The War on ‘Woke Capital’ Is Backfiring - The Atlantic - "One of the stranger political crusades of the past few years has been the Republican war on so-called woke capital, which has led GOP politicians across the country to adopt a kind of anti-corporate, pro-regulatory rhetoric that one normally associates with the left wing of the Democratic Party. And among the GOP’s favorite targets in this war has been ESG investing—investment funds that take “environmental, social, and governance” considerations into account."
I like how requiring pension funds to choose investments based on their returns instead of ideology is anti-capitalism, but letting a left wing agenda dictate investment priorities is not
Corporate giants such as Meta, Amazon and Google lost 3,000 ESG staffers in just ONE MONTH as backlash over 'woke capitalism' and equity hires intensifies - "Meta, Amazon, Google, and other US firms are shedding staff with environmental, social and governance roles (ESG), research shows, in the latest sign of the backlash against what critics deride as 'woke capitalism.' More people left ESG jobs than started them for much of 2023, marking the reversal of a once-mushrooming sector, according to Live Data Technologies, which tracks the employment market... This has spawned a fractious debate about whether efforts to make society fairer and cut carbon emissions are in the strategic interest of investors, by mitigating the risks of climate chaos and social disorder. Companies now face a pushback from investors, who have cashed out billions from ESG funds in favor of higher returns elsewhere... ESG funds saw their worst year on record in 2023, with investors pulling $13 billion from US funds, a recent report from the financial services firm Morningstar says... According to Morningstar, investors exited ESG amid fears of poor returns, a hidden leftist agenda, and 'greenwashing,' or making a firm appear more environmentally friendly than it really is. Investors walked away from ESG funds chiefly over lackluster returns. Their performance improved from 2022's lows, but they still lagged behind their traditional peers. The median sustainable large-blend equity fund gained 20.8 percent in 2023. That's lower than the 23.9 percent gains made by all types of funds overall... The weak period for ESG funds has been notable given the massive growth they've posted in recent years. ESG investing boomed in the pandemic, when lockdowns caused energy prices to fall and buoyed portfolios that shunned fossil fuels. Those same strategies have floundered as lockdowns ended and economic activity resumed."
Even if you accept that the left wing agenda reduces the risks of climate chaos and social disorder (quite the reverse for the latter), investing based on ESG is not going to do anything about it, since most of the world isn't jumping on the bandwagon
The Davos Consensus: Donald Trump Will Win Re-Election - The New York Times - "The money flowing out of E.S.G. funds has gone from a trickle to a torrent as investors sour on a sector hit by greenwashing concerns, red-state boycotts and boardroom debates. The investing strategy has become increasingly politicized after being used by companies to address environmental, social, and governance issues among their employees, customers and other stakeholders. In a sign of the times, the phrase has been scrubbed from the World Economic Forum’s official program in Davos, after being on the agenda in previous years. Investors pulled $5 billion out of E.S.G.-focused “sustainable” investment funds last quarter, according to a new report by Morningstar. The withdrawals occurred despite a wider market rally at the end of 2023."
