Corporations are beholden to other forces beyond the consumer: let me introduce you to the CEI and their scoring system. CEI stands for Corporate Equality Index. They receive their money from the Open Society Foundation. They’re very activist driven and in 2002, they started an equality index to score how well corporations are doing in favor of gay or LGBQT rights.
This score is very useful because it’s part of a company’s overall ESG score. Corporations are basically forced to be socially responsible. The score, from 1-100, determines how friendly corporations are to the Deep State ESG agenda. And they demand that these companies bend over backwards to have a perfect 100.
If you don’t have a 100 CEI score, they screw you. They send agents from the Human Rights Campaign to your corporation to tell you what you have to do and you must meet their demands. If you say no, because you sense this activism will damage your relationship with your consumer base, you’re really screwed. It’s a form of racketeering. They even make your corporation lobby for certain kinds of legislation, or they’ll have ad campaigns they want you to undertake. They’ve even pushed the three major airlines to give free airline tickets to certain activists to fly to pride events.
Every year, they come up with new demands.
If you decide not to meet their demands, a number of things will happen. Your score will go down, and Larry Fink will delist you from Index Funds. It’s a huge reservoir of money that goes into your stock value. They’ll remove your board members. It’s also tied into bonuses for CEO’s.
It’s so far down the road. The consumer doesn’t matter anymore. The regular Joe doesn’t matter anymore. The stakes are high. Our only hope is exposure of these crooked people.
This is pretty trivial, but the degree of triviality may indicate something. Husband and I went on a rare night out (rare because two entrees, two drinks and one dessert ended up coming to $110 at a very mid-market local non-chain place).
I wanted a cocktail, but was open to trying something new. The featured cocktails on the menu all listed "Sprite" as an ingredient. I demurred and went with a draft cider (probably also supplied by some kind of cousin-of-"Sprite" company).
Who, what, when, where, why did "Sprite" ever become a main ingredient in cocktails. THIS IS NOT ORGANIC. I'm 63 and have never seen this before.
I don't know to what extent the owners are complicit in touting this, but I made a point to say, "I'm really not interested in stuff with Sprite in it".
Anyone selling real drinks could employ seltzer, lime/lemon, simple syrup (with cane sugar, not HFCS) without resorting to "Sprite". "Sprite" brings nothing to the table.