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The Heartland Institute’s Donald Kendal, Jim Lakely, Justin Haksins, and Chris Talgo present episode 453 of the In The Tank Podcast. The European Union recently passed a law that would essentially mandate many of the guidelines and metrics of the ESG scheme we have talked much about on this show. You might ask, "Who cares about Europe?" Unfortunately, the way this Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive is written, it has the potential to fundamentally transform the way businesses around the world operate. It is imperative we get this message out to the public and to lawmakers to protect America from this dangerous law.
PRIMARY TOPIC - RADICAL NEW EU LAW WILL FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM AMERICA
PRIMARY TOPIC - RADICAL NEW EU LAW WILL FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM AMERICA
Fox News - Europe is hell bent on forcing US companies to go woke and it has a new law to do just that
Western Journal - Europe Just Approved the Worst Communist Law Ever - How It Affects You
SECONDARY TOPIC - EU ELECTIONS SHIFT TO RIGHT
WSJ - Europe’s Ascendant Right-Wing Parties Want to Remake the EU. They Can’t Agree on How.
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/europes-ascendant-right-wing-parties-want-to-remake-the-eu-they-cant-agree-how-96986a44
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/europes-ascendant-right-wing-parties-want-to-remake-the-eu-they-cant-agree-how-96986a44
Nature - Far-right gains in European elections: what they mean for climate goals
Politico - Inside von der Leyen’s secret climate crusade
Creators & Guests
Host
Host
Host
What is In The Tank?
The weekly flagship podcast from The Heartland Institute features in-depth policy discussions connected to current news. Host Donald Kendal leads the discussion with the usual crew of Heartland Institute Vice President Jim Lakely, Socialism Research Center “Commissar” Justin Haskins, Editorial Director Chris Talgo, and others at this national free-market think tank. The entertaining and informative discussions often hit topics such as the environment, energy policy, Big Tech censorship, the troubling rise of socialism, globalism, health care, education, that state of freedom in America and around the world, and much more.
This podcast is also available as part of the Heartland Daily Podcast, the “firehose” of all the organization’s podcasts that take deep and entertaining dives into public policy.
Alright. We are live ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the show. The European Union recently passed a law that would essentially mandate many of the guidelines and metrics of the ESG scheme that we've talked about so much on this show. You might ask, well who cares about Europe?
Donald Kendal:Unfortunately, the way this corporate sustainability due diligence directive is written, it has the potential to fundamentally transform the way businesses around the world operate. It is imperative that we get this message out to the public and to lawmakers to protect Alright. Welcome to the In The Think podcast. As always, I'm your host, Donald Kendall. And joining me today, I've got a full crew.
Donald Kendal:I've got Jim Lakeley, VP of the Heartland Institute. How are you doing today, good sir?
Jim Lakely:I'm doing just, great. You know, we talked just before we came on the air about, the super brood of cicadas to, different cicadas, broods coming
Justin Haskins:out at the same time.
Jim Lakely:And it's, you know, gonna be especially bad in the Midwest. And you've complained for weeks now, Donnie, that, you can't walk to your mailbox without crunching over grossly a bunch of cicadas and that they're all over the place so that they're noisy and that, I I have seen, like, 3 cicadas in where I live. I mean, you live not that far away from me, but Sure. Somehow, once again, another climate panic or nature panic doesn't turn out, at least for me. I've only hit, I think, 3 cicadas with my car while driving around, but I've seen almost none where I live, which I am very grateful for.
Jim Lakely:I'm not a bug guy. I eat bugs.
Donald Kendal:But if we have to
Jim Lakely:eat bugs, I'm gonna starve because I have no cicadas to harvest.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. I mentioned that, you know, I don't mind them. My son thinks they're super cool, and my wife is just horrified to walk outside. So that's that's the reality that we're living in here. But, also joining us, we have Justin Haskins, senior fellow for the, Socialism Research Center here at the Heartland Institute.
Donald Kendal:How are you doing today, good sir?
Justin Haskins:Oh, I'm doing really well. Doing really well. I don't know if you guys saw this in the news. Coffee, copper, cocoa, gold, all all time highs right now. So all those, coffee investments that I've got in my in my cabinets back there.
Justin Haskins:Uh-huh. I'm doing good. I'm doing really well. It's it's financially it's it's a I don't I I I wish I had gold. Unfortunately, I I didn't I missed the boat on that one.
Justin Haskins:But coffee and cocoa, I'm stupid with that, so I'm doing really well.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. Coffee, is that what you're always smuggling back from Colombia, or is that something else?
Justin Haskins:Well, you to to be honest, you need the coffee with
Donald Kendal:something else Got it.
Justin Haskins:That helps you.
Donald Kendal:Got it. Right.
Justin Haskins:Not to This is a joke, by the way, for the
Donald Kendal:We're already demonetized. We'll talk about that in a minute. Chris Talgo, the, you are the, what are you? The editorial director here at the Heartland Institute. But more importantly, some would say you're the heart of the podcast.
Donald Kendal:Chris Talgo, how are you doing today, good sir?
Chris Talgo:Doing good, Donnie, and I wanna wish you and Justin a early happy Father's Day. So Oh, thank you. Shout out to all the dads out there.
Jim Lakely:Thanks, Chris.
Chris Talgo:Yeah. You know? I mean, I think that dads kinda get the short end of the stick when it comes to these holidays. I think, you know, we put a big dog and pony show on for the moms, and then the dads just get, you know, what's left over. So I'm gonna go out of my way to make this the greatest Father's Day ever for my dad.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. Exactly. It's, Mother's Day is like going out to dinners and getting chocolates and showering moms with all this praise and everything. And on Father's Day, I get the the privilege of being able to cook food for everybody on my grill. That's it doesn't seem to be Nice.
Donald Kendal:It doesn't seem to balance out. But
Justin Haskins:I'm not a 100% sure that my wife knows it's gonna be Father's Day. So we're gonna find out on Sunday. So I'm not entirely sure. I'm I've got a feeling. She has no clue what's going on.
Justin Haskins:So I'm
Donald Kendal:the only listeners that are probably catching the show on a Friday or later. Leave a review for us on Itunes. That would be greatly appreciated. You could also join us a day earlier where we are live streaming this on Facebook and YouTube and Rumble and x. You could join in the conversation, throw your comments and questions in the chat.
Donald Kendal:Maybe we'll show your comments on the screen. Maybe we'll address your questions on the fly. You can support the show by, hitting that like button, sharing this content, subscribing if you haven't already or just leaving a comment under the video. All those things help break through those big tech algorithms that prevent content like this from being shown to more people. I would say you could support the show by hitting that super chat, button.
Donald Kendal:But guess what? We've been demonetized, folks. Yes. The Heartland Institute YouTube channel and the stopping socialism TV YouTube channel have both, at the same time, both been demonetized. Yes, Justin.
Donald Kendal:Well This
Justin Haskins:is the first I'm hearing of this.
Donald Kendal:You didn't hear about the Heartland 1? No. No? Yeah. Yeah.
Donald Kendal:So the Heartland channel discovered to be demonetized late last week, I think Friday of last week. And, Jim, do you recall what they said? Because they're always very vague about the reasons why they demonetize us or give us strikes or anything like that. What was the how'd they phrase it this time? Do you recall?
Jim Lakely:Yeah. I'm looking, Yeah. I'm looking for it right here. Let's see. Yeah.
Jim Lakely:They said that we we've been demonetized
Donald Kendal:Mhmm.
Jim Lakely:Because of, quote, content that focuses on controversial issues, and that is harmful, to viewers. Yeah. Now what they claim are controversial issues, they have a definition for that. And by the way, and and YouTube, Google, Alphabet, whatever the corporate master is, did not actually specify or flag anything to let us know exactly how we had produced content that's controversial and harmful to viewers. Mhmm.
