Costco vs. racist investors, tech bro victimhood, Altman cries, and Zuck sucks up

Oh yeah, come on. There it is. Come on. Ayo live. From an ESG flavored. We're still seeing issues still ESG flavor 2025. It's an all new Wacky. Wednesday edition of business fans joined by analysts whole Matt mcgady. Wow, plays the ESG with what is that 2025? Is there a new thing that we have to say on today's Costco? Love Fest called January 8th, 2025 headlines. We missed. And the new comic book superhero named Costco. Are there hero are they will find out. Well, we'll find out. It's a little redundant for you as an opening right now. It's hard to get going after the new year and I'm not at home. My bathroom is being fixed. So I have been displaced some strange cold. Home in a pond. I feel weird. I'm sitting on a couch. Our show today is being sponsored by free flow analytics. The only platform measuring board power connections and performance for free. Let's just, let's just launch into it. Matt. We've been off the air for several weeks enough to 1000s of headlines a crewed. And, and long enough that we don't know what we're doing anymore. That's true. I gotta remember. I hate people, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna overwhelm the audience with all the headlines that I think are important to at least touch upon to. So to reset their appetite for the coming year of all the topics that we talk about. That make sense. Yeah, no it's very compelling what you're saying. Okay. I mean I think that's your that's your your subtle way of saying, maybe you need some more coffee because you sound like a third. All I think you just cute me to play this. All right, what did I miss? Now, let's start in no particular order but but I'm guessing that where I start is gonna hit you hard. You gonna start with depression, but I'm gonna start, I broken this down into about four or five categories. I'm starting with The tech Bros. Oh good. No, I that's what I wanted to talk about first, I know, I'm sorry. Let's start with Zuck. Oh, good, let's talk about that too. And let's start with not the story that you think we're going to start with that. Most people are talking about. Let's start with the one that our company is especially interested in and that's the fact that that Mark Zuckerberg has once again expanded the board of meta platforms. Three new directors. But this time one of them is is almost a troll to us. I think it's I think specifically it's a troll to our company. And that one of the new board members that meta is Dana White. The UFC, CEO, and Trump Ally this to me, the game is over at this point. I think this is sucks. Way of saying to us and to to people who care about corporate governance that get over it, I control this Empire, I can control this company, I control three billion users. I'm gonna do whatever I want. I don't care if this guy has literally been caught on camera you know, physically abusing his wife, I don't care about anything. This is the dude I want on my board and you can't vote him out. What? What? Happened to her. So I thought it was the marriage, literally. It's crazy to me, Matt. I mean this one I I really did scratch my head for a while on this one. I didn't believe but it did get uncomfortable. It was getting Raw. Dana White UFC CEO on the board of meta platforms of all companies. What do you think? Like when they were asking when Mark was asking him? Do you think Dana even himself? Was like, you know, I run a company that where men hit each other, right? Like, that's what I do. Well, you know, there's been a lot of talk over the last year Zuck, bulking up wanting to become a Fighter, fighting Elon Musk. I guess. This is part of that. Oh, maybe. This is just a troll of Elon Musk to be like, I'm waiting on you. And again, it doesn't matter because again, he's trolling us specifically and saying, hey free flow. You can't do anything about this. And somehow, the investor Universe has allowed companies like mine to be controlled by one person. Again, there's the right answer. I mean, like, look how Sunset Provisions with a sunset Clauses to actually have these to have other people have insight into who provides oversight. It doesn't matter because I mean because this is leading up to the next thing going on at meta. But yeah. Go ahead isn't like like this is the perfect follow-on to last year at adding John Arnold who was a derivatives Trader at Enron and then putting the guy on the audit committee, right? Like, isn't the guy who got the biggest bonus ever at Enron for being a hyper aggressive Trader. Really Enron the real. The infamous Japanese this is like But we're just trolling the investors now, like, like no, the trolling us but I've talked to investors who are like, where we don't care for these, these board members, but we're not sure what to do about it and we told them what to do about it, vote against them everywhere else, but guess what? Yeah, Zuck can afford to just pick all these people because most of them don't have other board seats. They just sit here or they sit on other totalitarian boards and that's it. Well, look. I make fun of all the time. That the one thing that investors seem to know how to vote against is that if a director has under 75% attendance. That's the one magical thing that we all agree on. Yeah. How about we just vote against every policy every board member companies were the the shares are controlled by a dual class Provisions. That allow an emperor to sit in place. How about we just vote against everything there, until somebody may be notices, that could I like your ideas? I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Where I move on to other white men added to that board, John Elkin and Charlie song, her