Posted on 04/15/2007 3:24:07 PM PDT by LSUfan
You'll be surprised at the answer.
Every month the postman brings millions of pension checks to retired law enforcement officers, teachers, transportation workers, and other former state and local civil servants vested in the Florida Retirement Fund.
Over the course of their working lives they and you, as their taxpaying employers, paid into their retirement fund. Today that fund holds $129 billion. Those assets are managed by advisers hired by the State to make prudent investment decisions. The advisers work for the State Board of Administration.
Infamously, the State's investment advisers once put pension funds into a winner called Enron. The losses were staggering. Today, the fund managers have invested in another dubious enterprise - the Islamic Republic of Iran. The difference is that plenty of people, including Enron's own employees, were duped by its parboiled financial statements. By contrast, all of western civilization plus France knows that Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world, a superlative appellation bestowed by the US Department of State and acknowledged even by the United Nations.
In fact, the Florida Retirement System owns $750 million in stock in companies which, in turn, do a substantial portion of their business with Iran. These companies, floated by Florida's cash, are not American corporations. US companies are forbidden by law to do business with Iran for the very good reason that Iran has vowed to destroy America. Our assets are benefiting Iran through foreign corporations out of reach of US law but whose stock has been purchased by the Florida Retirement System.
One other thing: those foreign companies aren't using Florida's cash to build hospitals or roads or help the Iranians get better crop yields. They're directly involved in promoting, building up, contracting with, and supplying Iran's nuclear and energy sectors.
Let us take Iran's prime minister at his word - that as soon as he has the nuclear weapons to do so, he intends to engage in genocidal warfare. The first publicly announced target is Israel. America is next.
Put bluntly, the precious dollars set aside for the retirement of those who protected our homes, preserved our forests, taught our children, built our roads, and upheld the law in our communities are helping to develop the nuclear capacity of the world's worst outlaw nation. At least the Enron guys were just frauds and liars, not aspirational mass murderers.
The Florida Retirement System didn't set out to do what has been done. They will tell you none of this entered their decision calculus at all. That's because they make their investment calls in a moral vacuum. They say it's just business.
Here in Northwest Florida, the home of the greatest concentration of retired military in America, folks don't approve of anybody directly or indirectly giving aid and comfort to a country providing funding, safe harbor and arms to insurgents who are killing Americans serving in the Middle East. When people here learn that it's Florida's pension funds succoring the Iranians, they're outraged. When they discover their state's money is actually invested in Iran's nuclear build-up, they're thunderstruck.
For us, it's not just business. For us, it's wrong.
I've joined a coalition of eight Senators attempting to end these investments. The primary sponsor is Senator Ted Deutch, a Democrat from Palm Beach- Broward. Though we have very different political philosophies, Ted is one of the most intelligent, articulate, and principled people I've met in public life. He has researched the issue with the precision and accuracy of a brilliant lawyer, which is what he is, and then came to me and others with a compelling case and a good piece of legislation.
Three other Democrats - Jeremy Ring, Dave Aronberg, and Gwen Margolis - are cosponsors with Deutch. The Republicans, aside from me, are Senators Jeff Atwater, a banker by profession and slated to become the next President of the Senate; Ronda Storms, one of the Senate's most socially conservative members and a former teacher; and Carey Baker, a decorated Iraqi war veteran and rock solid conservative gunship owner. Maybe ours is an unlikely political alliance or maybe our coalition, stretching from the left to the right, from the Panhandle to Miami, and encompassing Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant faiths, suggests that this is an issue on which people of good will must come to the same conclusion.
Our legislation, Senate Bill 2250, would require the State Board of Administration to review the state's investment portfolio and divest of holdings in companies heavily involved in Iran's nuclear and energy sectors. The legislation has safeguards to prevent losses from precipitous selling.
The best financial minds are telling the Legislature that, yes, there are plenty of better stock buys with brighter futures than Iran, Inc. But the most compelling testimony in favor of SB 2250 comes from retired teachers, firemen, and law enforcement officers shocked that their pensions are being used to help a country whose foreign policy is genocide. It's their money and they're demanding divestiture now.
If you believe that everyone in Tallahassee is falling all over themselves to make things right and support our legislation, you'd be only partially correct. Entrenched bureaucrats and turfguarding investment advisors resent legislative interference into their rarified deliberations. Some fear a slippery slope - that if we proscribe investments in companies that support nuclear power for Iran, what other moral judgments might next be imposed on "business decisions?"
That's a good debate for another day. Maybe the Florida Retirement System needs an allweather moral compass. But Iran is in a class by itself: named by the US State Department as the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world, identified as supplier and protector of insurgents killing Americans in Iraq, called out even by the United Nations for its announced build-up of nuclear capability, and self-proclaimed as preparing to unleash genocide on Israel.
Any uncertainty over whether public policy should have a moral basis was resolved on this continent at least by Jefferson, Adams, Madison and later, Lincoln. When functionaries of government decide to put our retirees' savings into the warmaking capabilities of our enemies, they're making bad public policy and elected lawmakers have a moral obligation to try to stop it.
I guess if I were asking questions, one of them would be why Florida is investing in foreign companies, instead of American companies which do, after all, pay taxe.
Don Gaetz is a new state legislator that is a strong conservative. I hope he will take his wisdom to Congress soon.
I am alarmed that my retirement funds are helping Iran. Surely, this will be stopped.
There are bills in several states, but the pension system bureaucrats have been very effective and underhanded in subverting these efforts.
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