Jim Lakely:This is what they claim is a controversial issue. Controversial issues are topics that may be unsettling for viewers, but they're often the result of human tragedy. This policy applies even if the content is purely commentary or contains no graphic imagery. Controvert use include child abuse, adult sexual abuse, sexual harassment, self harm, suicide, eating disorders, domestic abuse, abortion, and euthanasia. Now we do cover a cornucopia of topics on this podcast.
Jim Lakely:We focus a lot on, you know, climate realism and debunking the green energy myth and how, and then it's like we're doing today. We go after the, you know, the global, economic masters, and in Europe and at the World Economic Forum and here in the United States. Sure. You might consider those topics controversial, but they are in no way they don't qualify for any of those. Right.
Jim Lakely:I just said. I don't even wanna say it again because, you know, the algorithm can hear you. And so even saying those things, people don't even say people say, self delete. Somebody, you know Oh, sure.
Justin Haskins:They're no yeah.
Jim Lakely:If they decided to go up to heaven and no longer be part of, the the earthly realm, I've heard a lot of people on YouTube say that person has self deleted. So that's how
Donald Kendal:you Unalived. Unalived. That's Unalived.
Justin Haskins:So so, yeah, we don't
Jim Lakely:we don't cover any of those issues. We don't talk about those issues. I think in no way is forgetting about the eating
Justin Haskins:disorder special that we did that one time. Oh, yes. Eating eating disorders.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. It was all about Ozempic.
Justin Haskins:We don't go anywhere near any of these top, like, even remotely close to any.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. So this was a bit of mystery when I came down. Right? You know, we're like, okay. Well, we got these Linnea videos that we're doing these, little 2, 3 minute videos at all different host of climate change topics that are pretty you know, some of them are very popular.
Donald Kendal:So maybe it was that. It was them trying to, like, shut down our channel because we're having some effect, with these new Linnea videos. But then when I saw yesterday when I was setting up the stream that our stopping socialism TV channel was also affected, that that puts it squarely on our show. It has to be in the tank because it's you know, our show is on both of those channels. Right?
Donald Kendal:So it's gotta be it. The latest video that we did was about Trump potentially facing 20 years in jail. So it must have been something in that in that. That's my best guess.
Justin Haskins:Everybody everybody's doing that.
Donald Kendal:Well, we also spent a lot of time bragging on, whether or not Joe Biden pooped his
Justin Haskins:fans. So that Yeah. But I think even more people did that one. Like, what, like, what was in that I mean, seriously, those are, like, the the Trump thing is the most popular topic probably on on, you know, YouTube that week. Like, there's no way that that would be it.
Justin Haskins:It's gotta be something else. They didn't they didn't flag. They didn't email us. They didn't because I thought there was a 3 strike system. Isn't that how it works?
Donald Kendal:No. No. That's how, like, deleting your channel. I think that's for, like, totally getting rid of your channel. This is just demonetized.
Donald Kendal:But, but, thankfully, our development people have put together a nice little, URL for anyone that's watching the show that wants to support our show financially. Heartland.org/inthetank. That'll direct you to a page where you specifically can donate to the Heartland Institute, to support this show. So that's, that's a big thing. We'll definitely be keeping tabs on that to see, because, you know, while this show is, you know, in essence, free to do, it still takes up our time, and our time, you know, is is, scarce.
Donald Kendal:Right? So there is a there is an investment that we put into the show and, to make it, like, worth doing financially, support from from everybody watching is greatly appreciated. But if there's anything else on that note that you wanna mention, Jim, you can have at it before we get into some of our topics.
Jim Lakely:No. I mean, it's it's really annoying. And one of the things it's not like we're, you know, we're making money hand over fist on this show. And that's not really the purpose of it, obviously. I mean, we're not professional YouTubers.
Jim Lakely:A lot of us watch them and they make a living producing their own content and shows. And they get super chats when they do their live streams. We were going to actually start a membership program where you could become a member of the channel and get exclusive contact and access and all of that stuff. And now that's out the window unless we get this thing re monetized. You know, it's it's but having a monetized channel makes your channel more legit.
Jim Lakely:You know? The algorithm shy smiles more upon monetized channels than they do with those that are not monetized. And I would think especially those that were once monetized and have now been canceled by the sensors, in big tech. So we have appealed it. We are going to, see if we can, you know, get it back get it back on.
Jim Lakely:I mean, it's nice when, some of our regular viewers, both here and in Europe and especially in the UK. We've even had some Australians donate to us. It's really nice. You know, you kick us $10, $20. It makes us feel good.
Jim Lakely:It helps it it does help the channel, but, it's it's discouraging. I thought we were kind of, beyond that. I keep thinking in my in my head canon, I keep thinking that Elon Musk owns YouTube, and he only owns Twitter. So, you know, that's just the way it goes these days.
Justin Haskins:I just wanna real quick add that, so the we haven't I don't think we talked about this on on this, on this show, but we've also been struggling on Facebook forever just to get people to go to like like, the the Facebook algorithm was altered at some point. We have 100 of 1,000 of of followers on Facebook. 100 of 1,000. Like, across all of the Heartland different channels, stopping socialism, Facebook fan page, the stopping socialism TV, Facebook fan page, the Heartland fan page, my personal fan page. We have, like, half a 1000000 plus followers on Facebook, and we get, like like, literally 0 traffic on our Facebook page now after we used to get millions of people a month.
Justin Haskins:Now we are down to, like, maybe 100 or 1,000. Like, that's how bad it's gotten. But then probably, this is, like, maybe 2 or 3 months ago, they Facebook stopped allowing us to post on our some of our Facebook pages. They completely stopped it without without as far as I could tell, we violated some policy. I don't know what it is.
Justin Haskins:I can't figure it out. I've gone through this absurd customer service thing, like, labyrinth of different foreigners talking to me about this problem in the most obscure complicated way. They don't even really understand it. No one can give me an explanation. I've been waiting for an appeal on this so that we can just post things to the channel, and nothing has I mean, to those to those, yeah, social media feeds.
Justin Haskins:And I haven't even been we we barely use it. I mean, at this point, we're just reposting articles that have been published by people at Heartland, and that's pretty much it. And major media outlets. So it's not like we're posting all this controversial stuff on there. There's nothing controversial about it, and we can't get an explanation for why that happened.
Justin Haskins:Right? And so this is just and as we'll see when we get into the main topic here for today's show, like, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I mean Well this is gonna get a lot worse soon.
Donald Kendal:To and and to underscore that point, on the show, for a while now, I I've talked about how there we have, like, a a whole bunch of different publications that we could get op eds published in, articles published in, stuff like that, websites, whatever. And we've had a friendly a friendly one of these publications respond to us after pitching them a op ed on climate change related topics saying, hey. This is a great article, but, unfortunately, we can't publish this because if it could share it on Facebook, that could throttle our whole account and all of that. So we're basically gonna just stay away from climate change topics. This is a friendly, right leaning publication that said this.
Donald Kendal:And then so I've been saying that for a while. Chris, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall you more recently in the past couple of months saying that we've gotten another, email response back to one of these op ed pitches from a different conservative leaning publication saying essentially the same thing. Right?
Chris Talgo:Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is this is an ongoing problem. And I think that, like you said, they're worried that if they publish a story like that, that they could, you know, come under the the, you know, grip of the sensors, and they do not wanna do that. So, yeah, this is flat out censorship, and it's
Donald Kendal:Yep. Right. So all of these things together just kinda shows that you can't rely on kind of these, like, passive ways of of getting this content, whether it's, like, YouTube recommending our videos or something like that in your recommended feed when you go to YouTube or going on Facebook and assuming that some of our posts will pop up in your news feed, or even just going to conservative publications and expecting to see some articles, that are about topics that you think are interesting. You can't passively do this anymore. You have to, like, seek out this sort of stuff in this environment.