Wickes and the madness of woke capitalism - "While the UK government is finally starting to take notice of the disastrous impact of gender ideology on wider society, increasing numbers of corporations appear to be doubling down on the trans lobby’s agenda. One of these firms is Wickes, the home-improvement retailer, which has made headlines by wading into the trans debate and insulting its own customers in the process... In 2022, Wickes launched a ‘No LGB without the T’ campaign – an obvious pushback against those gay, lesbian and bisexual people who are concerned that gender ideology is eroding gay rights and even the very notion of same-sex attraction. The campaign culminated in a Wickes float at the Brighton Pride festival last summer. Wickes faced a significant backlash for this, with customers saying it was entirely inappropriate. During the Pink News panel, Longden was asked about the outcry. He responded by casting gender-critical activists as ‘bigots’, in contrast to the majority of the British population, who he rather generously described as ‘just slightly ignorant’. Sticking the boot in further, he suggested that gender-critical people are ‘not welcome in our stores’. Given the fact that the vast majority of Brits reject gender ideology, it seems he would happily put Wickes out of business. I wonder how most of Wickes’ customers would feel, knowing its senior management holds them in such contempt? The answer to that question has already become abundantly clear. I published a blog post about the event and a link to the video of it. Since then, Wickes has come under intense fire on social media. #BoycottWickes began to trend. Within 24 hours, Wickes’ share price had dropped by over four per cent. Even Elon Musk got involved, commenting on one of my tweets. I can’t imagine he’d heard of Wickes before.The public’s fury is plain to see. Wickes’ most recent tweet – a poll about bath styles, completely unconnected to the controversy – has just 72 likes but over 3,000 comments, most of them raging against the retailer for its discriminatory stance... Wickes has stayed quiet about the controversy in public. But it has circulated an internal email to staff, referring to Longden as a ‘passionate supporter and advocate for the LGBTQ+ community’ and claiming his ‘comments were taken out of context’. This last point is particularly ironic, given that the YouTube video of the event has since been taken down. So now no one is able to watch it and appreciate the full ‘context’ of his remarks... During the event, a lot of vitriol was aimed at opponents of gender ideology. In the keynote speech, Rico Jacob Chace, a trustee of the LGBT+ Consortium, said, ‘I personally hold the press and government responsible for the murder of trans people in the UK’. In a session on ‘Allyship for Managers’, a panellist ridiculed women who would rather not share toilets with biological males, even putting on an over-the-top, high-pitched voice and exclaiming, mockingly: ‘I don’t want to use the loo next to Colin.’ While Wickes’ higher-ups might think gender-critical views are beyond the pale, some truly questionable things were said at this conference. In a session entitled ‘Future of the Workplace – Preparing for Gen Z’, one panellist said working with ‘straight, white men from Essex’ was ‘really embarrassing’ and ‘cringe’. In the following session, ‘Transition and Support Services’, a panellist called for a system in which ‘trans children’ would be able to go to a clinic and receive cross-sex hormones the very same day. He also recommended that these children and their families get in touch with Mermaids, a charity that is being investigated by the Charity Commission over safeguarding concerns."
As corporate DEI comes under legal attack, companies quietly alter their programs - "Diversity and inclusion experts say the legal backlash is already having a chilling effect over corporate efforts to address workplace inequality at a time when investment and interest in such initiatives have slowed following the post-Floyd surge. Job openings for diversity officers and similar positions have declined in recent months. The combined share of venture capital funding for businesses owned by Black and Latina women has dipped back to less than 1% after briefly surpassing that threshold — at 1.05% — in 2021 following a jump in 2020, according to the nonprofit advocacy group digitalundivided. The case against the Fearless Fund, which provides early-stage funding to businesses led by women of color, exemplifies the unpredictable legal landscape. In late September, a federal judge in Atlanta refused to block a Fearless Fund grant contest for Black women business owners, saying they are donations protected by the First Amendment and the lawsuit was likely to fail. But days later, a three-judge federal appeals panel suspended the contest, calling it “racially exclusionary” and saying the suit was likely to succeed... two prominent law firms that had faced lawsuits by Blum’s group. The firms, Morrison Foerster and Perkins Coie, opened their diversity fellowship programs to all applicants of all races in October, changes the companies said were in the works before Blum’s lawsuits, which he subsequently dropped. In February, Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer dropped race-based eligibility requirements for a fellowship program designed for college students of Black, Latino and Native American descent, even though a judge had dismissed a lawsuit against the program two months earlier. Despite the change, the conservative nonprofit suing Pfizer, Do No Harm, is appealing the lawsuit’s dismissal, arguing the fellowship’s goals remain the same. In May, Comcast said business owners of all backgrounds would be eligible to apply for a grant program originally intended for women and people of color when it launched in 2020. The telecommunications settled a lawsuit last year over the program brought by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty on behalf of the white owner of a commercial cleaning business. The Wisconsin Institute filed another lawsuit in October, this one on behalf of two construction firms. The lawsuit seeks to dismantle the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, which dates back to the Reagan administration and requires that 10% of funds authorized for highway and transit federal assistance programs be expended with small businesses owned by women, minorities or other socially and economically disadvantaged people."
End Wokeness on X - "Vanguard controls $7 trillion in assets. The new classes of interns are almost exclusively non-White. Employees are given courses on White Fragility and Engaging White Males To Advance DEI. Vanguard is also responsible for ESG."
Ian Miles Cheong on X - "Google is telling its employees at a DEI workplace training session that white anxiety is a public health crisis and that white people who vote for Republicans is just like the opioid epidemic. Wild."
