RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/poll-majority-of-americans-against-trump-impeachment/

Most Americans are against removing President Trump from office, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

The poll was conducted from September 19 to 23, before the Wednesday release of the transcript of a phone conversation between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. During this period, Trump faced growing outrage over accusations he improperly pressured Zelensky to conduct investigations that would damage presidential candidate Joe Biden.

37 percent of respondents to the poll said Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 57 percent were against impeachment.

The poll surveyed 1,337 registered voters and had a 3.2 percent margin of error.

Voters were largely opposed to impeachment even though approval of Trump’s job performance stands at 38 percent, with 55 percent reporting an unfavorable view of the President.

The findings show almost no change in attitudes toward impeachment since late August. A Monmouth University poll released August 22 found that 35 percent of Americans were against impeachment, while 59 percent were opposed.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that she would support an impeachment inquiry into the President.

A graphic in the New York Times shows 205 House Democrats who have come out in support of impeachment. A small fraction of the House Democratic caucus is either against impeachment, undecided, or has not responded to queries from the Times.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/transcript_of_trumpzelensky_call_released_impeachment_now_likely.html

With the release this morning of the unredacted transcript[i] of President Trump’s July 25 call to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, the bait has been set in a trap, and the House Democrats are very likely to vote to begin impeachment proceedings for President Trump. President Trump and his advisors hastened to release it because they now want impeachment.

There is no quid pro quo offer or demand in the call and no mention of military aid, but there is plenty of expression of Trump’s desire to have the affair investigated.

Trump began his expression of interest in Ukrainian cooperation with an apparent reference to the leaks from Ukrainian sources of material used to drive Paul Manafort out of his campaign:

I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has.it There are a lot. of things that went on, the whole situation .. I think you’re _surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I  would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to ·get to the bottom of it. As you said yesterday, that whole nonsetise ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that· you. do it if that’s possible.

President Zelensky’s reply indicated that he already was interested in pursuing corruption in his predecessors’ regimes, including corruption affecting the United States:

I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all, I understand arid I’m knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won· the absolute majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved, by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look. into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and wi1l work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to µs, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine as far as I recall her name was Ivanovicli. It was great that you were the first one. who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. [emphasis added]

The text in italics seems to indicate that President Zelensky already had investigation plans, and wanted US cooperation. This is the opposite of Trump demanding or coercing cooperation with a threat to withhold military aid or supply any positive or negative incentive.  

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/25/doj-bureaucrats-trump-complaint-was-neither-urgent-nor-needing-congressional-referral/

The Department of Justice’s criminal division reviewed a bureaucrat’s complaint about President Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and found it neither urgent nor requiring referral to congressional committees. All relevant components of the department agreed with the legal conclusion, and the matter was concluded, a DOJ spokesman announced.

The complaint was leaked to the media and other Democratic officials who have used it to call for the immediate impeachment of President Trump. A transcript of the call was released to the public. In the wide-ranging phone call, the transcript shows the two leaders discussing Ukraine’s meddling on behalf of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, which the Justice Department today confirmed is now being investigated by a team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham.

The Ukrainian president asked that former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani, who is the president’s attorney, come to Ukraine. “We are hoping very much that Mr. Guiliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine,” Zelensky said.

The legal opinion rests mostly on the idea of whether the foreign policy role of the president of the United States is subject to unelected bureaucrats’ complaints. It is not, they found.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/deroy-murdock-on-impeachment-of-trump

The roaring controversy over President Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden, and their respective actions toward Ukraine sorely lacks some key language: the word “extortion” and the phrase “obstruction of justice.”

In March 2016, then-Vice President Biden told Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko that the Eastern European nation would not get a $1 billion U.S. government loan guarantee unless it fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma Holdings — a natural gas extraction company whose board of directors included Hunter Biden, the veep’s son.

Shokin told The Hill’s John Solomon that plans for his probe “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”

Hunter Biden reportedly earned some $50,000 per month for his services, although he had no expertise in gas production and didn’t know Ukraine from Utah. He was experienced, however, in being the son of the vice president of the United States who, as luck would have it, “was serving as the Obama administration’s point man on relations with Ukraine and rooting out bureaucratic corruption,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Joe Biden must have been aware of Hunter’s term on Burisma’s board. Indeed, major news organizations raised serious questions about this arrangement.

