DeSantis Forms Alliance Of 19 Governors To Combat Biden’s Economy-Crushing ESG Obsession
“We as freedom loving states can work together and leverage our state pension funds to force change”
This is what leadership looks like. Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) has allied with 18 other governors to push back on Joe “I am the Democratic Party” Biden’s economy-crushing ESG push. “ESG” is the environmental and social governance agenda that seeks to control American citizens like Communist China uses its social credit scheme to control (and punish) its subjects.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., joined forces with 18 GOP governors to reject President Joe Biden’s environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) “agenda,” claiming the push is a “direct threat” to the economic freedom of American retirees.
Governors in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming formed the alliance Thursday in what they described as an effort to ensure American retirement funds are not used for “woke” investments.
“Yet again, President Biden put his political agenda above the wellbeing and individual freedoms of hardworking Americans,” the Republican governors wrote. “We as freedom loving states can work together and leverage our state pension funds to force change in how major asset managers invest the money of hardworking Americans, ensuring corporations are focused on maximizing shareholder value, rather than the proliferation of woke ideology.”
“The proliferation of ESG throughout America is a direct threat to the American economy, individual economic freedom, and our way of life, putting investment decisions in the hands of the woke mob to bypass the ballot box and inject political ideology into investment decisions, corporate governance, and the everyday economy,” the states said.
Here's the letter from the alliance of states against ESG formed by @GovRonDeSantis.
"We will not stand idly by as the stability of our country’s economy is threatened by woke executives who put their political agenda ahead of their clients’ finances.” -Governor DeSantis https://t.co/yw1JwuNGBm pic.twitter.com/idI6zw0yw6
— Bryan Griffin (@BryanDGriffin) March 16, 2023
You can read the governors’ joint policy statement here.
A group of 19 Republican governors from “freedom-loving states” announced an anti-environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, alliance on Thursday.
“This month, Congress exercised its powers under the Congressional Review Act to disapprove of the Department of Labor Rule relating to ‘Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights,’” the governors’ joint statement said. “Yet again, President [Joe] Biden put his political agenda above the wellbeing and individual freedoms of hardworking Americans.”
The House and the Senate passed legislation introduced by Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., and Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., to block the Labor Department rule the governors reference. Biden, however, said he’ll veto the Senate bill, which would be his first, CNBC reported.
“We as freedom-loving states can work together and leverage our state pension funds to force change in how major asset managers invest the money of hardworking Americans, ensuring corporations are focused on maximizing shareholder value, rather than the proliferation of woke ideology,” the statement also said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is leading the alliance, which includes Govs. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Tate Reeves of Mississippi, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Spencer Cox of Utah, Jim Justice of West Virginia, Mark Gordon of Wyoming, and Kay Ivey of Alabama, among others.
“At my direction, Florida has led the way in combatting [sic] the pernicious effects of the ESG regime by directing our state pension fund managers to reject ESG and instead focus on obtaining the highest return on investment for Florida’s taxpayers and retirees,” DeSantis said in a press release about the alliance. “At the time I said we would spearhead an initiative to join with other like-minded states to send an even louder message to the financial industry that the American people have rejected ESG at the ballot box, and ideologues cannot and should not circumnavigate the will of the people.”
“Today, we have delivered on that promise. Florida has emerged as America’s economic engine, with an unemployment rate consistently lower than the nation’s and the highest rate of business formations of any other state,” the Florida governor added. “We will not stand idly by as the stability of our country’s economy is threatened by woke executives who put their political agenda ahead of their clients’ finances.”
Winning.
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Comments
A great move though I am concerned about how long it can be maintained. Is this going to be backed up in these states by changes in the individual state laws? If it’s just by the orders of each of these governors then when they are out of office and if their replacement is a Dem that could just get flipped around. Guess we’ll have to keep an eye out for legislation in each of these states to see what other actions they will take to protect these pensions.
It helps greatly that the governors are catching up to investors but they are not the ones leading the demise of ESG. See my comment below.
When states yank their funds from your ESG loving investment company it most certainly has a major impact.
See my comment below. Governors are merely reacting to having to subsidize the mostly teachers government pension funds due to the poor performance of their ESG investment. They are not the horse leading the cart, They are reacting to the enormous losses. See my comment and link below.
