How Big Banks Are Trying to Make America Woke | #Heritage50

so I'm gonna get a chance to talk to three very smart individuals they were introduced briefly I'll just do a quick reminder we've got uh Derek kreifels come on up guys when I read your name co-founder and chief executive of the State financial officers Foundation Taryn Bragdon he's the CEO of the foundation for government accountability and Jonathan small president of the Oklahoma Council of public affairs give him a round of applause if you would please so so Derek I didn't talk about it but I know you're involved substantially in the fight on the financial front yes where where business where certain organizations try to use businesses to do things the government can't or won't and they circumvent that it's largely known as ESG but can you explain to the group what you're up to sure so I have the honor of leading an organization called the State financial officers Foundation we work with 35 State officials from 28 states that are actively pushing back against ESG investing environmental social governance investing uh to put it bluntly this is the way for large Banks and fund managers to drive a social agenda into our society without going through Congress or the courts I want to just recognize someone who a Statewide official that's in the room that put his political neck on the line a year and a half ago when we started this fight he was the first to go to Fox News and to talk about this nationally Nebraska Treasurer John morante our former National chair would you stand up and be recognized yes without men and women like John and other state treasurers and Auditors and comptroller Hager in Texas and CFO Patronus in Florida and others um you know we wouldn't be at this place bringing the awareness to the issue that we are and just give an example real quick ESG how do they leverage it and how do you fight back on it yeah so um these fund managers and Banks a lot of them have joined a group called climate action 100 or G fans the Global Financial Alliance for Net Zero and they're basically saying if you want to do business with us then you need to to agree to these uh Net Zero Alliance demands so um you know Carbon neutrality by 2030 um and uh and what we're saying as Market participants is if if you're going to drive that agenda and go against some of the signature industries of our state we don't have to do business with you and so together we've had eight states divest over five billion dollars from BlackRock for example fantastic uh Terence so the foundation for government accountability I try really hard when asking questions on TV not to ask the question of when are they going to be held accountable because it's an it's it's so easy to ask and easy to answer or speculate on but so rarely ever happens so how do you hold government officials accountable so one of our big Focus areas particularly at the state level is getting government out of the way so people can get to work you talked about the importance of Education well for us it all starts with a job so if you think about your own life think about your first job so my first job was cleaning out the cow stalls in my parents Barn so naturally a transitioned into political world yeah but the reality is that there's been not this 50-year war on poverty instead there's been this 50-year war on work and so we focus on moving people from welfare to work because you know men can't become marriage material if they're not providing for themselves and they can't build families if they're not working and then at the same time we look at where does government get in the way of even young people getting to work over 40 states require you to get permission from your school district or from government for a teenager to go to work that's just wrong we're telling people don't worry you can be dependent upon the government you know Democrats are all about deficits and dependency and we're attacking both at the same time by getting people back to work because America works when people work so that's how we hold government accountable I like it I like it uh by the way my first job was I was a stock boy at the Gap I don't know what that says about me but that's what it was uh Jonathan Oklahoma Council of public affairs when you look at this when you look at affecting things at the state level Oklahoma pretty conservative State you know what what are you able to do and how do you do it yeah no thanks for the question Pete so I think it's really important to understand because you would think why Oklahoma so in the state of Oklahoma our state has voted for the Republican nominee since 1968. the Republican nominee has won every County in Oklahoma since 2004. yet in the state of Oklahoma our two Flagship universities were committing all kinds of horror against children under the guise of gender affirming care in the state of Oklahoma as you talked about that K-12 system and our largest cities our Public Schools were teaching students not to focus on Concepts like hard work taking responsibility for your actions but rather focus on these were their words the power dynamics of those who are oppressors and those versus those who are oppressed and focusing on systemic racism so if you've fallen asleep and you thought I said I was from California or New York I'm not I'm from the state of Oklahoma and so we feel like at ocpa we've got to be shaping culture policy and politics for Freedom where there's opportunities for that is in journalism we've begun to expose where the teachers union in Oklahoma we're encouraging teachers to hide information from their parents and teach them that their parents were racist and then we had success in getting our legislature to ban the practice literally we had rural schools that were forcing daughters like one of the five girls that I have in my home to have to use bathrooms with biological Mills when they rural schools said they weren't going to stop that activity until they were made to we walked down to the Capitol and made them do it in about a month with a state law that protects daughters right because if you look at men at the minute they just passed the most radical anti-racism curriculum down to K-12 