“Hunter Biden’s new job at Ukrainian gas company is a problem for U.S. soft power,” read a May 14, 2014, Washington Post headline. And a June 8, 2014 Fox News story was headlined: “Ukraine energy firm hiring Biden’s son raises ethical concerns”

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/peter-schweizer-biden-familys-foreign-dealings-7-essential-facts

Editor’s note: Peter Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute spent three years investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter and their dealings in the Ukraine and China. The research culminated in the #1 New York Times bestselling book “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends” (Harper Collins, March 2018). Below are some of the results of the investigation.

1. Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, joined the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma in April 2014, according to RSB bank records. Hunter Biden had little background in energy. Over a 16-month period, Burisma paid $3.1 million to a bank account associated with Hunter’s business.

2. Joe Biden led the Obama administration’s policy toward Ukraine when he served as vice president. Biden helped shape Ukraine’s energy and anti-corruption policies, issues that directly impact Burisma.

3. Burisma sought to capitalize Hunter Biden’s name and relationships. According to The New York Times, Hunter Biden helped assemble the company’s legal team, which consisted of American attorneys and consulting firms, including a former Obama Justice Department official.

4. Burisma is led by an oligarch named Mykola Zlochevsky. Zlochevsky served as ecology minister under pro-Russia former Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovich, leading to allegations that he used his office to benefit Burisma.

5. Burisma was under legal scrutiny. Shortly before Hunter Biden was appointed to Burisma’s board, British authorities froze $23 million of Zlochevsky’s assets as part of a corruption investigation. Ukraine opened its own probe later that year.

https://spectator.org/pc-cultures-takeover-of-the-corporate-world/?utm_source=American%20Spectator%20Emails&utm_campaign=292ed4652c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_09_25_01_13&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_797a38d487-292ed4652c-104450573

The corporate world, perceived by social activists as the belly of the capitalist beast, might have been expected to be the most difficult for left-wing activists to tame. On the contrary, it has been a soft target.

On August 20, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Business Roundtable, which includes the chief executives of many of the largest U.S. corporations, has ruled it no longer considers the purpose of a corporation to obtain profits for its shareholders but instead to act in accordance with the interests of “all stakeholders,” that is, society in general — which in practice means in accordance with social activists’ enthusiasms of the day.

This can only make even more difficult the life of Justin Danhof, the lone ranger trying to restore the concept of traditional fiduciary responsibility to corporations steadily lurching leftward. The outcome of that effort will have a major impact on the many millions of Americans who depend in their retirement on funds that have been invested in the market.

Danhof directs the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research. According to Danhof, the National Center was founded in 1982 by Amy Moritz Ridenour with “a really great mission” — to be a voice for the conservative movement wherever the movement was quiet. And it has certainly been quiet when it comes to countering the coordinated pressure campaign on corporations to adopt the Left’s positions on so-called ESG (environmental, social, and governance) issues, and, in the last few years, to dissociate from any pro-business organizations.

In a recent conference call organized by Steve Soukup of the Political Forum, Danhof called the landscape in which he operates “ridiculous.” There are 80 to 90 left-wing groups, most part of the As You Sow network, coordinating shareholder resolutions, while he is the lone shareholder trying to hold the fort on the conservative side. Working 80 hours a week, he says he can file 20 shareholder resolutions a year as against the 400 to 500 a year the Left files annually. While Danhof did not single it out, the example of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility highlights the imbalance. Created by the National Council of Churches in 1971, its first high-profile target was the Nestlé Corporation for its marketing of infant formula in the third world. (The Interfaith Center argued breastfeeding was much less expensive, healthier, and more appropriate for third-world mothers.). Today the Interfaith Center boasts of filing 300 resolutions a year and representing $200 billion in investor capital.

For 10 years Danhof has struggled to get companies “back to neutral,” meaning out of social and cultural battles that have nothing to do with their businesses. His task was made immeasurably harder a few years ago when Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis, which together comprise 97 percent of the market for proxy advisory services, shifted to the left and began supporting ESG proposals. Danhof reports a recent example of what he calls “the black-and-white nature of their bias.” Shareholder activist groups have been pushing affirmative action policies, supported by ISS and Glass Lewis, for appointments to corporate boards. But when he introduced shareholder resolutions calling for increased viewpoint diversity on corporate boards, both ISS and Glass Lewis opposed him.