Strategic CEO Activism in Polarized Markets - "CEOs are increasingly making public statements on contentious social issues. In this paper, we examine what motivates CEOs to engage in social activism. We show that CEO social activism is a strategic choice and not necessarily an expression of the CEO’s own political views. Republican-donor CEOs are three-times more likely to make social statements with a liberal-slant. They are also more likely to make social statements when their firm’s operating environment is politically polarized, and when their employees are Democrat-leaning. Such statements are associated with a 3% increase in consumer visits to a firm's stores in Democrat counties without significantly reducing them in Republican counties. CEO activism is also associated with a 0.12% gain in firm value, increased quarterly sales turnover, and a reduced likelihood of shareholder activism on social issues. Our results suggest that corporate actions that appear to be stakeholder-driven can be motivated by economic concerns."
Yet liberals claim the right do cancel culture too
‘Woke’ ESG regulations leading to policy chaos - "Even BlackRock CEO Larry Fink seems to be turning his back on the ESG crusade. A Google news search of ESG produces a rundown of stories: the end of ESG boom; ESG blocks investment flows; institutions struggle with ESG metrics. That struggle is set to turn into a regulatory nightmare as governments, financial houses, corporations and regulators attempt to create international standards to document and measure business operations that are largely unmeasurable."
Opinion: Asked about its $244 million BLM donation, Microsoft told its investors to pound sand - "Perhaps relatedly, Microsoft did answer a general question regarding how it keeps “political ideology out of business decisions.” Unfortunately, the multi-paragraph answer provided absolutely no principle that shareholders could rely on to keep the political and ideological biases of relevant corporate decision-makers out of Microsoft’s decisionmaking. Rather, according to Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, anything that has an impact on customers, on the protection of employees or on business interests could justify Microsoft speaking or acting out “in the company’s name.” I submit that it would be impossible to come up with any divisive issue of our day that would be off-limits under these vague guidelines. Indeed, this is particularly evident in light of the current trend of labeling as a “safety” issue anything that offends even a single employee. Of the three, “business interests” is the only justification offered that has any legitimacy. On that score, here are two phrases that were shockingly absent from these assurances: “expected value” and “shareholder value.” Accordingly, here’s what I submit should be every corporation’s policy when it comes to engaging in politically divisive issues: “We engage in politically divisive issues when we have concluded that the engagement creates positive expected value for our shareholders, accounting for all reasonably foreseeable costs including opportunity costs.” This policy would ensure that corporate decisionmakers are in fact acting in compliance with their fiduciary duties of care, loyalty and good faith... It is fair to assert that brands like Bud Light, Disney and Target have seen their share prices decimated recently because they seemingly allowed the political and ideological biases of their decisionmakers to infect their corporate cultures. They often include the creation of left-wing echo chambers that masquerade as sources of constructive feedback, but then they can’t imagine anyone objecting to the corporation marching inlock-step with the leftist activism that elevates being on “the right side of history” (as defined by leftists) above competing fiduciary duties. Shareholders and consumers are sick of politicized corporations sacrificing the creation of value-generating goods and services at the altar of “stakeholder capitalism,” “ESG,” “DEI” or any of the other left-wing Trojan horses that have been infiltrating and corrupting American corporations... It bears repeating that “stakeholder capitalism” is no more capitalism than a “hot dog” is a dog."
The same people who rail against "white fragility" claim "implicit bias" and "microaggressions" are "safety" issues
James Lindsay, against magic on X - "BTW, of course IBM isn't the only company racially discriminating against employees with DEI (via ESG). Starbuck's CEOs get bonuses to engage in racial discrimination and implement Critical Race Theory, DEI, etc., policies because of ESG. It's a colluding corporate cartel."
How Corporate Abandoned Their DEI Initiatives - "a survey from Revelio Labs found that last year, companies who had layoffs cut DEI positions at a rate of 33% versus a 21% cut for other roles (Revelio Labs). Listings of DEI jobs have also declined, down 19% between January and December 2022 (Washington Times). These decisions have lasting implications for our workforce and indicate a shift in corporate sentiment on social justice issues."
