The central political and culture-war tactic of Washington Democrats, and of much of the American Left, is to use Big Business — particularly big finance — to punish political enemies and help the Left’s friends.
For example, Democrats are currently hoping they can use their sway with BlackRock and other investment firms to pressure companies into acceding to union demands.
Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Budget Committee will have a hearing today in which Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren will testify about “Wall Street greed.” But really, this is just the Democrats’ efforts to pressure investment giant BlackRock into becoming an activist shareholder in a coal company.
BlackRock is the largest shareholder in Warrior Met, an Alabama coal company whose workers, members of the United Mine Workers of America, are currently on strike. Warren and Sanders have written an open letter telling BlackRock it needs to make sure the UMW wins that dispute.
“Given BlackRock’s stake in the company and your position within BlackRock,” the senators wrote last month, “We are asking you to do the right thing.”
Recall how, after Jan. 6, Democratic lawmakers pushed Facebook and Twitter to drop Trump and pushed Apple and Google to throttle Parler. This is just another version of that.
Banks and other financial companies are an obvious pressure point for Democrats and liberals to push.
New York Times liberal writer Andrew Ross Sorkin has called on banks to basically ban sales of politically unpopular guns by refusing to process payments for such guns.
Why would banks, Amazon, Facebook, and BlackRock go along with these demands? Well, canceling conservatives or giving victories to Democratic-donor labor unions gives you access to the party in power. Maybe it even keeps the regulators off your back for a couple of months.
Using political pressure on banks to accomplish what government cannot is exactly the proposal of Federal Reserve nominee Jamie Bloom Raskin.
Raskin is supported by banks but opposed by oil and natural gas companies because she has explicitly argued that banks should cut off fossil fuel companies. Now she’s in line to be a top bank regulator, and you can be certain (despite her denials) that she will pressure the banks to divest from and cut off at least from fossil fuel companies, but probably also other enemies of the Left and the Democratic Party.
Right now, consider the legacy media’s efforts to intimidate anyone who donated to support the Canadian truckers protesting pointless vaccine mandates. Plus, consider Canada’s use of the banking system to freeze out critics of its pointless mandates.
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren play bad cop. Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer explain to the banks, or to BlackRock, how a deal would leave everyone better off — except for the Democrats’ enemies, that is.
