Free Republic

South Dakota is the latest state to have adopted terror-free investment policies that target companies doing business with Iran. It joins some 18 other states and the District of Columbia. Observers say these states can teach the UN Security Council a thing or two when it comes to punishing Iran. The South Dakota law will force its state controlled pension fund to divest itself from companies doing business in Iran. Right now there are three other states with similar bills to that of South Dakota; Alaska, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi. While the other two are gaining traction, Holton says he is...

Federal employees could have the option of taking their pension dollars out of companies working in countries that sponsor terrorism, under a Senate bill that follows a trend among state government pension plans over the last two years. The bill being crafted by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) likely will be introduced within the next two months, said a Lieberman spokesman. It will affect the federal pension fund, called the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). The proposal follows the lead of 19 states that have passed or are considering initiatives to completely divest public employee pension money from foreign companies doing business...

FTSE Group (“FTSE”), the global index company, and Conflict Securities Advisory Group (“CSAG”), the preeminent research provider specializing in terror-free investment screening and certification services, today announce the launch of the FTSE CSAG Terror-Free Index Series, which is based on the FTSE Global Equity Index Series. The indexes will begin disseminating on Monday, March 31. The FTSE CSAG Terror-Free Index Series has been devised in response to exclusion requirements being adopted by US state governments, public and private organizations and investor demand. Nineteen US states, including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Missouri and Louisiana have proposed...

Divest Iran

Josh Mandel is a first-term legislator in the Ohio House of Representatives. He is also a sergeant in the US Marine Corps reserves. Last year, Mandel arrived at the state house in Columbus after a tour of duty in Iraq. There, he saw first-hand how Iran was fuelling the insurgency that is killing his fellow servicemen and Iraqi innocents. His experiences led him to introduce a bill that would divest Ohio's public employee pension funds from companies that do business with Iran and fellow state sponsor of terror Sudan. As his bill made its way through the various committees, Mandel's...

Josh Mandel lives a double life. The 29-year old former student body president of Ohio State is a member of the Ohio State Assembly. He is also a Sergeant of Marines with the Marine Corps Reserve in Ohio as an Intelligence Specialist. Sergeant Mandel spent a year in Iraq fighting terrorists. While there, he had a first-hand look at exactly how Iran supports insurgents and Al Qaeda terrorists who are killing American heroes every day. Iran provides them with money--almost always in the form of US $20 bills--training and weaponry, including advanced IED's, known as Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFP's) which...

Fifteen states are working to force pension funds to divest their portfolios of Iranian investments, with Chris Holton, Center for Security Policy; Laura Ecklar, Ohio State Teachers Retirement System spokeswoman and CNBC's Bill Griffeth http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=377262690&play=1

TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey would become the second state to ban investing state pension funds in companies doing business in Iran under legislation advanced Thursday. A Senate committee approved a bill to restrict the state pension fund from buying stock in international companies that do business with Iran. An Assembly panel recently did the same and both houses can now consider the measure. "It's ludicrous that we should invest our dollars there, a country that wants to export terrorism, that wants to see the destruction of allies, that wants to see the destruction of the United States," said Sen....

The intense misinformation campaign launched by business interests against Americans who don't want to invest their money in companies that do business with terror-supporting governments serves to illustrate an unfortunate truism: that anyone who advocates standing up to rogue states or jihadists, whether through use of military force, covert action, or economic sanctions, must expect to encounter opposition from powerful forces with a vested interest in appeasement. Some of these forces, particularly in the Democrat Party, are modern-era McGovernites, late-1960s and early 1970s-style leftists with a reflexive hostility toward any effort to project American strength in the world. In many...

"Economic sanctions,” former Sen. Jesse Helms was fond of remarking, “are the only policy option between appeasement and war.” In his paraphrase of Thomas Jefferson, Sen. Helms was addressing the concerns expressed by the business lobby to U.S. sanctions on the regime of Saddam Hussein. The sanctions Sen. Helms was advocating came in response to the gassing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds by Saddam’s troops in Halabja, nearly twenty years ago. So too, today, the business lobby is fighting vigorously to prevent state legislatures around the country from passing new laws to divest state pension funds from companies doing business...