Greedy companies are more evil than they are greedy, which is why they are cutting diversity positions, even though everyone Knows that diversity is good for business
Google, Meta, other tech giants cut DEI programs in 2023 - "By mid-2023, DEI-related job postings had declined 44% from the same time a year prior, according to data provided by job site Indeed. In November 2023, the last full month for which data was available, it dropped 23% year over year. That’s a sharp contrast with the period from 2020 to 2021, when those postings expanded nearly 30%. In line with this broader trend, both Google and Meta have cut staffers and downsized programs that fell under DEI investment. The year’s cuts have also impacted smaller, third-party organizations who counted on big tech clients for work, despite the continued growth of those tech giants. “Whenever there is an economic downturn in tech, some of the first budgets that are cut are in DEI, but I don’t think we’ve seen such stark contrast as this year,” said Melinda Briana Epler, founder and CEO of Empovia, which advises companies and leaders to use a research-based culture of equality. “When George Floyd began to become the topic of conversations, companies and executives doubled down on their commitments and here we are only a couple years later, and folks are looking for opportunities to cut those teams,” said Devika Brij, CEO of Brij the Gap Consulting, which works with tech companies’ DEI efforts. Brij said some of her clients had cut their DEI budgets by as much as 90% by midyear... The cuts come at a time when technology companies are forging ahead on the biggest technology shift in a decade: artificial intelligence. If diverse people are not included in AI development, that may result in even greater power imbalances for both corporate workers, as well as consumers who will use their products... In 2021, for instance, Google said it shut down a long-running program aimed at entry-level engineers from underrepresented backgrounds after participants said it enforced “systemic pay inequities.” That same year, CNBC found the company’s separate program that worked with students from historically Black colleges, suffered extreme disorganization, racism and broken promises to students... Nearly every member of Meta’s Sourcer Development Program, more than 60 workers, was let go from the company as part of its layoff of over 11,000 workers, CNBC learned. They claimed to have received inferior severance packages compared with other workers who were laid off in the same time period. Meta’s Sourcer Development Program was intended to help workers from diverse backgrounds obtain careers in corporate technology recruiting. Google also cut DEI leaders who worked with Chief Diversity Officer Melonie Parker, while Meta made cuts to several DEI managers — some of whom it hired in 2020. Layoffs at Google and Meta also included employees who held leadership roles in their respective Black employee resource groups, known as ERGs. “There’s a lowering of physiological safety with layoffs or impending layoffs, and holding ERGs accountable for that is not fair and can lead to even more burnout,” Epler said."
AI is already institutionally woke, but clearly it needs to be poisoned even more
The North Face announces controversial 'racial inclusion' discount - "Outdoor apparel brand The North Face recently introduced a controversial new customer engagement strategy, which the brand says is aimed at addressing racial inclusion in outdoor spaces. Customers are being offered a 20% discount on online orders upon completing the "Allyship In The Outdoors" program. The hour-long digital course, developed in partnership with organisations like Mòr Diversity, tackles subjects such as white privilege and various forms of racism, encouraging participants to reflect on the representation and inclusivity of people from ethnic minorities in outdoor activities."
I still see left wingers mock the idea that capitalist companies can be left wing
An £800,000 lesson in how not to do diversity training - "The Free Speech Union (FSU) has just won its biggest ever legal victory at the Employment Tribunal (ET), securing damages likely to exceed £800,000 for Carl Borg-Neal, a dyslexic Lloyds bank manager who was sacked following a workplace free speech row. This is a fantastic result for Carl, and it’s worth pointing out that his final compensation package — which includes damages for past loss of earnings, future loss of earnings, a pensions award, compensation for discrimination and compensation for personal injury — is well in excess of the amount typically awarded to Claimants at the ET... context is everything when deciding whether to dismiss someone for breaking a workplace speech code. The bank will also have to inform the Financial Conduct Authority that it got this one wrong, telling the UK’s financial services watchdog that their dismissal of Carl was substantially and procedurally unfair and an act of disability discrimination. Finally, they must correct their internal records and provide a neutral reference for Carl, which it will be required to provide on request to any future employer. The ramifications of these recommendations will be felt in the HR departments of every major company up and down the country, meaning this case will have a lasting footprint that should stamp out this kind of behaviour by employers when faced with similar complaints. So how did we get here — to a case in which one of the UK’s “Big Five” high street banks is ruled to have unfairly dismissed an employee for something he said during a workplace-based diversity training session, before walking away with a total bill