Given that so many institutional investors — including public service union pension, BlackRock, and Vanguard funds — outsource their votes to the proxy advisors, their recommendations have a huge impact. Before the proxy advisors’ leftward shift, says Danhof, shareholder resolutions, whether his or those of “progressive” opponents, typically received only 2 to 3 percent of shareholder votes. But with the support of proxy advisors, last year the Wall Street Journal reported the median level of support for the left’s ESG proposals rose to 24 percent.

That’s only part of the story. The groups advancing these resolutions seek to negotiate an agreement with the company before they get on a proxy statement, and, indeed, the Journal reported in the same article that 48 percent of ESG proposals filed in 2018 were withdrawn. Generally a withdrawal means the company preemptively caved to the Left’s demands.

To be sure, in many cases, executives and corporate boards are in sympathy with the activists. This is increasingly the case now that some of the search firms used by Fortune 500 companies, says Danhof, only identify liberal candidates for open board spots. The global warming apocalypse, the focus of much of the environmental proposals, doubtless has plenty of board-room believers. To a large extent, says Danhof, the corporation is turning into the college campus, run by liberals, for liberals.

Egged on by their own success, activists in the last few years have pressed corporate America to dissociate from pro-business organizations. Danhof describes the activists’ modus operandi in the case of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which works on model legislation to reduce the regulatory burden on corporate America.

Because ALEC worked at one point on voter ID legislation — beyond the pale in the leftist worldview — the activists declared ALEC “racist” and flooded corporations with shareholder resolutions declaring they should not belong to ALEC because of “reputational risk.” That it was a circular argument — the activists decried ALEC as racist without evidence and then those same activists insisted corporations must not put their reputations at risk by belonging to it — did nothing to impair its effectiveness, Danhof notes. One hundred eighteen corporations left ALEC as a result of the campaign. The success of this smear tactic has provided the activists with a model to use against any trade group they choose to target. The corporations that weakly caved on ALEC, says Danhof, are now bombarded with proposals to leave the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and even the National Restaurant Association (dubbed by activists “the other NRA”).

The “index” is another device the activists employ to great effect as both carrot and stick. The CPA-Zicklin Index, for example, is the product of the Center for Political Accountability at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Funded by George Soros and ostensibly seeking to ensure transparency in the political activity of corporations, the index is used as a stick to keep corporations from engaging with groups like ALEC and the Chamber of Commerce, Danhof says.

Then there’s the Corporate Equality Index, produced by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC) to rate American businesses on their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals. Danhof says he can’t tell you how many shareholder meetings he’s attended in which the company has boasted about its perfect score on the Corporate Equality Index.

But the HRC keeps moving the goalposts. Danhof reports that about three years ago the HRC tweaked the index to demand an “outward-facing” event promoting the LGBTQ community each year. If not, the company would forfeit 10 percent on its score. This, he explains, accounts for the recent plethora of LGBTQ Super Bowl ads replacing the humorous ones to which viewers were happily accustomed. The HRC subsequently upped the demand to three “outward-facing events” annually. Last year, Danhof says, the Corporate Equality Index was tweaked yet again: if a company opposed a shareholder proposal that the HRC supports, the company would automatically lose 25 percent on the index.

Corporations not only bend quickly under pressure but also produce the desired results much more quickly than courts or legislatures. Danhof offers as an example the fate of Georgia’s 2016 “religious freedom” bill, which affirmed the rights of those who opposed same-sex marriage on religious grounds to withhold services. Both houses of the Republican legislature passed the bill, which needed only the (willing) Republican Gov. Nathan Deal’s signature. The activists could have launched legal challenges, but that would have taken years with uncertain results. Instead the liberal activist network flew into action. Georgia was hoping to be selected to host the Super Bowl in 2019 or 2020, and the National Football League announced it would be out of the running if the governor signed the bill into law. AMC Networks announced it would not film the seventh season of its hit series The Walking Dead in Georgia, and Disney threatened to stop all filming in Georgia. Gov. Deal did not sign the bill.