sister both kind of tech investors. But but I think most importantly, as this is one, the first big board edition of 2025 is that I think this is the opening Salvo of hey all that diversity, crap, that we pretended to care about. Like here comes the return of all the white dudes, right? I mean, we're not even gonna try anymore, it doesn't really matter. Yeah. If let's be honest. But you know, for a couple years there I think I have been being honest. Well, for a couple years. There it was it was it was getting hard to be a white guy, right? Like you can't see it to pretend you knew or cared about diversity, you know? That's that's hard. Yeah, I mean the Fortune 500, I think female CEOs crept up to like six or seven percent. So yeah, it was getting a little uncomfortable. I think. I mean nobody wants to like you know, like you know how much of this do you think has to do with the fact that Mom is gone Sheryl sandberg's off the board? More than I want to admit. So that sets up this other news that I'm sure most normal people are talking about. Although we wish there were talking about the metaphor board, but the headline everywhere, here's one of the versions of this headlines, Zuckerberg announces new measures to increase hate speech on Facebook. So actually yeah. Essentially what is happening is that they are getting their firing their fact Checkers. They're getting rid of their fact checking his thing. They're moving over to a musk asked Content moderation system that includes what community? Community no guidelines know. This is like firing the police and just leaning on the neighborhood watch group. That is that, that's a good way to think of it. Yeah, there's some there's some related headlines with this one. First of all. Mark, Zuckerberg's meta is moving. Moderators out of California to Texas to combat concerns about bias and censorship The Meta oversight board. Matt has already weighed in saying that there's a they have huge problems with this. The co-chair Hella torning Schmidt. She said we are seeing many instances where hate speech can lead to real life harm, so we will be watching that space very carefully. I'll finally someone's watching. Yeah. And that's really what the role of the oversight board is right. It's just watch stuff very carefully because they don't seem to have much influence with Mark, right? Well he does through various pays them. Yeah, Securus foundations, your trust or whatever pays their salary and he kind of is the owner of it so yeah. And let's be clear, there are other parts of this moderate. This content, moderation overhaul other than just moving over to community guidelines, whatever that is meta is also dropping rules protecting the lgbtq community. The changes include allowing users to share allegations of mental illness or abnormality. When based on gender or sexual orientation giving political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality so explain that to me in English. I saw that and could not figure out. Does that just mean? You what who's transgender mentally dysfunctional? Is that okay? Yeah. They're so what was what was previously forbidden? Basically homophobic bullying speech is now being allowed because because you know, I guess because of the election that some Americans like this, they like using bully hate speech and so we should allow it right? That's essentially what it's saying. Yeah. Someone like so go ahead. Oh yeah. All this under the the strange Free Speech umbrella that people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg really have no background and understanding but they they like to trot that I love the idea that phrase around that they're basically saying like they're basically saying look there's more racists then there are not racists right now. So we're going to be racist. Well, even even Republican senator Blackburn out of Tennessee. She's Martha Martha Blackburn. She said that she thinks it's just Mark trying to dodge more regulation. So this is not pleasing, everybody, not pleasing. All Republicans, recognize, I like that. She had nothing to say about the content of it. She was just like, it seems like it's cozying and kleptocracy. Let's move off mark on to Sam Altman who's becoming like you know he's one of the now Mount Rushmore of Insidious Tech bro. Sam Hunt and of course the the head of open AI. The big news while we're gone. Matt. Here's the headline. Sam Altman explodes at board members who fired him. Yes, that's the actual quote that's actual headline. Here's the quote from him and all those people that I feel like really fucked me and fucked the company were gone. And now I had to clean up their mess adding that he was fucking depressed and tired. Wow. He said It felt so unfair. It was just a crazy thing to have to go through and then have no time to recover because the house was on fire. I want to remind people what he's talking about. First of all, he is referring to really are two women Helen toner, the director of strategy at Georgetown Center for security and emerging technology. And Tasha McCallie who's a Senior Management scientists at the think, tank ran cooperation. She was also on The Advisory Board of the Center for Effective altruism. So she was mad at those two women who have now been replaced, they're gone. And I want to remind people that at the time, Time the board of opening eyes. The board's primary fiduciary duty was not to maintain shareholder value or profits, but rather to stay true to open ai's mission of creating safe, artificial general intelligence. That's AGI that benefits Humanity, that was their mandate. So his his non-profit, tirade, it's completely uncalled for, he can disagree, I'm with the decision, whatever. But, but his, his attack of