Chris Talgo:But it's even worse because even if you go and Google this stuff, the Google results are gonna be on page 7, 8, 9, and you're not gonna scroll to page 7, 8, 9 to get those results. I do a lot of research, so I, you know, Google lots of facts and lots of, you know, economic stuff and climate stuff. It's just every single time. You know, the first 10, 20, 30 results are all, you know, what they want you to see. But then if you dig deep enough, you can somehow find that, you know, diamond in the rough with, you know, the the the truth behind it.
Chris Talgo:So
Justin Haskins:Mhmm.
Chris Talgo:Yeah. I mean, it's just it's it's it's across the board.
Donald Kendal:It it's so it's time, basically, my message here is time to be proactive about the content that you want to consume. You have to, like, specifically, look for our stuff. You have to go to heartland.org and check out what's featured at the top. Become a subscriber to, like, the Heartland weekly email that's sent around that has a listing of all of our best articles and videos and all of the different, you know, events that are coming up or anything like that, so that you can ensure the content that you're interested in actually comes across your desk at some point. That's that's the world that we live in now.
Donald Kendal:So things are changing seemingly by the day, but, you know, we're gonna keep on keep on fighting here. But, gentlemen, should we get to our topics at hand, or do you have anything else you wanna say on this issue? Nope. Hearing nothing. I will, jump into it.
Donald Kendal:So so the topic that we wanna talk about is this radical new European Union law that we say in the thumbnail will fundamentally change transform America. So, people that have constant listeners of the show, you should be familiar with ESG. I mean, we've been talking about that for probably years now. I think most people listening understand what ESG is. This is the scheme that's advocated by the elitist left, places like the World Economic Forum.
Donald Kendal:It's essentially a corporate social scorecard that forces companies to adhere to metrics that champion a whole host of different social justice causes from diversity, equity, and inclusion to climate change and the destruction of reliable energy sources. A failure to adhere to these ESG metrics results in businesses losing access to capital, loans, other banking services. It could result in businesses being politically disfavored when it comes to government contracts, stimulus projects, bailouts, a whole number of different things. So I've always said that at best, ESG is the biggest cronyist system ever devised by man. And at worst, ESG is a fascist system that the government and ruling class can use to control the economy and society by extension.
Donald Kendal:But what, and we've been fighting against ESG for, you know, as many years as we've been talking about it, and there's been some success. But one of the things that's been flying under the radar that's in this realm of ESG for quite a while now is this, European European Union version of it called the corporate sustainability due diligence directive. Around the office, we just call it the European Union's ESG, but it's it's called the corporate sustainability due diligence directive, CSDDD, but we'll probably just refer to it as Europe's ESG. And, Justin, I'm gonna start off with you because you've been the one that's been shouting from the rooftops about this issue for, I don't know, a year now, maybe more, to anybody that'll listen. And, it took that long, as long as you've been shouting about it, for this legislation to work its way through the European Union legislative process.
Donald Kendal:And at one point, when we most recently talked about this, it was like dead. But as we feared in in that same episode where we talked about it, it crawled out of the grave and crawled across the finish line in just the waning hours of the legislative sessions there over in, Europe. So take it where you want. Tell us about this, the, Europe's ESG scheme. Go ahead.
Justin Haskins:Yeah. So we've actually been talking about this, Donnie, for, at least 3 years. I went back and looked. Yeah. Because we I and the reason I know that is because on the on the book that we worked with on, with Glenn Beck, The Great Reset, which is a number one best selling book, nonfiction book when it came out, back in 2022, start of 2022.
Justin Haskins:This this is in that book. We talk about this in that book, which means we were working with Glenn on that for and we would we started that book in 2020. And so we were working on that at least in 2021. So this had to be something that we were aware of for 2 to at least 3 years, I would say. It's a pretty safe bet.
Justin Haskins:And, we also had it in the dark future book, which we released, what, in 2023 mid 2023. So we've been talking about this for a while. Essentially, this is this to me is we talk about the great reset, the great reset movement, World Economic Forum, Davos, big corporations, all getting together, controlling society, through the private sector and financial institutions, public private partnerships between government and the private sector. This is the height of that. This is the pinnacle of it.
Justin Haskins:This is the this is sort of the dream scenario for people that want to elites, that wanna control society, but know that they can't get everything through government. And so we have to have these public private partnerships. So the this law is the culmination of them working on this for 3 years, this plan. So this is the way that it would work. This CSDDD law requires that the European Union Nations create laws that will force companies, large companies in the European Union, based in the European Union, to adopt these left wing social justice, ESG, anti you know, sort of climate change, anti fossil fuels, all of that stuff that you think of as being ESG left wing ideology, force these companies to adopt these policies in their business practices, both within their company's business practices and within, their subsidiaries and their contracts and all sorts of things.
Justin Haskins:So not just what they do, but also the products and services and things that they offer to their customers. Alright? But in addition to that, it also requires any company, any large company, so these are this is mostly about large companies, this part of the law that I'm talking about now. Any large company that does above a certain threshold of business in the European Union also has to do this regardless of whether they're a European Union company. So an American company, for example, or a Mexican company or a Canadian company or a Chinese company, if they're doing this, above this threshold, which is about $500,000,000 in, about $500,000,000 in revenue, It's a little more complicated than that, but it's basically that.
Justin Haskins:If you're doing $500,000,000 a year in revenue in the European Union, net turnover is what they call it, then you're going to be forced to comply with this law as well. Alright? So Ford, for example, does that much business more than that in the European Union. McDonald's, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, all of these companies, Amazon, they're all doing at least that much business. Many of them are doing much, much more business than that in the European Union.
Justin Haskins:So they also are going to be required to adopt these left wing government imposed social justice, ESG, anti fossil fuel policies into their business practices. The really, really insidious part of all of this, that's bad enough because you can change the world really and at least the western world just with that part of it alone. Because if you're changing what Apple and Amazon and Microsoft and much on societies all over the world, including America. Because it's not just about how they're behaving in Europe. It's about how they behave everywhere in the world.
Justin Haskins:So it's not enough for McDonald's just to change the way they do business in Europe. They also have to change how they do business in America. Alright? So it's going to change everything or or it's gonna change a lot, just that one part of it. But what's really insidious about this is they go a step further because that's not enough for them.
Justin Haskins:They go a step further. One of the requirements for these companies that's that are brought under this rule in the European Union is that those companies must, to be in compliance, impose many of these same ESG standards on every company or many of the companies, I should say. Not every company, but many of the companies that they are doing business with as part of their chain of activities. There's it's mostly supply chain, distribution, storage, that kind of thing. Regardless of where those companies are located, regardless of how much business those companies are doing in Europe.
Justin Haskins:So for example, Ford sells cars in Europe. They sell a lot of cars in Europe, so they're under this rule, this ESG rule in the European Union. Ford buys let's say, for example, Ford buys rubber from a rubber manufacturer that's in Ohio that does no business in the European Union. That doesn't matter. Ford has to force that rubber manufacturer to do everything that the European Union laws are saying that they're gonna have to do.
Justin Haskins:Even if they don't do any biz because they do business with Ford. And if Ford doesn't force that rubber manufacturer to do that, then Ford is gonna face these massive fines in the European Union. They may not be allowed to do business in the European Union. They can be sued by activist groups in the European Union for failing to do this. This is all part of the law, and it's not just one part of the supply.
Justin Haskins:It's all it's massive parts of the supply chain. Not all of it, but massive parts of the supply chain. So think about how this all plays out when you so at first, you might be thinking, okay. Well, it's just what is it? Just like manufacturers?
Justin Haskins:No. It's everything. Okay? It's everything it's everything that goes into the design and the production of these services and products that are that are being used and sold, by these companies that operate in the European Union. So you're a potato farmer, and you sell potatoes to McDonald's for making French fries in America.
Justin Haskins:Right? You're as you, the potato farmer, you do no business in Europe. Doesn't matter. McDonald's has to impose these ESG rules on you or else they're not gonna do business with you anymore. You're the transportation truck company that drives around different products and services being sold by these companies.
