Strive for Excellence

This story makes me exceedingly happy.

Today, Strive Asset Management (“Strive”) launches with the mission of restoring the voices of everyday citizens in the American economy by leading companies to focus on excellence over politics. Strive is led by co-founder and Executive Chairman Vivek Ramaswamy and has raised over $20 million from some of America’s most prominent venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Strive aims to solve a fiduciary problem created by the three largest U.S. asset managers — BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street — which control over $20 trillion in assets, exceeding the total U.S. gross domestic product. These “Big 3” firms bear a fiduciary duty to advance the best interests of their clients. Yet in the name of “stakeholder capitalism,” they use their clients’ funds to exercise decisive influence over nearly every U.S. public company to advance political ideologies that many of their clients disagree with. They engage in coordinated efforts to enact a uniform social agenda across corporate America resulting in higher gas prices and other consumer harms, which Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich recently called “the biggest antitrust violation in history.”

The fact that it is happening in my home state of Ohio is simply an added bonus. I will be transferring my Vanguard accounts to Strive Asset Management as soon as possible.

Oh my god, gonads!

These people are so fucked up.

P. P. is in deep Doo Doo

"Round it goes until the money's all gone" as the song goes. And it looks like the sugar daddies are starting to leave Planned Parenthood. Excerpt:

The news organization Daily Signal contacted several companies on the list asking about their purported donations to Planned Parenthood in light of videos revealing the organization’s harvesting of fetal organs. Representatives from Xerox, Ford, and Coca-Cola deserted the abortion giant, saying they were “incorrectly listed as donors… They said their companies do not contribute to Planned Parenthood and do not match employee gifts to the organization. All three said they have contacted or will contact Planned Parenthood to be removed from its website.”

 Maybe I'll call Microsoft later to see if they're like Coke in more ways than one.

Tea Party Pope?

I report, you decide. This is an excerpt from a recent Fortune article about Pope Francis.

The pope’s strategy for addressing both spending and pension issues is to gradually shrink the Vatican workforce through attrition and raise more money to maintain the benefits. In February of 2014 he imposed a hiring freeze and also stopped formerly generous overtime payments. The plan is to move existing employees from overstaffed congregations to growth areas, such as financial management, without replacing those who depart.

You have to read through a lot of yadda-yadda to get to this which, to me, is the meat. Workforce reduction is the only way to meaningfully reform a budget. If you think in terms of centuries like the Catholic Church does, attrition is the best way to do it. Cutting overtime is a great idea to since it saves money right away AND can make people quit who need their cushy lifestyle. They should grub for it in the "non-Church" sector.

This is what I wish would happen in our government at all levels. Due to automation, we should need less employees than we used to in places like the IRS and the welfare/unemployment offices. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Takeaway quote from the Pope on money:

Pope Francis has a complex but pragmatic view of money. “Money is useful to carry out many things, for works to support humanity,” he has said. “But when your heart is attached to it, it destroys you.”

Classic virtue of detachment, put simply. Not sure what is "complex" about that.