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.

Starbucks Closing Stores on May 29 for ‘Anti-Bias’ Indoctrination

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

The term “corporate diversity” these days refers far less to a diversity of opinion than to a diversity of demography in which people submit to rigid codes of speech and behavior if they want to stay employed.

Of the many companies enforcing this regime, Starbucks has been especially zealous. On April 18, 2018, Starbucks Executive Chairman Howard Schultz announced that sometime in May he would close about 8,000 of its coffee shops for an afternoon to train employees on how to recognize and avoid “unconscious bias.” His statement was in response to the highly-publicized arrest of two black males at a Philadelphia store.

For the last few decades, and with increasing speed, major corporations in this country are incorporating racial, ethnic and gender radicalism into their business practices. Whether out of fear or conviction, officials now reflexively succumb to Leftist campaigns that target them for injustices against minority groups.

Click … Read More ➡ “Starbucks Closing Stores on May 29 for ‘Anti-Bias’ Indoctrination”

New NFL Policy on ‘Kneel-Down’ Protests Is Capitulation to Radicals

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

On the surface, it looks like a compromise. Underneath, it is a capitulation. Yesterday the National Football League and its 32 team owners announced the establishment of a new policy on the issue of player ‘kneel-downs’ during the playing of the national anthem to express solidarity with Black Lives Matter and other radical groups who see America as the land of racial injustice. While the policy nominally bars players from kneeling down on the sidelines and gives owners the latitude to levy fines against violators, it also allows players to protest by remaining in their locker rooms. This is not a resolution. Indeed, it is a guarantee of further political melodrama.

Last November 29, as National Legal and Policy Center discussed at length days later, the National Football League and the NFL Players Association reached an agreement over this issue to ward off controversy. The league would provide $89 million … Read More ➡ “New NFL Policy on ‘Kneel-Down’ Protests Is Capitulation to Radicals”

Apple CEO Tim Cook Whitewashes His Hypocrisy at Duke

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Tim Cook at Duke University/IMAGE: YouTube

Apple CEO Tim Cook continued his hypocritical moralizing for progressive causes over the weekend, in a commencement address before (unsurprisingly) a friendly audience at Duke University.

In what was widely perceived as a(nother) swipe at Facebook, and its customer data security problems with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Cook boasted that (because of a standard he said co-founder Steve Jobs established) Apple infallibly protects its customers’ privacy, unlike other companies who collect their data in order to monetize it.

“We reject the excuse that getting the most out of technology means trading away your right to privacy,” he said. “So we choose a different path: Collecting as little of your data as possible. Being thoughtful and respectful when it’s in our care. Because we know it belongs to you.

“In every way, at every turn, the question we ask ourselves is not ‘what can … Read More ➡ “Apple CEO Tim Cook Whitewashes His Hypocrisy at Duke”

Labor Department Seeks to Prevent Managers From Playing Politics With Pension Funds

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

By law, managers of employer-sponsored pension plans must act in the best interests of investors. Unfortunately, many such fiduciaries are applying an unusually broad definition. That’s why the U.S. Department of Labor has clarified the issue. On April 23, the DOL released a guidance statement intended to discourage benefit managers from applying the principle known as Environmental, Social and Governance to investment decisions. Such a practice might seem worthy, noted the department, but it may place safety and soundness in harm’s way. The action is especially a rebuke to those who see issues advocacy as a top business priority.

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), alternately known as Corporate Social Responsibility, is a philosophy holding that a corporation is not only a business enterprise, but also a steward of the public good. A company, in this view, can and should be at once profitable and morally conscious. A company must … Read More ➡ “Labor Department Seeks to Prevent Managers From Playing Politics With Pension Funds”

Facebook Remains a Threat to Free Speech

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

During his two days on Capitol Hill, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly denied that the company censors information and opinion with which it disagrees, despite extensive evidence to the contrary.

Facebook censorship is real. The National Legal and Policy Center has regularly had our Facebook postings suppressed when they pertain to Black Lives Matter, which we have regularly criticized.

It just so happens that Zuckerberg has a different view of Black Lives Matter. Zuckerberg purports to value free expression, famously allowing the “signature wall” at Facebook headquarters. But when in 2016 “Black Lives Matter” graffiti was met with “All Lives Matter,” Zuckerberg just could not have it. He issued a memo calling such sentiments “unacceptable” and “malicious” and assured everyone that the company was “investigating the current incidents.”

