Transcript
That's it. There it is. Live from a vanguard's mirror voting policy, right. But right from the policy itself, I don't want to be live from that their Hall of mirror voting policy Horrors. It's a business pants Friday show here at November 22nd Studios, featuring analyst whole Matt mascardi. Whoa, we got mad. Good. I gotta say, Matt, you have a lot of fat. I know that you have a lot of fans, people people sometimes, you know, thank you for your incredible contributions. So I'm gonna announce to anyone, listening. We have Matt today, we have Matt mascardi right here? Yeah, so thanks for booking me. It took a couple wasn't hard to figure out when I could fit it in my schedule. All. So I do want to thank the fans who come up to me in the street. Yeah, what I think of a particular directed like a really esoteric, you know, mid cap company. Yeah, good for that. Really appreciate it. On today's weekly wrap up, d e, i and meritocracy. Shark jumping. No, more Jaguars for Blue Collar, America. A holy or is it a holy investors? That's a, that's a written joke. It's really terrible. Who do we have to fire about that joke? Really, and will the real Elon Shady please? Stand up. That's our show. They are our show. Today is being sponsored by free flow analytics.com. The only platform measuring board power connections and performance for free. Yeah, it does more than that real for free. Yeah, free. It does more than that, it does measure those things, but also, it's just a handy place to, if you just want to know who's on the Rio Tinto board, for some reason, they're ages and, and gender, all of us. It's just a simple stuff. You could go, who isn't thinking about that really well, yeah, everywhere I go. Everyone's like, who's in the Rio Tinto board? Well. Uh when you see when you see headlines like this from The Wall Street Journal, Rio Tinto says sexual harassment racism, still happening at their mind at minor. While things are improving resistance is evident and might be contributing to a rise in harmful behaviors in some areas. Maybe you should want to know who's on the board. I don't know if that article. I think, if you put up like, you know, like the photo arrays you show, like people who, you know, to identify a criminal, like you go to the police department, someone mugs you, and they give you a photo array, like, pick out the person that you recognize, if you showed a photo or array of every single board. Unlike the boxes at Target, right? Like Brock. You're in gamble process. My phone to my literal dream. Yes, I know. Well, I thought of it is like a nutrition label but the photo array actually you would look at that and be like what I buy these people do. I Did they look like people? I could trust to buy something from? And well, that's probably know, most of the time, they they talk a lot about like, Dei running amok, right? So this is what, which is filled, this sort of young white male resistance to Dei. But, but listen to this, this again, is from The Wall Street Journal about Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto is finding it difficult to Stamp Out sexual harassment racism and bullying as it faces resistance and backlash from some workers to an efforts to overhaul the culture. Right? That's the first, this is the first story we've seen where this is now. Trickling down to the, to the workers at the company, but they're like, no, no, we're not. You know, not changing good with. Whoa. Like, we don't have any Dei training, so I'm good with. Usually, it's just spineless, overpaid board members, who get rid of the Deo policy, but this is workers themselves being like, yeah. Not interested. Those same spineless overpaid directors, to overpaid part is very relevant. They get paid the same amount on an hourly as it was and they go to 12 meetings a year, right? Like so what are we talking about? According to our data, a lot of them are very much. Yeah, come on. What we're way off here. Let's get to the show, like, being way off like this, all right. Story of the week. Unfortunately, I have five I'm gonna I'm gonna go in the first one I'm gonna put in the first one because no one wants to spend time in this. A Department of Justice says, Google must sell Chrome to crack. Open its search Monopoly. Wow. All right, let's go. Let's move on. That's old school business news. We're new school business news. We don't we don't dwell on that like old fussy stuff. Okay, we're moving. What they sell it too. Us. Oh, okay. I want to start with this one. This is relevant for Americans. Only who celebrate Thanksgiving. The headline is just for those of us in the Northeast because this directly affected me for several weeks Stop and Shop cybersecurity issue. Empty shelves before, Thanksgiving know, I know because I shop at Stop and Shop. I do too. I, so my version of Stop & Shop up here is Hannaford. It's the same company, but the app has been down for so long, I just stopped going all. So, one of the times I went to the store, there was big signs on all the doors saying, cash, only because our card readers are down because of this issue. So I just stopped going. Basically, you know what the hell carries cashew enough cash to buy groceries. That's a lot of cash. So yeah, go ahead. Can we say though? Stop and Shop Hannaford's? These companies, the companies that Supply us our food in parts of the United States owned by a Dutch company. Such Elgin Belgian Belgian. Ahold Del Haze a hole. Did you say a hole? A hole? Okay, or a hold sure I'm gonna go with a hole though. This is this is not a US company doing that. We're we're being cyber attacked and it's we can't even like it's not even in our jurisdiction. This is this is not good. I I want my turkey and I I want it now. And here's the context of what another reason why I picked this story, not only the context of things giving, but listen to these two other headlines that we have tagged just this week in our news story database. I don't even know what it's called. We should name it. We should trade market and sell it, but Trump's new Administration, this is a headline. Trump's new Administration should not tolerate the level of cyber attacks. Coming from Russia and China, Microsoft President says, and this other headline, the AI affect Amazon. The company Amazon sees nearly one billion