12 May 2021 Angry At Left-Wing Corporate Leaders? Here’s How to “Vote the Bums Out”

New Publication Encourages Shareholders to Vote the Most Egregious Offenders off Corporate Boards

Washington, D.C. – The Free Enterprise Project (FEP) published a key report today that encourages investors to voice their displeasure with censorship and “woke capitalism” by voting against key board members at annual shareholder meetings.

“Balancing the Boardroom: How Conservatives Can Combat Corporate Wokeness” highlights both individual directors and entire boards of directors who are actively working against American freedoms and values. It also dives deeply into disturbing corporate trends, including Big Tech censorship of center/right voices, widespread refusal to hire former Trump Administration employees and corporate support for extremist groups such as the Human Rights Campaign and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Justin Danhof, Esq.

“Conservatives are finally awake to the woke mob’s outsized influence over corporate action, but many of them don’t know what to do about corporate America’s continued march to the left,” said Justin Danhof, Esq., who serves as FEP Director and General Counsel at the National Center for Public Policy Research. “‘Balancing the Boardroom’ is here to help. If you are mad at social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter that are censoring conservative speech, let’s vote against their board members. Are you mad at far-left CEOs – such as BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff – who use shareholder funds to advance their private political goals? Let’s vote the bums out.”

Scott Shepard

“The stakes could not possibly be higher,” added FEP Deputy Director Scott Shepard. “The left has successfully taken over higher education, Hollywood, the civil service and what was once the mainstream news media. All that’s left are corporate America and the military, and the left is rapidly working its evil magic in both of those spheres as well. The attempted takeover of corporate America has been fostered by Occupy Wall Street and the groups pushing left-wing shareholder proposals, but it’s also been guided and shaped and cemented by these bad-actor corporate directors.

“These directors have lost all contact with their legal duties,” continued Shepard. “Legally they must work for the long-term benefit of their companies, but instead they have set themselves up to be private, unelected policy dictators for the nation, working hand-in-glove with the left-most political actors to force upon an unwilling country policies that could never survive an honest and open political process. And this spring, they have even tried to thwart nationwide efforts to make sure that our elections are clean and fair. The directors we highlight in this report must go. And the mechanisms by which they attempt a smiling takeover of America must be shut down. Shareholders can play a vital role in saving the American economy, and American society, by pushing them out.”

The publication of “Balancing the Boardroom” comes on the heels of FEP’s recent release of the “2021 Investor Value Voter Guide,” which instructs investors how to vote their proxies this shareholder season in order to reflect conservative and Christian values.

Davis Soderberg

“‘Balancing the Boardroom,’ the sister guide to the ‘Investor Value Voter Guide,’ is another great resource for conservative shareholders wanting to make their voices heard,” said FEP Associate Davis Soderberg. “Voting for proxy resolutions that align with our values is vital, but equally important is attempting to vote out the business executives who continuously work counter to those values. As corporations move further and further left, shareholders must fight back harder than ever. By identifying the most destructive, woke board members, ‘Balancing the Boardroom’ is a weapon that can be used to stand our ground.

“This document goes beyond a list of incompetent directors to instruct us how to stop the madness,” Soderberg continued. “It breaks down some of the most pressing corporate attacks on American life, including Big Tech censorship, anti-religious bigotry and the role of the scandalous Southern Poverty Law Center.”

“The evidence bears out that the left engages the shareholder vote far more than the right,” noted Danhof. “If conservatives start showing up in equal force and exercising their franchise, it will go a long way toward thwarting today’s woke corporate mob.”

To schedule an interview with a member of the Free Enterprise Project on this or other issues, contact Judy Kent at (703) 477-7476.

Launched in 2007, the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project focuses on shareholder activism and the confluence of big government and big business. Over the past four years alone, FEP representatives have participated in over 100 shareholder meetings – advancing free-market ideals about health care, energy, taxes, subsidies, regulations, religious freedom, food policies, media bias, gun rights, workers’ rights and other important public policy issues. As the leading voice for conservative-minded investors, it annually files more than 90 percent of all right-of-center shareholder resolutions. Dozens of liberal organizations, however, annually file more than 95 percent of all policy-oriented shareholder resolutions and continue to exert undue influence over corporate America.

FEP activity has been covered by media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Variety, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Drudge Report, Business Insider, National Public Radio and SiriusXM. FEP’s work is prominently featured in Stephen Soukup’s new book The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business (Encounter Books) and Kimberley Strassel’s 2016 book The Intimidation Game: How the Left is Silencing Free Speech (Hachette Book Group).

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 60,000 active recent contributors.

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