WOKE WEDNESDAY: Nerdy ESG headlines and a monthly Woke Police Blotter with corporate arrests for public wokeness

Live from the Glass Lewis Underground Cornhole Fight Club, it’s the ESG Industry’s ONLY weekly woke data podcast, featuring BS-Man Matt Moscardi. In today’s Endlessly Stupid Gasfest called May 31, 2023: ultra nerdy ESG headlines, a Weekly woke police blotter, and a word from our sponsor about CEO pay rises.

Our show today is being sponsored by ESGauge, your ESG data solutions provider 

DAMION1

Ultra Nerdy ESG Headlines

1. Alternative Democracy: 2023 Say on Pay & Proxy Results

1. The current failure rate (1.5%) is 130 basis points lower than the failure rate at this time last year (2.8%)

2. Russell 3000 support at highest level of support (91%) since 2017

3. By Sector: Energy leads with 96% support; IT lags with 65%

4. ISS “Against” recommendation crashes to 7% from 14% just last year.

1. In S&P 500 that number fell from 13% to 8%

2. Lowest figures since at least 2015

5. Median support has decreased by five percentage points for social proposals when compared to 2022 year-end average support, and four percentage points for environmental proposals; this is a continuation of the downward trend in median support for E&S proposals observed in 2022

6. Average vote support for Director nominees of 95% thus far in 2023 is 80 basis points higher than the year-end support observed in 2022

2. Stakeholders Rule!?

1. Boeing 737 MAX Victims’ Families Can Seek Compensation for Pain and Suffering, Judge Rules

1. Boeing has admitted responsibility for 2019 crash, but has contested factoring victims’ precrash pain and suffering into damages

2. A federal judge ruled that relatives of people who died in a 2019 Boeing 737 MAX crash can seek compensation for the victims’ pain and suffering before the plane slammed into the ground in Ethiopia.

3. The order issued late Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso in the Northern District of Illinois is a setback for Boeing ahead of possible trials to determine how much the plane maker should pay victims’ families.

4. Boeing in 2021 admitted responsibility for the crash in a deal with plaintiffs’ attorneys to take potential punitive damages off the table in the lawsuits. Punitive damages are amounts of money defendants must pay as punishments. Potential trials in unresolved cases would determine compensatory damages.

2. Sackler family wins immunity from opioid lawsuits

1. The billionaire owners of Purdue Pharma will be protected from lawsuits linked to the US opioid crisis in exchange for a $6bn (£4.85bn) settlement.

2. Purdue, which filed for bankruptcy in 2019 amid thousands of lawsuits, made drugs like OxyContin and is blamed for fuelling the crisis.

3. On Tuesday, an appeals court ruled that its owners, the Sackler family, would receive full immunity from civil suits.

4. In exchange, they will pay $6bn to help address opioid addiction.

3. Woke Data

1. It would take a typical worker 2 lifetimes to rival CEO pay

2. Glass Cliff Sadness

1. Carnage at one of Australia's 'Big Four' accounting firms as nine partners are stood down and CEO issues grovelling apology: 'Betrayed the trust'

1. PwC has been under fire after it was discovered one of its former heads of tax shared confidential Treasury information about tax changes with other partners and the information was used to help win new clients.

2. Last week, Treasury referred the allegations to the Australian Federal Police to investigate the leak.

3. It comes as PwC on Monday announced it was standing down nine partners, including members of its executive and governance boards.

4. Acting chief executive Kristin Stubbins said members of the company who shared Treasury's plans had betrayed 'the trust placed in us'. 'We understand that we betrayed the trust of our stakeholders and we apologise unreservedly,' she said.

5. Stubbins became Acting CEO this month

6. On May 8: PwC Australia chief executive Tom Seymour resigns in wake of tax policy leak. The chief executive of PwC Australia has resigned in response to a leak of confidential Treasury information on tax policy, a scandal that sparked a broader examination into the government's use of consultants

7. LinkedIn update: Stubbins has updated her account; Seymour has not

3. Arnold Schwarzenegger Wants to ‘Rephrase’ Climate Change, Focus on Pollution

1. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER IS on a crusade to tackle climate change, but first he believes the phrase needs a rebranding.

