The Daily Signal - What Conservatives Can Do to Fight Corporate Wokeness

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

Corporate wokeness increasingly is becoming part of American society. Justin Danhof, general counsel for the National Center for Public Policy Research, argues that Americans can and should stand up to woke ideology. "The shareholder base of even large companies that are woke, like Facebook, Alphabet, Nike, they're not monolithically left, but that's what the vote looks like," Danhof says. "The management of those companies, they have freedom to take stances against conservative values, because that's what the vote looks like." Danhof joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss what conservative shareholders can do. We also cover these stories: President Joe Biden proposes a $6 trillion budget for fiscal year 2022, a senior administration official tells CNN.  Senate Republicans unveil a $928 billion infrastructure proposal to counter the White House’s $1.7 trillion plan.  USA Today removed the word “male” from an op-ed by Chelsea Mitchell on competing against transgender athletes.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Feeling festive. Catch classic holiday favorites like Home Alone, the Santa Claus and Die Hard, along with holiday episodes from Family Guy, Abbott Elementary, and more with Hulu on Disney Plus. From festive Disney flicks to binge-worthy Hulu originals, Hulu on Disney Plus is your home for the holidays. Celebrate the season with Hulu, available on Disney Plus in Canada. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, May 28th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Del Judis. Corporate Wokeness is becoming part of American society. Justin Danoff, the General Counsel for the National Center for Public Policy Research, says it has no place in American society and joins me today on the Daily Signal podcast to discuss. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave us a review or have five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now onto our top news.

President Joe Biden's administration is proposing a $6 trillion budget for 2022, a senior administration official told CNN. The so-called $6 trillion budget for 2022 would increase the debt by over $1 trillion for at least the next 10 years and would be the biggest spending increase in over half century, according to CNN. Congressman Dan Musers said the plan will not contribute to economic recovery, tweeting on Thursday, while the Biden administration is raising taxes and new spending. Americans know that these policies will drive inflation and increased costs on families. We should be focused on economic recovery, not passing a $6 trillion budget we can't afford. Senate Republicans have unveiled a $928 billion infrastructure proposal to counter the White House's $1.7 trillion infrastructure plan. The GOP plan includes $98 billion for public transit systems and $500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

$6 billion for bridges, roads, and other major projects. Democrats have criticized the plan for not providing a clear explanation for how the government will pay for the projects in the bill. Democrats have proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% to pay for their proposed infrastructure bill, but Republicans don't want to raise the corporate tax rate. Republican Senator Shelby Morcapedo of West Virginia is a leading voice amid the infrastructure plan debate and said that GOP members are trying to get to that common goal of reaching a bipartisan infrastructure agreement that we talked about in the Oval Office with the president several weeks ago.

USA Today removed the word male from an op-ed by Chelsea Mitchell on competing against transgender athletes. Mitchell, a former high school track athlete, had written an op-ed about competing against biological male athletes, which USA Today published last week. Then on Tuesday, editors at USA Today changed the word in Mitchell's piece from male to transgender and called her out for using hurtful language, Fox News reported. Christina Holcomb Mitchell's attorney responded to USA Today's actions on Twitter saying, USA Today published our client Chelsea and Mitchell's opinion about the unfairness she experienced being forced to compete against male athletes. But after backlash from the woke mob, editors unilaterally changed Chelsea's.

his words and called them hurtful language. Holcomb added, What was the hurtful language that editors deleted from Chelsea's opinion piece three days after publication? The word, mail. USA Today violated its principles to appease the mob. This blatant censorship violates the trust we place in media to be honest brokers of public debate.

Now stay tuned for my conversation with Justin Danov. Americans use firearms to defend themselves between 500,000 and 2 million times every year. God forbid that my mother is ever faced with a scenario where she has to stop a threat to her life. But if she is, I hope politicians, protected by professional armed security, didn't strip her of the right to use the firearms she can handle most competently. To watch the rest of Heritage expert Amy Swearer's testimony on assault weapons before the House Judiciary Committee head to the Heritage Foundation YouTube channel.