Click here to read the rest in the Daily Caller.

 … Read More ➡ “Facebook Remains a Threat to Free Speech”

Apple Falsely Claims it Uses ‘100-Percent Renewable’ Energy

Posted on by Paul Chesser

Media consistently pour the love on the progressive moralizers at Apple (except for occasional slams about Chinese labor conditions), and nowhere are they more willing to amplify phony claims about the company’s “goodwill” achievements than when it comes to the environment.

All corporate mouthpieces need to do in Cupertino is post some propaganda on their press release page about “renewables” and the tech bloggers and business media drool. Lazy-minded (and just plain lazy) liberal journalists eagerly adopt, repurpose and regurgitate even the most outrageous and debunk-able of claims, and dis-serve their reading public by delivering the misinformation.

Witness Monday’s announcement that “Apple (is) now globally powered by 100 percent renewable energy.” Here’s how some of the uncritical beat writers (representative of most of those who wrote about it) disseminated the release:

… Read More ➡ “Apple Falsely Claims it Uses ‘100-Percent Renewable’ Energy”

Amnesty International Joins Criticism of Apple CEO Tim Cook on China

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Tim Cook

Apple CEO Tim Cook has received accolades for free speech advocacy by respected institutions such as the Newseum, but the company is being called on the carpet for consigning its data storage services – especially crucial encrypted access keys – to a bunch of communists.

Amnesty International announced Thursday it would initiate a social media campaign against Apple, because the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant caved to the Chinese government and agreed to allow its customers’ data to be housed on servers there.

The effort coincides with a visit by Cook to the China Development Forum, where he is co-chairing an event sponsored by the government in which business leaders meet with public officials in an effort to improve relations.

It also follows only a month after Reuters reported that Apple agreed to store encrypted keys used to access customers’ (or, users’) data storage accounts (such as iCloud).

According … Read More ➡ “Amnesty International Joins Criticism of Apple CEO Tim Cook on China”

Corporations Paying for Employee Protest: Does the Tail Wag the Dog?

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

There’s nothing unusual about a corporation offering employees paid leave for vacations, illness or personal emergencies. That’s a fact of the modern workplace. But lately employers have begun to provide a far less justifiable benefit: paid leave for social justice activism. Very often, employees themselves, backed by social media mobs, demand that management take stands on gun control, global warming, immigration and other major issues. And these shakedowns can result in the termination of less than compliant executives. It’s another example of why business should not be a vehicle for political advocacy.

The Left always has been resourceful in building cadres. And the workplace has become the new frontier. Not that many companies aren’t already on board with this. At Luxe, a San Francisco-based valet parking smart phone app, founder and CEO Curtis Lee, angered over President Trump’s January 2017 executive order temporarily barring entry into the U.S. … Read More ➡ “Corporations Paying for Employee Protest: Does the Tail Wag the Dog?”

Corporate Cowards Abandon NRA in Wake of Parkland Shooting

Posted on by Paul Chesser

The horrific shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. – other than the obvious evil present in killer Nikolas Cruz – have been the result of a massive breakdown of government institutions – from deputies who didn’t enter the school, to the many warnings about Cruz that were ignored by authorities, to the failure of federal, state and local lawmakers to fortify their schools with armed security to protect students and faculty after too many incidents already.

Nonetheless the pressure groups of the Left and the legacy media, in the immediate days following the incident, trained their sights on the National Rifle Association, its millions of members, its finances, its influence, and its corporate partners.

Never ones to let a good crisis go to waste, countless organizations and media enterprises made it their mission to outline how much NRA money supported various Congress members. … Read More ➡ “Corporate Cowards Abandon NRA in Wake of Parkland Shooting”

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Calls Upon Business to Save the World

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

With about $6 trillion of assets under management, BlackRock Inc. carries a lot of weight in the business world. And Laurence Fink, CEO and chairman of the New York-based investment firm, wants everyone to know that. In a letter dated January 12, Fink urged dozens of CEOs of publicly-traded companies to expand their horizons beyond the confines of profit. “Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose,” he wrote. “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.” Though such words sound reasonable, they epitomize a common error about the institutional role of the corporation.

For decades, corporations, prodded by government, nonprofit activists and their own shareholders, have been retooling themselves as social problem solvers. Under the doctrine of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), companies are behaving as policy-oriented philanthropies. … Read More ➡ “BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Calls Upon Business to Save the World”