Get Your Culture War Out of Our Pension Funds
Plus: Should libertarians consider employing noble lies when pitching themselves to new potential voters?

In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman critique Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' plan to investigate the inclusion of Bud Light's parent company AB InBev in the state's pension funds.
00:40: Gov. Ron DeSantis politicizes Florida pension funds.
20:38: The summer of strikes
32:50: Weekly Listener Question
38:50: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears before the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
43:53: This week's cultural recommendations
Mentioned in this podcast:
"Ron DeSantis Bullies Bud Light Like Elizabeth Warren Bullies Amazon," by Joe Lancaster
"How Corporations' Good Social and Environmental Intentions Undermine the Common Good," by Samuel Gregg
"DeSantis Unironically Frets About 'Criminalizing Political Differences,'" by Eric Boehm
"Politically Motivated Investment Guidelines Making Bad Public Pension Programs Worse," by Scott Shackford
"Three Reasons to Fix Public Sector Pensions Now," by Nick Gillespie and Todd Krainin
Is ESG a threat to capitalism? Live with Samuel Gregg, Russ Greene, and Zach Weissmueller
"Don't Expect Unions To Make a Comeback," by Nick Gillespie
"America Needs a Better Kind of Capitalism," by Veronique de Rugy
"UPS vs. FedEx: Ultimate Whiteboard Remix," by Nick Gillespie and Meredith Bragg
"Artifact: War's Nightmare Landscape," by Nick Gillespie
"Why Color Atom Bomb Footage of Hiroshima & Nagasaki Was Censored by the Government for Decades," by Nick Gillespie
"Obama, Trump, and the Nuking of Hiroshima," by Steve Chapman
Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.
Audio production by Luke Allen; assistant production by Hunt Beaty.
Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
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“Should libertarians consider employing noble lies?”
How progressive of you.
The noble lie of Biden being a moderate?
No mean tweets was worth it all.
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Think about the children. Biden does.
He licks his lips for two reasons. Ice cream. And children.
Except for 1 specific child that he doesn't acknowledge.
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I agree. Get Blackrock out of state pensions.
I hope they have a bad day.
+1 Spencer Tracy
InBev stock is down almost 50% over the past 5 years. Is the pension fund obligated to hold because 1A?
Don't be ridiculous. This is Reason. The pension fund is obligated to hold because Dylan Mulvaney.
If a Blue State's pension fund holds a sports and leisure conglomerate and divests after they acquire a firearms manufacturer does that violate 2A?
And what about fiduciary responsibility vs ESG scores?
To these leftists serving the marxist narrative is the most important thing. They have no problem with mandates for DEI or ESG or any other leftist bullshit but getting that marxist crap out of a pension fund inspires this outrage from them?
State pension funds are an irresistible temptation for state-level politicians to virtue signal and meddle.
Every state does it. Look at California for god's sake.
Spare me the outrage over Florida doing it, they are just late to the party.
My thoughts exactly. Curious if they are going to go through all the different ways politicians on all sides fuck with pension funds for political reasons or if they are just going to portray this as something unique to DeSantis.
And regardless, the pension fund should seriously consider InBev investments given that they don't appear to be bouncing back.
I don't recall a word when California passed laws saying they had to divest from oil and gas interests, or when they divested from anything Russian related, or any of the crap they've limited it to. Those were just last year's bit, but Newsome has proudly opposed everything from oil to firearms, not even pretending to hide the lack of fiduciary responsibility there.
They've had a few articles about that stuff. Reason is pretty awful in some areas these days, but tend to be decent on economic stuff like this.
I presume they spend the bulk of their time lambasting Blackrock.
What? I'm wrong and this is all about how Pouncing Oranges Man Is Bad? How shocking.
"The real culture warriors are the people reacting to the imposition of new cultural paradigms, not the imposers" - t. Reason
"The cultural war for True Righteousness can be attained ONLY when politically WRONG people all commit suicide!"
-Marxist Mammary-Necrophilia-Fuhrer, Hater of ALL the Lesser Mortals, and Supreme Servant and Serpent of the Evil One.
Mammary-Necrophilia-Fuhrer, Supreme Demonic Director of Decay, Destruction, and Death, will now SPEAK! HARKKK silently and RESPECTFULLY, all ye lowly heathens, as She Directs Death, and announces WHICH few of us MIGHT deserve to live, and WHO all deserves to DIE-DIE-DIE!!!
https://reason.com/2022/01/25/did-these-three-officers-willfully-deprive-george-floyd-of-his-constitutional-rights/?comments=true#comment-9323626
“You should really join ᛋᛋqrlsy, ᛋᛋhrike. You two goosestepping fascists offing yourselves would definitely be a mitzvah.”