cyber threats a day because of AI one million. And again, this cut and just to wrap it up here. The reason why I chose the story is that is that one of the things I've been shouting about for years, in the context of analyzing the boards of directors of this company, is knowing no one who's there? No, one who has, what skills, knowing who's appropriately? Do you want five people from Dartmouth? Or maybe do you want four people from Dartmouth? And one person who has expertise in cybersecurity, right? Can we can we actually say maybe anything cybersecurity in using or like expertise but I'm just trying to paint a picture here, man of why the board matters. I know, I know, it's only one. I know that the idea is to have you surrounded by your friends who helped to CEO just like that's true rubber stamp everything but the board actually could and should be a useful entity. We talked in pre-production about Rand Paul. We talked senator, in the United States who was this is just rid of the cybersecurity and intelligence committee, I don't understand. It has and wants to shut down like funding for it. I don't like the whole thing and he said, and in a great quote, which I closed because I didn't think we cover it, but like he said in his great quote, we survived 248 years without it, so we'll be fine. That was thinking on. Why heard of it is that real? Is he really think that he real said about cybersecurity? Well, to be fair I need to be fair. I do have the data here and in 1842 amazon.com saw only zero cyber threat today that so he's correct. So he's right, he's right. It was in a big problem. Yeah. I love amazon.com and 1842 was so much simpler because there's really just like, you know, there was like five items for sale, me a mule Maybe some hey what right? Maybe like what else was like a steel iron that you could hit put on your horse's hoof shoe? Yeah. All right, let's move on. That's just all right. Number three. Last thing on that story. Yeah, I do want to say that there are 67 us companies where in our database computers and electronics. There are zero directors where that is oh those are you have the data? You have the data 7 out of about 500 large cap companies that won US which means about 12 to 13% of large cap. Companies. Don't have a single person on the board with computers or Electronics, as a base knowledge. Those are across every industry including like food and stuff. Yeah. Like Gas, Utilities health care. How about this biotechnology bio-tech? Industry, there are companies without a single computer person on the board. Uh, moving on to the third headline of the week, and we can go quickly on this too, because I think you're covering this. So I'll just read the headline News, Corp shareholders. Reject activist bid to end dual class. Share structure. You have more on this later. So if you want to skip it, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about my own thing for fourth story of the week. I will say this though. This button News Corp shareholders, is that actually a lot of shareholders voted to pass this 35% shareholders and if you subtract this shares held by Rupert Murdoch, that means that 64% of non Rupert Murdoch. People want to want this, I did that math. I'm upset with the other side of the yeah. Yeah, let's move on the fourth one. I'm calling this one. Has meritocracy jumped the shark. This is my last week. You're just copying me from West. Oh, okay. Well this is what we do here. This is the headline which is just mind-boggling and we're talking about Linda McMahon, she's the president elect Donald Trump's pick for education secretary but here's the headline. This is from USA Today. Trump's education, secretary nominee. Once said, she had an education degree but she doesn't so I mean yeah. I There's no button the headline, I like that. It just says. Yeah, this is true. There's no. Yes, that's a little bit of background so you can understand why I picked this wise relevant to us. First of all, this this woman was the CEO of a publicly traded company. That's correct, but it was, you know, it was WWE. A company, okay? But a company that is just been a dual class company. That has been riddled with sexual harassment, sexual assault, just all kinds of horrible and in fact she's currently being sued. Why is she being sued? Apparently she like, aided in a bedded, she ignored the fact that an employee of WWE was sexually harassing children aged boy. Yes. So here's the headline from The New York Times Trump's education secretary pick named in sexual abuse lawsuit. Alleging that she knowingly enabled to sexual exploitation of children at the company where she was CEO. The other reason to why I picked her is because Matt announced in our last show that we're very busy. Scraping board members from all kinds of entities, in the United States, and Beyond everywhere. But what are those? What are those things? I think that you're scraping from our places like universities Linda McMahon Sat in the Board of Trustees at Sacred Heart University for 13 years. So this is one thing that hopefully will be included in our future iterations of our database. And also, Matt, she also co-founded, we often talk about these conservative research groups that have silly names, like, you know, like Liberty Eagle or whatever, she she co-founded, one called America First policy Institute. And the only reason why I point this out because we love to go right to the leadership teams to see like who these people really are. And this one again, of course, 15 people all white people. So this is the, oh, I'm just saying, I'm just saying. So, this is, this is why I picked this story. This is why I picked her because, you know, former CEO board member at a non-for-profit, blah, blah. Question about this one though. It's a little tin foily. So stay with me. Yeah. Is a? This the greatest government glass cliff ever, right. Well okay, so you're just so it's like you become the CEO of Walgreens in your first task is to destroy Walgreens. Is that what you're saying? Well, so the department of government efficiency headed by musk in ramaswami. They're one of their, they announced their initial list of things that they wanted to cut and on. It is the Department of Education. So you're putting, her is ahead of the Department of Education with a hammer