Separating Mullahs From Their Moolah INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY 4/25/2007 Axis Of Evil: As Hezbollah's leadership admits Tehran is pulling its strings, Ohio takes a step toward making a contribution to the war on terror: Don't defund the war; defund the terrorists and their state sponsors. Despite overwhelming evidence, Democrats have long denied there ever was any link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and terrorist organizations like al-Qaida. Even as American and British soldiers are being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by Iranian-made high-tech explosives, they still refuse to connect the dots between terrorists and their state sponsors. While House Speaker Nancy...

The following testimony on the merits of divestment from Iran was given in front of the Ohio State Assembly on April 25, 2007. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee: I am Gunnery Sergeant Mark DePhillips with 3rd Batallion/25th Marines, based out of Brookpark, Ohio with companies in Akron, New York, West Virginia, and Lima Company here in Columbus. I drove down from Cleveland this morning to testify in support of H.B. 151, the Iran Divestment bill. I would like to start off by reading some headlines that have appeared in the news over the past six months: Iranian Weapons...

This week, the Ohio Legislature will hold its second hearing on legislation designed to help the state make a real contribution to America's triumph in the War for the Free World. It would prevent investment by Ohio's public pension funds in companies that do business with the terrorism-sponsoring, nuclear weapons- and ballistic missile-building and genocide-threatening Islamic Republic of Iran. Unfortunately, the Iranian regime and the corporations partnering with it (almost all of them foreign-owned and -operated, since American companies are prohibited from participating directly in such dealings and only a few circumvent that by using offshore subsidiaries) are abetted by...

WASHINGTON - Missouri State Treasurer Sarah Steelman may be far from the front lines in the war on terrorism but she's on the cutting edge of efforts to fight it with the power of the U.S. dollar. Elected as Missouri's chief financial officer in 2004, Steelman is leading a campaign in the Show Me State and beyond to get state and local governments to stop investing publicly managed funds in companies that do business in countries believed to sponsor terrorism. "Whether you're for or against the war, there are Americans sacrificing their lives on a daily basis for the protection...

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....

Iran pension divestment March 28, 2007 SACRAMENTO --The Assembly retirement committee approved a bill today requiring two giant state pension funds to sell about $24 billion worth of investments in 300 international firms that do business in Iran. The bill by freshman Assemblyman Joel Anderson, R-La Mesa, similar to previous pension divestment bills on South Africa and Darfur, split powerful public employee unions whose members are covered by the pension funds. The Service Employees Union that represents many state workers dropped its opposition. But two teacher unions, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers, said investment decisions...

What You Can Do about Iran March 23, 2007 FrontPageMagazine.com Kenneth R. Timmerman This week brought unusual news from Russia, which until now has been a major supplier of Iran’s nuclear programs. The Russians said they were pulling engineers and technicians out of Busheir, the Persian Gulf site where since 1995 they have been building a nuclear power plant for Iran. They cited as pretext Iran’s failure to make timely payments on the $800 million contract. Should this turn out to be more than just a tactical maneuver, Russia’s pullback from Iran signals a real success for U.S. diplomacy. But...

FSM’s friends at the Center for Security Policy have created a terrific program that enables every American to get involved in ending the war on terror…even without having to leave your home! Read this exciting news about what the lawmakers of Georgia have done using CSP’s program, and remember, your legislators can do it too, especially if you pressure them to act…now. Atlanta, GA - At 11am on Thursday, March 8, Senator Judson Hill of District 32 will hold a press conference in the Georgia Senate Press Conference Room at the Capitol in Atlanta to introduce Senate Bill 199 to...

The No. 5 auto maker will divest it's Mercedes distributor, reacting to pressure to not to do business in Iran, a magazine reports. February 12 2007: 12:48 PM EST FRANKFURT (Reuters) -- DaimlerChrysler intends to divest its majority stake in the company that is its exclusive distributor for Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Iran, Germany's WirtschaftsWoche magazine reported on its Web site. "The group is reacting to the growing pressure that the United States is applying on companies that do business in Iran," the magazine said Monday, without giving a source for its information. It said DaimlerChrysler would sell its 51 percent...

“It is unconscionable for our country's public pension systems to permit investment in companies that provide revenues, advanced equipment and technology to countries that threaten our vital security interests.” U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. The post-Sept. 11, 2001, war on terror has been costly to American taxpayers. An estimated $400 billion has been spent to date, and President Bush is asking for another $100 billion. The more painful cost, which is unquantifiable in monetary terms, is the 25,000 military casualties including more than 3,000 American lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government instituted...