While the liberal activist network mobilizes the troops, Danhof notes that those who oppose some of the most flagrant corporate decisions — like the decision by Nike to ditch its sneakers with the Betsy Ross flag because Colin Kaepernick told them to do so — confine themselves to personal expressions of outrage on Twitter.

With corporations, including the country’s largest, lining up to throw out traditional notions of fiduciary responsibility to shareholders in favor of responsibility to everyone and everything up to and including the planet (reversing climate change is a favorite cause of the activists), is there anything that can be done to reverse the anti-business tide that has taken root within the corporations themselves? At the outset, conservatives must finally begin to take notice and address the problem seriously.

Danhof says that over the past five years he has personally attended more than 150 shareholder meetings, filed over 130 shareholder resolutions, and had over 200 meetings with corporate executives. His law degree comes in handy as he also does all the legal battling, much of it involving corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But however admirable the lone ranger is (Danhof has an occasional Tonto who will go to a shareholder meeting for him if in the event of schedule conflicts), he cannot carry the day alone against the activist behemoth.

Danhof offers a host of measures that conservatives could and should take. They can start their own rating systems to counter the activist indexes. Why, he asks, are companies rated on how much they promote the LGBTQ community while there is no liberty rating system? Why isn’t the Heritage Foundation rating companies on cronyism? Why isn’t the NRA rating companies on how they engage in Second Amendment issues?

How about developing fast-action social media response teams to counter the Left’s outrage machine, which so often produces corporate action? That way conservative anger would not be dissipated in ineffective bursts of emotion on Twitter.

Danhof says there should also be an effort to elevate business-minded conservatives to corporate boards rather than leaving the shaping of these boards to people like Eric Holder, who is currently working to get as many former Obama people as possible on corporate boards.

There should be an effort to engage corporate managers. Even those sympathetic to favored activist causes can be persuaded, Danhof believes, that it is in their interest to keep power and control over decisions, not to outsource them to groups that don’t care about their shareholders and in many cases would shut down the business tomorrow (think fossil fuels) if they could. He urges them: Don’t adopt a policy based on flawed studies that made it into a shareholder resolution.

Most important of all, according to Danhof, is finding a way to deal with the radicalized proxy advisors, which he calls an existential threat. If he had a silver bullet, he says he would buy the Institutional Shareholder Services because its role in increasing the impact of the shareholder resolution cannot be overstated.

One piece of good news is that the SEC has finally issued new guidance limiting the usefulness (and thus the power) of the proxy advisor. No longer will investment advisors be able to simply outsource their recommendations to the proxy; they will still be responsible for doing their own due diligence. And the proxy advisors will now be legally on the hook for false and misleading communications. While Danhof does not believe the SEC rulings will have much impact in the short term, the Wall Street Journal in an August 28 editorial treats this ruling as a significant sign the SEC is looking out for shareholders, not political stakeholders.

Organized advocacy of “stakeholder” over shareholder rights is relatively new, going back to the Ralph Nader-created and inspired so-called “public interest” groups of the 1960s, which sought to politicize the corporation by turning it into a miniature government whose decisions were to be made by a “legislature” that included the public affected by the corporation. At the time this was dismissed as fringe chatter. Now that the vast majority of the corporate leaders of the Business Roundtable have adopted the then-far-out notion of satisfying the “stakeholder” as their central mission, many in the media simply shrug, dismissing it as inconsequential window dressing. In the Hill, Danhof points out that, on the contrary, the Roundtable has provided “the rope that the Left can use to put around the necks of its corporate members.” Indeed he envisions shareholder proposals being fashioned right now demanding Roundtable member companies leave the Roundtable because some of its pro-business advocacy is contrary to the positions of some ESG “stakeholders.”

The notion that stakeholders trump a corporation’s shareholders may be new. Much older is the pithy observation of Adam Smith in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations that “I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.”

Rael Jean Isaac is the author (with Erich Isaac) of The Coercive Utopians: Social Deception by America’s Power Players (Regnery) and (with Virginia Armat) Madness in the Streets: How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Ill (The Free Press).