waiting, for them to fire, the entire Department, of Education, right? So so is it like the perfect glass, Cliff like she's basically giving a job that there's no potential for success. And it doesn't really matter but I don't know. Do they pay or something to shit? Is there some Advantage? It is a cabinet pick. Which means, I believe as a government employee she has to divest from any conflict of interest that she may have like stock Holdings that she may have or there's like requirements. So maybe she gets some like tax-free money for selling her, you know, some stock or a house somewhere or whatever. She's got to do, let me up into you on your tin foil hat work. What if this is, just another clever way of proving, the Dei has run. Amok because they've they've hired a woman who and she has no experience. She's not, she's clearly not qualified to be to run the Department of Education, right? So they're right. They're right about Dei right, the door plug popped off of a Boeing plane and musk was all over Twitter saying Dei. So this is a very clever, this is very clever, it's just the troll that that is that she's clearly taking the position of a man who would be more qualified in a meritocracy, right? But anyway, that obviously right, you see the point here of my of why I'm saying, meritocracy, jumped the shark, because this is what they shouted about, even, even the Vivek ramaswamy, who was on our show. This was his big thing, meritocracy, and this is what, and he has no skill set, which would Government funding, and she has no skill set to run the Department of Education. By the way, Matt to just to end this talk about Trump's potential, new programs, and cabinet picks. They added Marjorie Taylor Greene to work with Elon Musk and VivoCity on that project, blah, blah. I'm just saying they added another qualified genius. So I don't want this to be another Dei, pick pure politics. So let's end on this. My fifth Story the week that I had to fit in. I don't usually, I had a fifth. I just love this one so much. This is from The Washington Post. I was not gonna include this because I didn't think it was something that we we would cover that. I wouldn't think it was at a company that we would cover. The headline is it's called work advice, I'm uncomfortable with our CEO, invoking, Jesus in meetings, right? And I thought, well, this is probably a small company Worcester, you know, it's like a, you know, like a 10 employees, you know what I mean? Like this is not a big deal but then I looked at the article she says that the reader says I'm a mid-level executive for a publicly traded company, so this is a company in our database. So I just thought it was funny that she's, she's talking about how the, the, the CEO of the company starts every day by invoke saying, you know, invoking a Christian prayer and I just, are you like this one? I like this. Are you pointing this out because of the deep deep hypocrisy that like noonies aren't allowed to talk about Dei? Absolutely not. But they can be devout. Christian, know they're allowed to that. No, there's no political message in here. I In this out because I, I'm hoping that there, this is a future data point in our database where we can add like how many CEOs invoke Jesus, Christ's name. I love the morning prayers, right? I don't know that. I wanna know we want every data point. Yeah, I want everything I want everything. All right, so, my options here are sorry for so many selling Chrome. Stop and Shop really killing me with cybersecurity News. Corp, rejecting activist, bid to and dual class shares, meritocracy, jumped the shark and CEO invokes. Jesus publicly traded CEO. But as a new data point, that's that's really what you're saying is, the story of the week having that as a new data point, look, meritocracy we talked about last week. It is very clearly, a troll it is. I think we're past it now. Like are we done talking? Notice how yeah. Hearing much about the meritocracy right now, I hear a lot of wokeness stop talking about whatever, but they stopped talking about it. Because it is so painfully obvious that every one of the cabinet picks everyone doing everything in the incoming Administration has absolutely no expertise in that thing. Well, we hate experts, but we don't listen to our doctors. We don't trust them. We don't listen to like news anymore. We don't trust that. We don't just, you gonna spend 50 years doing a thing, and we think you were probably lying about having done that thing at this point. So let's be a little bit more accurate. It's, it's a bit more than a troll. It's a Sinister racist sexist troll, right? It's not just your average troll, okay? Okay. I'm just saying, yeah, no, it's a sexist racist, troll. But I think, I think as story of the week goes, it's hard to really pick anyone other than the education secretary like interesting. Like I didn't think you really think that News Corp shareholders were going to and dual class did we? Well, we really shot holders did essentially just except for Rupert Murdoch. But do we think that a Belgian Owned. A US grocery store is going to care about Thanksgiving. Oh no, cybersecurity to me. If I had a vote in this that actually would have been my story of the week only because I I kind of do worry about a future where this gets kind of out of control you know, and we're not in publicly traded companies to your point are not fortifying themselves against this and even Rand Paul. As you just pointed out, is trying to deregulate in this area and I don't think you're going to see a lot of, you know, you're not gonna see the Business Roundtable show up and fight that or maybe you will, I don't know. Maybe they will. Maybe you say that I do actually think the data behind the Stop & Shop. One is really important. Knowing the knowledge of the people on the board and what they're actually. Yes. And it's important for us to sell us is I don't know why people aren't curious about it. Why people don't want like, why we don't get a call every. 