What Should Americans Do about Woke Corporations?

             The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the political war being waged by corporations against conservatives. The war has been raging for months and possibly years, but the latest battle is the issue revolving around the new voter law in Georgia.

            Much has been written about the law, which was compared to “Jim Crow laws” by President Joe Biden. According to Ben Shapiro, the new law echoes the federal laws and requires an ID number to receive an absentee ballot. It also bars “electioneering within 150 feet of a polling place or 25 feet of voters in line,” which includes partisans handing out food and water to the voters waiting in line. 

In addition, the law increases “the number of mandatory days of weekend early voting,” preserves “some drop boxes that did not exist before the pandemic,” requires “additional voting machines and election personnel in crowded precincts,” and increases “voting hours in future elections for the vast majority of counties.”

            Even though the provisions in new Georgia law “are similar to the laws in a vast majority of states,” President Biden, other Democrats, and the media spread lies about it. In addition to their lies, they “bullied corporations into taking positions on the Georgia election law.” Three big corporations took actions to “help fight Georgia’s restrictive new voting law.”

            Coca-Cola “issued a statement deploring an election law the corporation hadn’t bothered to lobby against before its passage.” Delta’s CEO explained, “I need to make it clear that the final bill is unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values.” Major League Baseball listened to the Biden’s advice and moved the All-Star Game to Denver, Colorado. This move will cost businesses in Georgia $100 million. Many of those businesses are Mom and Pop operations that are struggling and fighting to stay in business.

            Shapiro suggests that conservatives are “left with little choice but to exert counter-pressure” to the left’s weaponization of the “most powerful institutions in America.” He stated that the “only alternative is the formation of alternative companies in every industry.”

The left has politicized everything. The right has avoided that tactic, because it’s ugly and divisive. But it’s too late to put the genie back in the bottle. It’s time for mutually assured destruction.

There’s only one thing worse than having nuclear weapons: unilateral disarmament. Better to establish mutually assured destruction now and put corporate America on notice that, by stepping into the middle of fraught political debate, it risks just as much blowback from the right as from the left.

            Corporations are not the only businesses that have been weaponized. Big Tech took a big role in the 2020 presidential election. Twitter, Facebook, and Google censored the news to keep bad news about Biden from reaching Americans. The big news that was censored was the information about Hunter Biden’s computer and what was on it. Only alternative news sites said anything about the computer or the federal investigation of Hunter Biden. There was nothing in the mainstream news about the connection between various members of the Biden family and the Chinese government.

            It also appears that Big Tech was involved in the actual election process. The results of the election leave millions of Americans distrusting the process and a question about the legitimacy of leaders now in office. Numerous states, like Georgia, have taken steps to ensure that the next election will have more integrity.

            Hayden Dublois and Trevor Carlsen posted an article about the election process in Pennsylvania. They wrote that some actions “have proven to be widely popular across the political spectrum.” These actions include “using existing technology to livestream ballot counting and monitor ballot drop boxes, imposing penalties on officials who mislead the public, and requiring mail-in ballots to be postmarked by Election Day.” These reforms would bring more integrity to the election process in Pennsylvania. However, there is something even “more egregious” that violated the trust of the people – “the growing influence of corporate money in local jurisdictions.” 

During the last election cycle, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, gave the Center for Tech and Civic Life more than $350 million to award “grants” to local jurisdictions as a way of allegedly helping counties and municipalities run their elections safely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This money – which the Foundation for Government Accountability has dubbed “Zuckerbucks” – was supposed to help with pandemic-related expenses, including personal protective equipment and other unique challenges at a time of social distancing.

Requests for public records in Pennsylvania counties have revealed that most of this money wasn’t used for personal protective equipment but for get-out-the-vote efforts and other non-related COVID-19 expenses, which influenced Democrat turnout and actually may have affected the results of the election in the state….

It appears that the greatest allocation of Zuckerbucks went to counties with the greatest chance of Democrats winning….

There is also evidence that Zuckerbucks influenced election outcomes by mobilizing Democrat voters. Democrat turnout in Zuckerbucks counties didn’t match the changes experienced in counties without the influx of cash….

With the “success” of Zuckerbucks last year, nothing is stopping billionaires from California and New York from exerting this same partisan influence in 2022, 2024, and beyond.

            Millions of Americans are concerned about the integrity of elections and question what they can do about it. David W. Almasi claims that there are things that ordinary Americans can do, especially those people who “own just one share of stock in a publicly traded corporation.” Recognizing that it is a “David-versus-Goliath strategy” not used enough by conservatives, Almasi “called into the Walt Disney Co.’s virtual shareholder meeting. CEO Bob Chapek was caught off guard when Almasi “accused him of blacklisting anyone not adhering to Hollywood’s left-wing agenda.” 

Most shareholder meetings reserve time for such questions. It’s a unique opportunity for average Americans to address CEOs and other high-ranking executives in front of their boards of directors, other executives, investors, and the media. The price of admission is as little as owning one share of the company’s stock.

The Free Enterprise Project of the National Center for Public Policy Research, of which I am vice president, has used this simple process as a powerful tool for change, and so can you….

As a shareholder, you also have voting privileges on important matters, such as the board of directors and shareholder resolutions.

If conservatives begin voting their shares in large numbers like the left does, CEOs may realize “it’s no longer worth doing the woke left’s political bidding and focus instead on improving their respective companies,” said Justin Danhof, director of the Free Enterprise Project. Just like politicians, CEOs are influenced by those who bend their ears.

            Almasi claimed that “Boycotts aren’t effective,” and “Engagement is key to conservatives’ effectiveness in the corporate culture wars.” However, businessman and former President Donald Trump called for conservatives to boycott the corporations condemning the new Georgia election law. He suggested that Americans stop drinking Coca Cola products, stop flying Delta Airlines, and stay away from Major League Baseball. Boycotting them may not put them out of business, but it would not be supporting them.