There you'll find talks, events, and documentaries, backed with the reputation of the nation's most broadly supported Public Policy Research Institute. Start watching now at heritage.org slash YouTube. And don't forget to subscribe and share. We're joined today on the Daily Signal by Justin Danhoff. He's General Counsel for National Center for Public Policy Research. Justin, it's great to have you on the Daily Signal. Thanks, Rachel. Appreciate it.

Well, you're the director of the conservative movement's most effective shareholder activism organization. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, so basically a little more than a decade ago, we looked at the landscape of where corporate America was heading, and we got very, very concerned. We saw on issues from health care to the environment to social issues that corporate America in some instances was lurching to the left and in some instances sprinting to the left. And we were so confused. You know, big business, you know, this is supposed to be the one area of culture that conservatives have some lever of power. But we were losing it at a rapid pace. And

So we started the Free Enterprise Project. And we started with like a very simple mission. We're just going to reverse engineer how the left is trying to take over corporate America. And two tools they were using were very simple and very effective. And they were shareholder resolutions. So every publicly traded company, if you're an investor of a certain value, you're allowed to put a resolution on the ballot that all the shareholders vote on for each of these companies. And then the second was just showing up at investor meetings.

to speak values that we believe in. Because we realized that the left was literally, at that point in time, the only one engaging in those arenas. They were the only ones filing shareholder resolutions with companies, and they were the only one showing up to annual meetings because conservatives ignored this cultural lane. And frankly, to our peril, look at where we are in 2021. You know, 10 years ago when we started this,

conservatives looked at us like we had a tinfoil hat, what do you mean that you're going after big business? And now I think everyone's awake to the woke, that we have a problem with big business, that the left, just like they did with academia, the Main Street media, many of our religious pillars of our institutions, they marched through the institutions and they took them over, and big business is just the most recent.

We've talked a lot about, too, how this has affected higher education. In a recent op-ed or piece you wrote, you said, the left took their slow march through academia now completely control higher education they went through hollywood and done the same thing can you talk about how we got here and how we can sort like climb out of this or begin to yeah so it's it's god bless the left for one thing they did all of this in the sunshine everything was out in the open when it comes to taking over corporate america and it parallels most directly with academia so like if you permit me to run the parallel i've always called this a tri-part takeover. I've called it top-down, bottom-up, and outside-in. And so if you

parallel this with academia, the top-down part is what academia called, you know, academic freedom or tenure for professors, right? What did that turn into? It turned into black-balling conservatives and traditional-minded Americans from getting lifelong tenure in academia. So now we're at the point where dozens of major coastal elite universities have zero, zero Republican professors, because they've been blackballed. Same thing with corporate America. So how do board members get selected? Well, large companies don't have the time to select their own board members per se. They use search firms. The left figured this out. Guess what they did? They bought out the search firms. So now we're at the point where the search firms bring potential board members to Fortune 500 companies that are all super woke.

They won't bring someone that believes in traditional Judeo-Christian values. Never. Not going to happen. So we've got the same thing at the top. That's what happened in academia starting in the 1960s. So that's what's happening there. The bottom-up takeover, if you are a graduate student of any design, let alone an undergrad, graduate student, if you believe in traditional and conservative values, you don't speak those on campus.

Because guess what? You're beholden to your professors for your grade. Well, in the corporate campus, you're beholden to your bosses for your paycheck. So we've reached the same level, where conservatives self-censor on campus because they're scared about getting their grades reduced because of their beliefs, same thing. So the cancel culture really, really that we're experienced in America, sure, it's Gina Krafano getting canceled from Disney. That's part of it, but that's only a part. The real cancel culture is the employees at Coca-Cola and Cigna and Boeing and Disney that you simply don't want to go to the racism training put on by Robin DiAngelo,

who says that all white people are oppressors and all black people are oppressed. They can't speak up and speak their truth because they're a whole. afraid they're either going to get sent to a re-education camp by HR or give it a pink slip. That's the real cancel culture. So we have this bottom-up problem in business where folks can't speak their truth if they believe in conservative or traditional values. And then the outside in problem, that's the world I live in. Again, I've been a shareholder activist for more than a decade for right of center causes, and it's very lonely. If I put a pie chart up right here for everyone to see of shareholder activist engagement from the right of center and left of center,