Right, so when the largest investors pull out, such as states like Texas and Florida, it has little or no impact…
NotCoach: Are you illiterate? Where did I say the largest investors pulling out have no impact? Large investors pulling out is what caused the bad performance in the pension funds and to states and Congress bailing them out. Now the governors are reacting by forcing the unions to drop the ESG crap. Aren’t they shutting the barn doors after the horses got out? Hello? Anybody home over there?
The largest investors are the states, and them pulling out has a major impact. You are conflating the divestment of these companies with the removal of ESG within state controlled bodies.
Anyone home over there? Hello?
Phil, you’re the one who looks like you’re not quite “home.” Best just take the L.
These states need to do similar for other stuff as well.
1- Energy. Biden filled the TVA full of leftists and has set the federal government up to quietly choke jobs and industry away by limiting power access.
You can try and move your business to a red state, but good luck getting electricity. In effect also choking job growth.
I’d argue they can stymie the electric car and natural gas mandates too. Not that I’m down on technological progress- but the grid cannot handle it and other countries that have gone all electric haven’t faired well.
The generating capacity just is not there for our country to go all electric, particularly all electric while going all in on renewables. It’s just another massive disaster waiting to happen, one that could leave huge swathes of the country without the power they need to do much of anything. Watt’s Up With That is a good site to use to check out articles on why the pursuit of renewables to the exclusion of other sources is ruinous.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/
The more pointed weapon is throttling power down in red states. The left will declare a quiet war of regulation and rationing to stymie the flight of talent and business to red states.
That is the next shoe to drop.
Last week we arrived in TN. You would not be believe the number of uhauls we saw heading eastward at hotels etc. In MARCH. We saw one dude from California moving to South Dakota.
I love my Tesla, but I know darn well the battery technology is not there to put everybody’s car on the grid, yet, and maybe ever.. I also know that gas-powered cars and coal-fired plants in the US are so clean now, the enviros had to declare Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant because we met our other goals.
I want the car companies to make the very best product of the type they know how, and want to, make. Competition from gas-powered cars will assure that the electric cars will continue to develop.
We need to get the uneducated bureaucrats in Washington out of the business of picking winners and losers in the marketplace. That role belongs to consumers, who are the people closest to the decision.
It’s very easy for some person who commutes by subway to daydream about controlling the daily habits of a person who drives a car and lives more than 1,000 miles away, but it’s just not practical, as the old Soviet Union demonstrated.
If I still lived in a metro area, I’d consider getting an EV as a commuter vehicle. It doesn’t make sense for where I live currently. My house is off grid since our REC will not supply power to my area. The price I paid for solar is worth it. I’m not going to have to worry about future rolling blackouts or the government deciding how much power I’m allowed to use.
I’d like to know more about your apple cause I hear that it’s a shame most of the time
Hear about your solar.. how weird it came out apple lol
Yes please. I am seriously considering a solar system as a hedge v potential electricity reliability as well as potential savings. Would love to have some insight into your experience and purchase decisions.
I’d enjoy hearing a case study
In general, the ease n quality of life with on-homestead generated power keep getting better; the improvement itself is accelerating.
Like less load from LED bulbs, Apple’s RISC-y processors, ever more efficient referigeration. Better generation from wind n water turbines, photo cells, geothermal. Cross the streams n the world changes.
My tinfoil hat says they have to try stampeeding us to believe in only centrally orchestrated universal “solutions” precisely beause people can do ever more for themselves. What’s an Overlord to do when The Livestock can get along on their own?
Carbon dioxide is a NUTRIENT! Please excuse my outburst, but it burns my biscuits when “enviros” deny actual scientific facts.
For the record, I am not opposed to advances in technology to create power. What I vehemently oppose are the children slaves that are used to mine lithium so that “green people” can virtue signal their “righteousness.”
ESG is collapsing on its own.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Are-Oil-Stocks-Too-Good-For-ESG-Investors-To-Pass-Up.html
This is a stake in the heart of ESG. Even Larry Fink is beginning to bail out. Global economic collapse is not a win for anybody but the insane billionaire Malthusians who believe they would survive the process.
No more than a minor setback for the ideologues who have been advancing ESG despite all common sense and reason.
