2nd Amendment | Michael Patrick Leahy

2nd Vote Advisers Co-Founder and CEO Dan Grant Offers an Alternative to Corporate CEO’s Forced to Adopt Leftwing Idelogies

Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Grant of 2nd Vote Advisers to the studio to discuss their alternative for Fortune 500 corporations who want stay out of the politically correct ideology promoted by left-wing asset management firms.

Leahy: I’m just so excited about our guest today because you’re going to learn something about how to fix America right now. And one of the problems with America is embodied by a guy you’ve never heard of folks.

Listen to this guy’s name. He’s aptly named. His name is Larry Fink. F-I-N-K. And he’s very aptly named. He’s a very powerful guy, really powerful guy. He’s ahead of a group, the biggest money manager in the country, BlackRock. They manage, what, $9 trillion?

Grant: $9 trillion.

Leahy: $9 trillion. And he’s pushing all this leftist claptrap. There’s a claptrap that he’s pushing. And he wants in his mind, there are good sources of virtuous energy. And then there’s evil. And so in his mind, natural gas, oil, coal, that’s evil.

But solar wind, that’s virtuous. And he’s created all sorts of incentives for CEOs who just want to keep their jobs and get paid $10 million, $20 million a year to kind of be figureheads, moving along with the left.

There are all sorts of pressures with his regular messages to them about what he wants to see. This guy is running the policy of many Fortune 500 companies today, and it is, in my view, Dan Grant, a disgrace. What do you think?

Grant: I think, Larry, he’s a representative of the asset management industry as a whole. BlackRock is the largest. But if you look at all of the leading banks, all of the leading asset managers, investment managers, they’re following this philosophy. And if you went to the BlackRock website, you would find what they call their stewardship team. And that sounds great.

Leahy: Well, there’s a biblical concept, stewardship.

Grant: Sure. They adopted the term. And what they will brag about on the website is last quarter, the stewardship team from BlackRock visited 482 companies and their boards, their management teams, and said, hey, listen, guys, we’re owners were big owners of your company. And if you don’t start making acceptable progress towards hitting these ESG metrics that we have laid out,

Leahy: ESG. Environmental social governance. And some of these metrics are ridiculous, right? They basically, take bad leftist policies, they are the metrics.

Grant: So they’re the largest asset manager in the world. They go to these management teams and say, you need to start doing more to implement our definition of good. You need to start forcing that definition on your suppliers, your vendors, and ultimately, your customers. And if you don’t, we will start voting you out. And they are doing it.

Leahy: They’re voting them out. And basically, you got to accept their version of diversity, equity, and inclusion. You got to embrace Critical Race Theory in the workplace which is perhaps one of the most divisive things that are out there.

Now, people listening to us, you work for a large company, they’ve got diversity, equity, and inclusion. And if you go in, you’re forced to sit through the training. They’re telling you stuff that you know is wrong.

But what are you going to do? Are you going to say you’re violating my rights and lose your job? That’s what’s going on.

Grant: My company from a practical perspective, 2nd Vote Advisers, we’re looking at what they’re doing and we’re saying, what is the cost to these companies at the end of the day?

What is the cost of a diversity and inclusion program? I mean, it sounds great. But JP Morgan, for example, a couple of months ago announced a 30 billion dollar capital commitment to diversity and inclusion and closing the racial gap.

Leahy: (i.e. dividing people). That’s what those programs do.

Grant: You read the press release and you look at it and it’s like, okay, their funding, additional mortgages, small business loans, and that all sounds great. And the top 10 banks all have very similar programs, multi-billion dollar programs.

But nowhere in that press release is the actual cost. They’re not talking about the underwriting criteria for these types of loans and for these types of mortgages? A friend of mine was seriously being considered to be the CEO of Fannie Mae back in the Great Recession.

Leahy: Tell people what Fannie Mae is and why it matters.

Grant: It’s one of the government-sponsored entities that will essentially buy up mortgages.

Leahy: It’s the Federal National Mortgage Associations Administration. It’s a quasi-public organization.

Grant: Back in the Great Recession, both of the GSEs were about to fail. And the reason they were about to fail is they allocated 10 percent of their capital to subprime loans. But that 10 percent represented about well over 50 percent of at-risk.

Leahy: Why did they allocate those 10 percent of subprime loans?

Grant: Because they wanted to do something for the social good.

Leahy: Because it would be good.

Grant: It would be good.

Leahy: Virtue signaling.

Grant: So to bring it back to JP Morgan and this 30 billion and the top 10 banks, what they’re doing, what is the actual cost? Nobody knows. Third Bank just announced a $2.8 billion program, and they’re investing in a bank in Detroit, which doesn’t have the best background.

And yet they’re going to allocate a lot of capital to this bank in Detroit. And that bank in Detroit is going to be putting that money to work. Well, how successful is that going to be?

Leahy: I guess we’ll find out.

Grant: Right.

