealership, right? Yeah. So most people who, and every company America is effectively a car dealer, right? Because like, they don't have somebody like, well, I guess Doug does. He's got the U.S. taxpayer.

But like absent a government bailout, most companies are that car dealer. They have to sell you a good or service that you want in order to stay in business. And so it should be really suspicious when you like walk up to the car dealership, and I mean that metaphorically like you walk into any business in America. And they're suddenly just want to talk to you about something completely unrelated. It makes you question it's like, well, do you really have faith in your cars? Or they're like, you know, are they breaking down back there and you're trying to like hide something? Yeah. And so I think that's the issue is it seems to be a problem that is recent.

And every time you look into it, these companies have a real issue that they're trying. They really don't want to talk about. And in some cases, it's like strangely related to the thing that they're obviating about. Like, you know, Black Rock's got all these, you know, environmental, you know, rules they're trying to oppose from the top down on American corporations. But then in China, it's just like freewheeling. They're invested at all these like, you know, PetroChina and all these like crazy polluting companies. It seems they're covering for that very specific thing.

Right. They have something that can hold up. Oh, look how good we are. Interesting. I want to go back to consumers research as an organization. As we mentioned at the top, you guys highlight issues that affect consumers and then offer them sort of like guidance on how to consume better. How do you guys do that?

Like, what's the work that you guys do to educate the consumer? That's a great question. question. Well, historically, the organization was founded in 1929, where the oldest consumer protection organization. I wasn't there, obviously, which is probably for the best because then I wouldn't be here. And it started out as pretty much your first product testing organization. We had a lab of about 500 people in Washington, New Jersey, put out the Consumers Bulletin, which is now a website, by the way, Consumersbulton.org. And it existed because there really was no product testing in America. The founder, Frederick Schlink, had written a

book called 100 million guinea pigs, which was a reference to the population of United States at that time. It's basically saying, you know, companies were just putting out products and we'll see what happens, right? And that continued for a good portion of the life of the organization. However, luckily, the market actually provided new products and services like Yelp and Google reviews, and you don't really need that as much anymore. Even, you know, websites like LifeHacker and Wirecutter are, like, having trouble because

it's like there's just so much aggregated, crowdsourced reviews of things. and so we moved into a space of trying to go from kind of a shotgun blast approach to more of a rifle shot where we would look for real issues that consumers, you know, kind of were missing that aren't going to show up in a Google review for American Airlines or certainly not for BlackRock, right? And try to educate them on an issue that maybe isn't right at the surface level, but is affecting their experiences as consumers. And so that's we've kind of shifted focus over time as sort of the product testing is, has been taken over by the sort of crowdsourcing internet age. Now, you've mentioned quite a few, I guess your campaigns target quite a few different businesses.

Coke, obviously, a drink company and food, Nike, sports apparel, American Airlines, a plane, and then BlackRock, right? We got all this stuff. How do you guys determine which issues you direct your consumers to sort of look at? That's a great question. Well, it really just depends on what we see as the sort of greatest factor going into this. So, like, for American Airlines and Coca-Cola and Nike, they were all companies that had massive hypocrisy at the same time that they were bloviating on, like, subject after subject. And so it seemed like something where people needed to understand.

We're sort of introducing the consumer to this trick that these schisters were pulling. It's sort of like walking, you're walking down the street in New York or Chicago, whatever, and you see someone doing like a three-card Monty scam on somebody like that. There's a crowd of people gathering, you know, moving the cards around or whatever. And you walk up and you just explain, like, actually, the cards in his, he's moved it. You're never going to, none of the three is the card that you're looking for. You're never going to win. Well, you've effectively beaten him. You don't have to arrest the guy at that point because you don't have the power to, we'll say.

But you've destroyed his scam because you've explained the trick. And so initially, for the consumer's first initial, we just wanted to explain the trick to consumers that what's going on here. is when you see them take this weird stance on something that's not related to their business model. And I will note, I know I keep hammering on American Airlines because it's such a great example of this, it was so oddly ironic that they would take a position at the time. They were really getting involved in some election integrity legislation that was going through Texas. And one of the big things they hit upon was that they had problems with you needed, were going to need an ID to vote. What's really weird about that is you need an ID to use their product.

So, like, not only are they out here getting involved in something that's not germane to them and they have no expertise in, they're, like, sort of like taking a position that's, like, in direct, you know, contradiction to their own business model. And so we wanted to explain, like, well, to consumers that were mystified by this, well, here's what's really going on, okay? And then with Black Rock, you, we wanted to show, to stretch the three-card Monty metaphor way farther than I should. The three-card Monty operator has a boss. And you may not know who he is, but he's the guy putting all these guys out there. And he's the one pushing them to do this. And BlackRock plays a significant role in pushing American corporations away from their main focus, which should be producing value to consumers in order to return value to their shareholders.

And they've instead hijacked the management class and provided all these perverse incentives for them to serve their own interests, to either to be punished or rewarded for sort of engaging in woke politics and cozy up to woke politicians. So we're trying to explain the street level trick and then explain the sort of like and the boss guy where he's at and what he's doing. So let's say you're given the opportunity to maybe sit down with the CEO of American Airlines or BlackRock and you are going to explain to them what consumers' research is trying to do.

What do you say to them? What I would say we're trying to get them to do is just to cut it out and just focus on flying a good airline. I mean, I used to be a very, American Airlines used to be my airline. I always flew. And I just watched the quality go down and down and down. And then you look into a little bit of like what Doug Parker's been doing during the management cycle. I think in 2016 there's a good Forbes letter on this. It talked about in 2016, I think the company started off with like $5.5 billion.

in cash, just sitting in the bank. And by the time the pandemic had rolled around, they had spent $5 billion of the cash and then borrowed more, I don't remember the exact amount, to do stock buybacks, which remember I noted that Doug Parker's compensation is exclusively based on stock compensation, right? Which he claims keeps him honest about his performance, because it's all, I don't get just paid for sitting in the seat.

I have to produce value. What he's done over his tenure is effectively just use stock buybacks to goose the price, and then when the pandemic rolled around, there was no money in the bank. It's sort of like spending all your rainy day fund and he had to run to the U.S. government for a bailout. I bring this up because what I'd say is, you know,

you spend all that money putting, you know, stock options in your pocket. You either could have returned more value to shareholders or my preference is you could have invested in newer planes, more leg room, you know, giving your workers a wage so that they're happier on the job and more training so that they can handle issues better. I mean, you could have, I mean, $5 billion, right, could have gone into improving that airline. Instead, it's sort of like they stripped it for parts and then sold it so that they could goose his compensation.

And then they pretended as if COVID was the entirety of why they needed a bailout, and that just isn't true. They wouldn't have needed one had they had they been saving that money instead of spending it. So what I say, I mean, obviously, it's a long way of saying a very simple message is just like, get back to serving your consumers and stop. cozing up to woke politicians because we're going to, we're done playing that game. We're going to name and shame you when you do that. So as we wrap up here, if our listeners would like to learn more about your campaign against BlackRock or American Airlines or Nike or Coke, where should they go? Absolutely. Well, I'm going to shill exclusively here for our website on BlackRock.

People can visit BlackRock loves China and find out all the dirty details that CEO Larry Fink doesn't want you to know about. and we hope you'll come watch the ad there. Very good. That was Will Hild, Executive Director of Consumer's Research and Educational Organization, seeking to highlight issues concerning to consumers. Will, very much appreciate you joining us. Thank you so much for having me. And that'll do it for today's episode.

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