Recently two investment companies sent me ballots to cast my vote for changes to their corporate investing plan. Not being any sort of fiduciary wizard, and not having a single idea on what I would be voting on I ignored their requests to participate. I felt that my voice in corporate decision making, based on how many shares I owned was more of a silent minority thing.
However, that was not to be. Shortly after I trashed one ballot another one arrived in the mail. The other company started flooding my inbox with emails to vote. I relented and voted by mail and computer. It was quick and easy and in both cases I noticed some sort of control numbers on the ballots that would obvious keep me from voting more than once. What they did with my ballots after I voted I could not say.
The recent corporate/GOP fallout over recent voting laws, proposed and passed, on changing voting procedures is interesting, particularly when GOPers like a Senate Minority Leader and governors tell CEO’s to bugger off. The Texas lieutenant governor basically said CEOs were stupid when he told them they have “meddled in a lot of issues lately … stay out of things you don’t know anything about and if you want to get involved then you’re taking that risk.” This seems odd when a lot of legislation is actually written by corporate lobbyists. He also admonished them to “read the damn bill” before they proffer an opinion. This is bold talk for a politician fatted on the corporate larder, particularly when there is a shift away from typical and long-held GOP beliefs to more Trumpian attitudes.
The Texas LT may have a point, though. When I voted for changes to the investment management I had no idea what I was reading. Talk about the fine print. It made me think of legislators reading the numerous bills they are confronted with. For instance, the recent 5,500 plus page pandemic aid bill, one of the longest bills in Senate history, was handed out several hours before it was voted on.
Generally speaking, if you want to memorize something, you’ll need to read slowly. A normal rate for learning is 100-200 wpm, and for comprehension it is 200-400 wpm.
According to MindTools.com The average reader can read about 250 wpm. This a good speed for comprehension. If you crank it up a notch to speed reading, around 400-700 you can turn more pages quicker but you start lose something in the translation, especially when you hit 500-600 wpm. Evelyn Nielsen Wood, a pioneer of speed reading, supposedly hit super sonic speeds of 2,700 wpm. I am not sure if she could have read a 5,500 plus page document in two hours.
Several years ago Senator Rand Paul proposed a bill that would require the Senate a whole day to read 20 pages of proposed bills. Talk about bringing Congress to a standstill.
Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell took a slightly different tact with those recalcitrant corporations. He fired a warning shot across Corporate America’s bow by saying that “corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs,”–code for socialists, communist and other fellow travelers. This harkens us back to the eras of “Red Scare.” That’s heavy duty considering that Corporate America has a history of calling on the government, particularly the military or state militias, to physically bust up left leaning mobs like union strikes against railroad, coal and steel barons; and any other socialist and anarchists gatherings. Right wing mobs, however, are given free reign to tour Congressional chambers of the Capitol.
The symbiotic relationship between the GOP and Corporate America may not be crumbling anytime soon but the feeling that “I’ve got your back on this one,” maybe slipping a little. Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2021 just might be the first act in a right wing multi-act play to return the South to its core antebellum attitudes. A desperate play being acted out by desperate white men.
Unlike some of the proposed voting laws, it seems that those corporation managing my investment concerns went out of their way to make sure I participated in their decision making policies; no matter how small my voice.
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