Justin Haskins:You also have to be brought into compliance. You're the mechanic that works on the trucks. You're also going to have to be brought into compliance. You're the, you're an energy company that sells energy to these companies. You're a, gas.
Justin Haskins:I mean, just people who sell gasoline. Even them would be part of the supply chain for all of this. You're a marketing firm. You're a software company. That you're part of what you do is you help, you know, McDonald's or you help Amazon or you help one of these companies.
Justin Haskins:You do one tiny little part of of some aspect of their business for them. You also have to be brought under this law.
Donald Kendal:Mhmm. And the
Justin Haskins:list goes on and on and on and on and on. By the time you play it all out and you just think about how far reaching this thing is, you realize the many bit I mean, literally, it's unknown. Nobody knows exactly how many businesses will be required to do this, but we're talking about thousands of businesses affected by these policies, which are by the way, that's the stated goal. This is exactly what they want to do. They want to transform the economies all over the world to adopt these EU, values, and and and they want to do it through these corporations so that you have no constitutional right to stand stand up and say, well, Apple is saying that, this is this is a real example.
Justin Haskins:This would be a real example. One of the things that's in the EU law, it's very applicable to the Heartland Institute, is that you have to have policies, a lot the the these nations in the European Union have to have laws that say that companies need to stop climate change related misinformation and disinformation on their platforms. That's part of what is required under this law. Alright? Well, you're Apple.
Justin Haskins:Okay? Apple hosts podcasts, including this podcast.
Jim Lakely:Right.
Justin Haskins:Under that European law, Apple can't, allow for a podcast show like our show, which says things about climate change that that is not in agreement with the standard EU view of things, can't allow us to have a show on Apple's platform. It can't even do business with a company. Apple can't even do business with a company that's doing business with us if it's part of their supply chain in order to bring that podcast platform into into being or some other thing that they do. It doesn't even have to be that. So you can see how this is going to transform everything.
Justin Haskins:All the big tech companies, all the censorship that will come from this, the the the chain the transformation of agriculture, farming, manufacturing, fossil fuel industry must be killed by this, or these companies have to completely stop doing business in Europe. I mean, we're talking about the entire transformation of the United States' economy, culture, free speech being eliminated. This is the most insidious, ingenious, diabolical public policy plan I've ever seen put forward. I think it's the most important story in the country today, which is really saying something because I know with Trump and everything that's going on, there's lots of important stories, but it touches on so many other things. So And almost no one knows about it, which is incredible.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. There's there's a a whole bunch of questions that are coming in, that I wanna come back to you, Justin, to answer some of these. But just to get Jim and and Chris, back into the podcast here. Chris, one of the things that I find remarkable about this is that in our whole fight against ESG, the over the last several years about this, You get people in the United States, even on our side of the aisle, that they'll just kind of dismiss it like, oh, yeah. It's not great, but, you know, voluntary interaction between whatever.
Donald Kendal:They kind of dismiss all the coercion and all of that stuff or whatever. But in this case, Europe's just mandating it. So it's it's not even about there's not even the illusion of, like, voluntary interaction here. This is just like authoritarian, foot right on the on the necks of just, like, businesses, specifically in Europe, but as Justin described, basically across the world. What what's your reaction to all this?
Chris Talgo:Jeez. I mean, it's it's it's overwhelming, first of all. You know, Justin just provided a ton of information, and I'm still even confused on so many aspects of this. My my my first, like, thought is, is this practical? Can they actually implement this?
Chris Talgo:So, Justin, I mean, just in terms of the sheer practicality aspect of this, do you think that they will ever be able to actually enforce this around the world, or is this some pipe dream that European Union, you know, leaders, you know, think that they can, you know, impose upon other countries when in reality, they're not gonna be able to do that at all. That that that's my number one question first.
Justin Haskins:So the the the the way that the enforcement of the law would work is every European Union country has to have essentially, its own version of this, which has to be at least as strict as the law that was just passed by the whole European Union. Each of those countries is responsible for punishing the companies that would be related to it because they do business in their particular country. So France will have a department which will be responsible for punishing companies that like McDonald's that do business in France if they're not in compliance with this up and down their supply chain. Right? So there is going to be I and there's an incentive, though, for these countries to do this, to actually hunt people down that they don't like and figure out which countries are not or which companies are not doing the things they want them to do and punish them.
Justin Haskins:And that is that the law allows for a 5% fine. 5% of net worldwide turnover, okay, which again is similar to revenue. So for a really big company that's doing, say, 1,000,000,000 of dollars in revenue every year, 5% adds up really quick. Right? So you're talking about tens of 1,000,000, maybe even 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars in fines over a a long enough period of time you could be talking about even more than that.
Justin Haskins:Right? So there's a revenue generating aspect to this from a government's perspective. They have an incentive to do this. The other thing that they put into the law, which I think will will lead to enforcement in a variety of different ways, is they allowed for a what's called a private cause of action or they mandated a private cause of action. What a private cause of action is is a citizen or a, or an activist group or a nonprofit or even a group like the Heartland Institute can can bring a lawsuit against companies for failing to comply with the rule if there's some sort of damage that can be claimed to someone or something.
Justin Haskins:So for example, if you're, if some German court agrees that, McDonald's is not sufficiently transitioning to a green economy, and they're therefore damaging the environment, they can bring, an activist group in Germany can bring a lawsuit. Court can say, yep. We agree with you. And now you can fine McDonald's for not sufficiently doing this. And it's not just about whether McDonald's is doing it.
Justin Haskins:Is McDonald's working with suppliers who are not sufficiently doing it? Is the potato farmer Mhmm. Sufficiently doing the things that they need to do? Then the if not, then they could theoretically bring a lawsuit and do that. So the question, will there will this be enforced at all?
Justin Haskins:I think it's absolutely because at the very least, you're gonna have activist groups going absolutely insane in Europe, suing everybody all the time over this. So for sure, on that level, you're gonna have that, especially on climate change and things like that. But, there's a financial incentive for the governments to do it as well. Will they do it to everyone, everywhere, catch every little thing? No.
Justin Haskins:Of course not. That's not the point. The point of the law is not to do that. It's to punish the people they don't like. So they will selectively enforce it in order to accomplish whatever sort of political or ideological goals they have that week.
Donald Kendal:I think there will be politics that's gonna
Justin Haskins:be how it works.
Jim Lakely:Can I
Chris Talgo:just follow-up with the with the, you know, like, a follow-up question to that? So, like, I'm not I'm not completely, clear on the corporate structure of, like, a McDonald's or a Ford, whether or not they have, like, their headquarters here in the United States, you know, or North American headquarters, and those are separate entities from their, like, European operations. But how could a European country, whether it's France, Germany, whatever, impose a fine upon an American based company, and how could they, do that, when they don't have the sovereignty to inject, you know, fines and such and punishments in the United States of America? Like, how just how how would that actually be done?
Justin Haskins:So Would it or would it only apply
Chris Talgo:to their European, you know, operations and such?
Justin Haskins:So the fine would be based on so okay. So the fine would be imposed on any company that's a covered company under the law. A covered company under the law are the large corporations, whether they're based in the European Union or they're based in Mexico or based in America. It doesn't matter. As long as they do enough business in the European Union, they would be a covered company.
Justin Haskins:And the so if they're not following the law or one of their suppliers is not adhering to these ESG things, regardless of where they're located, the large company that's doing business in Europe above of that threshold is the one that gets fined. Right? So so Ford, regardless of whether they have a European, headquarters or not, that's irrelevant to the law, They would because they sell cars in Europe, they would get fined. Okay? Based on their total net worldwide revenue, they would get fined because of something that they're doing maybe in Ohio.
Justin Haskins:That's the whole point of the law is to is to impose penalties on companies regardless of whether they're European companies and regardless of just what they're doing in Europe. And so do they have the authority to do this? Yes. They do have the authority to do this because they're operating because the larger companies are operating in Europe.