Leahy: But let me come back and say, okay, so these big money managers like Larry Fink. F-I-N-K. Big Larry Fink, that guy. They’re forcing companies to do all this politically correct stuff that’s costing a lot of money.

Let’s say you have some assets that are currently under management. What can 2nd Vote Advisers do to help out?

Grant: The first thing I would tell you is we are not going to do what BlackRock is doing. We are not going to be visiting companies and their boards and saying, hey, guys, we want you to implement our definition of good.

Leahy: Threatening them basically, you must do our version of lacking good or we’re going to whack you and we’re going to get rid of you.

Grant: That’s right. So what we’re doing is we are actually voting our shares with our beliefs. Companies should not be into social justice engineering. So we are telling CEOs to do that.

And I feel like we’re actually giving CEOs a reason to say no to Larry. Larry, right now, and all the big banks, all the asset managers, as I mentioned, are behind it.

Leahy: He’s kind of a tyrant when it comes to dealing with CEOs who are just quivering when his stewardship team walks in, they start to wonder, what can we do? What can we do? How can we not make them upset? How can I keep my job?

Grant: So what I hope to do is give these CEOs a reason to say no to Larry. I want them to say, Larry, listen, I hear what you want, but I got Dan Grant from 2nd Vote Advisers, and he wants us to do something completely different.

We’ve gone to our board, and we’ve decided to just stay out of the whole thing altogether and focus on our company and profits and let the individual decide where they want to put their philanthropy and charity.

Leahy: This Larry Fink guy at BlackRock manages 9 trillion dollars of money. Where does that money come from, by the way?

Grant: It comes from you and me.

Leahy: Private individuals.

Grant: Private individuals. If you’re in a pension plan if you’re a teacher if you’re a policeman if you’re an individual investor. These guys have hundreds upon hundreds of exchange-traded funds and mutual funds.

Leahy: So they’ve got 9 trillion under management. So 2nd Vote Advisers, what do you have under management?

Grant: Well, we started only a few months ago, and unfortunately, it takes a company like ours, a startup, to do what we’re doing. So I mentioned we started in 2000.

Leahy: You started with zero.

Grant: We started with zero. We now have two publicly traded exchange-traded funds.

Leahy: Tell us what an exchange-traded fund is.

Grant: It’s very much like a mutual fund. So you can go on, you can put the ticker symbol in. And one of our tickers is EGIS and it’s a Second Amendment fund.

Leahy: Which ticker do I go to?

Grant: If you are with a Morgan Stanley or any broker and you want to buy a stock, you put the ticker symbol in and you hit buy. So it is a liquid stock.

Leahy: Can I do it online myself?

Grant: Absolutely.

Leahy: Where would you go?

Grant: I have an E-Trade account.

Leahy: Put in EGIS I could do it right now if I wanted to buy. And what’s the fund do? Investing in gun companies?

Grant: Well, no. So what we’ve done is we have rated the S&P 1500. And we have different issues that Conservatives care about. One of the issues that Conservatives care about is the Second Amendment.

Listen to the third hour here:

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.

Tennessee Firearms Association’s John Harris Weighs in on Biden Gun Control EO and How Tennessee Will React

Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed John Harris of the Tennessee Firearms Association to the newsmakers line to weigh in on the new gun control executive action by Joe Biden and speculates whether or no the Tennessee General Assembly will take action.

Leahy: Yesterday, President Biden made a couple of announcements. Here’s a story at The Tennessee Star. Biden announces executive actions on gun control, says changes won’t impact the Second Amendment. Really? On the newsmaker line right now is Tennessee Firearms Association President John Harris. Good morning, John.

Harris: Good morning.

Leahy: Well, President Biden on Thursday announced executive orders he’s signed on gun control, including ones to address the issue of homemade untraceable firearms known as ghost guns and strengthen so-called red flag laws that allow police or family members to ask a court to order the temporary removal of guns from a person they say, presents a danger to themselves and others. Biden says this won’t impact American rights to own guns under the Second Amendment. What say you John Harris of the Tennessee Firearms Association?

Harris: Well, Joe Biden’s got a long-standing history of deception and lying, and this is just more of it.

Leahy: When I read the Second Amendment, it says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

Harris: Correct. It is abundantly clear there are no qualifiers on that prohibition and yet government officials, certainly at the federal level, and sadly, at the state level and commonly at the local government levels completely ignore that. They want to put a provision at the tail end of it that says, unless we find it to be politically expedient or what we define as reasonable.

Leahy: So these red flag laws that allow police or family members to ask a court to order the temporary removal of guns from a person they claim as a danger to themselves or others, I can see that being easily abused. What do you think?

Harris: It will be. That kind of law exists in some states right now. It doesn’t exist in Tennessee, although a Senate Republican in Tennessee last year tried to push it forward, and this year there are other bills like that pending. I think they’re all filed by Democrats this year. And the sad part is those bills are clearly gun control measures and get guns off the street measures.