40 seconds asking us like is this board even competent or qualified, you know, handle these issues. So I agree with that. Would be aggressive. That would be aggressive towards the directors, but I really do that this ongoing meritocracy. Troll is move on, is it? All right, let's go on that. Good. Oh, I don't have a good list. Well, you kind of do we buy? We both agreed the beginning of the show and yeah, that's why you stole my goodly. I said it was gonna be good list and so you take it. All right, so this when I saw this, I thought it was fabulous. And I have not talked about this, this speaking of stupid trolls. So the headline is Jaguar. Dubbed, Bud, Light 2.0. After releasing modernist rebranding, add with androgynous models, no cars. Okay, yeah, Basically there's a anti-wolf backlash against Jaguar, the company, the car company, because they put out this ad in which I don't know. It does. In people wearing very bright models decision. They look like they're off of a Runway more modern. Yeah. Yeah. Like Paris fashion show. There's supposed to be androgynous. They're never Fashions. Been doing this for 30 or 40 years, they've been doing this. It's not supposed to be gay or straight. It's not a new thing. No, it's like Star Trek or something. A lot of it says stuff like, you know, no more rules and you know, there is no like it's supposed to be that. But there's no car in the commercial just says jaguar and it's got the new writing, you know, like it's supposed to be the beginning of a rebranding. The anti-woke just went bananas, right? Because they're because the anti woke, which is represented mostly by Maga Blue Collar types and the Midwestern states. Big Jaguar buyers. That's why they went crazy correct, because that's it because that's the first thing that made me chuckle is like Bud Light 2.0. Like wait, what like who's buying Jaguars like, who? Who do they think this ad is targeted to? You think you're gonna see that at the like halftime of the Chiefs Bills game? You think you're gonna see a lot of jaguars? I don't know, I don't know what they're talking about. Everybody's tailgating in their Jaguars before going into the clinic. I don't know what. I don't know. What we're complaining about here. That's the first thing that made me chuckle, but it was contrasted against this funny photo. Yeah, Pro family? Yes, I Volvo. Yeah. In which yeah. Like like this heterosexual, white couple, who's young, like he's like putting together some furniture or something. She comes in, she's pregnant and then they have a baby. It must it's like it's like a three minute advertisement. It's like a really long advertisement about like raising a family and Volvo And whatever. Um, the thing that struck us both that made this good list is all of the anti-wolf outrage for the most part. I mean, you have Target a little bit, you have, you know, it all is non-us companies, this particular outrage but like 2.0 Bud, Light owned by a European and Heiser Busch. Are there Dutch right? Or no, maybe they're building too. Yeah, remember we get those people mixed up, don't we? Oh, European company. Anheuser Busch owns Bud. Light. They're the first backlash now. This backlash is Jaguar owned by Tata Motors, which is an Indian. Yes, absolutely. And Americans are contrasting it for the family-friendly. Add put out by Volvo owned by a Chinese company. Yeah. Well, this is the thing that most Americans don't realize that they have not caught up to, this is a whole separate issue. But this ultimate Giggle Volvo is yes. In fact owned by a Chinese entity. And in fact if you go to our data right there it's controlled by. I believe their brothers, the Lee Brothers who control over 70% of influence and of the influence. Here's why I made me laugh because there was another headline just today, Texas governor orders state agencies to sell China assets. Oh finally. Oh yeah, finally. So this is all most. So this is the best and the ultimate made me giggle too is that they're saying that the pro family Volvo? Add was released to to like counteract the Jaguar. But in fact the Jaguar I just came out and the pro family. It's been out since like September. So yeah. For like a couple months. Yeah. The whole thing is it mean it? It fully jumped a shark. Like now we're just wandering around looking for things to be really upset about because someone might be gay and it isn't even the Jaguar, add wasn't even like it was androgynous. It was non genderized but it just be. It looks like outside colors. It looks like a science fiction movie straight out of a Paris runway model, like none of it was real. It was like pretty colors and silliness like yeah. Like like a friend of mine sent a SNL skit that exactly like that. There's a car in the Attic. It's just, it's like, you know, it's that's what it's supposed to be. Here's the other part that I pointed out about this is that okay? So they're dubbing up Bud Light 2.0 which suggests a massive boycott against Jaguar, right. That the backdrop of the Bud, Light reference here is there there was a significant boycott against the company boycott. So here's some other couple other ads that made me chuckle in relationship to that ad. Jaguar rebrands Sparks, confusion angers anti-wolf critics. Including Elon Musk, okay? Oh, of course, yeah. And this other AD, Texas AG opens investigation into advertising group, that Elon Musk sued for boycotting his own company. So you see how this works, like you can boycott and serve directions but not other directions but yeah, you better not boycott. Yes, platform notice how Texas is involved with both of these. They're Texas is angry at people who boycott X and their angry at China. Anyway this was up just blows our mind because it's just so silly. It's like three non-us companies involved in the biggest anti-wolf woke backlashes. Like what is this? Oh, that's exhausting. All right, my mind's a little bit more simpler. My goodness of the week. This headline, Blue Sky CEO. Jay Graber says that her ex rival is billionaire. Proof, this is a new term. I love this new term, billionaire, proof, billionaire proof. The reason why it's billionaire proof is that blue skies open source. So if someone were to take over blue sky, all the users can take all of their data. All of their post, everything they own and just leave, that they're not gonna be held Capital, right? So, I just love this new term. I love the term, billionaire proof, we and by billionaire proof. We've been saying this for a while and different ways. Like dismantling dual Clash shares, right? That's a way of billionaire proofing, your company right there. I just