Donald Kendal:So it Do you know It would be like
Justin Haskins:you had a European company dumping chemicals into a river in America somewhere. Sure. It doesn't matter if they don't have a headquarters in America. We can still fine them for dumping chemicals into a river. That's the same logic that
Donald Kendal:we need. What's what's kind of crazy about this too is, like, you know, you would look at something like this and just think, like, how unfeasible it is. You you did a great job of explaining, you know, how to, like, enforce all of this. But, like, what makes it easier for the government regimes to enforce this is the fact that we've spent several years now, laying down the the, the foundations for all of this with our United States Centric ESG Schemes, where essentially every business is preparing some ESG report every year and some sustainability report every year where they're, you know, take keeping track of all of these different metrics that are gonna be used now, against them theoretically by some other foreign power using the mandates of government. So it's like, you know, all of these people, like I, referenced earlier, you know, I'm I'm like, the right side of the aisle generally here in the United States.
Donald Kendal:I kind of dismissed the CSG thing as, oh, voluntary interactions or whatever. Like, they just completely, just slept. They just ignored this whole creation of this foundation on which this monstrosity is built. That that to me is one of the craziest aspects of this. Jim, you haven't, you haven't been chiming in.
Donald Kendal:The last time we talked about this, it was actually us kinda celebrating this very plan going down in flames with just, like, a week left in the European Union legislative, you know, process or whatever. And there was a question. There was still a question about whether or not there was gonna be a post credit scene where the the hand comes lurching out of the out of the dirt or whatever, and it's still alive. And I think you being the more cynical of probably all of us here, you put your money on that hand reaching out of the grave. So, not too surprised, I I suspect here, but, I mean, the scale of this has gotta be a shocker to you, though.
Jim Lakely:My my perfect record of being cynical about the results of policy and becoming correct remains intact, sadly. You know, people in the, this this this, this podcast should be archived. You should go back to it for for lessons on what's going on here. Congratulations to Justin and you, Donnie, for researching this and bringing it to the fore. You know, what strikes me while listening to Justin outline all this, which I knew in broad strokes, but he painted a much more detailed picture for us, is that in the comments, some of our, viewers here on YouTube were saying that, you know what?
Jim Lakely:Trump is gonna stop this. He'll stop funding to the WHO and perhaps even the United Nations. And I thought, well, you know, he did pull us out of the Paris Climate Agreement. In fact, the then president the founding president of the Heartland Institute, Joe Bast, was invited to be in the rose garden when Donald Trump announced that wonderful policy, which, of course, was reversed the minute, Joe Biden, got to the White House. But, you know, it struck me looking at those comments.
Jim Lakely:What's remarkable here is that there isn't an outcry in congress or among any American politicians about any of this. I think they're 1, wholly ignorant of it. And I think that excuse is not gonna hold up very much longer, especially because we are talking about it and other people will be talking about it as well. But it's obvious that the Biden administration wants this. They want America governed by unaccountable and unfireable and never voted upon European bureaucrats.
Jim Lakely:So this is a complete polar opposite of philosophy here. You don't have to be, a MAGA hat wearing America first or with the Trump flag, right next to your American flag in your front yard, but if you are, you're a great American, to understand that this would be extremely harmful to American businesses, obviously, and to all Americans to basically have the private sector, and this is what the left has been doing now for very, very intensely, especially over the last decade, is leveraging their power, with their ideological, fellow travelers in the private sector to impose hard leftism, communism, marxism, what have you, but certainly not free market capitalism, the opposite of that instead upon society. Not not passing laws here in the United States, in in many cases, not even really trying to pass or try to sneak a regulation through the deep state in the, in the bureaucracy, the the real power center in Washington DC, you know, pass the courts. In court, they'll they'll find friendly courts to approve these sorts of things. But, basically, just, you know, off sourcing, economic tyranny in the United States to Europe.
Jim Lakely:Now, you know, we we call it European ESG, which is a lot easier to remember and say than I can't even remember now. The, there's, like, 5 letters
Donald Kendal:in the sustainability due diligence directive. I have it tattooed on my arm.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. That's that's fantastic. Thank you. But, actually, it reminded me. I saw and I'll try to find it if when I'm done with this.
Jim Lakely:I'm almost done with my little soliloquy here. I remember seeing a chart, yesterday, I think it was, on how during quarterly earnings calls for, corporations here in the United States, The number of times over the last 2 years they have mentioned e their efforts on ESG and DEI. And the chart was a bar chart. It went way up like this. About a year ago, it was as high as it's ever been, and now it's dropping and dropping dropping.
Jim Lakely:And now mentions of a corporation's ESG scores and our our DEI initiatives have dwindled down to even less than when this topic just started bubbling up, in 2021. And so America. Yes. That's right. You are welcome, America.
Jim Lakely:We've helped that that happen. But, you know, so it's so maybe what we will have then is, you know, it's a tough Biden economy. American corporations are having very difficult and, contentious earning calls, in in their for their, shareholders every quarter, and they have stopped talking about ESG almost entirely and now just wanna talk about trying to trying to turn a profit as a corporation. So it could be, ironically, here that it will be corporate America that has had enough of this and we'll look at this and realize we need to push back at the Biden administration, which we own and operate, as big business in in America, and tell them to put a stop to it. But, you know, if the election turns out that Donald Trump is our next president, I think he will do what, frankly, any American president should be doing, which is leveraging America's power and influence to put a stop to this stuff.
Jim Lakely:Like, you know, hey, The WHO. I guess maybe we won't give you any more money. Hey. Maybe maybe, the United Nations, you know, headquartered here in the United States. You should be able to use that power to stop this absolutely anti business, anti American policies being implemented by people nobody ever voted for, nobody even knows who they are, on our society.
Jim Lakely:Maybe we'll get a president that will do that one day.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. I've been, trying to track some of the questions that were there that were, that I referenced earlier in the chat that were coming up. One of them was specifically how they would enforce this, which Chris already asked to Justin. And while answering that, you kind of answered a couple of the other questions, but there was one by, I think, Christine here that said, how is it that, like, Europe is, like, dictating, like, global laws, basically? And, Justin, feel free to hop in on this, but my initial reaction to that question is basically like, well, I mean theoretically, if you know we we're talking about Apple was one of the examples, if they didn't wanna, like, conform to these laws, they could theoretically pull all of their business out of Europe and strictly do business in any other place other than Europe to avoid, you know, being caught up in these laws.
Donald Kendal:But I just don't suspect any, like, global corporations would ever do that. When they're doing their cost benefit analysis of this stuff, they're probably looking at the bottom line and being like, you know what? We already like, virtue signal about half this stuff anyways, so we might as well just conform to these laws, you know, instead of trying to, like, fight it in any way. Justin, your your, response to that question.
Justin Haskins:That's sort that's that's, that's kind of true. So I agree I agree with the second part. I don't think that these major corporations, which already have, as you pointed out, massive ESG systems in place in their own companies. So met much of this, they already agree with, and they're already doing it. And that's why we've been talking about the great reset in ESG and stuff like that for a long time.
Justin Haskins:But the other part of it that you have to remember is that it would all what you're describing almost only works if all the large corporations get together and leave at the same time because, like, you've used Apple for an for example. So let's say Apple says, we're done doing business in the EU because we don't wanna have anything to do with this. This is too much of a headache and too much of a problem. We'll never be able to to get all of our supply chain in order. So they leave.
Justin Haskins:Okay? That's fine. But Apple is a supplier of a lot of other businesses. They're giving computers. They're supplying all sorts of things.
Justin Haskins:Right? Services. The think about their cloud services and everything. So if they're doing business with another major business that's doing business in the European Union, then they're gonna be brought into at least some of it Sure. That way as a supplier.