Tennessee and other states generally have existing statutes that have been on the books for a long time that allows someone that has a mental health issue that poses a risk of injury to themselves or others, it’s called an emergency committal in Tennessee, to be judicially evaluated by doctors for purposes of seeing if there is an immediate need to get this person some diagnosis and treatment. And they can lock them up for up to two weeks in a mental health facility for diagnostic and determinations.

What these red flag laws do, however, is under the guise of safety they allow anybody without a medical opinion or diagnosis to go to a judge or magistrate to get an order not to get the person off the street and not to get the person evaluated and not to get the person some help, but to just have the police go in and seize their guns and take those items out of the house, disarming the individual and other household members.

Leahy: What is the probability that that such a red flag law would be used against lawful gun owners?

Harris: It has been. And there is a clear history based on congressional Senate testimony of numerous examples where that has been used against lawful gun owners. It’s been weaponized in domestic matters. It’s been used in petty disputes, and it happens all too frequently that many of those, in fact, because they’re done Ex parte, which means you don’t have a chance to challenge it on the front end, is often reversed by a court when they actually have a contested, evidentiary hearing.

Leahy: Now, where does this go forward? I saw that the attorney general of West Virginia, Patrick Morrisey, says, if you do this, I’m going to file a lawsuit against you. Do you suggest that our attorney general in Tennessee, Herb Slatery, that he follow the lead of Morrissey and file lawsuits against these of what I think are unconstitutional executive orders on gun control?

Harris: Absolutely. What I would actually suggest is that Tennessee get an attorney general that leads on issues like this instead of letting other attorney generals in other states be the leader. And then our guy having to be speculated about as to whether or not he would follow suit and join as opposed to lead the battle.

Leahy: Well, that’s a tall order to get a new attorney general. It is a long process to go through that. But do you see Attorney General Slatery filing the lawsuit or not?

Harris: Right now, I see, potentially because of prior experiences with him that he might join in someone else’s lawsuit. I don’t see him filing it on his own or leading with Tennessee as having the best or the strongest arguments. I see him piling as a me-too kind of participant.

Leahy: How does he go about making those decisions and what influence do the average people and state legislators have on him?

Harris: They have a lot of ability and capacity to put public pressure on him. But the state AG, operating as an attorney, exercises generally independent discretion on whether to pursue a particular lawsuit or not. And so although the General Assembly and the public can demand it, they can pass legislation enabling it.

The decision as to whether or not to weigh in and actually do it is the AG. And in fact, there have been instances in the past where the General Assembly specifically wanted the AG to weigh in on issues such as this. The AG failed to do it, and the General Assembly went out particularly, I think when Mark Green was still in the General Assembly and hired a private law firm, the Thomas Moore Center, to represent the state of Tennessee when its own AG wouldn’t.

Leahy: Do you see something like that being a possibility now or needed now on the gun control issues?

Harris: I do think on gun control issues you may see that as an alternative because we have not seen since Slatery has been in office that he’s been particularly supportive or defensive of Second Amendment rights in Tennessee.

Leahy: The Tennessee General Assembly is only going to be in session for another three weeks. Is there a time for such action to be taken?

Harris: They could pass a resolution very quickly to urge that action be taken. But frankly, they’ve known it’s been coming since last fall when the Biden-Harris administration became the president-elect, so to speak. And yet they’ve done nothing during this legislative session of any significance to prepare for the inevitable. So they don’t get a pass on this as if it suddenly struck them out of the blue.

Leahy: Do you plan on contacting members of the Tennessee General Assembly to pass such a resolution?

Harris: We actually wrote legislation and submitted it to a number of legislators back as early as December on this issue to improve Tennessee’s laws and to put a provision in Tennessee law that would have required the Attorney General to go forward with protected Tennessee rights. And the legislators that we submitted it to didn’t even file it as a bill.

Leahy: Why is that?

Harris: Not sure. I don’t know if they were getting pressured down by the leadership. If they were getting opposition from the governor. I know there are two bills pending now, and we’ve offered that legislation as amendments on those bills. And those two bill sponsors have indicated that they’re not even planning to put the amendment on the bill.

Leahy: Do you think any current members of the Tennessee General Assembly would be open to the idea of a resolution requesting that the Attorney General file suit against President Biden’s executive orders?

Harris: Oh, absolutely. I think there are legislators like Bruce Griffey that you mentioned a little bit ago that have the spine that would stand up and demand that we at least do resolutions and proclamations and other types of encouragement for that action. I think also, as Speaker Sexton has said, there’s a whole lot of Republicans in that General Assembly that don’t have the willingness to defend our Second Amendment rights and that’s why we took a partial step on the governor’s bill rather than a full step towards constitutional.

Leahy: Last question. Will you be presenting a draft resolution for, I don’t know, Representative Griffey or others to consider introducing in the next couple of weeks?

Harris: We may do that but we have not drafted one at this point.

Listen to the full second hour here:

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.