Corporate Integrity Project

NLPC seeks to promote integrity in corporate governance, including honesty and fair play in relationships with shareholders, employees, business partners and customers. In doing so, NLPC places special emphasis on:

* Asserting that the social responsibility of the corporation is to defend and advance the interests of the people who own the company, the shareholders. True responsibility is fidelity to one’s own mission, not someone else’s, or someone else’s political agenda.

* Exposing the seeking of influence on public officials by corporations, which is the inevitable result of high levels of government spending and intervention in the marketplace.

* Combating practices that undermine the free enterprise system, including philanthropic giving to groups hostile to a free economy.

New Details of Google Exec’s Behavior Put Spotlight on Company’s Policies

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Andy Rubin/IMAGE: YouTube

Revelations last week from a former Google executive’s legal dispute with his estranged wife underscore an even greater need for the search giant to adopt measures outlined in a recent shareholder proposal presented by the National Legal and Policy Center.

The new developments came from the release of court filings by a California state judge in a clash between Andy Rubin, creator of Google’s popular Android operating system, and his wife Rie. The New York Times had reported in a widely distributed October story that the Silicon Valley company gave Rubin a celebratory send-off upon his departure in 2014, which cloaked the fact that he was told to resign over coercive sexual misconduct and an affair with a subordinate. Rather than quietly send their prized employee away, he was instead granted a golden parachute of $90 million – paid out in increments of approximate $2 million per … Read More ➡

Leftist Wayfair Employees Rant Against Sale of Beds for Illegal Immigrant Children

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Wayfair employees walk through the streets of Boston in protest./IMAGE: YouTube

Leftist mobs employed by the likes of Big Tech companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft have attempted – often successfully – to pressure their bosses to discontinue contracts with the federal government over policies they disagree with.

Examples of agencies that engage in such “odious” policies include the Department of Defense (“making war”) and Customs and Borders Protection (“putting migrant children in ‘cages’”).

The most recent example of such pressure tactics is against the online furniture retailer Wayfair, which last week was subject to an employee walk-out in Boston to protest the company’s contract to provide beds for Baptist Child and Family Services (BCFS), a nonprofit organization that operates detention centers for illegally-present migrant children in Texas. The workers objected to the $200,000 sale over the characterization of the facilities as “concentration camps” by Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The … Read More ➡

Exposed: Google’s Plan to Stop Trump in 2020

Posted on by Paul Chesser

On the heels of an annual meeting in which it was called to account by two investor organizations – including National Legal and Policy Center – for its antagonism against conservatives and libertarians, Google has been further exposed, for efforts to prevent President Donald Trump’s reelection and to maintain all the power it wields in order to accomplish it.

Project Veritas, the undercover investigative nonprofit led by James O’Keefe, learned of the effort from an unidentified Google insider who divulged the leftist company’s intentions for the 2020 campaign. In addition to an extensive interview with the whistleblower, Veritas obtained lengthy and detailed footage of top executive Jen Gennai, the tech giant’s Head of Responsible Innovation, who unknowingly explained Google’s strategy for the next election cycle.

As Veritas reported, Gennai said Google’s aim is to avoid a repeat of the election results of 2 ½ years ago.

“We all got … Read More ➡

Democratic Candidates Seek to Weaponize SEC Over Climate Change

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Elizabeth Warren/PHOTO: Gage Skidmore via Creative Commons

The 2020 presidential primary campaign has most of the Democrat candidates competing for who can impose the most requirements upon corporations to disclose the threats their assets, operations and profits face from climate change (formerly known as “global warming”).

Except the risks – at least with specificity – aren’t defined.

What is a “threat” from climate change? An extensive list of societal ills have been blamed on global warming, so many that it can be argued that everythingbad is caused by it. Of course, that’s the brilliant intention of the alarmists – create an all-encompassing source of destruction that cannot be averted without their prescriptions for massive government intervention, wealth redistribution, and the affliction of anyone who is comfortable.

While all corporations are in the environmental left’s crosshairs, the major targets are the fossil fuel companies. If they can get CEOs … Read More ➡

Flaherty Rips Alphabet/Google at Annual Meeting for Caving to ‘Left-Wing Mob’

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

Today, I presented our shareholder proposal on combatting sexual harassment at the annual meeting of Alphabet in Sunnyvale, California. The resolution was opposed by the company. The text of my remarks are below this video of my presentation:

I can’t figure out why the company opposes this proposal on sexual harassment after pledging to do all it can about sexual harassment.