Justin Haskins:Right. So for in a lot of ways, most comp large companies are gonna be brought in either because they do business in Europe or because they do business with someone who is working, who is doing that business in Europe. And and so from their perspective, why would they get out of the market when they're gonna be pulled in in other ways anyway? It it almost doesn't it wouldn't make any sense for them to do that. So unless all the American companies that do business in Europe and all of the, well, yeah, it would have to be all the American companies that do business in Europe all get together and say, we're not doing business in Europe anymore.
Justin Haskins:We're gone. And all the American companies that do business with a business that's in Europe would also have to say, we're not doing business with those companies anymore. And what you so what you're asking is it's just not possible, and and that was why they wrote it. And and so the question of, well, how can they, like, how can they do something this audacious? Well, how did they market this in the European Union?
Justin Haskins:What did they focus on? The law is massive. It's a 100 plus pages long, but it references a bunch of other laws and international agreements in the law. And the law is really just a framework for individual EU nations to create a new law. So we're talking about laws on laws on laws.
Justin Haskins:Right? Like, tons of laws here we're dealing with. But the thing that they talk about all the time when they are pitching this idea is basically 2 or 3 things. One is, climate alarmism, which in Europe, the vast majority of people are climate alarmists, compared relatively speaking to the United States. So that was a very appealing argument.
Justin Haskins:We gotta stop these companies from polluting the earth and destroying the planet, and we're all gonna die from climate change if we don't do this. The other two things were child labor. So, like, you know, you've got these African countries and certain parts of Asia and stuff where there's children, really young children, working in horrible conditions. Like, we've talked about this a bunch of times in the Congo, how you have kids in the Congo in in mines for rare earth minerals and stuff like that that are used to produce renewable parts for renewable energy. And so they wanted to stop that, which pretty much everybody would agree with.
Justin Haskins:Yeah. We don't we don't want little kids working in horrible conditions overseas. And then the other thing was, like, slave labor. So so you know, that that's another thing that they're they're advertising this. Right?
Justin Haskins:So we wanna eliminate slave labor from all these different supply chains. So it's not enough for you, European company, to say, we don't have slaves. It's like, yeah, but you're doing business with suppliers in these other countries that do have slaves, and you're just turning a blind eye to it. And so they focused on those kinds of things, the things that we all sort of, not the climate part. Obviously, we don't all agree with that, but we do agree about the child labor thing, and we agree about the slavery thing.
Justin Haskins:And they focused on those things as the main thing, and that was that was really how they sold a lot of this. And, of course, there's a million other things included in it. But when you slap when you when you when you frame it as an antislavery, anti child labor law, it it's not hard to sell that to a lot of people. And and I think that was how they got away with it. And that's probably what critics will say.
Justin Haskins:They'll say they'll probably say that anyone who's opposed to this, the critics of us, anyone who's opposed to this is proslavery, pro child labor. That's probably what they'll say. They already have us on the climate denialism thing. So it's they'll just tap the other two things onto it and say, you guys don't care about all these human rights abuses, and and that's they'll act like that's what the law is when in reality, it's a million other things on top.
Donald Kendal:So so there, is have been a couple of questions in regards to China. And I know that, you know, we've been just, like, getting into, like, the meat of all of this, and we've got, you know, competing theories about how all of this is exactly gonna work out. And you were telling me just yesterday about this new contracts thing. For the sake of time, maybe we should, not get into, like, some of the superweeds in some of this, maybe for a future episode, especially when we untangle some of this mess. But but in regards to China, because obviously China is upstream and downstream of virtually every corporation's supply chain when you look at it, at some high enough level.
Donald Kendal:So the question is, how are they not gonna be pulled into all of this? Like, aren't they just gonna be, like, have a massive amounts of fines and being coerced and forced into all of these different metrics too? How is it possible that they are gonna, like, slip through the cracks of this?
Justin Haskins:So there's no exception in the law for China. So, all these horrible things that are going on in China, would presumably need to end in order for this thing to be enforced equally across the board. I just don't think it will be enforced on China. And I and I think the reason for that is because we've seen a long track record of countries of not holding China accountable, and so we think that that's the way this is going to work. And and the way the law is structured remember what I said.
Justin Haskins:The EU passed this law. The EU law requires that, the EU law requires that each individual EU nation create its own law, and then that law has to be enforced by that EU nation. So if the EU nations just say, well, we we can't enforce it on China because, like, we really need China for cheap crap, you know, or for rare earth minerals to run our renewable energy system that's they supposedly wanna impose across the European Union. If they can't, you know, if they if they just don't enforce it, then that's one way they might get around that. The problem with that, of course, is you have these far left activist groups that will bring lawsuits and complaints saying, we don't care about about cheap stuff.
Justin Haskins:We don't care about it. We demand that China get in line. This is the law, and and they're gonna be suing. And I don't know how that's all going to play out. I've been talking with, Heartland's research, editor Jack McFerran has been working with me on this for a while now on the in the weeds, getting into the weeds of the law and everything.
Justin Haskins:And he and I have had, a long conversations about what this law will mean for the European Union, and and Jack is sort of taking the position that, you know, this is horrible. And in the short term, this is this is you know, it is going to be the end of freedom in America in a lot of ways. We're just giving up our sovereignty to the European Union. But you know what I think? I think that at the end of the day, this this is gonna just crush the European Union, and they're just gonna collapse into dust.
Justin Haskins:Because eventually, the far left wing activist types will force the European Union to start imposing this on China. China's gonna say, screw you. We're just cutting you off. We'll do business elsewhere. And Europe will just its economy won't be able to survive that.
Justin Haskins:And I think there's a pretty good argument to be made that that is that's a legitimate way of looking at this because this is so bad and so stupid of a policy. It reminds me a little bit, like, on steroids. This is an old school Heartland topic, Donnie. You're gonna remember this.
Donald Kendal:Oh, god.
Justin Haskins:Back in the day when we used to talk about normal boring stuff, we would talk about millionaire's taxes. And there were there are these wealth millionaire's taxes that some states would put into place, and they would essentially say if you have a certain they had different versions of it, but it was usually based on your assets. If you had a certain amount of assets, they would impose, like, a wealth tax on you. And what what happened when you would do that? Right?
Justin Haskins:Well, from the left perspective, this was great. We bring in all this revenue from these horrible rich people. They're hoarding wealth. But the obvious thing everyone knows would happen is the rich people just leave. Right?
Justin Haskins:They're like, well, we're not gonna pay this. And there were examples of this happening where states would impose these taxes, and then just all the rich people left. They'd say, well, we're we're not gonna stick around for this. And it was so obvious. And you would look at this and say, what were these people thinking?
Justin Haskins:Of course, the rich people are gonna leave. They're not gonna stay and pay this absurd tax. They're gonna leave. It's so easy to do.
Donald Kendal:Well Right.
Justin Haskins:In a lot of ways, this kinda looks like that where it's like, how is anyone going to be able to do this? And they're just banking. They're banking, I think, on having another 4 years of Joe Biden and, another 4 years of or another many years of of radical leftist in Canada and radical leftist in other parts of the world that all just sort of agree with this anyway and aren't gonna fight it and are gonna twist the arms of these corporations. And then in the backroom when the corporations are complaining and moaning and whining about this, these big you know, these politicians and bankers and stuff are gonna say, look. Look.
Justin Haskins:We'll take care of you. Just do what they say, and we'll make sure that you get the money. We'll have the subsidies. We'll have more government programs. We'll have more money printing at the central bank.
Justin Haskins:You're gonna be fine. You're gonna stay rich. Don't worry about it. And that's how and the reason I think that's how this might work is because that's how it's been working for a while now. Yeah.
Justin Haskins:And I think that's how this all plays out.
Donald Kendal:Chris, you almost have to, like, applaud the hubris of these, these, like, bureaucrats in, in Europe for, like, passing this. Because, like, we were talking about, it was, like, down to the wire. The whole idea, you know, even Justin was saying this. That's like they basically have to get it passed now because these elections that are coming up looks like we're gonna have, like, a right word kind of lurch in the the kind of the political makeup of Europe. So they have to get this passed now or they're not gonna be able to get it passed for 5, 10 years from now, and they did.