anti-racism and math and science which is really just code for critical race Theory or New Jersey has now gender affirming education all the way down to first grade mandatory arrives in Oklahoma Uma not just in cities but in probably more conservative school districts how do you and then what you're able to what has worked when you've taken on unions are taken yeah you know that's a great question you know we cannot and I've heard Heritage fellows refer to it as this I mean higher ed is the madrasas for the left I mean that's what they are yes and understanding that the vast majority of teachers have been trained in this Marxist pedagogy I mean they just have and so once you understand that to your point you have to give parents the power to hold school boards accountable by obviously through Universal school choice but then also exposing where kids are being hurt in a very popular suburb in Edmond Oklahoma two girls were beat up by a so-called transgender girl in the bathroom so this is going on everywhere and the only way we're going to stop it is by exposing it to a majority of Americans who are with us and then holding our lawmakers accountable so that they amend state law to protect kids absolutely Karen the idea of work even the idea of hard work uh showing up on time has been the target of some on the left is seeing as white privilege I mean how do you even address the issue of work well I think that you have to first step back and realize that government has gone out of the way to just make it difficult at every step of the way it's whether it's an occupational license requirement that you have to go to government to get permission to do something basic we even had this in Florida where I live within certain counties that you had to pay hundreds of dollars literally if you just wanted to be a mechanic in Miami until we passed a state law Banning that because government just puts all these different barriers into place and so our approach is get government out of the way and really honor the whole Dignity of work rather than honoring a bunch of other things that undermine work on the ESG front too I know we're bouncing around here a little bit but and feel free to comment on each other's if you want do companies want to be doing that or do they feel like they just have to for fear of backlash because what was interesting to me about the whole Bud Light controversy let's take them at face value that the c-suites didn't know about this partnership to me that almost makes it worse because someone underneath thought that was the corporate culture of what they wanted to drive in their advertising did they want to be doing this and do they think it really helps their bottom line you know we hear from CC wheat Executives all over the country and our state officials do and one of the biggest messages that they're not willing to say in an email or to a press a reporter is thank you because there is now pushback from the right to say you don't have to do this you don't have to cave and you know the the Playbook is the same as Jonathan was talking about the attacks you know in the name of Dei and transgenderism for public education it is the same Playbook to the fund managers the banks and the publicly traded companies and so what we are preaching every day is going to shame you until you do tell you cave or your your board of directors caves to our whim you know to take the human equality commissions index and uh you know and what we're again continuing to say is like fiduciary responsibility yeah is absolutely the foundation of every argument that we make you cannot include politics of any kind in economic decisions and you start playing politics with people's pensions that leads to someone trying to decide whether they can afford to retire at age 65 or do they have to wait till they're 67 because the returns just weren't there because BlackRock or their fund manager or their pension fund was busy worried about their Dei initiatives instead of what the return was on the investment absolutely I'm going to give you all the kind of the same question and Jonathan I'll start with you just because the name of our our panel is our fight to stay free from where you sit in what you see both locally or in Statewide or nationally what is the state of freedom in America are we are we free in getting Freer are we even free or are we getting less free what's your sense yeah you know that's a great question and I think an honest assessment uh even when you look at conservative States across the United States is that we are facing Ronald Reagan's nightmare which is that Freedom would become extinct and I think the first thing that we have to do what one of the panelists said earlier earlier Ian Rowe is we've got to have the courage to say things that are common sense and this gentleman's agreement that the professional right had that we were going to stay out of cultural issues because everyone was going to leave that to themselves we can all stop believing that lie now it's kind of like Dave you know Dave Dave Ramsey says that you know parents don't talk about sex or money and their kids have both well families and students and 18 to 40 year olds they're trying to formulate their opinion about how the culture should work and they need all of us in this room to speak about the success sequence what causes people to thrive what are those classical liberal ideas that result in the most vulnerable being able to succeed if we don't we are going to lose this country in the Next Generation that's not hyperbole well said so I guess I'm a little more optimistic I think that in many places that we're winning and I think the reason that we're winning is we're in the fight and that we don't have our blinders on anymore about the size and scope of the enemy or just the constant engagement that we have to have you know one of the big lessons from the Trump years is if the media is always going to hate you then you're not surprised when they hate you again tomorrow yes and you just realize that you have to continue fighting so I think that we're winning and we're whining a lot less so I think that's good and we're just in the fight and engaging whether it's in the home in the