Meeting of Minds Podcast

Alliance Defending Freedom is the leading defender of religious and political speech protection in our nation’s legal system. With fifteen Supreme Court victories and over 70 assists since 2011, no other organization has done more in the courts to protect religious freedom. But several years ago, ADF became a victim of cancel culture at Amazon, which kicked the organization out of being eligible f...

We at Bowyer Research worked with a financial advisor to place a proposal on the annual shareholder meeting ballot of Mastercard. One of the rights that comes with placing such proposals is the right to address the board, CEO, and other shareholders present at the meeting directly and unfiltered.  Usually, the advisors and ministries we work with give this speech themselves, but in this particular...

In a recent op/ed for the Wall Street Journal, Commissioner of Revenue for the State of Alaska Adam Crum made the case that a recent attempt by blue state pensions to intimidate the board into acquiescing to the demands of anti-oil activists is a violation of the fiduciary duty to put retirees’ life savings ahead of politics. ( Exxon Mobil Takes On Climate Extremists - WSJ ). He should know. Commi...

According to Alabama State Auditor Andrew Sorrell, blue state pension plans and the stakeholder capitalism movement have been attempting to intimidate private corporations into imposing policies which have been repeatedly rejected by Americans at the ballot box. Sorrell points out that the demands of anti-energy activists and blue state pension bosses would lead inevitably to an authoritarian shut...

A group of blue state officials are attempting to use their pension funds to kick out the board of ExxonMobil because the firm has successfully sued to block an attempt by an activist group to place a proposal on the company's ballot that is hostile to the oil and gas industry. In addition, these states are pressuring Blackrock, JPMorgan Chase, and other asset managers to also vote against the Exx...

The battle between red states and ESG is raging in Oklahoma right now.  The pro-energy Treasurer Todd Russ is suffering massive backlash for attempting to enforce a law which calls upon the state to not do business with asset managers such as Blackrock that boycott or seek to harm the fossil fuel industry. Russ found himself on the receiving end of a lawsuit from a union boss and attacks from nume...

Over twenty states have passed legislation that prohibits the state entrusting the management of state assets to companies that seek to harm the fossil fuel industry. Many of these states have been under attack by mysterious, well-funded, coordinated efforts to discredit those laws and the financial officials who are enforcing them. Right now that backlash is falling hardest against Oklahoma, it's...

Continuing our series about the battle between Texas and Blackrock (as well as other anti-energy financial entities), we talk in this episode with the chief financial officer of the state of Texas, Comptroller Glenn Hegar. He defends the Texas law which forbids the state from doing business with financial companies that boycott or otherwise seek to harm oil and gas companies. Comptroller Hegar als...

A Texas State Investment fund, under the leadership of school board chairman Aaron Kinsey, just divested 8.5 billion dollars from Blackrock. Blackrock quickly retaliated, suggesting that the move was against the law. On this episode of Meeting of Minds we talk to the Honorable Jason Isaac, formerly of the Texas Legislature, who played a key role in drafting the legislation. Isaac defends the Texas...

American Family Association has been the leader among evangelical Christians when it comes to boycotting companies that violate the values of their Christian customers. AFA still leads in that area, but recently they widened their mission to focus their attention on the powerful strategy of shareholder corporate activism. Non-profit ministries often are given stocks as gifts from donors, but they...

In his new book, Full-Time: Work and the Meaning Life ( https://www.fulltimebook.com/ ), entrepreneur David Bahnsen confronts the anti-work-ethic culture of modern evangelical Christianity and calls upon churches to reassert the Biblical mandate for hard work and high productivity. He talks about the problem of a deficient pastoral work ethic, and the tendency of the church to focus on things like...

While at Davos, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon called for elites to acknowledge the economic accomplishments of the Trump administration and to stop showing contempt for 75 million Americans who are not on the left. Exxon, the world’s largest public oil company, is suing shareholder activists who pretend to represent the interests of investors while pushing oil companies away from their cor...