Donald Kendal:Right? So it's like the hubris of them to try to pass something like this knowing that the voters in Europe are going to basically, you know, slap all of these people on the on the wrist when it comes to the the ballot box for, like, these exact same policies that they've been pushing for a while now. I I think it's pretty much accepted fact that the kind of the rightward shift in the political makeup in Europe was largely in response to the draconian climate policy rules, whether it's like the restrictions on fertilizer or pesticides and agriculture that led to, like, all the different, you you know, outrage in some of those countries that we've talked about or, you know, some of the other stuff that led to, like, the yellow vest riots and all of that. And it's just like so even when they're staring, you know, down the barrel of the gun, when it comes to, like, the response of their policies, they're still gonna push this. What what's what's your reaction to that and just the general election, shake up in Europe?
Chris Talgo:Yeah. Well, I think the pendulum is swinging the other way, and I think we saw this in 2015 with Brexit and, you know, the the fact that your, England knew better. England knew that the European Union was not in its best interest, so it, you know, stayed out of the, the euro, for a time being. But then once the European Union just got, you know, 2 all encompassing and trying to micromanage every single thing across the continent. England said, you know, enough is enough.
Chris Talgo:We wanna go our own direction. I I I still hold out hope that other countries within the European Union, namely Germany, France, and a couple others, will do the same thing, and the European Union will collapse. Because I think the European Union, is just completely, you know, bonkers. It's just gone so far outside what it was meant to be. It was meant to just, you know, be a common economic zone.
Chris Talgo:It was meant so that, the European Union could, you know, people could, you know, move freely between the countries, and they have taken that and just gone in such a crazy direction. The, the the the crazy climate policies, the mass immigration, just all the regulations, all the micromanaging, the you just I I think that Europe I think the people of Europe are fed up with it. I think the, the elections for the EU, that just occurred last week show that the people are fed up with it. I hope that the next iteration of the EU does something about this, and, I I I just hope that this blows up in their face. And I hope that this is also a, you know, just maybe possibly the beginning of the end of this, like, just this stupid globalist, you know, agenda that, you know, just does not make sense, is not practical.
Chris Talgo:And, I I really hope that, you know, Donald Trump wins in November and just says, we want nothing to do with this, and good luck trying to implement it. And, you know, I I still think that the United States has a lot more influence around the world than Europe does. And, you know, when you look at the size of the US economy, you know, our military prowess, I mean, Europe should be listening to us, not vice versa. Like, come on. This is not 1850 anymore.
Chris Talgo:This we are the the the global superpower. They need to be following our lead. So I just think we just need to put things back in its proper order. And I do think a lot of this is the fact that, you know, president Biden and his, you know, America last policies and trying to appease, you know, Europe and just trying to, like, appease everybody is part of why this is happening. We need strong leadership in Washington, DC.
Chris Talgo:We need a strong president to say, listen, Europe. This is not gonna fly on my, you know, my watch, and, good luck, you know, doing it. And I I I would hope that he plays hardball. And if that means tariffs, if that means whatever, do what has to be done to nip this in the bud. Do not let this take hold.
Chris Talgo:Do not.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. Yeah. We are, so this this podcast, I just kinda wanna dedicate to just raising the awareness of this issue. Because even when I was trying to find links to put in the show notes about this, if you look this up, like, c s d d d Europe, whatever, you just, like, Google these certain terms. It's like Justin's Fox News article, and then there's, like, a western a western journal article that comes up that's specifically talking about Justin's appearance on, like, the Glenn Beck show, and that's it.
Donald Kendal:Those are the all this is the only, like, links that are out there right now. So we have a lot of work to do just to write, raise the public
Jim Lakely:consciousness when it comes to this issue.
Donald Kendal:When it comes to the solutions, that's gonna be a when it comes to this issue. When it comes to the solutions, that's gonna be a different that's a different episode. In fact, we're we're over here trying to figure out solutions to this, like, basically, as we speak. Justin and I were just talking before the show about some potential things. We've had some talks in the past about some potential things.
Donald Kendal:So we need to figure out, what is the best kind of course of action of pushing back against this. I was gonna toss it to Chris or, Jim, but Chris looks like he wants to jump in
Chris Talgo:and say something real quick. Just just one more thing because I I've seen this pattern before, and I've seen this happen, you know, over the past few years. You guys are doing an amazing job of of finding something that not many people are talking about, and I think that that's they want it to be that way on purpose, whether it's ESG, Modern Monetary Theory, the great reset. And it's just so amazing that that you guys put it out there. And then once the conversation gets started, what do they do?
Chris Talgo:They then deny it. They deny it. Then I call it a conspiracy and all this, you know, crazy stuff. But then years later, it's like, well, actually, we're doing it, and here, like, here it is in front of you. So Mhmm.
Chris Talgo:How many times are the people gonna fall for that? I hope not anymore because like Justin said, this is a humongous threat to liberty. Not only just, you know, our economic prosperity, but just our our our our our ability to live in you know, live free lives. And, we need to get it out in the public, you know, realm, and we need to make sure that, you know, the vast majority of hardworking Americans who I'll bet you anything say, we this is insane. Stop this, you know, in its tracks.
Chris Talgo:Gotta make sure that that message is getting, you know, clearly, you know, to Washington DC and to state, you know, capitals across this country to say, enough is enough. We will not we will not allow this to happen on our watch.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. So, we're we're doing
Chris Talgo:you guys are doing, you know, just amazing work.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. We're we are doing our best, folks. I'm gonna go to Jim, and then I'll end it off with, with Justin to to wrap up the show here because we're already north of an hour. But, Jim, I mean, some of what Chris was talking about, like, the kind of a rebuke to, like, the globalist movement or whatever just kinda reminds me of the episode we did a couple of weeks ago about the, what was it, like, populism versus globalism or something along those lines. And this just seems like a perfect example of that.
Donald Kendal:It's like they know they see the polling. They know they're gonna go down, because of all of this, climate policy stuff that they've been pushing, the banning of combustion, you know, whatever gas gasoline powered cars or whatever. And they're still gonna push this. Like, it's just like they know that the public doesn't want it. They're still gonna just jam it down the throats of not only their constituents, but the constituents of everyone in every country around the world.
Donald Kendal:It's it's not it's not mind blowing. Like, this is almost par for the course. But what's your reaction to it, Jim?
Jim Lakely:Well, the the globalist clique is keeps trying to make fetch happen. I mean, keeps trying to make ESG
Justin Haskins:happen. Right.
Jim Lakely:And it's not gonna happen or it's not happening. I just I so I found those charts. I just wanna show it, to our audience here. So I found, these charts about how often, ESG is mentioned on earnings calls, and, here it is up on screen. There we go.
Jim Lakely:So, so this was percentage of earnings calls mentioning ESG, and it's bumping around there around 1% to 0% from 2,005 to 2019 and starts to go. And then 2020 and 2021, by, the Q2 of 2021, 19% of earnings calls, with shareholders mentioned ESG scores. And then, so but then you can have, that's that was kind of near the peak, and then it starts coming down. And so, you know, the years 2021 and 2022 were kind of the peak for corporations all buying in to the, the leftist dream of of leveraging ESG and DEI and all of those, top down, you know, socialist agenda items through the private sector, it starts to diminish because you can't make fetch happen if fetch don't make you money. Eventually, these corporations just have to, they get pressure from their shareholders.
Jim Lakely:I mean, I I I think of Disney as a great example. They've gone completely woke, and they are and they are, their stock price keeps going down. They keep having failure after failure at the box office. And so, you know, eventually, you do run out of other of of your shareholders' money, and they start holding people accountable. But, you know, this we part of the the second part of this podcast, and we're past that now.