you wouldn't even see my sliver. Okay, so that's the problem is the left, when they see a business, they want to take over, they buy more. They don't divest. They don't boycott. They engage more in that company. And so that's the state of play with the outside in. The shareholder activist investors, the rating agencies, they almost all come from the left. Conservatives do not engage business. Conservatives have this terrible knee-jerk reaction that we need to unlearn that we claim we're going to boycott. And Rachel, give me a conservative boycott that's ever worked of a business. I'll wait. We'll sit here in silence for the next many hours because there isn't. one. That's just the problem, is our claim of boycott is actually a hollow threat so it hurts

our cause. So don't boycott, because here's a secret. The left threatens it from time to time too, but their biggest effective tool is engagement. Well, on that note, we've seen, especially recently in Georgia with the Georgia election bill, that passing, Coca-Cola, the National Baseball League, all of these different entities are deciding that we're going to pull out. We're to speak against this because we don't agree with it. And what is your perspective on that, how these big entities are deciding to be, I guess, almost, it seems like politicians in some ways are they're coming out and making statements as a corporation and not as individuals? Well, it's because, again, in that issue, they're only hearing from one side.

If reports in the news are to be believed, Major League Baseball heard from Stacey Abrams, Al Sharpton, and members of the Rainbow Push Coalition. they didn't hear from us until after the fact. So that's just the point is if we engage these business leaders from the onset, if our voices are in the room, we're going to have more impact. And that's why I always say engage don't boycott, right? Because for my understanding, there's at least 1,200 major companies that are on the wrong side of voter integrity in Georgia,

that are literally trying to corrupt our elections. So if I'm going to go shopping for my family, if I want to boycott, first I would need to look at all 1,200. I probably need it like, you know, to set up some sort of algorithm and figure out which stores I'm even allowed to go to. And then once I get there, I would need a team of people behind me saying, oh, no, that product can't go in the cart. That one can. That one can't. So boycotting isn't going to, we're not going to boycott our way out of the problem. So we have to engage the companies that are, and engage the ones that are especially bad. Engage big tech, engage Hollywood.

Because part of the problem is, if you're only hearing from one perspective, why won't you just give into that perspective? It's human nature, right? And so many of these large corporations never hear from folks that share the values that you and I share. They never hear from us. So contact customer service of your customer, contact investor relations of your investor. And if you're anybody anywhere,

all these companies claim they care about stakeholders now. Well, everybody's a stakeholder because stakeholders in amorphous term that means nothing. So you have the right to contact any company on any issue. So I implore folks to do that. Well, you also talk about, we've talked about how the left dominates the shareholder proposal space. how would you say conservatives can work to dominate the space as well? Yeah, so again, the left, everything they did was in the sunshine.

None of this was in smoke-filled rooms. None of this was with fancy mirror tricks. They did it all out in the sunshine. So all I've ever done at the Free Enterprise Project is literally a reverse engineer what the left showed me how to do. So I've just copied the left's tactics. So as a movement, if the right would just approximate the left's army, will have tremendous success in this arena.

And the simple answer to your question, that was the broader answer, the simplest answer is vote. At corporate annual shareholder meetings of every publicly traded company, there's two sets of votes that are super important. Those are votes for board members and their votes for shareholder resolutions.

And what happens is the equivalent of a red or purple state election that goes blue every single year because conservatives couldn't be bothered to show up while the left coalesces their money and they vote. So the shareholder base of even large companies that are woke, like Facebook, Alphabet, Nike, they're not monolithically left,

but that's what the vote looks like. So the management of those companies, they have freedom to take stances against conservative values because that's what the vote looks like. Because conservative money, we couldn't be bothered to vote on that Tuesday. Sorry. The left, they always vote. So use your money just like you use your electoral votes for politicians.

Because you have the same amount of power. Because if Andrew Breitbart, you know, rest in peace taught us anything, is that politics is downstream from culture. So these votes on corporate culture, they affect politics. So I implore folks to vote and not ignore your proxy ballots for corporations because they are so, so meaningful for our society. Well, in speaking about Major League Baseball and these other entities that have come out and made political statements, there was a poll that came out this week that said over 60% of Americans don't like when big corporations went into these big political fights. So the messages, people are starting to say that they're frustrated by this.