these two women is wrong. He's wrong and and history is rewriting this in a way that makes him look like the victim and that he was ultimately right but but the way the news is rewriting is wrong too, they're really doing a disservice to what that board represented. I mean the work that those two women were doing. Frankly. No offense to the trigger words but he does sound a little shrill and emotional when he's saying these things. Does. Yeah. But he got to get a few f-bombs and we don't see a lot of f-bombs from CEOs, to their female boards. I'm sure he's proud of himself. This is he's one and a long line of tech man babies. He's just a fucking man-baby, just like they did their job, you didn't like that. They did their job. You got them fired, and then you are taking the company to be a for-profit company. So you can be a billionaire, stop it. Stop pretending like, oh, those two women really fucked up my whole world, like, stop it. Like you only seven houses, the two women did the letter of their job. They did exactly what they should have done. We said it then. Absolutely. We say. Yeah, that's covered was a part of that. He agreed. Why is it as soon as you achieve a certain level of wealth or power? You all you do is cry about being a victim, right? Like he's a victim of the two, female board members who don't work there anymore for who did their job? You're the victim. Still, you're the victim. He's still, he's still angry about it, despite over the last year, his wealth has increased exponentially. The power of openai has has increased exponentially. He has, he has been allowed to get rid of the board members. He doesn't like he's put in a bunch of his buddies, on the board, everything is you could make this. The you could make the case that these women have helped increase his power. Honestly, that there has been nothing like the first story is white, male victimhood with Zuckerberg, you know? And you know, like in Zuckerberg's video, he says he the last four years, you know, the new Administration is a, is a cultural shift. The last four years have been hard because they, they want to increase censorship. It's like you're not a victim like you Made more money in the last four years and you've ever made. Right? And now it's Sam Altman, like, oh, somebody hurt my feelings because they said I was rude one. Like I'm sure we're going to talk about mothers and other Tech Bros and Bezos and like Maga. And it's like, what is with billionaire victims? You're not a fucking victim. To make this to make this story about Sam Altman. Even stranger. And we don't have to spend a lot of time on this one, but this is at a CNBC in a lot of new news organizations reporting. This openai CEO Sam Altman. Denies sexual abuse allegations made by his sister in a new lawsuit. So, That's also happening to Sam Altman. Let's move on. Let's move on. And let's go over some other headlines. We can go a little bit more quickly. Stop me if you want to talk about this. A few musk Elon Musk headlines that we missed. I'm sure everyone has seen Maga versus musk. Trump Camp divided in bitter fight over immigration. Welcome back to that actually. Yeah, Elon Musk endorses, not see linked German party. Let's move over to Tech, bro, wealth, a lot of stories about tech, bro. Wealth. 12 us billionaires gained almost one trillion dollars in wealth and 2024 us. That's really highlighted by the tech Bros. The New York Times reporting that Jensen Wong. CEO of Nvidia is trying to avoid an eight billion dollar tax. Bill Mark Zuckerberg is joking about his Hawaiian doobies day bunker Elon Musk is urging Jeff Bezos to have a epic wedding and throw amid Rumours of having a 600 million dollar ceremony. Elon Musk is still is angry. At Mackenzie, Scott for how she's giving away. Billions of dollars to Liberal causes Jensen Wong. How he made? Help make three Nvidia board members, become billionaires and finally when Mark Zuckerberg announced that the new content moderation rules, according to reports, he was wearing a 1 million dollar watch 600 just million dollar wedding. That's the one you landed on but like isn't that that's a pretty bad. That's the perfect picture of lunacy, right? Like these are the people it is right? Yeah. 600 million dollar wedding, I don't herself. I don't report these headlines, as a way of, like some kind of podcasting clickbait, I do I report it to demonstrate the lunacy. You're absolutely right. And to to show you what happens when you have unfettered control and dominance of these Tech Empires, this is really what you're creating. You're creating a bunch of angry users who are constantly mad at everything and you're creating just absurd. Well, let's, yeah, let's be clear like, okay. So, these are people who created companies and build them, they build them using, you know, infrastructure and subsidies from the government. Like, you know, Tesla got, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in Government funding, SpaceX, got government fund. These are people who, like rely on, you know, people who, you know, work hard and build these companies up and kudos to them, but at some point in investor needs to stop and say, okay, we have seeded control to you. for your entire existence we are willing to just like take no control and now when you're doing crazy stuff, Is it an Investor's role to say? Now this is not a good idea. This is just nuts. This is like you can't go backing Nazi parties in Germany like how on Earth does backing. The party that that is linked with Nazis and stopped your gigafactory. Good for Tesla. How is that good for Tesla? Yeah, great question. Yeah. I mean we have, you know, we're going to cover this later but the group trying to get a share, the proposal at Costco, to