-Quote MammaryBahnFuhrer the "Expert Christian Theologian", AKA Mother’s Lament, with a head full of cement
You're not just politically wrong, you're morally wrong. Like when you argued for cannibalising Trump supporters.
"SQRLSY One 29 mins ago
GMO and-or cultured HUMAN meat, with the PRECISELY needed (already-built-in-by genetics) balance of amino acids! Even with NO killing of anything truly living or “human”, how many customers would go for it?"
(I read of it in sci-fi in high school.)
On a related note, WHERE, evolution-wise, does it turn into cannibalism? If I eat a chimp? A Neanderthal? A Trumpanzee gone apeshit?
MammaryBahnFuhrer the “Expert Christian Theologian”, AKA Mother’s Lament, with a head full of cement, can't tell the difference between a question and an ASSertion, because She is a Perfect ASS!!!!
Talk about utter tunnel vision.
Seriously, why are people under the impression that the collapse in Bud Light sales is a “boycott” or motivated by political/culture war ideas? Sure, there are some righty culture warriors pushing that line, but that’s self-serving nonsense.
You know why the stunt killed Bud Light sales? Beer, for decades, has been sold to men on the basis of “aspirational masculinity”. The idea, consistently, has been that beer is what manly men drink, and that manly men drink beer.
In that context, someone in the Bud Light ad department decided to directly and deliberately associate not just with an “influencer” whose claim to fame is being the exact antithesis of the manly man, but to specifically celebrate his over-the-top girliness on the product packaging itself.
The only real question is whether the action was gross negligence or deliberate sabotage, because there is no way an advertising exec exercising anything remotely similar to the ordinary standard of care in brand management could have even considered the action.
The result was an utterly predictable utter collapse in Bud Light sales because the move directly undermined the basis on which the product was sold for decades.
And Christ almighty, every large holder of AB InBev stock should be threatening the executives over that blatant fuck-up, through both lawsuits and shareholder action at the next meeting.
The actual political/culture war issue here is that so many stockholders are too afraid of a political/culture war backlash from the left to actually punish grossly idiotic brand management, so the only stockholders publicly willing to hold the board and executives to account are already involved in the culture wars on the right.
It was a woke white femael on a mission and she didnt give a damn about the profit or brand. she was a true believer
Well, if she literally didn't give a damn, and so wasn't actually trying to tank the sales, it's "gross negligence", which is, after all, "the lack of any care".
BUD stock hasn’t even gone done over its price a year ago, so it’s arguable there are even losses to sue over. Unless the courts are going to start filling their dockets with cases based in short-term losses.
Poor little corporate simp.
"BUD stock hasn’t even gone done over its price a year ago,"
Hear that, guys? Mike has been searching for weeks for the right cherry-picked data and talking points, and- by gum- he found it. It is always hilarious to see Mike parse these conditional statements together to sound oh so smart. Like, "I've told you guys a million times, that there are no minors getting solely bottom surgery in the past 3 years during waning gibbous moons! "
Stocks are priced by anticipation. Of the last four quarterly reports, the first two matched expectations on EPS, while the latter two had significant upside surprises on EPS. If AB InBev were expected to hold steady, the stock price would be up substantially from last year's number. That the stock is currently even with last year indicates the market expects the next quarterly report will show a serious problem that wipes out all the gains seen in those two positive quarterly reports.
What we are going to see on August 3rd (when the next quarterly report comes out) is formal confirmation of the screwup that the non-naive investors have already acted on.
And with that formal confirmation is going to come all the long knives, since the quarterly report will give the investors the necessary "it's business" cover from accusations that they're acting politically.
I doubt any investor is going to successfully convince a judge and jury that a failed ad campain is an exceptional case of fiduciary malfeasance rather than a run-of-the-mill bad decision. Stock investing comes with risks.
They repositioned Marlboro cigarets for be manly after many years of being thought feminine or effeminate, so why not?
Name one brand of mainstream beer historically marketed and viewed as feminine. Name a wine cooler portrayed as masculine.
There's good marketing reasons why they haven't tried this before.