school as you have highlighted or in the legislature or in the corporate boardroom we're punching back and that's how you beat a bully and the left is a big bully propped up by the media and government money but we can fight back and we are well said yeah and I would agree with Tara And I think we are winning um you know I Think Bold leadership and bolden's more bold leaders to stand up and folks like treasure moranti and others who have put their necks on the line um you know we uh we created a an educational campaign that launched in December called our money our values you can go to our many rvalues.com and you can see a short primer video on what ESG is we were shocked Beyond imagination that in an eight-week period we had 32 million households go and visit that website we were able to spend some money to subvert if you were doing a Google search on ESG instead of BlackRock being the first to pop up it was our money our values for about two months it's expensive to do that so we need support to do that but um you know there's little wins like that where we're seeing um you know these elected officials who are shepherding model policy through State legislatures passing laws to protect fiduciary duty to protect their signature Industries in an anti-discrimination type of laws and and the best part of it is and I've said this you know with all due respect to the Heritage Foundation and to all the research groups in the room Main Street Americans really don't care about your white paper for the most part what they really care about is how it impacts them their bottom line and their wallet and so we don't win this battle on ESG without making sure that Main Street Americans know exactly how that has led to inflation higher Diesel and gas prices higher prices at the grocery store and so the more that we can do that and connect those dots we win absolutely well I do love in addition to America's Outpost the idea of Heritage is is forwarding which is going on the offense it's been so much defense in the conservative movement for so long and I think Taryn you're referring to that going on offense when you it's like when in the military if you're if you're in an ambush the last thing you do in that near Ambush is crouched down and try to survive you have to charge back at the other side which forces them to pop out of the tall grass and expose where they are and what they're doing and that's is the product of going on offense let me ask all three of you again I'll start here and go that way so now you've got time uh if what what are the top three things if you want to go on offense change the trajectory of our of our country create the American dream for future Generations an incoming let's say there was to be an incoming Republican Administration what should a republican Administration or a campaign frankly be focusing on right now to be on offense on the issues of freedom and the issues you're working on I would say we have had a couple of of presidential candidates um former vice president Mike Pence has done amazing things to advance this ESG issue nationally I think protecting fiduciary rule at all levels of government I think you know chip Roy has introduced a bill that that protects the federal Thrift Savings the retirement program for federal government to keep it free of ESG um Congressman Andy is it currently free of ESG no sure BlackRock and other companies are managing that as an as a retail customer you have the freedom to call your financial advisor and tell them I don't want and money money invested in BlackRock anymore BlackRock is the biggest offender and I would encourage you to you find Alternatives there's plenty of other groups outside of ice shares and the group of folks that are leading BlackRock that are really working to harm us so those are some of the things that we would really encourage people to do and our money our values actually has a five question uh Easy PDF downloadable PDF that they can take to their financial advisors and ask great questions and then the last one is well if the answer is yes to any of these might are the fund managers uh pushing a Dei initiatives are they pushing transgender initiatives are they activists shareholder proposal are they pushing activist shareholder proposals then if the answer is yes then tell me who else I can invest in because I want my money pulled out love it Tara so I would rather than three I'll give you two one I think it's focusing on work we have 10 million open jobs the Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans in their debt deal had work requirements for childless adults these are adults with no kids and no disabilities right now they're not required to work Florida is the only state with a Statewide work requirement for these adults on food stamps at this moment we need to have a lot more work and move people from welfare to work so that's number one number two the biggest most powerful enemy that we're all up against is the administrative state in Washington D.C I absolutely agree with that we need to absolutely have a checking balance on that administrative State and there's a simple proposal that says look Congress has to sign off on costly executive action whether that's new regulations new guidance like canceling student debt payments or even economically significant things like canceling oil and gas drilling permits well a lot of people don't realize is several States already have this proposal Florida Colorado Wisconsin West Virginia and that's how you keep the bureaucrats in check if you can keep the little socialist minions from doing bad things on their own it protects all of us so work and a lot less bureaucracy yeah they're counting on a lot of people not looking and not having the ability to oversight on that for sure Jonathan you're back clean up for us yeah I know thank you and so I am optimistic as well because I know represented in this room many of you are giving to Freedom infrastructures across the states and I think there's three things that conservative groups across the country can focus on is one educating there's really Three core groups of people there are influencers lawmakers in the public so educating them about what's going