Well, maybe it’s because there is not an ounce of sincerity in any of the reasons Alphabet cites. The real reason is that this company, and most of the rest of corporate America, is not governed by what is in the interests of shareholders or society as a whole

Instead, it’s is governed by what the Left-wing mob demands. Alphabet will only support initiatives that advance an agenda.

In my supporting statement, I argued that more political and ideological diversity would create a more respectful workplace. I guess that … Read More ➡

Shareholder Proposal on Sexual Harassment to be Considered at Alphabet (Google) Annual Meeting

Posted on by NLPC Staff

On Wednesday, June 19, a shareholder proposal sponsored by the National Legal and Policy Center will be presented by NLPC Chairman Peter Flaherty at the Alphabet (Google) annual meeting in Sunnyvale, California. Here is the text of the resolution and supporting statement:

WHEREAS, Company executives have aggressively allied themselves with a variety of progressive social and political causes at the same time sexual harassment is alleged to be a serious problem within the Company by many of the Company’s own employees.

This hypocrisy threatens the Company’s reputation. The fate of The Weinstein Company LLC, which has declared bankruptcy, underscores this risk.

Several public companies have lost billions in market capitalization shortly after executives have been accused of sexual misconduct, prompting lawsuits by shareholders.

Recent events have placed the Company’s policies and practices under scrutiny. In December 2017, then-Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors Eric Schmidt abruptly and unexpectedly stepped … Read More ➡

Are Big Tech Executives Abetting Doxxing?

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

One of the more noxious aspects of anti-Trump radicalism is the growing practice of obtaining private information on public figures for the purpose of mobilizing large-scale harassment campaigns against them. The practice is known as “doxxing.” It’s highly illegal. Yet it thrives largely because of tacit encouragement from social media sites. That raises a couple of questions: Are social media companies willfully enabling such behavior? And if not, are they at least taking steps to discourage it? So far, their action has been underwhelming.

Doxxers tend to be a self-righteous lot, possessed of moral indignation against supposed perpetrators of injustice. They also are prone to viewing themselves as above the law. Case in point: Jackson Cosko, age 27, a former Senate staffer arrested last October for posting home addresses, phone numbers and other personal information about five senators, including Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, whom he claimed … Read More ➡

Moralizing CEOs Exert Pressure Over Guns and Abortion Laws

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Marc Benioff

The trend for corporations to use their leverage to exert influence on divisive public policies escalated last week, with the potential of driving off a significant segment of their customer and investor base, in the name of self-styled “corporate social responsibility.”

In the higher-profile examples, tech-entertainment studios Disney, Netflix, WarnerMedia and a few others threatened to remove productions from the state of Georgia, because of a recently-passed pro-life law that prevents the abortion of any unborn child in which a heartbeat has been detected.

In another example, business software giant Salesforce announced it would not allow businesses that use its product to sell certain types of guns.

So now corporate social responsibility has come down decisively in favor of the view that a beating heart is not evidence of the presence of life, that would be worthy of preservation. And it also means that the ability for mature, … Read More ➡

Corporate America Gets Behind Deceptively Named ‘Equality Act’

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Rep. Vicki Hartzler

Much of corporate America is once again banding together to attack the social construct of the nation and many of its liberties, all in the name of conferring special rights and privileges upon individuals who don’t accept or acknowledge the gender they were born with.

The occasion this time was to get behind the “Equality Act,” which the Democrat-controlled U.S. House recently passed. The misnamed legislation purports to enact law that prohibits “anti-Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer (LGBTQ) discrimination,” but in practice would put the kibosh on almost all other rights and freedoms Americans possess –including speech, association, privacy, and property rights. Most of what the law would do is bastardize the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by adding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” discrimination protections.

The “Equality Act” would produce draconian outcomes, including (list compiled by staff of Rep. Vicki … Read More ➡

Facebook Criticized for Lack of Ideological Diversity at Annual Meeting

Posted on by NLPC Staff
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Here are remarks of NLPC Chairman Peter Flaherty at the Facebook annual meeting today in Menlo Park, California in support of NLPC shareholder proposal on workplace diversity:

In response to this proposal promoting ideological diversity, the Company claims that “diversity of ideas is core to our business,” but then goes on cite initiatives that make the company less diverse, not more.

Like the fact that the company publishes data on the ethnicity and gender of the its workforce. Is it not racist and sexist to attribute certain thoughts and ideas to individuals based on their gender or race? Do all African-Americans think alike? How about all women?

Facebook huffs that “we do not collect data on the political ideology of our employees,” as if this would be somehow intrusive.

I’d suggest that it is a lot less intrusive than quizzing employees on the genetic makeup of … Read More ➡