Progress Ohio | nancy debrier's Blog: PERS investments in Iran

PERS investments in Iran

By bluehogcat - May 20th, 2007 at 9:41 pm EDT

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Categories: Action Alerts, Honest and Ethical Government, Peace and Armed Conflict, Religion, Workers' Rights

understand that state retirees investments are in iran..if Iran is bad as media makes it out why isnt PERSdivesting? they claim it would hurt their portfolio; we heard that re south africa --who r we supporting in iran--halliburton .....

Reader Comments

You bring up a good point...

By Doug May 20th 2007 at 11:03 pm EDT

But what are the names of the companies? V.P. Cheney's company was allegedly doing business with the govt of Iran not that long ago. I think you are barking up the wrong tree. Why not target the companies?

Re: You bring up a good point...

By bluehogcat May 21st 2007 at 5:57 pm EDT

copied th article fro metro section of dispatch last week--but forgot ot get date--so far they may divest from chevron, comerica, conoco, for, ge, boeing, honda, and xerox--sorry i did not get date of article

Re: You bring up a good point...

By bluehogcat May 21st 2007 at 5:59 pm EDT

writer of article was jnash@dispatch.com--sponsorrs of bill r josh mandel and shannon jones

This is a Bad Bill

By Carol Cogitating May 21st 2007 at 8:25 pm EDT

At the risk of being a contrarian, I will repeat my thoughts that I posted on this subject at Blue Bexley. If investment in companies that have investments in Iran is such a bad thing, then the legislature needs to deal with ALL Ohio investors, not just PERS investors. I contribute to PERS. It is my retirement. Like your Social Security, my pension with PERS is the only source of income I will have at retirement. I find it interesting that these Republicans would offer this bill. Republicans want to get rid of social security and tell everyone to take that money instead and go invest it for their own retirement. PERS has allowed this to some extent by allowing participants to "self direct" their investments in PERS. Yet now the Republican sponsors of this bill are telling participants HOW to invest their money for retirement. So my retirement does not have an equal chance of growing as compared to every other private retirement dollar in the market. If these same Republicans were trying to ban stock investments in companies like GE with business ties to Iranian companies, and it affected ALL Ohioans (not just state workers), what are the odds that this bill would see daylight? Is this what our fine legislators have in mind if social security was privatized? Go invest on your own, but by the way, here is a list of companies that you may invest in...

Iran: Who does the US government tell us is bad this month?

By Hopeful Choice Progressive May 30th 2007 at 3:54 am EDT

In the book 1984, the government would tell the people that so and so is our enemy, and then the next day, tell them that so and so has always been our friend.

The US government is eager to control the people who live in the middle east. Those people have artificial borders that were drawn up by imperialist European powers long ago. If people have a right to self determination, then peaceful efforts to reconfigure the artificial borders should be supported by a democratic and peace loving nation.

Before we start supporting a government call for disinvestment from Iran, we should consider who has a legitimate right to "interfere" with Iraq's Shi'ite population, and who is there purely on behalf of the oil companies. Who possesses, continues to develop, and has used nuclear weapons and refuses to give them up, while demanding that others not possess them?

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