get rid of a Dei program is, is complaining about Dei programs, because they think that it could open up the company to lawsuits. What about having a CEO sympathetic with Nazis in Germany? What about like could that not open up your company to lawsuits or, or how about just opening up your company to losing sales? I mean, who the hell wants to buy and electric vehicle? From my from a company whose CEO is sympathetic with not a great question, but that's actually what happened. They saw the first sales dip in the last, like, five years or 10 years like some some like the first time like And how does it help you as an investor? That three Nvidia board members became billionaires because of Jensen Huang who's Allegiance, who do? They owe allegiance to you investor or Jensen Huang. So when like you know in video wants to go out and buy like a Bitcoin mining operation for fun, do you trust those board members to represent you and say why don't we stick with, what got us to be billionaires, this? That's a good idea. Like, who do they represent? They don't represent you anymore. In fact, isn't that the same lawsuit that Tesla tornado versus musket Tesla? Right? Isn't the same thing that they said, was that the board members are compromised, because they made so much money from us that they couldn't possibly be objective. I mean, one of the guys who was made billion over billion dollars on that board is on the nomination in compensation committee. I don't I don't understand. It's banana. What oversight? He's providing. Let's move on. Let's stay with your anger and move over to stakeholder anger. So there's a bunch of angry. Stakeholder stories. Let's start with this one. There was a poll released from the University of Chicago. Uh, the headline is that the poll finds many Americans pin? Partial blame on insurance companies in UHC, CEO killing so they're referring to the murder of Brian Thompson. Who was the named executive officer at United Health Group? He was the CEO of their subsidiary, United Healthcare but the poll said that well a out of 10 U.S adults believe that the person who killed Brian Thompson Bears, the responsibility for the murder 7 in 10. Also shared the belief that the health care companies themselves are also to blame. I mean, what I Right? So and this is this is why we wonder like why aren't investors more okay? I don't want to investors to hurt anyone to shoot anyone but why aren't they more involved with? You know, paying attention to who were running these companies, you can see how the the stakeholders, the customers of these companies, how they're affected by it, actually, why not pay attention to that? Why aren't we pay attention to that point? That's a super point. If clearly the constituents who use these products are angry, The investors have their inaction, right? Like and we talked about this in pre-production and we talked about this yesterday like it takes an activist for anyone to pay attention. Who's on these boards for some reason, like, no one cares. It's like default mode. Vote. Yes. On everybody until like, if you were paying attention, you would look and say, oh my God, everyone hates this company. Like this company is making money, but they're making money at the cost of this stakeholder anger. Stakeholder anger, so much that it's bubbling over to murder. At what point do you say it is my fiduciary duty not literal. Murder not to pull like bios off the fucking website or like take down pictures. My fiduciary duty is to actually have a bunch of people running this company who care about the stakeholders too. Like they have to, otherwise you can get shot. Like, that's crazy. It's insane. Or, I mean, there has to be long-term risk to so angry, stakeholder base, right? So, it absolutely is their fiduciary duty to pay attention to. I mean, Beyond long term risks is there very well may be short-term risk. But at a minimum there is long-term risk. If you would, if you ignore everything, but the share price of your, exactly, exactly. Other quick thing, New York to charge fossil fuel companies for damage from climate, change the new law actually a new law, requiring the companies responsible for greenhouse gas emissions to pay into a state fund for infrastructure project. I'm sure Exxon will be soon as the future lawsuit. Sure. Speaking of Exxon they are actually suing the California attorney general for defaming the company because California and the Sierra Club and other environmental clubs are suing X on. Congratulations investors. Now you have the company suing Attorneys General that they don't like, that's insane. Albania bands tiktok for a year. Teens and Vietnam, will now be limited to one hour of gaming procession. So, I only mentioned those two because we talked about the new laws in Australia, right to their trying to kick kids under 16 off of social media. We're going to see more and more of this, right? I mean, everyone is everyone is calling A Mark Zuckerberg's pivot on content. Moderation to be appeasing, Trump appeasing Maga, but there still are Republicans and Democrats alike who aren't falling for any of it right there. This is not there. There's, there's a growing dissent of the effects of social media in our culture and I I don't know where it's gonna go, but I I think it's gonna, it's gonna increase the next few years. Here's a prediction that the number of users on Facebook's platforms and Instagram, Facebook, Instagram, like I guess less so what's up? Because it's not an ad generating platform. But the number of users fall and the number of users Falls because when you get served, you don't want to be served hate speech on a daily basis. Like most people aren't looking for that most people like casually use it to look