like this term, billionaire proof. I just like that. Investors should like the idea too. You should like the idea that your investment is billionaire proof. As in some billionaire, cannot tank your investment. Because they feel like it right like, because or has complete control over without any counterbalance without any oversight. I don't care if the oversight is other billionaires, but as long as they have oversight in some ways, right? Like it's not just Mark Zuckerberg like, fiddling around and making your decision. Yeah, that's correct. I'm still going with anti-wolf. That's the winner of the week. Yeah, that's the winner of the week. All right. Let's move on to ask. I've got three. Go ahead. These are assholes. Asshole is yes. Um the good news is this. Well, I wrote down a lot, they're not that newer interesting in some ways. First of all, news, Corporate Way to sell it, way to sell it. 36% of non Murdoch investors. Wanted to stick with dual class structure. A lot pointed out. You you pointed out that 64% voted for recount. No company. Oh class. It's four was recapitalization. So if you do the math, If you eliminate Rupert's chairs, 64% against was eliminating was keeping Rupert shares, four was getting rid of them because it was the Cheryl, The Proposal was written, such that it is, we are proposing recapitalized as a single class, okay? So if you voted for that, it meant that you wanted no more Rupert chairs, you want it all everyone's got the same class of chairs. 36% wanted to stick with the dual-class structure. They wanted to keep Rupert chairs. That was the non Rupert vote. Right. Like so yeah which Rupert's votes out, you got 64%. Who said, oh let's recapitalize in 36% said and let's not and my assumption is a big chunk of that is a couple of institutional investors. So the top two investors that aren't Murdoch's independent franchise partners and SOS limited which was founded by a Murdoch friend, actually the head of the Motion Picture Association in the UK. They voted. You can assume they voted yes of course. And they own 17%. That's really half of that figure. Yeah. Nearly half of that. It left basically another or they owned. Yeah. They owned 18% or 19% 17% of non Murdock investors that were not those two institutions. Still wanted dual-class shares Who are you? Well, this is the 99.99. We can get a director vote. And you cover this all the time. A director of vote that is 99.9% for. As in 99.9% of the shares will agree that this director should go in. Somehow 17% of investors think they should have less rights than some other investors. I don't understand why this is not. Who are you? Matt, I have to give up your shares. I have a thought somebody else. Maybe. This is part of vanguard's new and this is, I'm not making this up. Maybe this is part of vanguard's, new mirror voting policy, oh, which boats and investors proportionate shares in approximately the same proportions as the votes cast by other shareholders, maybe it's just people who didn't want to pay attention and just let Vanguard shoes. I mean, when do they make a qualification in that policy that when it's a dual class company, the other shareholders, one guy like or is it the the minority shareholders? The ones that own like Cummins stock, okay? Everybody else, the maybe it was the van, the Vanguard personally called company board aligned Paul policy. There we go, company board because there were two board members. Who owns some B Class shares that are not Murdoch's. They don't about like 4,000 shares together. I also want to know, Know, who the mysterious 11,643 votes that abstained? Well, I have this, I've thought about this, you didn't watch the show succession, right? Which is based on the Murdoch family, like four episodes. Well, there's a character named cousin Greg who doesn't really know which side to go. He doesn't know who's asked to kiss, does he kissed the kids ass or does he kiss the Rupert Murdoch's ass? So he kind of just stays in the middle cousin Greg. And he probably abstained, that's my guess. So that and I was like, look, if you are in that like 83% of non like the bigoted 2, non Murdock voters and you're still pissed at this board and you're pissed at this company and you want it, not be dual class. I went back and I said, all right. You on those shares. How can you get back at the board? You can do what we like to do here, which is to say what other boards are these directors on. Let's vote them out of the other boards that they're on. Right? Like, why should you know, why should you know? If you are just aiding a bedding, totalitarian dictators, you shouldn't have a board seat anywhere. You should be toxic on boards. Yeah, there were two Um well, no. Well there were two on this board. One is just left. Yes, but there were only two options to vote against in other places. One was Anna, Paso. She's on the cosan board, okay? She's 4% influence, turns out kosan totalitarian company entirely run by one guy. All the influence run by owned by one guy. Yeah. And then the other was Kelly, I owe. You know, xenaderm like days before the meeting, it was her name. The reason why you included it here, which makes sense is that her name is actually in the proxy statement for reelection. And a couple of days they announced an 8K that she wasn't running so I don't even know who would have known that. Right, my guess here is that this election happened. That just like yesterday. My guess here is that she's been Taps probably to join the income Trump Administration. Well like something like Um but she is on the board of Blackstone. Oh she has three percent in another, another totalitarian companies, Stephen Schwartz, you the richest guy in the world. Yeah, you can't even vote these directors out of other companies well, because they only work at totalitarian companies. I don't know if you had the data for this, but we have seen this anecdotally over and over and over that directors, who they, they like to sit on multiple controlled company boards because they don't have to do anything, right? They just know their point. Yeah, it is they get paid like a lot. If getting a board seat is the greatest job in America because these are guaranteed seven year, 10 year, which 96% of people agree that you're doing an epic job and you get paid the hourly wage and