You should read Vance Packard’s book, “The Hidden Persuaders”. In it, he notes that when Madison Avenue really got to work on advertising beer in the 50s, they discovered that more women bought beer than men! – because women were buying 6-packs and 12-packs in supermarkets for their men, in larger quantities than men were drinking beer in bars. And so they changed how beer was advertised and even its appearance – women went for “clean”, “sparkling”, “refreshing”, etc. and liked seeing a lighter colour and more fizz. -And then when their men were watching the game at home, and the wives brought them beer, by that point the men didn’t particularly care
So basically, all American beer was feminised in the 50s.
Men are what % of the population and more importantly the population of smokers? Transgenders are what % of the population and population of beer drinkers? Let me know if that's enough for you to figure out why one is a viable marketing strategy and the other is not.
In theory, it's perfectly fine to try to radically change your target demographic.
In practice, with a brand as big as Bud Light, you launch it as an actual, deliberate, coordinated, and massive campaign, with a particular effort to get buy-in from your distributors and retailers in advance.
So, again, this was either gross negligence or deliberate sabotage.
I always thought Marlboro was more aiming for the gay Brokeback Mountain sort of cowboy.
Marlboro was a brand with a smaller market that wanted to expand. Bud Light was perhaps the best selling product in its category in the country. It's probably wiser not to mess with your marketing too much when you are already that dominant.
It seems that if anyone is politicizing state pension funds, it's InBev, not people reacting to the fact that their sales tanked due to questionable politicized product messaging.
The only real question is whether the action was gross negligence or deliberate sabotage, because there is no way an advertising exec exercising anything remotely similar to the ordinary standard of care in brand management could have even considered the action.
It should further be noted as well that Bud Light was far from the first of this stupidity. Disney and Warner Bros. product line went from "off-the-line Ferrari" to "Used, driven like stolen". CNN+ tanked incredibly fast. The Harry Potter video game crushed it any number of other games in the opposite direction have suffered terribly. Gillette felt the flames on it's ass for virtually identical stupidity. SVB was notoriously suffering from similarly woke nonsense. There isn't a single W from a pro-trans or anti-trad-male ad/marketing campaign out there and a lot of very big and very notorious Ls.
To commit not just a brand, but THE brand to it should be considered an act of sabotage, even if the specific exec was only a useful idiot unwittingly participating in gross negligence. There are socio-political movements out there that openly believe we need to liquidate half of humanity in the name of justice and equality. They've deluded employees minds and infiltrated HR departments not just to allow this sort of thing to happen but to virtually guarantee it does. If you think the movements care about your brand, your company, your customer base, or your employees, you're mistaken.
I don't agree with DeSantis actively tweaking pension funds (if that's what he's even doing. Giving Reason's general policy of siding with retarded SJWs, downplaying actual market-pressuring action, and up-selling saber rattling, I give it 70/30 odds that Ronnie D. is just exercising what, if anyone else did it, Reason would call protected free speech) but pension funds should be running from this stuff like a mixture of the plague and agent orange.
I feel like you agreed on the culture war part but just reworded it into something with different descriptors. The left is not into manly man stuff so you basically do agree with the premise.
I would phrase it as saying that the collapse of Bud Light sales has consequences and implications for the culture war, but those are downstream of why people stopped buying Bud Light, rather than the culture war being the reason.
By analogy? The reasons why Imperial Japan attacked the United States are not why the average American on December 10, 1941 wanted to crush the Japanese. The average American didn't particularly care that Japan was trying to conquer China, or was trying to secure the sea lanes to get oil from the Dutch East Indies to fuel that war. They were just pissed that American lives had been taken. The Japanese started a war for oil, but Americans were not participating in a war to deny Japan oil.
So, sure, the cultural left is opposed to manly man stuff, and the Dylan Mulvaney can can be seen as Bud Light marketing thinking it was hip to take a side in the culture wars. But the collapse in Bud Light sales is not mostly because Bud Light drinkers are politically upset, it's because they don't have any interest in personally being associated with girlish transsexuals.
And complaining out that AB InBev fucked up by alienating its customers is yet another step removed. If the customers largely don't actually give a damn why AB InBev decided to associate Bud Light with Mulvaney, so much less does someone upset over the consequence of the customers' reactions on their pocketbook have to give a damn about why AB InBev provoked the reaction.
AB InBev's politics are simply not the issue here anymore, even if they were part of the causal chain, just like Japan's desire for the oil of the Dutch East Indies was not part of the decision to nuke Nagasaki, even if that desire was part of the causal chain that led to the decision.