at their friends, your baby's, let's hear the one delivering this piece unless you're the one looking for a community of other hate speeches. But the most part it's like you just want to look at your kids Dopey. Kids are your friends, Dopey kids and that's it. Like, that's all you want. It's Dopey kids. Yeah. Some other stories we missed Norway on track to be the first. To erase petrol and diesel engine cars. 90% of all new cars sold in Norway. Last year were electric vehicles. It's it's possible. It can be done. And Norway is a, company is a country that makes an extreme amount of its money from oil. Yeah. From its oil. Get over that hypocrisy. Yeah, I know, let's move over to dystopia. I had a few headlines that made me laugh, man. Trying to catch flight alarmed as his driverless waymo gets stuck driving in loop around parking lot. Better than going on your flight honestly, like, it's so horrible to fly these days. I don't know where he's going. It was probably somewhere, terrible. But why not just drive around the parking lot for a few hours? Then go home, like that, who listens to the waymo, the entire like, like Can't you stop it and get out. Like it's an automatic driving car like it's an auto taxi so it's it's in some stupid Loop. Isn't there a button on the side where you're like get out like just stop? I don't know. Is there? I never. I evidently not about that. That is, that is like I'm sure, you know, like waymo I think, is, is Google right? The Google owns way more. I can't remember who owns waymo. I'm sure some tech bro. Somewhere is saying that they're a victim that they're waymo didn't work for this driver, I'm sure somewhere. This next headline is one of my favorites called an early favorite of 2025 asked to write a screenplay. Chat GPT started procrastinating and making excuses. That's gotta be one of my favorite. I mean, all writers all writers know, the pain, all of writer's block. So you gotta love that. And also in dystopia klarna, CEO, Clarin is CEO says, AI is capable of doing his job and it makes him feel gloomy. What do you think about that one? Oh, Care about that care about colonists like now or buy now pay later company, right? Which is but do you think otherwise known as layaway otherwise known as credit otherwise saddling everyone was credit. Here's why I bring it up. There are how many thousand companies do we cover and free float? Analytics.com? How many in a database? How many thousands of companies nine River 9000? 9000. And a lot of those are small cap companies, right? Like tech companies like you just described clarina. Are we that far away from Maybe replacing some named executive officers with AI, I don't know. I love your ideas. Could we be there? Could we be getting closer that that's replace on my arms? Some some some boring governance news, Shari Redstone saying goodbye to Paramount Global that Empire is over Charles Dole and speaking of media Empires, he's, he's dead and 98, Richard Parsons former Time Warner. CEO also dies Here's one that we talked about briefly before the year ended, the die in Durham board resigns in full after it activist nominees take control, you don't really see that very often the whole board. We saw that at 23andMe, but the whole board kind of gave up at once. I like that, maybe it's a new trend, that would be great. I wish we had more of that and how about this kind of pathetic headline? The Fortune 500 has two new female CEOs, finally pushing that Milestone above 11%. So we're at 11% Should be celebrating. That one of those new CEOs is the new CEO. I like you. I like that, it says, finally pushing the Milestone above 11%, that's the Milestone number. It's weird number. I think that, I think the mouse in their referring to was 10%, but let's take the, let's take the Victory, lap with 11% one of those new CEOs is, Keisha Steelman from Ulta Beauty. Also how I have a before we segue over to your what you're covering today. I wanted to also mention just a few other classic headlines that I wanted to make sure that people know about first of all, Boeing. Here's a headline from Boeing Boeing and a troubled year with a jet crash disaster and South Korea. Matt another Boeing Jet crashed, I think after Christmas killing 180 people, you know, things must be bad at Boeing, when people are just kind of, I don't know that, you know, they just just another crash at Boeing another, you know, it's how hasn't really maybe because it's in South Korea that there's a, there's a bias and the Western media but but there hasn't been much coverage of this. But know, the reasons for it or like a bird strike. It wasn't. It wasn't like MCAS. It wasn't a bowing fail to. Yeah, it doesn't look like what That's the initial reports but who knows? Who knows. We can hope that it's Boeing's fall but it's it does not appear to be. There's this headline that I just wanted to say just the trigger. You I like triggering you Nora. Virus rates have skyrocketed by 340% this season. Here's where the winter. Vomiting disease is spreading and why winter vomiting disease. Not okay. And finally, Matt, this headline Takes the Cake for the most like Free flow the most business pants headline ever so far. There's three things in here that we that we talk about all the time. But man, who exploded Tesla cybertruck outside Trump Hotel used chat GPT to plan the attack. Wow, that's all the things we talked about in one dumb headline. And let's, let's segue over to map. Bye, bye. Also have some stories about Dei ESG flip-flopping, first of all, McDonald's. Another company rolling back. Its Dei programs, despite starting their programs only four years ago. They've already they've already decided to abandon that ship. I mean, it has their even been enough data