free. Yeah, and free Bagels, the meetings and airline tickets to show up and all that nice hotel. And like, occasionally you get like, you know, and lifetime airline tickets for your spouse if you're free at Southwest. Yes. I this is the greatest subset of that group, which is a board member at a controlled dual class totalitarian company, where you get all the same perks. But literally have no accountability to anyone, except as long as you're the friend of that one person that I think it. I think I read in the Blackstone proxy. That Kelly iot's job on the board is to hold Stephen schwarzman mug of tea and kind of keep it warm not like, yeah, that's right. Not to keep it like hot but just kind of keep it warm. You know what? I think. She holds it and routinely puts it in the microwave for seven. Okay. So she's actually doing like an effort there. So she's earning her, he's earning her, keep I think, So News Corp investors. The 17% of you that still wanted to do a class, just give up your shares, you asked like not be allowed to, that's the first asshole. Okay, number two. um, Every investor that voted for Kimball must. Are you still on this? You're still on the yeah, Tesla, but here's the headline. Elon musk's father said it would be a, quote, big concern. If Elon had to step away from board meetings at his company to quote, go to governments. Well, I'll be fair, he said he said companies companies, that's right, right not company. Well, there's only one where, you know, that board meetings have to happen by one publicly traded company, still have to happen at all right. But the other board meetings could be musk sends an email saying, we don't have to have a meeting because I'm just doing what I feel like. Yeah, thanks for being around, right. Just as a reminder, those investors voted 78.5% for Kimball musk. The brother. Yeah and 67.9% for Lachlan Murdoch. Speaking of people, more people thought his brother should be on the board then then the Murdoch, I don't know what that says about them, I don't either. I actually looked at the go to government piece Vivek and musk and their Department of government efficiency. They're targeting 500 billion dollars in Cuts initially and it is the Twitter fication of government. That cuts actually Target. What I could, what I could estimate is roughly 38% of government employees. And that, that, that's hard to say because there's a lot of overlap and they it's not good accounting around this, but it would be around 775 thousand employees. That's a lot of unemployed people. All the sudden, you know, if they manage to cut 25% of them like which is generous, like, just 25% of those that's 200,000 people laid off at once. And the last BLS estimate had unemployment at 4.1% of 7 million, people in the US are unemployed. The number would jump to 4.23% just on those cuts alone, they would add 0.13% a 3% increase in the number of unemployed people in the entire country. Based on the two of them. So it's like he went into Twitter and cut half the staff and if you figure it out. And if you take a step further too, I mean think of the amount of government benefits. A lot of these unemployment workers will be suddenly eligible for including Healthcare benefit Cobra. Yeah. Well, be even Beyond Cobra, some states, you know, will cover you if your income drops below a certain level. So a lot of those Assistance programs are on the chopping block to get. Okay. Okay. But you know that they inevitably will be eligible for government spending to help them because they're on employed not to mention that. What about some of the small business owners? I see it right here in my own City. When you suddenly pull a bunch of office workers, out of a certain area of your downtown, it destroys a lot of small businesses that operate just to serve those workers like, like sandwich shops. For example, right? I mean, so this could be a lot of collateral damage to just suddenly removing all these workers. I mean, it's incalculable. Yeah, things are talking about cutting are like the secondary tertiary effects of this are sure. You cut some government funding too. One of the things is opioid addiction and prevention. Like the that's one of the big spends that they want to cut. Okay. So then there's more opioid deaths and like less education and people dealing with opioid issues burden on the hospitals is the opioid epidemic and if any Of those people are veterans. The number one thing on their list is the Veterans Healthcare System. They want to cut vets Healthcare, remember. There's a there's supposed to be like the party of the military or whatever. They're gonna cut, you won't have health care. Well, they were a military veteran. It's I believe I tell you the trickle-down effect of this is mind-boggling. I mean, I was just thinking, even like the you'd have to bail out the local. The local Metro The Local transportation because they're gonna lose so much money and just people commuting to work. It's just gonna it's gonna affect basically everything. Put it this way, Lachlan Murdoch owns News Corp, which owns The Wall Street 97 year old dad, he does. But he's about to all the Wall Street Journal The Wall, Street Journal, editorial staff just printed today. Yeah, something that said, Elon Musk, canva. Swami's Cuts would devastate the US economy course. So the guy who sits on the board who oversees Elon Who could talk to him and say, what are you doing? Doesn't do that instead. His company puts out an editorial that says this is one of the worst ideas in the history of the American United States. All right. So who are you mad at? Who are I shouldn't say that? Who is the asshole? Sorry them. Okay, to invest your impact. So, well, I told you these are really what else you got? Number. Three, number three is a new one. Oh, I like new ones. Airlines CEOs. Oh, There were two separate Airlines. Oh the ones I'm mad at just stupidity. Ed Bastian, that's when I met up. Let's see what's for the same reason. Yeah, of Delta said, he said at a speech Trump's approach to regulation, could quote be a breath of fresh air and he didn't like Biden's quote level of overreach and consumer protections. It was about, he doesn't like here's the things that he didn't like Pete footage to the Department of Transportation. Forced the airlines to do the