Fourth of July fireworks
2008 Cityfolk Festival
Spotted at the Cityfolk Festival
EDITORIAL
Our view: Pension funds shouldn't finance evil
Other views: Retirees can't afford to fight Irans and Sudans
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Just lately, President George W. Bush has somewhat ratcheted up pressure on Sudan to stop the genocide in Darfur. But while he's been dithering or — if you prefer the kind interpretation — giving diplomacy a chance, the Ohio Legislature has been working on a message of its own.
Last year state Sen. Jeff Jacobson, R-Butler Twp., and state Rep. John White, R-Kettering, got a resolution passed that encouraged pension systems and state governmental agencies not to invest in Sudan. But the suggestion was just a suggestion.
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This year Rep. Josh Mandel, a Republican from Lyndhurst, and Rep. Shannon Jones, a Republican from Springboro, have proposed legislation that would prohibit Ohio's five pension funds and the Bureau of Workers' Compensation from investing in companies that do business with Iran because it's on the government's terrorist list.
Now the push is on to get these funds to divest from businesses that have ties to either country, and divestiture would be mandatory.
Administrators for the pension systems are not happy. They argue that it costs money to dump investments, and they're worried about lawmakers making more and more rules about where they should be allowed to put down their billions. They say they're ill-equipped to make moral judgments about individual companies' or countries' actions.
They have a point. Different people will have different standards about what's just and ethical. But the slippery slope argument is a little hard to take seriously when genocide is the issue.
The disinvestment campaigns against Sudan and Iran are national. They include some unlikely alliances. Very different groups are turning to the same tactic — grassroots-driven economic isolation.
Liberal human-rights groups and conservative evangelicals are among those who are outraged about the Arab-backed government in Sudan's campaign against black Africans. Over four years, government-supplied marauders have killed 200,000 to 400,000 people and run an estimated 2.5 million people from their villages.
Feeling a special responsibility to speak out against genocide, Jewish groups also have rallied against the killings in Darfur, with some calling for disinvestment. Likewise, they loathe Iran's president, who sounds as though he would, if he could, obliterate Israel.
Because these campaigns have picked up speed — 13 states have adopted divestment laws on Sudan — some companies, including Siemens and Rolls-Royce, are voluntarily getting out of the African country or not renewing contracts there.
The American Enterprise Institute also is generating conservative heat on businesses that even tangentially are helping Iran by documenting major financial transactions with that country through an interactive, updated Web page. (Visit it at www.aei.org/IranInteractive/.)
These campaigns are modeled after efforts in the 1980s to get South Africa to end apartheid. There's no question that grassroots activism — even without the Internet — helped to isolate a country and to end the evil subjugation of blacks.
The counter-arguments to economically based sanctions are that they can end up giving outside forces of reason less leverage and influence, and they may harm an offending country's people, rather than the government.
With regard to Sudan, the case for disinvestment is clear-cut. That government has had four long years to stop raping, burning, pillaging and killing; the people are already victims.
The situation in Iran is more complex. There's no genocide. And the country would be harder to isolate. Many European countries trade openly with Iran. And the president is elected, which has to count for something.
American foreign policy specialists are divided on how to deal with Iran. Some point out that there is much internal hostility to the current president, and that he isn't the ultimate authority, anyway. They worry that making Washington too much the villain could help him.
State legislatures are getting in over their heads in trying to deal with the issue.
Investing in Iran and Sudan by American companies is against the law, The ability to do so through foreign subsidiaries is something bigger than a loophole. Insisting that at least government pension funds will not play that game with regard to Sudan makes a statement worth making. They're big investors.
Ohio should join the community of people nationally — and globally — that is rising up and saying that, with some effort, investors can and should distance themselves from the world's most heinous actors.
