Apple held its annual stockholders meeting last week, and CFACT (which holds shares in Apple) was in attendance to ensure that the company isn’t putting the radical green agenda ahead of the interests of its shareholders.
This was the company’s first stockholder meeting following the cancellation of their long-awaited mega-project to develop their own EV — the “Titan”. It should be of little surprise that the program was scrapped following a string of recent setbacks in the EV market. Nonetheless, cutting it apparently made company execs feel vulnerable and in need of forgiveness from Gaia. Thus, Apple opened up shareholders meeting with praise of Al Gore’s “years of extraordinary service on Apple’s board.” They went on to say, “Al [Gore] has been a critical voice on protecting the environment and protecting user privacy.” This type of romanticism of a man proven in British court to have lied in his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” is exactly why it is of utmost importance for CFACT to be there as a fly in the ointment.
During this particular meeting, numerous proposals and questions from stockholders were presented. CFACT supported two of the proposals dealing with viewpoint discrimination. The most important one was submitted by its ally, the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR). The NCPPR proposal asked that stockholders vote for the creation of a public report covering the potential risks of the company harboring viewpoint discrimination against its workers.
In a lengthy response, the board rejected the idea that Apple takes part in any partisan attacks against any viewpoints. Unfortunately for Apple, their actions speak louder than their words. Numerous examples, including the company removing conservative social media app Parlor from its Apple Store, demonstrate that they are not above the fray. Consequently, the board recommended that shareholders vote against the adoption of the NCPPR proposal, and it failed.
CFACT additionally supported a proposal from the American Family Association dealing with censorship of conservative apps which would require a report disclosing litigation over alleged discrimination. Not surprisingly, the board also recommended voters oppose this proposal and it went down.
On the plus side, CFACT also submitted a question that the board did deem important enough to address. Our question had to do with the environmental and humanitarian harm caused by cobalt extraction. The board member tasked with answering our question apparently didn’t have an adequate answer for the humanitarian issues we raised, so he skipped it. This is not surprising. If Apple did address our question, they would have had to answer for the uncomfortable fact that 40% of cobalt the company likely uses in its operations comes from places like the Congo (the world’s leading supplier) that employs child labor, and is refined in China which relies on Uyghur slave labor.
So the Apple exec decided to paraphrase our question, leaving out the annoying humanitarian portion, and instead only focused on addressing the environmental concerns we raised. To them, he said that Apple intends to move toward more “sustainable” cobalt use. Their plans for that include encouraging vendors to use “renewable” energy and to recycle the metal for use in future products. Blah, blah, blah. The bottom line is these are just fuzzy words to put happy faces on cobalt operations that wreak havoc on the environment, violate human rights, and empower America’s adversaries.
CFACT plans to continue its monitoring and participation in corporate shareholder meetings to offset efforts by Green activists to push corporate America ever more to the Left.