West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore lead the way earlier this year in removing Wall Street financial firms from holding state funds due to ‘Environmental, Social and Governance’ or ‘ESG’ climate change ideology driving investment decisions.
West Virginia had been the tip of the spear since early 2021 {link} removing Blackrock in January of 2022, and even removed banking contracts from multiple investment firms during the battle and asked other states to join in the effort {link}.
Today, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis announced the DeSantis administration would be following the lead from West Virginia.
[FLORIDA] – […] State Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis announced Thursday that Florida will immediately freeze about $1.43 billion in long-term securities and about $600 million in short-term overnight investments managed by BlackRock because of the firm’s use of “Environmental, Social, and Governance” standards — known as ESG.
Patronis in a prepared statement said he doesn’t “trust BlackRock’s ability to deliver” and “BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is on a campaign to change the world.”
“Whether stakeholder capitalism, or ESG standards, are being pushed by BlackRock for ideological reasons, or to develop social credit ratings, the effect is to avoid dealing with the messiness of democracy,” Patronis said.
Book publishing, as done by politicians in both parties, is the way money is laundered to candidates and various campaign finance rules are subverted. Nikki Haley, Kristi Noem, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo and Tim Scott have all released books in the past two months in advance of their 2024 presidential bids.