You are right to a point. The problem is that the biggest shareholders of InBev stock are the mutual funds who are pushing the "woke" agenda.
Get your progressive, cosmo asses out of our Florida.
Get public sector pensions out of the obligations of taxpayers.
It’s more complicated than you realise. Often enough favourable public sector pension benefits were a way of avoiding larger salary increases – in other words, state pols were kicking the can down the road and back-loading costs (and fwiw public accounting largely permitted such shenanigans). And taxpayers fell for this shell game – or delibertately closed their eyes to it – seeing lower current taxes.
Meanwhile public sector workers legitimately contracted for accepting the lower current salaries while getting more at the back end. So taxpayers as a group are responsible for re-electing the pols who were doing this, while public sector workers had contracted to trade off current against future income. As a general position, you shouldn’t penalise one contracting party just because the other contracting party fucked up.
However, we should in any event have moved from defined benefit to defined contribution funds, which almost invariably reduce employer – public or private – costs.
That should just be tough shit for those who chose to work for the government. Contracts with government can change or be cancelled at the whim of the legislature, and it has to be that way. A legislature can't constrain future legislatures like that. If people vote for killing public sector pensions and cutting staff, then that's what should happen.
Adherence to contracts is at the heart of capitalism - whether between persons (fictional or natural) or between persons and government. I suspect that if it were a group you were more favourably inclined towards, you would not be so cavalier as to dismiss their contractual rights.
The idea that a legislature cannot bind a subsequent legislature is generally true in matters of law, but in matters of contract both in principle and in practice it ain't necessarily so - and nor should it be so. And there is case law, such as Winstar: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/518/839/
This is fantastic
https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1683524866673188873?t=qT4ULqj3upfv1n1UNDy29g&s=19
Just Stop Oil activists got a taste of their own medicine!
-> LMAO ... Anti-activists-activists tied a rape-alarm to a balloon and let it fly during their gathering!
[Video]
Glorious.
A good start.
Culture War is all we have left.
It used to be Repubs and Dems argued about the top marginal rate - 36% or 39% was the battle ground.
But since Fatass Donnie ran the deficit up 6x to over $3.5 trillion any tax cut talk is ridiculous.
So now Trannie Dancing is the War we choose to fight.
You could try being honest you know.
Stop all this fake “both sides” crap and just say what you really mean.
What he really means to say is he digs kiddies.
Everyone knows that. He just thinks he’s a persecuted minority because of his desires.
I am being honest.
Since my first vote in 1984 (Reagan) the parties have quibbled about the top tax rate as their primary economic policy.
The best economy (the 90s) had the highest top tax rate of 39% and provided the last surplus in 2000.
You know what I fucking mean, all this pretending that you’re some kind of objective person.
The debt increased in 2000 dumdum. It was a local minima caused by stock sales from dot com bubble stock sales and decreased spending. You aren't intelligent shrike.
Biden (D) began office when the debt was $478 billion. He’s been mostly present for taking that to $32,614 billion. Biden has been as horrible as an elected official as you would be working at Chuck E Cheese.
Federal Deficit Hit $984 Billion Last Year—a Nearly 50 Percent Increase Since Trump Took Office
https://reason.com/2019/10/25/federal-deficit-hit-984-billion-last-year-a-nearly-50-percent-increase-since-trump-took-office/?comments=true#comments
You're an idiot. That is so far off.
The DEFICIT hit $984 billion before Donnie's massive COVID spending.
then
The federal budget deficit hit an all-time high of $3.1 trillion in the 2020 budget year, more than double the previous record, as the coronavirus pandemic shrank revenues and sent spending soaring.
.
The Trump administration reported Friday that the deficit for the budget year that ended on Sept. 30 was three times the size of last year’s deficit of $984 billion. It was also $2 trillion higher than the administration had estimated in February, before the pandemic hit.
CNBC
The DEBT is over $30 trillion.
Debt =/= Deficit. Learn the difference.
“CNBC” was Pravda busy?
1973 debt $458 billion
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/national-debt-by-year-compared-to-gdp-and-major-events-3306287
Current day debt $32,614 billion
https://usdebtclock.org/
Biden was a part of 46 of those 50 years.
Why did you post links to cp material here?
Your comment wasn't very clear on what you meant. I initially thought you were talking about his term as president, not his whole political career.
And there would be no Culture War if only the Right and ordinary people would stop resisting.
In a sense you are right. Take a look at the principles of Aikido and Judo.