following things. Oh yes, great. Great things. Give cash. Refunds within a few days of canceled or delayed significantly, delayed flights. What a, what a novel idea, your flight didn't go where it was supposed to go. We couldn't provide you service, we have to pay you back for that. We can't take your money. Also forgot that there's been really that there's been record traveled during the Biden Administration level. That's level of overreach. How about this one, a proposal that airline seat families with young children together at no extra call. That one is my boggling. When you're when you're on a budget and you're trying to buy a certain tier of tickets and they say to you, we can't guarantee. We're gonna sit you to, with your fellow passengers, mine boggling. I, I have to personally deal with that as cruel, where they placed on a flight, they placed our seven-year-old daughter. Yeah, by herself, 10 rows up from us and we had to sit there and be like you were, you were freaked out, but she was probably thrilled. Oh, she was loved it. Yeah, she was very, she was very happy. I was this, they want to regulate loyalty programs, but How about this one? I like this one. A rule meant to provide transparency around fees that they charge customers. They literally have to say what they're charging for in the fees. Not just, you know, like convenience fee. They can't just, like, say fee. They have to say, what is that fee? All the level of oval reach Ed Bastion. Meanwhile, Ed Bastian Delta couldn't get anyone in the air because of the crowdstrike Cyber crash. Yeah. When when the crowd stood had their update and it crashed Delta had, the law was the longest to everyone else. Figured it out, Delta could not figure it out and they had to get investigated for it. And they did not want to refund passengers for the crash, there's still fighting about refunding passengers for not being able to send them and schedule them and fly them places. In fact, from our proxy countdown, we said this, the Delta board was a masterclass and best practice board. Mediocrity, that's Ed Bastion. I'll tell you also, what impression yes, is that he his pay went up to 34 million dollars this year. I don't you it's a nice little that's a nice chunk of chicken an increase from 10 million dollars and 2022 the other. But the real reason why you should be mad at Bastion is for this horrible headline. That affects me greatly which is move over peanuts, Shake Shack, Burgers are coming to Delta flights. This is my personal worst nightmare. I have long advocated that nobody should be eating anything on flights because it just makes a big stinky mess long lines of the bathroom. It's disgusting. I don't like, I don't want to see people eat. I don't want to hear them. I want to smell it. Burgers and Fries people, Matt. Imagine 300 people clogging the bathrooms after eating burgers and fries. That's disgusting. I'm sorry. Imagine, you know, How long it takes like them to like, like load up a plane with supplies and then and then it's you sit on a plane for like, six hours. And like, you know, like those burgers are basically sitting on refrigerating, is terrible at best like five hours before they actually nuke them and hand them to you. So it's not even good what other airlines, CEO, Airlines CEO, Robert Isom of American Airlines said, quote, we have to invest in this industry and he touted government support during the pandemic. He supporting Trump because he wants to invest more investment in the industry Isom. American Airlines had among the highest Buybacks in the entire industry prior to covid. And you're talking about investing in the industry American Airlines borrowed 12 billion dollars with which they used to buy back their own stock. They hold 25 billion dollars going into covid twice. Any other US Airline you want to talk about investing in your industry? Do you didn't you invested in your own pay? The stock is down 90% from its highs like his pre-covid highs today still on the board of American. Still on the board who helped create this situation that now, Robert Isom want to invest in the industry, still on the board, helped them, get them here. John Cahill Susan chronic, Dennis O'Leary Matt Hart, Martin Nesbitt, Jeff Benjamin Mike Embler 53% of board influence is still there who approved those BuyBacks and that debt invest in the industry. You fuckers. Can't you don't invest in yourselves. Forget investing in the industry. You basically buy yourself stock increases. So your salaries go up. There's no other thing. Yeah, this is a highly complacent board and investor class because they've only had three new directors since 2021 and those three and they came in 2022. So they've done nothing since 2022. Which is an outlier S&P 500 boards are typically refreshing their boards annually every year. One year at least one, right? Yeah, they're they're pretty happy over there. American Airlines inside note Trump pledged to eliminate diversity. Programs meant to diversify air traffic controllers and Pilots. That was like, one of his new, like, we're going to get rid of Dei. It turns out the 3.6% of pilots and flight Engineers are black and 8% are women. So he's gonna eliminate the 3% of people that are non-white. Oh, that just like his colleague at over at Delta who saw his pay go up to 34 million dollars from 10 million dollars. Robertson saw his pay increase from 5 million dollars in 2022 to 30 one million dollars. Yeah, baby. So again, Back all your stocks, all the media that you're referring to doesn't seem to exist in his world. So yeah Airline CEOs happy about Trump and their just total assholes. Those are three options. New schools investors test line investors in Airlines. This is easy slam dunk because as much as I love talking about, you know, hey on investors The News Corp story is new. The Tesla's. Not so new. I love this. This information about the airlines CEOs. Yeah, yeah it was yeah, that was. I knew that was good. The longest ride up when you add The pay I mean they're they're bitching and moaning and their pay is skyrocketed since it's been hard, right? It's been a great year to be a CEO in an airline industry under Biden's watch, right? It's been an amazing year. Headline is Winners and predictions. I've got a good one for my headline. Yes. I just love a very casually