You probably know who your governor is and your senators too. But do you know who your state treasurer is, auditor general, how about your comptroller? Well, it's time to start paying attention, because these officers have emerged as the new frontline against the intrusion of politics into finance under the guise of  ESG. 

On my podcast, “Meeting of Minds,” I recently interviewed John Murante, Treasurer of Nebraska, an agricultural state. He warns that the war against fossil fuels is now turning into a war against agriculture as government and activists push companies to divest not just from the energy industry but from industries that use energy, and farms use energy. 

Whether they know it or not, ESG activists would create a world where we are colder, more hungry, and in the dark. It's time to start engaging with the companies you own in your 401(k). Remember, they work for you.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have we grown too cynical and self-serving to keep national security information a secret any longer? The case of Jack the Dripper, the Massachusetts Air National Guard enlistee who transmitted highly classified material through his gaming platform, is only the latest in self-absorbed leakers and classified material mishandlers. Jack Teixeira didn’t exploit his access to the nation’s secrets to act as a whistleblower or even for ideological purposes. Teixeira allegedly used the material simply to bolster his standing in a cult of personality.

The recent rash of personally motivated leaks for social media credibility raises significant questions about whether we have lost our ability to put national security ahead of personal gain. That starts at the top, however. The recent exposures of national leaders retaining classified material for their own commercial and/or political use is similarly damning. 

We get the behavior we incentivize. If we reward narcissism in both public and private arenas, we ought to expect the undermining of integrity and commitment to the ideals that allow a self-governing republic to function. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Following a weekend of “fiery violence” in Chicago, the Mayor-elect, Brandon Johnson, said: “It is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”  The same weekend, four teenagers were shot and killed in Dadeville, Alabama.  Something awful is happening with our youth and it’s spreading beyond our major cities—but it’s not a lack of economic opportunity.  Reckless and senseless violent crime is not caused by poverty.

What this comes from is “moral poverty.” Economics does not drive the lack of impulse control.  The absence comes from not teaching young boys the habituations of right and wrong, and children without fathers, drenched in environments of drugs and resentments. What we adults teach and insist upon—or what we don’t—is what matters. Until we get this right and reinstitute timeless and reliable standards of right and wrong in our youth, be prepared for more violence, death, and destruction.  And not just in our major cities.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Biden administration is seeking 87,000 more IRS agents to make sure every last tax dollar is collected from the wallets of hard-working Americans.

But if they’re that desperate, they should be more careful about the way they hand it out. Apparently, the feds have lost at least $276 billion dollars that was designated as covid-19 relief funding, according to the combined estimates provided by inspectors general of the Treasury and Labor Departments, along with the Small Business Administration.

The Labor Department’s Inspector General estimated that $76 billion dollars set aside for unemployment insurance was lost through fraud. And at least $86 billion dollars was misappropriated via fraud and waste at the SBA, according to its inspector general. Both said those figures were likely to rise.

Leona Helmsley once famously said that paying taxes was only for the little people. But nowadays, actually being held accountable for taxpayer money is obviously the rarity.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Even the Biden administration understands how unpopular radical transgender policies are. That’s why they’re trying to have it both ways with biological men in women’s sports.

First, the Department of Education released new guidelines nullifying the bans 20 states have passed on men competing in women’s sports. But simultaneously, they’re allowing schools receiving federal funds to stop transgender athletes from playing in leagues that don’t conform to their biological sex — under certain strict criteria.  

The result is an incoherent mish-mash, but the takeaway is clear as day. President Biden wants to be able to claim he’s protected female athletes. At the same time, he wants to pacify the loud and aggressive transgender lobby — and keep states from championing all-female sports in any meaningful way.

The device is too clever by half. America’s women see through it … and we’re not impressed.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently sent a letter to Chevron denying the company's request to exclude a request from a shareholder for a vote from other shareholders which asked the company to study the risks of giving up the production of fossil fuels. 

Green activists routinely try to cajole oil companies into trying to guess the effects of fossil fuel usage on the weather decades into the future. But one shareholder, the financial advisor David Bahnsen is asking the more relevant question. What would happen to our investment value if Chevron got out of the oil business? 

It’s high time that people who are actually investing their own money get into the game which up until now has been dominated by activists. Exxon also will have a similar proposal on the ballot. It’s their chance to speak up and defend what they do every day: power the world. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Harvard is defending its admission policies in the Supreme Court this year; policies that discriminate against Asian students. Diversity, they argue, “lead[s] to greater knowledge”…and promotes “tolerance.”

None of this is true if you are of the wrong race or the wrong political viewpoint.  At Stanford Law School, students shut and shouted down a federal judge because they didn’t agree with his legal position on a prisoner’s transgender rights.  At San Francisco State last week, students put swimmer Riley Gaines in fear of her life, after she was assaulted and barricaded into a room for three hours for talking about biological differences in sports.

Gaines said the inmates have taken over the asylum.  She’s right. The notion of diversity has proven itself to be nothing more than code for its opposite: enforced consent—and the prevention of common sense and true equality.  If we don’t reverse this, the new word for “college campus” should be “asylum.”

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’ve heard a lot about Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi’s Catholic faith. So where were they last week? During the holiest time in the Christian year, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (America’s largest military hospital) ordered Catholic priests to halt religious services on its grounds—right before Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter.

A community of Franciscan priests who have served soldiers at the center for almost 20 years were terminated, with their contract awarded instead to a secular firm. Cost differences between the two are reportedly de minimis.

The bigger problem, however, is that the secular contractor cannot provide the requisite pastoral care for the sick and elderly at Walter Reed. And patients can’t readily access pastoral care outside hospital grounds.

What a despicable violation of the First Amendment rights of those who have offered their all in service to our country.  It needs to be remedied. Now.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So: How do you get on the Supreme Court in Wisconsin? Evidently, you break all the rules, declare your position on issues that will come before the court, and run with lots of liberal outside funding. That’s how Milwaukee Judge Janet Protasiewicz won her runoff race on April 4. 

The race will go down as the most expensive judicial race in American history, at least so far. Judge Protasiewicz ran to the left, breaking convention (and setting up likely challenges to her role in future cases) by declaring her “values” such as a right to abortion. That issue is sure to come before the court in short order, as will the establishment of congressional districts in Wisconsin. 

Americans easily forget how important the courts are, and this is a wake-up call for conservatives. If we keep losing elections like this one, we will see the Left take over the courts, seat by seat. Did we work so hard for 50 years only to surrender now? 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For years, Twitter pushed back on complaints—primarily from the right—about suspected “shadow-banning.” Executives, including founder Jack Dorsey, repeatedly insisted in congressional testimony that no such practice took place. 

Now: Elon Musk has released Twitter’s algorithm and we know the truth. Twitter built its code to suppress comments based on complaints, blocks, and mutes, punishing users far more for such feedback than for ‘likes’ and engagement. 

Twitter engineered its algorithm to incentivize block lists and complaint campaigns, both of which got widely adopted on the Left. It would not take many blocks, mutes and especially complaints about inappropriate comments to get users locked out of any distribution and their input quashed on the broader platform. 

And all the while, Twitter executives gaslit conservatives about their shadow-banning.

Thanks to Musk for getting the truth out.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.