Odd that Texas has not joined this group.
Abbot and DeSantis are potential rivals on the national stage, so likely Abbot does not want to be seen following DeSantis.
You mean he does not want to be seen following DeSantis who is following Trump in his shadow campaign.
I thought DeSantis was following Bush and Rove.
He’s being coached and advised by Rove to wait for Trump to reveal his take on issues and then weighing in with a lame replicated take.
Last week, Tucker Carlson posed a few questions to Trump, DeSantis and a few other declared and anticipated margin-of-error candidates. Look up the responses. DeSantis was excoriated on his response on Ukraine which was a Readers Digest version of Trump’s very precise and detailed response.
Reminds me of 2016 when Jeb!!, Cruz and Rubio tried to mimic Trump by using insulting humor. They bombed!!! Trump is out there just being Trump. Everyone else is experimenting with their image to see which works. Classic Rove. Look for it. DeSantis is just another polymorph trying to shape-shift himself as Trump “without the baggage”. He’s proving to be a lightweight. Why not try being himself? Gasp!!!
This doesn’t even make sense. Rove and his Bush-Cheney branch of the GOP are big into the war in Ukaraine and big against Trump. Why would Rove “coach” DeSantis, whom he does not even advise, to . . . follow Trump’s lead on Ukraine? And to do it, according to you, badly? Do you hear yourself?
DeSantis proves again and again that he is own man, that he stands against the globalist agenda from ESG to foreigners buying land in Florida near bases to keeping our kids safe, and the best you can come up with is he’s being coached by Rove to impersonate Trump? Who is a loser that can’t win a general election? Ludicrous.
Exactly
You want to know the first signs of derangement? When one decides a person is wrong even if they agree with you.
@Fuzzy. You are right it doesn’t make any sense. Maybe DeSantis is lying? His reply to Carlson lacked the detailed explanations that Trump provided. Shadow campaigning is dishonest by definition! And it’s not working! You just assume that anyone who supports Trump is stupid don’t you? Take a deep breath and take whatever time you need to think this through. I thought you were Tea Party? You lost the plot somewhere along the road because you are now defending the very Bush crowd that gave rise to the Tea Party. What happened?
No, Phil, I read many (but not all, some are so ridiculous I just can’t finish reading them) of your screeds, and they don’t make sense to me. At all. They are filled with wild speculation based on pretty much nothing but the ravings of nobodies at garbage blogs. I don’t assume you are stupid, and in fact, have expressed surprise that you seem so strange of late. You don’t see a rabbit hole you won’t jump down, and then you come back here and regale us with your “findings.” Then tell us we are stupid, we are GOPe, bought and paid for Soros stooges, and whatever you spew on a given day.
There is literally nothing at all that DeSantis has said or done that is remotely agreeable to the Bush-Cheney progressive wing of the party, including his measured and completely reasonable statement on Ukraine (the Bush wing freaked all the way out over it, but you claim–based on your insider knowledge? Hahaha–they told him to say it? Laughable.).
DeSantis has openly declared war on their pet projects (from ESG to selling out our land to the Chinese), fired a Soros-backed DA who refused to enforce the law, and pretty much been spot-on in his decimation of “woke” nonsense in Florida, where he infamously said, “woke goes to die.” He’s protecting Florida’s children from grooming and mutilation, he pushed through legislation that made it all but impossible for antifa and BLM to function in our state, and he put a stop to blue-areas fining people for not wearing masks during the WuFlu scare.
NONE of that is remotely Bush crowd.
But you ignore what he actually does and instead focus on the wild ramblings of nutters . . . so, yeah, you sound like a nutter when you mimic them to the point of slapping your hands over your eyes and ears to avoid seeing what DeSantis is actually saying and doing.
And I am Tea Party. And I believe that DeSantis, a founding member of the Freedom Caucus in the House, is, too. He has done nothing to make me think otherwise. If he goes off the rails, I’ll be the first one calling him out. Just like I did when Marco Rubio went all-in on amnesty (though I had already had my doubts given some shady finance stuff here in Florida before he went to the Senate). He sold out, and I never wrote another positive post about him (this was back on my personal blog). But there has to be a real reason (pushing amnesty, as an example), not made-up nonsense that has zero evidence to back it up.
