Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who wants to be president, is opening “a new front in his anti-woke crusade” by banning Florida pension fund managers “from considering the social impact of their financial decisions,” CNN reported on Wednesday, August 17, 2022 (read story here).
“DeSantis has criticized financial institutions and corporate executives for considering factors like systemic racism and economic inequality when making business decisions, a practice known as environmental, social and governance, or ESG, investing,” CNN said.
An early example of ESG investing was foundations, college endowment funds, and other institutional investors shedding their South African investments during the apartheid era. Presumably DeSantis would’ve been just fine with apartheid, had he been issuing edicts then.
DeSantis went on Glenn Beck’s show to announce he expected the new rules to “make a big splash.” That sure sounds like it’s an attention-seeking gambit from a cynical politician trying to promote himself, not someone who’s serious about governing a state or nation.
The U.S. president has to deal with a nuclear-armed world filled with aggressive, dangerous, bad actors. Russia is invading Ukraine, China is threatening Taiwan, and North Korea is rattling nuclear sabers; conflicts rage in the Middle East and Africa. Americans also face serious issues at home: Environmental, economic, health, and rising threats to our democracy.
Do you really want to entrust that job to a cheap-thrills politician who makes war on rainbows and threatens teachers?
But all cheekiness aside, this is serious stuff; DeSantis is working hard to ban any mention of slavery or America’s current race issues from public schools, he’s attacking college tenure and curriculums, and pushing LGBQT people back into the shadows. His “anti-woke” crusade is about silencing discussion and debate, and history and people he and other conservative haters don’t like. His agenda drips with demagoguery, bigotry and racism, and hatemongering. He’s smart and media-savvy; he’s a product of Yale and Harvard Law, and some people call him “a Trump with brains.”
If the white Republican retirees of Florida elect him to run their state, that’s one thing; most of us don’t live in Florida. But the rest of America’s voters need to keep him there, not unleash him on all of us. This man should never be president.