Woke Joe Biden's Woke Veto Saves Woke Capitalists! Let The Woke Investment Rumpus Begin!

No special protections for Big Oil, sorry GOP.

As promised, Joe Biden did his first veto Monday, giving the boot to a GOP bill that would have prevented pension fund managers from considering environmental and social justice factors when they invest. The bill would have rolled back a Labor Department rule allowing such investments; that rule was itself a reversal of Donald Trump's ban on so-called "environmental, social, and corporate governance" (ESG) investing.

 As we said when the bill passed in the Senate, it's pretty much a quadruple negative, since Biden vetoed a rollback of a reversal of a ban. And that's a positive!

Read Moar: Joe Biden Prepares His First Veto, And Joe Manchin And Jon Tester Helped! 

The bill was part of what Republicans claim is an absolutely vital movement to ban "woke" investing, because if fund managers consider anything but the highest short-term gains, that's supposedly a betrayal of their fiduciary duty to investors.

In reality, of course, it's less about "wokeness" than about protecting fossil fuel companies from disinvestment. You see, kids, money is free speech when corporations are making political contributions, or lobbying Republicans to ban ESG investing. But don't you dare use your money-speech to try to make the world a better place — or even protect your investment in the longer term — by choosing to invest in green companies instead of fossil fuels, because screw your free speech money, commies.

 In a Twitter video accompanying the veto, Biden explained that he was vetoing the bill because it

would risk your retirement savings by making it illegal to consider risk factors MAGA House Republicans don't like.

Your plan manager should be able to protect your hard-earned savings — whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likes it or not.

Yeah, he enjoyed that.

A White House statement on the veto made similar points, albeit without singling out Greene. In the statement Biden said that retirement plan managers should have the ability to consider retirees' rate of return on investments while also being able to "make fully informed investment decisions by considering all relevant factors that might impact a prospective investment."

And here's Biden doing some jujitsu on the "freedom" caucus types, explaining that if anyone's forcing ideology on investments, it's the Republicans who want to tie the hands of investment managers:

There is extensive evidence showing that environmental, social, and governance factors can have a material impact on markets, industries, and businesses. But the Republican-led resolution would force retirement managers to ignore these relevant risk factors, disregarding the principles of free markets and jeopardizing the life savings of working families and retirees. In fact, this resolution would prevent retirement plan fiduciaries from taking into account factors, such as the physical risks of climate change and poor corporate governance, that could affect investment returns.

In response, woke Wall Street investors sang "The Internationale" while burning themselves in effigy, and then they all carpooled in a Prius motorcade to the nearest abortionplex to read banned library books to drag queens.

[ Daily Beast / White House / Image: "Maurice Sendak's Wild Things protest at an oil refinery to fight climate change" generated by DreamStudio Lite AI. No idea what's going on with that center figure.]

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