Phil, your posts would receive considerably more upvotes at Sundance’s TreeHouse, where he stokes the anti-DeSantis fires weekly, if not daily.
The irony of what Sundance, a Cape Coral, FL resident, is doing is attacking the same Republican Governor of his state of residence who, after winning selection by 19+ points, quickly and tenaciously cleaned up SWFL after Irma and Ian and is rebuilding the very community where Sundance lives.
Insincerity and hypocrisy exist on conservative blogs, too.
Texas was doing this last year. They’re ahead of the pack, not behind.
So DeSantis is following abbott
I neither claimed nor implied that. Texas was simply reacting to its own interests, that are different from Florida’s, or anybody else’s.
I thought they arleady divested.
And I want to know where Mike DeWine is. Always a day late and a dollar short.
Good start. Now cancel the Democrat(ic) Party..
Common sense and action … good!
Petty dictators forcing companies to spend money on people and things that have nothing to do with producing good-quality goods and services. I always thought Ayn Rand was a boring writer, but she described these awful people accurately.
I am glad to see that some of the States are resisting this pernicious, costly, non-productive nonsense.
Sing it, out loud
Sing it, so everybody can hear
Sing it, sister!
It’s good to see this, and I’m glad to see Idaho is involved, our gov is a bit of a squish. (I’m a CA refugee now in ID). We need states to band together on many cultural, economic and political issues to push back against the leftists controlling the federal government and so many of our institutions. States have the power to do this far more effectively, and this could move us toward a more “extreme federalism” in a hopefully peaceful manner. This would be a far better outcome than a national divorce. One of the two is necessary as there is no way to live in harmony with the now crazed left. State alliances like this are the way forward and kudos to DeSantis for his leadership.
One… another step forward.
Fiduciary responsibility, first. Cargo cult, class-disordered ideologies, second, or never.
Federalism holds a lot of the answers to our problems. Let each State do their thing and stop trying to run a continental size Nation from DC as one size fits all.
Federalism is so 18th Century.
Then roll back the 17th amendment so that Senators are once more selected by the legislature of the State to represent the interests of the State.
I’m on your side. One of the worst changes to the Constitution was the 17th.
Funny how every scheme to “fix our democracy”, means more, more centralized control, “authorized” ever-less robustly, proposed by the same people.
Posting on Truth Social about Making America Great Again is not leading. Talk is cheap.
Forming an alliance of 19 GOP governors to take the fight against ESG directly to the Biden Administration and woke corporations is leading.
1 Ghostrider in reply to Pasadena Phil. | March 20, 2023 at 2:46 pm
Hmm so you live for upvotes?
Tacky
Truth is always hard to believe when your so invested in something, or someone, who will disappoint… HUGLEY
But no
Doubt, this is a DeSantis cheerleading site, don’t believe the moderators that say they voted for President Trump but now are disapproving of him…
Some I believe have outright girly girl crushes
I hear he is on a crash diet.. hmm. Why.. wondering minds want to know…
gonzotx — Given your idolization of Trump, and Trump’s penchant for having sex with porn stars and hosting parties at his resort with hundreds of gay men, I don’t even want to imagine what your “crash diet” would include.
Some day you have to explain what satisfaction you derive from posting such obvious and blatant lies.
“DeSantis Forms Alliance Of 19 Governors To Combat Biden’s Economy-Crushing ESG Obsession”
Shoot me if you must, but DeSantis oozes leadership like Pelosi oozes vodka vapor. W after W after W, putting together political armies to push back the wokesters. This is federalism. Why have no other governors done stuff like this?
The closest I have seen lately are consortia of state AGs… the most recent one demanding that credit card companies not pursue their plans of singling out firearms purchases (countered after their victory by an Axis of Evil AG consortium formed to argue the opposite). This has happened several times on several issues over the past three years or so.
But this is something governors should be doing. The governors of these states haven’t even bothered to issue statements backing their own AGs.
Does it matter why any of these folks do something useful, or if not useful, right?
Trump is plating Trump to feed his ego? Ok, DeSantis is playing Trump lite to get himself elected, and feed his ego? Ok.
God spare us from more people doing righteous things, for the good of humanity.