on under their own noses and then I think the second thing is advocacy and requiring that all of us as individual citizens get involved in getting across good public policy like Universal school choice as donors as investors making sure that those organizations that you're funding are committed to advocacy and bringing more people involved and then I think finally it's focusing on culture and being willing to stand up and say those things that are common sense and support those who are doing it whether they're business owners non-profits your own pastor at your church wherever people are willing to stand up and say things that are common sense we need to be rewarding that so last question and we one thing Heritage wants us to emphasize is a deliverable a takeaway and I know we talk about policy but if you were to say to this audience right here here's something tangibly you could go do whether as a activist or as a donor or as a as a voter what would your advice be to individuals here as hey when I leave this Ballroom this is something I can do today well as I said I would I would go to your personal financial advisor if you're a state pensioner holder if you're a pensioner that's that's got to stay a pension fund get involved in your state pension board meetings and hear how the appointees of your Governors and your speakers of the house and your and your majority leaders are are voting or working along with some of these big fund managers the other thing I would say is you know the office of State Treasurer state auditor isn't quite as sexy as attorney general or Congressman or Governor call your state treasurer and encourage them to be involved in our fight if they're not ask them why gives a little pressure but if they are call them and just thank them because they're often forgotten Statewide elected officials that are because of some polling that we did they're the most trusted Statewide elected official on all things Financial in your state over their governor and certainly over the member of Congress regardless of party so I would say you know um a couple different things one continue to just lead by example I I think sometimes that we undervalue the importance of just being a in you know my case a good husband a good father a good employer and a good member of the community that's an important role like that's the backbone of America so don't undervalue the roles you're playing in Family Faith and Community every single day that's critical the next piece is just recognizing that for a lot of elected officials it's a pretty lonely existence where you just hear from people who want stuff or hate you and what's great about everybody in this room is we don't want stuff and we don't hate them and so you can have a big impact just by being encouraging and saying we want to work with you on this particular solution I think what Derek and his folks are doing from the state treasurer role of literally transforming Bad actors that are multi-multi-billion dollar companies by having one elected official stand up it transforms that but it's a lot easier to stand up when you have a few other people locking arms around you and all of you in this room have that capacity so I would just say keep doing what you're doing with faith family community and work but at the same time recognize you can have a really big impact by just directly engaging with your elected official in a focused way that's our primary audience working with state and federal elected officials and they need more encouragement and they need help being more courageous and you can play that role no doubt yeah you know so I I would encourage you to think about you and your neighbors and at the risk of sounding like a pastor I'm going to ask you to do one thing find one person who is under 40. and share with them have you heard the success sequence what is the success sequence result in in the United States of America whether you're black white purple with pink polka dots if you just did this get a skill get a job then get married then have five kids like I did you don't have to do that part is that what it is is you can explain the success yes sequence is merely get a skill it can be finishing a high school diploma auto mechanics technician certificate something like that then get a job then get married if you do that 97 of the people that have done that today they're not living in poverty but here's the powerful thing of the poor that have applied that principle 75 percent have moved into the middle class we have the keys to thriving we just have to be willing to share it so I'd encourage you when you leave this conference it could be a younger family member it could be an employee ask them have you heard about this cool thing called the success sequence and what you do in order to thrive and that's what I would encourage people to do I love it um I'm going to call an audible here real quick if if someone has a question near the front and they have a good voice like a sergeant major all right right there sir go ahead you'd like to interview me maybe it's a solid Maybe of course the first stop was to the Pastors in Detroit and they agree with what you're saying they want educational Freedom they want dads back in their homes they want to know how we can help them do that that's that first question the second question is is why aren't we going out to every single Christian organization across our state across our country and encouraging our pastors to get Christians to vote the third question is there's a new tax credit limit coming I wonder if you're aware about that where you can take a deduction and it goes to a private fund which eventually will go to kids wanting to go to a school of choice great great questions thanks for the microphone um well first of all on the anybody want to address the idea of fathers and homes and how you facilitate that I mean that's I I think it I think so much of it comes down to faith and comes down to um personal responsibility and instilling that it used to be something churches did used to be something communities did you should be something that ethos that was created that reinforced that to completely collapsed uh and then on the pastors I think