of around £1 million, and the chastening words of a distinctly unimpressed panel of Employment Tribunal Judges ringing in its senior executives’ ears? In July 2021, Mr Borg-Neal was one of around 100 senior Lloyds managers who logged on to an online training session entitled “Race Education for Line Managers”. Provided by an external organisation, the training formed part of the bank’s “Race Action Plan”, launched in the wake of George Floyd’s death the previous year. Carl had worked for Lloyds Bank for 27 years without issue, was popular among colleagues, and had risen to a highly technical managerial role at head office. Far from being indifferent to racial equality, he had recently joined a new scheme mentoring young colleagues from ethnic minorities and was working with three mentees, one of African descent, one of Asian descent and one of European (non-UK) descent. At the start of the session, the trainer read out a script that established the parameters for what was to follow. “When we talk about race, people often worry about saying the wrong thing,” she said. “Please understand that today is your opportunity to practice, learn and be clumsy… The goal is to start talking, so please speak freely, and forgive yourself and others when being clumsy today.” Carl was relieved to hear that, since his dyslexia can occasionally cause him to “be clumsy” when speaking “freely”. At a relevant point during a subsequent discussion on “intent vs effect”, Mr Borg-Neal decided to take the trainer’s statement at face-value and “speak freely”. Thinking partly about rap music, he asked how as a line manager he should handle a situation where he heard someone from an ethnic minority use a word that might be considered offensive if used by a white person. Met with a puzzled look from the trainer, he added, “The most common example being use of the word n***** in the black community.” Carl didn’t receive a response to his “clumsy” question. In fact, he was angrily berated by the trainer. He tried to apologise for any offence, but was told if he spoke again he would be thrown off the course. Other managers on the course complained that Carl’s question never received an answer — indeed, anonymous feedback collated after the session suggests the trainer’s behaviour was not particularly well-received... Something that emerged particularly strongly from the hearing was the extent to which Lloyds focused on Mr Carl Borg-Neal’s use of the n-word in isolation, irrespective of what a linguist would describe as the “context of situation” in which he’d used it. It was on the basis of this semantic fixation that the bank could concede that Mr Borg-Neal had not intended to cause any hurt, that he asked the question with no malice, and that the question itself was valid, but then still dismiss him for gross misconduct. The bank’s argument was that Mr Borg-Neal should have known better than “to use the full word in a professional environment”. However, thanks to top-drawer representation from Doyle Clayton, as well as tireless work behind the scenes by Karolien Celie, our Legal Officer, we were successfully able to steer the panel towards an appreciation of the wider context in which the n-word had been uttered... “He told [the Hearing Manager] that he understood in hindsight that the trainer could be upset. He said a friend had told him use of the word was inappropriate and ‘I get that now’. He said he understood his conduct had fallen below expectations. One wonders what was expected of him.”... The bank’s initial response to the tribunal’s decision, and in particular, paragraphs 1-2 of its “Grounds for refusing reinstatement” document were found by the panel to be “high-handed and rubbed salt into the wound by distorting the tribunal’s liability judgement, and using selective quotes to make the tribunal sound like it was saying something it did not say”. As the panel pointed out, the bank’s continued fascination with Mr Borg-Neal’s use of the word in isolation meant that this document “omits the tribunal’s constant emphasis on context”. Paragraph 1b was singled out for particular disapproval, with the panel describing it as “a deliberate misreading of what we chose to say”. On the basis of this accumulated evidence of injury to feelings, the panel awarded Mr Borg-Neal an additional £3,000 aggravated damages. That’s bad enough, of course. But it then gets even worse for Lloyds. In a remarkable passage, the panel go on to express “concern” that paragraph 4 of the document, in which it is suggested that Mr Borg-Neal’s decision to bring a race discrimination claim against the bank influenced its subsequent decision not to reinstate him, “in our view amounts to victimising the claimant for bringing [that claim]”."
When the woke say you can speak freely, they mean you are free to push wokeness. But not question it
Bank manager fired for using N-word awarded up to $637,000 in damages - "A bank manager who was fired when he used the N-word in an anti-racism seminar has received up to £500,000 ($637,000) in damages after judges ruled he acted without malice and used the word as a result of his dyslexia. Carl Borg-Neal was sacked by the British bank Lloyds in 2021 after upsetting an instructor when he used the offensive slur during an online class discussing race in the workplace... Lloyds accepted that Borg-Neal acted without malice, had apologized immediately after using the word, and that the question was fair, but determined he should have known better than to use the slur in a professional environment. The trainer of the seminar also took several days off following the incident, encouraging Lloyds to take its decision to dismiss the manager."