The New Civil Liberties Alliance ( https://nclalegal.org/ ) has exposed the extreme extent to which the Biden Administration has been coercing social media companies to censor the research of credible experts who dared to disagree with the party line on lockdowns, vaccines, and mandatory masking. A combination of legal discovery and Congressional subpoena powers reveals an astounding amount of col...

Another state treasurer is taking on ideologically-captured Wall Street firms. Dale Folwell of North Carolina is publicly calling for Larry Fink to be fired because he is isn't doing his job. The job of asset managers is to manage assets, to put the financial returns of investors above all else. But what happens when the "invisible people…the people who work with their hands and their backs…the pe...

Like most people who run for a constitutional state-level row office, Dan Elliott has a business background and a desire to focus on “worker bee” type issues, such as cyber-security. But on the campaign trail running for Indiana Treasurer, he met a law-abiding gun store owner who had his bank account cancelled for no reason other than being a gun store owner. That’s when Elliott became aware that...

The Christian Employers Alliance is the leading association of Christian business people who employ others. Shannon Royce, its president, talks to Jerry about their upcoming conference and how Christian employers can learn what they’re up against, but also how to triumph. Topics include agility in the marketplace, how to maintain Christian identity and not run afoul of the law, strategies for deal...

It is clear that certain political factions have been highly successful at hijacking the debate over whether and how American companies should engage in non-core social issues. Jonathan Berry, Managing Partner of the prestigious DC law firm Boyden Gray, and a leading authority on the overlap between federal regulation and corporate law regarding ESG and proxy voting, explains how the SEC arrogated...

After decades of neglect, conservative shareholders just had a banner year placing far more proposals on the ballots of companies than they ever have before. Scott Shepard, who heads up The Free Enterprise Project ( Free Enterprise Project - The National Center ) at the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been tracking the resistance movement against the ideological capture of American...

Conservative activists have focused largely on complaining about celebrity corporate brands associated with ESG and stakeholder capitalism, such as Blackrock. However, state treasurers have turned their attention to the large proxy advisory services, which are arguably the most influential voices when it comes to whether your shares are being used to vote for policies that are in your interest. Le...

Bob Pruitt serves as Senior Counsel and Corporate Affairs Director with Alliance Defending Freedom. He recently appeared on Meeting of Minds to update our listeners about the state of affairs of the battle over religious freedom at America’s largest bank. He gave a helpful overview of the pattern of apparent discrimination, the engagement with the company by Financial Advisor David Bahnsen, the co...

The Alliance Defending Freedom recently released its second annual Viewpoint Diversity Index, and the findings are shocking. The survey looks at 75 of the most prominent companies in America, with an emphasis on technology and financial firms. With few exceptions, their scores are in the single or low double-digit range (out of a scale of 100). Jeremy Tedesco, who heads up the Corporate Engagement...

Dave Brat, former econ professor, congressman and now Vice Provost for Engagement at Liberty University explains how monetary bubbles have obscured the continuous declining productivity in the real economy, how a Christian culture shift made the West the leader of global prosperity, how the loss of the culture is causing us to lose that prosperity and how we might get both back. Brat explains the...

Todd Russ was a community bank CEO in Oklahoma who decided to become a public servant. He ran for Treasurer which he saw as a low-key “worker bee” kind of job. But when he learned how gigantic Wall Street firms like Blackrock were managing the pension assets of public workers and using those assets to undermine the hydrocarbon economy on which the workers of Oklahoma depend, he decided to go to ba...

A group of 14 state-level financial officials, led by Nebraska state Treasurer John Murante, recently wrote a letter to the CEO of JPMorgan Chase asking the bank to account for the recent cancellation of banking services to conservative organizations. Murante also discussed a new Biden proposal to impose an extra tax on mortgages for people with high credit ratings, a move likely to hurt the peopl...

Stephen Moore is one of the leading voices in favor of economic freedom and wealth creation. But being pro-wealth doesn’t necessarily mean being automatically pro-business. Moore talks about a new report created by The Committee to Unleash Prosperity https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/ , which exposes how many of the most trusted names in finance have been actually voting with their clients’...