on the education front pastors are the most important component you have a massive congregation who are with you for one hour a week and then you're not commenting at all on what's Happening to your flock for the rest of the week including being honest about what's happening in school so I I think part of a Renaissance or a Revival of Education certainly starts with pastors but anybody else want to address any other aspect of that so I think you're spot on that there's a really active role for the church and I think you're accurate that we think of the church as something that happens in a building on Sunday or something that maybe happens with a smaller group on Wednesday night I was privileged I live in Naples Florida several years ago to start up a charity it's called better together and we work with churches to host job fairs think of churches they're buildings of employers and people who hire but they're oftentimes in great locations and their parishioners come from the suburbs and go into these churches but the churches aren't engaging with the community so we started working with churches to host job fairs we've now done this in over half the states had 20 000 people go through these churches and what's great is you're meeting an immediate need but you're being relevant in their life and you're providing a great volunteer opportunity for people of all ages and Stripes within the church so I think there's a lot of things we can do outside of government but it requires the same kind of thing of standing up getting involved and really revitalizing institutions that used to serve this role before government took over I I would just I would add that the faith component is really important even in in our Treasures world at our national meetings if you were to come to one of our national meetings one of the first breakfasts that we have is called the prayer breakfast for the states and that started six years ago when we had a group of State officials who said they called me and they said hey can we just all get together in a suite the night before the meeting starts and share each other's you know prayer concerns issues with our kids issues with our spouses and so one of the things that we've learned as we've Advanced all this really wonky Financial public policy is that at the end of the day what I care most about is my friendship with John moranti not about his real estate Treasurer because he has a wife and a daughter and and we care about learning and building friendships and relationships with the people that we're working with because we can get a lot more done when we kind of know and have each other's back and so I love the question because I think that that's a component that a lot of times in public policy or politics would kind of separate them we Silo them and I think they can all be integrated together and I think that we actually improve our lives in the and the situation much better when we do um yes ma'am hold on we gotta we'll get a microphone to you real quick it's on the way I'm a school teacher um and I I love all of your your comments work is a dirty word uh Mr small your success sequence fantastic your success sequence is fantastic but I can't teach it that way um what I'd like to say is out and I'm also a Christian um and the single largest thing my kids pull me aside to ask me about is my faith because I can't teach it outright but they'll pull me aside I work in an alternative school where kids don't have much of the components that you talk about I just encourage you Mr small in particular I work right over there you can see where I work men outside the faith community men outside the Facebook Community I don't mean to be sexist that are willing to admit their faith in in and to convey this message it's really strong so if anybody feels like visiting my school you're welcome thank you thank you for what you're doing thank you for being the definition of Salt and Light students inherently imprinted on your soul to seek truth and because God has been ripped out of those schools they've been left searching for other things that are empty uh and so I know there are millions of people just like you who want to do the best buy them and you write an alternative education it's more difficult no doubt because the supply of schools on the outside isn't the same as public education can provide as far as alternate educational opportunities but uh I salute you I appreciate that anybody else all right any other question we've got time for one more question gentlemen right in the front what about trying to amend the welfare laws so they don't drive the father out of the home I agree completely well I think you're spot on that's one of the reasons that we think if you're going to be receiving welfare whether that's food stamps or Medicaid or cash assistance that you have to work uh and it's true for men as well as for women when you look at when we put into place work requirements for mostly single moms with welfare cash assistance in the 1990s you had enrollment drop 60 percent you had child poverty drop 40 percent and so it's important for men to step up and work but it's also important for parents to be responsible and to go to work whether they're men or women and I think what we've done is you know the whole story of Julia under Obama was government replacing the man in the home but what we need to do is have government not undermine men or families but instead encourage it amen well I our time is up but as someone who was a young conservative in Washington DC and always knew where a refuge was was the Heritage Foundation there was always a place standing firm amidst the swirling nonsense of not just Washington DC but of our culture I mean on behalf of Derek Derek Taran and Jonathan I want to thank Heritage thank all of you for the role it has always played it remains a bedrock and a rock and a sea of insanity uh and and for that we thank you very much God bless thank you thank you guys

Channel: The Heritage Foundation

Views: 16,502

Keywords: The Heritage Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Conservative

Id: mohvQXq0Wg4

Length: 34min 14sec (2054 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 27 2023