When they encourage you to ask questions, they don't really mean that
The people who go on about "white fragility" are unable to work for 5 days upon hearing a forbidden work
White middle-aged men are ‘bottom of everything’ claims N word tribunal bank worker - "“I feel very discriminated against,” he said. “I often wonder if I wasn’t a white middle-aged male would I have had to go through everything I went through. There is no way of telling. But when I talk to my friends – and as you can imagine a good many are white, middle-aged and male – we all agree that is the worst thing you can be right now. You are bottom of everything.”... According to one attendant, Mr Borg-Neal was ”very much reprimanded in front of us all and when [he] tried to apologise or explain he was threatened with ‘you will be thrown off the course’”. Another said: “I was shocked by the manner and tone used by one presenter to a colleague. After saying at the beginning this would be a safe environment and it is acknowledged we may make mistakes, she launched into a vitriolic attack. Whilst I do not condone what the colleague said … I believe he was trying to ask a valid question to aid understanding.”... “I realised later on that once it had got back to HR which was dealing with the bank’s race action plan that I was doomed,” he said. He is convinced that the bank, which he first joined in 1993, had “wanted to make an example of me”... In awarding Mr Borg-Neal substantial damages, the tribunal accepted that “it has hurt the claimant a great deal that he has been branded as a racist”. It ordered that Lloyds circulate the judgment to the bank’s British board and “that they be asked to read and digest it”. It warned Lloyds “not to make comments to the press which give a wholly misleading impression”... He has had more than 50 messages of support from former colleagues. Tears form as he reads out one message from a senior colleague from an ethnic-minority background following the court victory. “Now the lid has been lifted I wanted to say how proud I am to count you as a friend and a colleague. Stand up, stand tall and please reach out if I can help in any way,” the colleague wrote."
How Sharpton gets paid to not cry ‘racism’ at corporations - "Want to influence a casino bid? Polish your corporate image? Not be labeled a racist? Then you need to pay Al Sharpton. For more than a decade, corporations have shelled out thousands of dollars in donations and consulting fees to Sharpton’s National Action Network. What they get in return is the reverend’s supposed sway in the black community or, more often, his silence. Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal met with the activist preacher after leaked emails showed her making racially charged comments about President Obama. Pascal was under siege after a suspected North Korean cyberattack pressured the studio to cancel its release of “The Interview,” which depicts the assassination of dictator Kim Jong-un. Pascal and her team were said to be “shaking in their boots” and “afraid of the Rev”... “Al Sharpton has enriched himself and NAN for years by threatening companies with bad publicity if they didn’t come to terms with him. Put simply, Sharpton specializes in shakedowns,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal & Policy Center, a Virginia-based watchdog group that has produced a book on Sharpton. And Sharpton, who now boasts a close relationship with Obama and Mayor Bill de Blasio, is in a stronger negotiating position than ever. “Once Sharpton’s on board, he plays the race card all the way through,” said a source who has worked with the Harlem preacher. “He just keeps asking for more and more money.” One example of Sharpton’s playbook has emerged in tax filings and a state inspector general’s report. In 2008, Plainfield Asset Management, a Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund, made a $500,000 contribution to New York nonprofit Education Reform Now. That money was immediately funneled to the National Action Network. The donation raised eyebrows. Although the money was ostensibly to support NAN’s efforts to bring “educational equality,” it also came at a time that Plainfield was trying to get a lucrative gambling deal in New York. Plainfield had a $250 million stake in Capital Play, a group trying to secure a license to run the coming racino at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Capital Play employed a lobbyist named Charlie King, who also was the acting executive director of NAN... AEG viewed its payments to Sharpton as more of an insurance policy so he wouldn’t scuttle its chances by criticizing the group, said a source familiar with the racino controversy... Sharpton landed a gig as a $25,000-a-year adviser to Pepsi after he threatened a consumer boycott of the soda company in 1998, saying its ads did not portray African-Americans. He held the position until 2007."