Jim Lakely:We're almost done here. But was to kinda look at the European elections and to see that is actually tied into this sort of thing. I think you mentioned it, Donnie, that they cram this through. Like, the the the hand came out of the grave at the last minute to get this passed in the European Parliament because they knew a a voter led revolution was happening in Europe. And it's a revolution against green policies.
Jim Lakely:When you have farmers protesting with tractors and the beautiful sight of spraying manure, liquid manure on European bureaucrat office buildings in protest. When you have, the immigration problem is now, so acute in Europe, you know, so called refugees coming in, and the same thing is happening here in the United States. And the voters don't like that, and they are they are revolt you know, there's a revolution against that, and it's been actually kind of almost humorous to see the reaction of the, corrupt corporate legacy media both here and in Europe, and that, parties and and policies and platforms that got the majority support of the people are yet still far right. Anything anything 1 inch to the right of a, of a Marxist globalist is far right. But it's not far right.
Jim Lakely:It's common sense. It's people wanting to preserve their way of life. It's people refusing to be shoved into a Marxist box and to live their life the way, they're supposed betters instruct them to do it. This is all to the good, and this, this what we've talked about on on this podcast today, what Justin and you, Donnie, have laid out in books, with Glenn Beck and especially Justin with that great, backgrounder for us on this podcast is that, I think the people are not going to put up with it. While these things are are officially law, I I don't think they're gonna get away with enforcing it.
Jim Lakely:I I don't think they think they can get away with enforcing it. I I think I guess we will see, and then maybe we will have leadership in this country that pushes back on this, and, we return to a society in which we, the people, select those who govern us, not rule over us, and they rule or they govern us with our consent. Everything that was described in the top of this podcast is a complete opposite and goes against that principle. And if America is still America, we're gonna stand up for that.
Donald Kendal:Justin, I said I was gonna end the show with you, good sir. This is this is your moment in the sun here. You've been like I said, you've been talking about this for this is it. You've been talking about for this particular issue. You've been talking about this for so long and, you know, like, finally, I think this is this is the like, the alarm bells are going off, man.
Donald Kendal:Like, this is this is everyone everyone gets to your station's moment, when it comes to this.
Justin Haskins:I know. It feel it feels like a little bit like, you're seeing that movie conspiracy theory with, with Mel Gibson. She's, like, trafficking and conspiracy theories, and he's got this, like, little, newspaper that he does from his crappy apartment, and he just and then he finally finds out
Donald Kendal:at the
Justin Haskins:it's that's the whole plot of the show. He finally finds out all these conspiracy theories. He's actually got one right.
Donald Kendal:Mel Gibson Mel Gibson in that movie is my spirit animal.
Jim Lakely:But
Justin Haskins:Yeah. I I believe it. So that so, I mean, that's kinda how this I've been talking about it for 3 years, and and I think a lot of people just sort of people who who usually publish the things I do, I mean, usually, they just they just didn't really get it or they didn't want it, and now it's here. And so, I'm gonna finish this off with just one paragraph from this law. Alright?
Justin Haskins:There's a hundred something pages, one little paragraph that talks about just one of the things that every company just keep in mind, all the big companies that are doing business in Europe, American companies too would have to do this, and they would have to impose this on many of the companies that they're doing business with all over the world, including in America, completely transforming our society. There's just one tiny little shred of what's in this law. It says this. Depending on the circumstances, companies need to consider additional standards. For instance, taking account of specific context for intersecting factors, think intersectionality, including among others, gender, age, race, ethnicity, class, cast, education, migration status, disability, as well as social and economic status as part of a gender and culturally responsive approach to due diligence.
Justin Haskins:That means government behavior. Companies should pay special attention to any particular adverse impacts, not adverse treatments, but impacts, effects on individuals who may be at a heightened risk due to marginalization or vulnerability or other circumstances, both individually or as members of certain groups or communities, including among other groups, indigenous peoples. This is the kind of stuff that's in this. It's going to transform every single part of how these businesses operate. And someday, if we don't tell people about this and they don't find out about it, we don't have politicians fighting against it, this you're just gonna wake up one day and everything is gonna be even crazier and woker than you than it is today.
Justin Haskins:It's gonna be a fun house mirror distortion of this country, and most people are gonna have no idea why, and it's gonna be because of something like this. This or this specifically. Transforming society culture through businesses and corporations and and all the rest and how this all we're all downstream of this law is how this is gonna work out. I do believe people will fight back against it. I do believe we can stop it.
Justin Haskins:I do think that once Republican politicians, as bad as they've been in a lot of ways, I think will fight back against this. I think if Donald Trump is president, he would push back against it, but none of those people right now or very few of them know about it. And we're working on changing that. We're fighting for that every single day. I had a special with Glenn Beck last night on television talking about it.
Justin Haskins:I did his radio show a couple times on this issue or one time on this issue. I know that member certain members of congress have now seen some of this information. I published an article for Fox News about this. We've got a policy paper that we're gonna send out to thousands of state lawmakers. We're putting the final touches on that.
Justin Haskins:So we're doing things. We're trying to fix it, but we're just one group of people. We need everybody fighting against us if we're gonna stop it or else America, we're completely screwed. There's just no other way around it. We're screwed if we don't stop this.
Justin Haskins:So, hopefully, everyone watching this shares it with somebody out there that they know. Just listen to this one episode of In the Tank, and you're gonna have your mind blown. That's the only way that we we end up beating this thing.
Donald Kendal:Absolutely. And and I I can't think of a better kind of rallying call to, you know, help support the work that we're doing here, whether it's Heartland in general or the show, in particular. Like I said, there's a new way of supporting the show because YouTube demonetized us for talking about issues basically like this. So we have to do a workaround for, for you all to support our show, which we have a new link. Heartland.org/in the tank.
Donald Kendal:So if you go to that, you can donate some assist specifically to our show. But, yep, like Justin said, we've got a lot of work to do on this issue. Surely, we're gonna be talking about this on episodes in the future, especially as we produce more tip sheets and, you know, have some solutions and all of that sort of stuff on this very, very important issue. But that's gonna do it for this week's in the tank. I wanna thank you all for joining us, and, join us every week for a new episode of in the tank podcast.
Donald Kendal:For those audio only listeners that are catching the show probably on a Friday or later, leave a review for us on Itunes. That would be greatly appreciated. And consider joining us live on Thursdays at noon CST where we are streaming this on YouTube and Rumble and x and Facebook or whatever. Join the conversation live. Throw your comments and questions in the chat, and we will show your comments on the screen, maybe we'll address your questions on the fly, and you could also help the show out by hitting that like button, sharing this content, subscribing if you haven't already, or just leaving a comment under the video.
Donald Kendal:All those things help break through those big tech algorithms and prevent content like this from being shown to more people. If you'd like, you could follow us on x at in the tank pod, or you can send us your comments, questions, or suggestions to the show by emailing us at in the tank podcast@gmail.com. Jim Lakeley, where can the fine people find you?
Jim Lakely:Jay Lakeley on Twitter x at heartlandinst on Twitter and x, and always visit heartland.org.
Donald Kendal:Fantastic. Justin t Haskins, same question to you, good sir.
Justin Haskins:Justin t Haskins on, x. Also, go to Glenn Beck's YouTube channel, or go to the Blaze TV. Be able to watch the special that we did last night on this topic. If you go to the YouTube channel, it's the show's gonna come out sometime later, today, and, he does a fantastic job breaking all this stuff down, so I really encourage people to to check that out.
Donald Kendal:Fantastic. And, Chris Telgo, what do you have to pitch today?
Chris Talgo:Well, I just hope everybody goes and reads Justin's Fox News article and shares it with friends and family members Because the only way that this is gonna be defeated is, by getting the word out.
Donald Kendal:Fantastic. Alright. Thank you to everyone watching, and we will talk to you next week. Bye bye.
Chris Talgo:He's a lion dog faced pony soldier.