blaming the worker. I'm gonna call this one Boeing's new CEO. This is Kelly, ortberg Boeing, CEO tells staff to stop quote, bitching by the water cooler and quote, and focus on beating Airbus. A great. That's a great headline, at headlight. I never quit. I mean, boers really, I always talk about Starbucks being my favorite corporate governance company because there's just so many, like, wonderful tidbits. But Boeing is a close second. I mean is right, they never stopped with their Joy. It's like the that Starbucks. I love everything about Starbucks, everything about their favorite drinks in the proxy. That's what it's more than that. It's their it's the boomerang CEO, it's their founder CEO fetish, it's their, their glass cliff in Mel, CEO chairman Melody. Hobbs, there's just so much so much. I'm really excited to see what Brian Nichols. Favorite drink is like, new CEO. Okay, I just say one thing though. I looked at this article. Can I just say that he didn't actually says to stop bitching by the water cooler. He's what he really said. And as I just want to add this because it makes me look want to make fun of him a little bit longer. He said, don't sit at the water cooler and bitch about people Matt, nobody sits the water. He doesn't even understand. He doesn't understand his owner is, right? I mean, There's nothing about office work. No, nothing. Yeah. All right, I have two headlines. Yeah, the price of one and they just go back to back and they require absolutely no context. The first headline Grimes says, Elon Musk has become unrecognizable Grimes. One of the, one of the the women who has father, mother his children, you know? Correct. And the second headline is Florida, man, accused of posing as Elon Musk defrauding elderly woman of 250,000 dollars. Oh, I don't like, I like just I read those back to back and I thought Grimes, Is it the Florida man? That you're talking about? I just love that winner for the week. Yeah, my winner you're gonna mock my winner but I'm just trying to make myself feel good about something and I'm going to pick Blue Sky, CEO. Jay Graber, I don't know. That's it that you're just picking. I just like we don't have many women who run social media companies. I liked it. Like maybe there's a potential to do some harm to X. I don't know. I'm just I like this her concept of billionaire proofing companies because it's a concept that I've been wrestling with over the years. I think she put it better because I again as I said before I think higher I think we're moving dual-class. Shares is a is a way, also a billionaire proofing companies, but I just wanted to pick something that made me feel good. That's my winner. This made me feel good. I picked every new board member at the national Fisheries Institute. Oh I don't know if you saw this story. No Fisheries Institute. Yeah and if I their bylaws allow for a 51 person board 51 person 51. Well they don't want there to be a what? They don't want there to be a tie. I get it. There's 45 at large directors. Yeah. And then 18 person Executive committee drawn from the board and then six officers. And if I Alexa new slate of board members every year with three year terms. So it's a three attorney, it's a classified board, 51 person classified board, just the math. Just figure out 51 people, is that like to match the the brands of like tartar sauce or something. Do you think there's something going on there? I don't know what it is. It's like, I don't understand for every species of fish. Were allowed to catch. Yeah, they added 13, new board members. These are my winners of the week 13 newborn unlike American Airlines. They're busy adding directors. And what I liked when I actually read the nine ninety, which nonprofits at the file, which is some of the data that we're here at free float. Scraping as we speak to get all 51 board members names. They actually like their outgoing president, got a salary of 685 or 684,000 and 35 dollars last year. Is the what? Here's my question for you. What percentage of the 51 board members knows there's even a CEO of the national Fisheries in. It's like it's actually a woman. Lisa will end up Picard That's, that's the incoming president know. This says that she was appointed in November 2022. I don't know, the filing has Believe It or Not. Matt, I haven't spent a lot of time tracking the leadership at National Fisheries Institute. So I don't, I'm not clear about the data here. I just love a 51 person board. I think, why doesn't that happen? Just make everybody a board member wasn't CVS as we reported earlier this week. I think, CVS health is trending. That way, they're going from 12 to 16, so they're getting there. That's getting there. Just working their way to 51. Everyone just gotta set a bar predictions. My predictions pretty simple and it's probably already in the works Coke in response to another great member of the meritocracy RFK Jr. I guess who's accomplishments include how many last name but he's a member of the Kennedy family. So that's his that's his accomplishment know, right? So meritocracy. Yeah. Coca-Cola starts adding fluoride to Diet Coke, I like that. And Nestle Nestle's new ad campaign includes Hot Pockets, new slogan now with a lemony herb shingles vaccine sauce That's how we're going to get back scenes in Florida, and we're just gonna have to the big food companies are going to just start putting it in our Foods. So my prediction was on the back of your prediction. Your story of Kelly, ortberg, stop, bitching by the water cooler, and focus on beating Airbus. My prediction is Boeing staff. That the water cooler about new CEO Kelly, ortberg and looks for jobs at Airbus. That was my prediction before we wrap up. Matt, can I just tell you that, the Lisa will end up a card, which is CEO of the national fishing student. The job before that she was a senior vice president at The National Turkey Federation. So turkeys, like the fish, but not a d e, I hire there that she has a background. She has a appropriate background, right? Yeah. At the fish and poultry. Yeah. I'll stop making fun of him back next week when we do more shows, more inanity, their does, it get more name than everything that's going on all the time. The national director of public relations at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. That's all