for them to understand. If it's, if it's hurting, or helping. I probably not right. I mean, this is not based on any actual fiduciary duty, right? This is just a knee-jerk flip-flop, in McDonald's defense. They in four years, I think like, there's their, their team turnover, they're employed turnover, something like 75% because it's all like low wage McDonald's workers for the most part that. Well, that's true. The other restaurant companies McDonald's does franchise which is a little bit different, but let's say there's like really high turnover that that's a lot of opportunity to add some Dei. I'm just, I'm just saying so maybe maybe they're rolling it back. Because They tried it and they thought it sucked or more like they're cowards. Their cowards. Yeah and more importantly, when you look at our data, I think you'll find that the that there are five four or five men that control about 2/3 of the total influence at McDonald's. It's a very male, very powerful, male born BlackRock, Black rock is cutting back on its on board diversity. So they're what they've done essentially, is they out of their proxy vote. Guys, they've stripped the policy that board should aspire to 30%. Diversity. They're kind of walking back from that. I don't know how often they were actually voting on that. I think most large cap, companies have already hit that threshold but they are they kind of quietly have removed that language there. It's their version of of getting rid of Dei I suppose right there just abandoning the fight. I suppose, this is like a reversion to the mean things that BlackRock does, are not surprising like oh, black rocks, not doing something like that, Larry Fitz and boogie man, right, they're not surprising. That one. Seems a little petty to me, they are reported the all, but 2% of the boards of companies in S&P 500 have diverse representation of at least 30%. So why? Why make the song and dance to remove the language? Well, who are you? Who exactly are you trying to please with this? Oh right. What? Honestly like in some ways I get it because it's like if you put the language in there, that that's a target for you, like you could just engage with that 2% of the company of companies and everybody else has already achieved it. It's it's what if it slides backwards, like as Mark Zuckerberg is already. Probably. I wonder what the percentage is now it meta, because he's already added three, white, dude. It's 23% week, it's 23%, right? So there you go. But it would have been a Target. Doesn't make a difference out there, but like, but actually, the bigger thing is, is that they didn't like, like any goal, right? Like you said, a target of like, 30% diverse membership of boards. You didn't say, okay? We've achieved 30% at 98% of boards. What about 40% right? What about like a higher number? A different number. A different goal. They didn't. That's What they didn't do, they didn't replace the goal. They just said, okay, we're done. That's enough diversity. We're done. Yeah, well, or to your point, what about the next stage of that goal would be okay. We have representation now. Now, let's check that these are well, no, yeah. Well, are they leadership roles are they? Are they on track to become CEO? Or you know, like, what what are you doing with these people? But anyway that they rolling that back. And finally, and this is the, this the the Segway everyone's waiting for the segue over to Matt mascardi, Costco. Is actually. Defending its Dei practices. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. So so there is a Shirley proposal From Matt's favorite group, the conservative activist the national Center for Public Policy research, essentially asking for them to get rid of their Dei program and Costco was basically saying go f yourself. Yeah, I'm really, I mean, we've been waiting for for, would there be any company and any board that would actually fight back and people? It's called Costco there, right? Not the board. I would have expected Know. Well, okay. But I had a different reaction when I looked at our data on this board, but I'm gonna let you take over. So I think you have a lot more. Yeah, Costco, go ahead. Let's spend some time on Costco. Do I have to preface this by saying? I've never even been to a Costco, but now I'm push. I'm gonna have to go. Yeah, I never have to get a membership. So, as you mentioned, it's National Center for Public Policy research, not to be confused with the national public policy, Research Center or whatever. What can I write like there? I can't. I confuse that crazy in the way they named these things. This is what their arguments are in the proxy. The proxy they file to share a little proposal. It went through and it's in the proxy. The vote is on January 23rd, so it's up. It's coming up. There are arguments that what they asked for was a report on how maintaining your Dei programs can hurt the company. That's what they were asking for. That was that their arguments include the US Supreme Court decision at Harvard, You know, the affirmative action decision, they include an argument that a single Starbucks employee, who is a regional manager, a white regional manager was fired after overseeing, the arrest of two black men in a in a in a Philadelphia Starbucks who are arrested just because they were black. There's no cause there's no nothing. They basically get arrested that employee was fired and but one a judgment or 25 million dollars. Wow. Starbucks one does the jury found that race won played a role in the firing? One one, one way employee I don't have roughly 400,000 Starbucks employees one. One. One, dude, like 700 million Starbucks employees one. Okay. But then, there's this gentleman of of an argument for Costco specifically. They