2. “As long as they keep talking about global climate change, they are not gonna go anywhere. ‘Cause no one gives a shit about that. So my thing is, let’s go and rephrase this and communicate differently about it and really tell people we’re talking about pollution. Pollution creates climate change, and pollution kills.”

4. So what’s our problem? We never killed the acronym.

4. CEOs Rule!

1. Elizabeth Holmes faces 6 a.m. wake-up calls and making her own bed at federal prison camp

1. Elizabeth Holmes is due to start serving her 11-year sentence Tuesday.

2. The Theranos founder is expected to do so at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas.

3. Bryan's rules include 6 a.m. wake-up calls and working for as little as 12 cents an hour.

2. Jeff Bezos is ripped now. Here's how the Amazon founder went from scrawny to brawny.

3. Lazard's new CEO Peter Orszag once inspired a fan blog called Orszagasm.com.

1. Peter Orszag has been named CEO of investment bank Lazard, effective October 1.

2. Orszag is best known as Barack Obama's director of Office of Management and Budget.

3. He also has a past as a prolific writer and Beltway sex symbol.

MATT1

Monthly woke police blotter: May 2023

Charges: Assault with a deadly rainbow

• Arrestee: Hoover Institute at Stanford

• Offense: celebrating Pride month with a flag pin and “woke” rainbow

• Hoover Institute at Stanford has ceded ground to Stanford’s ideological totalitarianism rather than firmly standing up for conservative values. Hoover has gone woke.

• Note: it was a lapel pin and a website logo?  Are there no conservative gays?  Peter Thiel anyone?

• Arrestee: Ford

• Offense: detailing a car with a rainbow a year ago in response to social media outrage at the time about pride month

• Ford's 'redefining tough' rainbow raptor commercial goes viral, sparks online backlash’

• Note: Was it NOT woke a year ago?  Was it woke but everyone was too afraid to say anything because conservatives didn’t have control of Fox and/or the most watched shows in the country?  Was it tough then, but now feels too gay?  

Charges: Diversity and inclusioneering

• Arrestee: Chick-fil-A

• Offense: hiring a VP of diversity, equity, and inclusion three years ago

• Chick-fil-A sparks anti-woke outrage for VP of diversity, equity, inclusion post

• Note: Christian org, but a private company so Larry Fink is unlikely involved. This HAS to be the beginning of the end of the anti-woke when they realize how exhausting it is to hate everything that a rainbow touched, right?

• Arrestee: Target

• Offense: selling things with rainbows on it for 11 years, saying DEI “fueled growth” for nine

• Right-wing investment fund dumps Target stock over ‘woke’ agenda, adds retailer to ‘refuse to buy’ list

• Note: The American Conservative Values ETF OWNED Target and divested from it without noting that Target had the same DEI policies and Pride month merchandise for a decade. They must have overlooked it in their due diligence, now they are on the “Refuse to Buy” and “hostile” list because methodology

Charges: Not manly enough

• Arrestee: Lululemon

• Offense: firing two female employees who tried to stop thieves

• Lululemon Backlash After Firing Staff Who Stopped Thieves: 'Woke Go Broke'

• Note: Joey Mannarino, podcast host and idiot, is saying Lululemon is woke for having a company policy not to stop potentially armed theives because their clothes aren’t worth the lives of their employees.  That DOES sound woke.  So the company fired the two women who obstructed the doorway of thieves, which was the MANLY thing to do, but the woke corporation selling see through women’s yoga gear wouldn’t let them.  I get it.

• Arrestee: Dove (Unilever)

• Offense: a fat woman was a fake video game hero

• Dove Produces Ultra-Woke Ad To Change Beauty Standards In Video Games?

• Note: They’re correct, it WAS better in the 80s and 90s when every girl was a size zero, straight, and had sex with me whenever I wanted at age 15.  Also, they know Dove is a brand from Unilever, right?  Unilever also makes: Axe body spray, Hellman’s mayonnaise, and fudgsicles - are they ALL woke?  Well, maybe fudgsicles.