What do you think will happen? Do you think corporations are going to start to listen and do something about it? or it's going to be ignored still? What is your perspective? Well, the polling has been somewhat consistent on that for a while, interestingly. And so that's just the point is, if the left is going to be a squeaky wheel over here and we're going to make a squeak every now and again,

then no, nothing's going to change. But if we're the squeaky wheel on the other side, guess what? We'll provide an off-ramp for companies to say, wait a minute, this wasn't our fight to begin with. this was a legislative battle in a state, maybe we have nothing to do with it. Because guess what? I want companies to be fully engaged when there's an issue that affects their bottom line. When it affects their investors, when it affects their customers, their shareholders, yes, be fully engaged.

But voting laws, bathroom bills, these things have nothing to do with the bottom line of corporations. And so if there's enough chatter on both sides, I think we're going to build an off-ramp for companies to say, hey, maybe we should focus on our business for five minutes rather than engaging in the culture wars. Because the culture wars, guess what? They should be left to the culture warriors, right? I'll fight that battle. I'll fight that battle and I'll debate anybody from, you know, the SPLC or the human rights campaign, you know, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. But Bank of America doesn't need to be funding, you know, the SPLC or the human rights campaign. Goldman Sachs doesn't need to be involved in that.

So, yeah, if there's enough chatter from our side, because we know there's enough on the other side, let's build them the off-ramp because I think deep down, many business leaders know that it's their legal fiduciary responsibility to look after the best interest of their investors. but they're bending to the will of those that are talking to them. So we need to have more conversations. Well, lastly, as we wrap up, I wanted to get your thoughts on different companies. I know a major airline. I think it was Delta.

I could be wrong, but they're talking about how they want to hire X amount of female pilots, other people talking about we want to see this gender represented or we want this race to be represented. While we all want opportunity, how do you think it's best to focus more on people's qualifications and their talent for being somewhere versus making it about, you know, gender or race or whatever. Yeah, so that's a great question. And it was United that came out with that that 50% of their pilots they want to, you know, hire in the future to be diverse.

And when I saw that headline, I thought to myself, United Airlines exclaims that affirmative action for higher education has been a failure. Right? because that was supposed to be a quality of opportunity. So what they're saying is a quality of the opportunity doesn't work, so we want a quality of outcome. Right. And so my whole philosophy with business and my engagement with them has been, I think diversity is super important.

But I think diversity goes beyond skin surface characteristics. I don't think diversity is what you look like. I don't think diversity is which restroom you use. I think diversity is who you are. as a person, your ethos, your belief system. And I think that at the higher levels of business, the more people that think differently, they're going to ask the critical questions at the critical time. Because my concern for big businesses is monolithic group think.

Because that's where you're all going to walk off the same ledge at the same hour, at the same minute on the same day. because no one stopped to think, well, what does someone else's perspective bring to this discussion? And so I do think that diversity of thought will lead to diversity of skin color characteristics, skin color, you know, and then gender diversity as well. But I think that's where we should start with diversity, is diversity of thought. because we have to ask critical questions if we're going to be these large businesses going forward. But just to force diversity of outcome

and a quality of outcome, that's very scary as an investor. It's very scary as a citizen. It's very scary as a traveling member of the flying public that someone's going to be put in charge of a plane solely because of how he or she looks, not because of how he or she looks, operates an airplane. And so that's where I would say is we can focus on diversity, but viewpoint

diversity would enhance the discussion. Just having different genders and different races in the room, that doesn't enhance a discussion. Because not all women think the same based on the fact that they're women. In America, we used to call that sexism. Not all black Americans think the same based on the fact of their skin color. Once again, in America, we used to call that racism. And I think we need to get back to calling sexism and racism for what it is. True sexism and racism. So, yeah, you're not going to find in the corporate world a bigger proponent of diversity than myself.

I just think that diversity comes from the inner, not the outer. Well, Justin, thank you for joining us on The Daily Signal. It's been great having you with us. Thanks so much, Rachel. Appreciate you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

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