said, quote, with 310,000 employees Costco likely has at least 200,000 employees, who are potentially victims of this type of illegal discrimination because they are white Asian, male or straight. They basically, the yeah, this is, this is there are not much, why don't why am I even bothering to get involved with the argument of this? Yeah, go ahead. But they're saying that Costco they they have 200,000 people who basically could be discriminated against in the same way that Starbucks have like discriminated against that one white guy apparently right? And they are asking for a detail like that that could they said that could amount to billions of dollars. This is perhaps And this is Legacy. This is, this is the, this is the, we're recording on the 8th of January. It has to be, what will be the best ironic argument for meritocracy ever made, right? Like, at least for this year because what they did by making that last argument I'll say it again, 310,000 employees Costco likely has at least 200,000 employees who are potentially victims of this type of legal discrimination because they are white Asian male or straight. Okay, potentially, yeah. What they said what that means is they're pointing out. The majority of the staff 200,000 is more than half of 310,000. The majority of the staff is white Asian, male or straight, might be discriminated against. And they are getting discriminated against the majority treated. Like they might be treated, like the minority staff. That's what their word about that. They didn't even use Costco's data, which is available. And the Data shows that non-management is 44%, White Management is 58% white and executives are 80% White. 80% white. So what they're, what the argument really is to me, Matt is that they're saying is that You know, we have been systemically bullying minorities for hundreds of years and what we're worried about is that that you're going to do it to us. Is that what their word about? that this is the best part because there were that they're gonna have to stop systemically bullying and that someone might bully them because one person at Starbucks was bullied because there are a lot of white males at the company. There is a lot of risk that the white someone like fire will sue you. If they feel discriminated against if they feel, right? They are effective. It's the place where where we're just like the rest of the S&P 500 and just like the rest of the of the investor Universe. Where where, why Asian male straight people are still in charge to completely in charge of everything of all of leadership of influence of shares, and, right? And the weirdest part is, they, are they like, so, Hispanics are 33% of non-management and 9% of management, which is already insane, okay? 8% of Executives, and 23% it. Basically, it's straight Line's down for everybody else, right? And that the data is there it shows that effectively as you get higher in responsibility you are more likely to get discriminated against. If you are a person of color a minority with the exception of Asians, who are flat, they basically are like they're they're just about 8% of non-management. There are seven percent of management there are 8% of Executives, right? Like it's like, you know there's just not a lot of Asians that are there period I suppose. I just love that. The argument is so such an ironic joke, because they're saying you have programs for non-diverse people, which makes the majority of your white male Staff, feel discriminated against and they could sue you like that, it's just like they don't, they're not even in their own joke but Costco was The response that they dropped dropped all pretense in the proxy. Their their response to the shareholder, resolution it dropped all pretense that this is anything. But racism, they said, quote, The proponent professors concerned about legal and Financial Risk to the company and its shareholders associated with diversity initiatives. The proponents broader agenda is not reducing risk for the company but abolition of diversity initiatives. Basically, just get rid of anything that helps of like anyone, but white people. In fact, they said the proponent themselves admitted this in a federal district court decision, which the national public policy, research, policy Center, whatever the hell they're called, they actually wrote in a decision already that that they're describing shareholder activism as fighting back against the evils of woke politicized capital and companies and they describe CEOs evil. Yes CEOs and other corporate Executives who are most woke and most hard left political in their management of their corporations as inimical to The Republic and its blessings of liberty and committed to critical race Theory and socialist. Foundations of wild, they're throwing out everything. Thermo every trigger word. They can think this is National Center for Public Policy research. The proponent of the shareholder, resolution in a district court filing because they sued, they sued somebody and they called them. A Shameless monsters who are willing to sacrifice monsters future for their Comforts. Wow, I'm surprised they didn't mention like Malcolm X and trans people and keep going with that list. And then so Costco, basically is like, you have, you have a clear agenda, it is just the abolition of diversity for ugly agenda. Has nothing to do with risk or this company or anything like that, you are absolutely Shameless and you're fuking, Liars is basically what they wrote down the proxy. And how about this man? There's actually a, we were always asking like, where are the directors? Where are they think about things? There's actually a direct on Costco Jeff. Raikes, he actually said something, Matt, here's what