You have a point there. Both of the teams now agree over the big things - massive spending, wars, etc. They just quibble over the little things that drive emotions.
https://twitter.com/bhweingarten/status/1683554339422457857?t=jkI2tmCGC6bw9A5asECfSA&s=19
This is a horrible story:
"Nothing that the Metropolitan Police Department relayed to Ms. Boyland’s family from the Jan. 7 report turned out to be true, except that she was dead. As the security video conclusively shows, Ms. Boyland did not collapse in the Rotunda and paramedics did not find her there receiving CPR from two unnamed Capitol Police officers."
...The new video only deepens the stark contrast between the indifference shown to a pulseless Ms. Boyland by police outside the tunnel and the unflinching trauma care she received from medics, police officers, and paramedics once she was brought inside the Capitol.
The video also underscores the desperate attempts to save Ms. Boyland’s life by a group of fellow protesters, who repeatedly begged police for medical help and began CPR themselves when no officers stepped forward.
It does nothing, however, to explain why MPD Officer Lila Morris beat the unconscious Ms. Boyland with a walking stick while she lay prone and defenseless on the sidewalk.
[Link]
Two murders. One shot, one beaten to death.
Where the fuck is Reason on this story?
Where the fuck is White Mike and his fucking fire extinguishers to explain this?
Considering Reason runs a half dozen articles every day about the most minor local PD misbehavior, one must conclude that Reason condones the killing of Babbit and Boyland by the federal government.
They published articles uncritically reporting claims that federal agents were kidnapping peaceful protesters in Portland in 2020, during the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse Ethics Train Wreck.
I haven't read the article yet, but surely this is about ESG and Cal-state woke investing that's been in full force for the last 30 years, right? RIGHT? RIIIGHT?
It is a podcast, not an article.
I recommend any critics of Reason here who believe the staff are leftists listen to a few Reason Roundtable podcasts. You may be shocked to hear lots of criticism of the left from the round table panel.
Boaf sides!
"You may be shocked to hear lots of criticism of the left from the round table panel."
I would indeed be shocked because I listened and there isn't.
I recommend any white knights for Reason here who believe the staff are balanced listen to a few Reason Roundtable podcasts.
They are painful. I just get pissed off listening to them. The shit takes and leftist drivel is only part of it. They all come across as elitist and trying too hard to appear to be interesting.
I mean, how fucking stupid can they be to stand behind and focus on some of the dumbest recent articles they allowed?
I do agree they try to hard to appear interesting and witty a lot of the time.
Listening to Peter Suderman is the hardest because I share zero of his personal interests in things like Marvel movies and cocktail mixing, and he always goes on too long -- on the other hand, they give him shit for it.
You just bitched and moaned about watching a video this morning sea lion.
CalPERS:
"Tell us about yourself:
Race
Ethnicity
Preferred language
Sexual Orientation
Gender Identity"
Lot of time spent worrying about what's going on your pants there, eh CalPERS?
Yeah, FUCK Ron DeathSantis! literally worse than Trump!
Truth is valuable. Don't give it away for nothing.
Why does Biden seem to care so much about what appears to be a purely internal structural affair in Israeli government? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-wrestles-with-israel-s-defiant-turn-to-the-right/ar-AA1eiP0R?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=b4fee1ced3074970909626ed5d20eab7&ei=10
Because the Israeli Supreme Court has been taken over by leftists and is acting as a judicial tyranny.
They block any conservative laws based on “reasonableness” and never touch anything leftist.
They also choose their own successors, so conservative jurists need not apply for a seat on the Supreme Court.
Biden loves leftist tyranny.
So that is why is promoting the “democracy” of leftist judicial tyranny.
https://twitter.com/PopCrave/status/1683592070584229888?t=s3Rr8uK2DOGLmJsBXuomIw&s=19
Tori Kelly was rushed to the hospital after passing out during a dinner with friends in LA, TMZ reports.
She is currently getting treatment for blood clots found around her vital organs.
Culture War is all we have left!!
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DeSantis didn't get "the culture war" into our pension funds, Larry Fink, Bill Gates, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten GIllibrant have, by promoting and requiring ESG.
DeSantis is trying to undo the damage.
Reason is apparently on board with the totalitarian ESG program.
For sound economic perspective please go to https://honesteconomics.substack.com/
Pension Funds...wow, Drucker was on this a billion years ago
The Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America – January 1, 1976
by Peter Ferdinand Drucker
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