he said. He actually tweeted this on Elon musk's Elon, musk's horrible company. Attacks on Dei aren't just bad for business, they hurt our economy, I diverse Workforce drives Innovation, expands markets, and fuels growth. Let's focus on building a future where all Town thrives, Matt and That's an actual director at Costco. He actually he made a stand. He said something Jeffrey Riggs. Congratulations, incredible. Here's one of the reasons I think Costco is pushing back. You pointed out one thing which is the fact that the board has like a high level of female power on it on the board at the board level, right? Well, I will say this, it's the only board so far that we've looked at of all the, Okay. So we've looked at all the companies, all the boards that have flip-flop that have turned their back on Dei or shameful cowards as Matt rightly called them. A lot of them are family firms, a lot of them are controlled just by men just by dudes like a McDonald's. But but at Costco, the the first thing that I know this was that they have very two powerful women on the board that we talk about all the time because they're on other boards and that Mary wild Ryder and Susan Decker, and that just might make a difference. They just those two women alone control about a quarter of the Board influence and this is why we talk about influence so much. This is the perfect use case for this and this is data that you can only find at freeflow analytics.com. So if you're interested not only is that correct perfect use case but the biggest outlier they are. I looked at I pulled every company that flipped on Dei or has been targeted for Dei and Costco is one of among like two or three that have basically pushed back in any way. Even small. What else? Microsoft Microsoft, who else fired a couple of Dei people but have doubled down on Dei JP Morgan said Jamie dimon said that if you're not right he's not he's not whoa but he's not. Whoa he's a full-throated you know, red blooded, whatever. He's but he would be wrong, they would still call him woke those. So he's confused Costco of all of them has Costco the lowest Um, deviation and influence, meaning the people on the board. All, almost all have equal influence. There are only a couple of like people with less influence but is one of the most democratic boards in terms of power in our entire database. More people have a say on that board, then most boards, which means you combined democracy on the board. Where people do not feel threatened. If they speak up and say this is insane, and the fact that none of the people on the board have business allegiance to other Dei, flippers one of the things we found in a study is that most of the flippers like the Walmarts, the Fords they have board members in common. They actually largely come from a single cohort of directors, like, interconnected directors, not Costco. So Costco's board members are not connected and they're highly democratic. And they have a decent amount of female power on the board. When you combine those things you get what is basically Costco saying, you guys are fucking idiots. You guys are moron. Yeah, this is just won't stand. And now, Robbie Starbucks said that everyone should cancel their memberships. We'll see. Yeah, which I saw that and how, how exactly does that? How does that help the bottom line of? That's what I understand about this movement, like, like, they're so interested in the bottom line of fiduciary duty for shareholders. And how does that? What is that? Well, so we're gonna ban Costco, we're gonna hurt, I don't really, but forget, Robbie Starbucks. I, I want to repeat something you said, because I do think that at least initially, it looks like this is one of the perfect use cases for our data on this topic, which is that Mary wild Rider has the same amount of influence as CEO Ron backrest 13%. And that there are a total of at least six directors with at least 10% influence. So to your point to balance Sports, so that that I'm trying to recreate the conversation here, right? Which is that Good. Instead of getting, we get so much pushback about how our approach is angry. It's it's gonna offend directors, it's mean we can't do this. You need to see this in terms of just reconstituting Boards of of, maybe you target someone who has outsize influence for for variety of reasons. And you just trying to balance the membership so that you have more of a democratic oversight. It's not about you're not going to, you're not going to ruin the career of some directive by voting them out. There are already doing fine, they're probably sitting on three other boards. Anyway which is why they have such incredible influence. It's just a way of it's just like a sports team, cutting a fan favorite or someone who used to perform well is not performing anymore. Its just trying to get someone else in who maybe can perform that role better player, right? I mean what are we doing here? Like we why do we need to protectors so much that? We're actually worried about offending them and that we, I just really, it's it's down the sound Damien. They're victims. I'm gonna call it there. I had like a little bit more on this, but before we go into our 12th hour, we're gonna talk about Costco a lot. Congratulations. Because they are Bellwether, they're there. They're the canary in the coal. Mine for a company that can call out racist, bulshit could congratulations to them. That says, will not roll us. I am your animals told me I'm scared. We are free float. Come back on Friday. We have a prediction show. We're gonna do predictions right? It's more we have more shows to say but we've got for the year, we got all sorts of stuff going on. We can slowly inform you about all of them until then good. Bye.