The California Federation of Teachers plans a protest at a CalSTRS board meeting in West Sacramento Thursday, demanding the pension fund follow through on a 2-year-old pledge to unload its investment in a gun-maker tied to a horrific school shooting in Connecticut.I know what let's do. Let's divest from all sorts of profitable but "bad" organizations. We could start by ditching gambling stocks, liquor stocks, smoking stocks, and invest only in renewable energy and free-range chicken companies.
A simultaneous protest is planned, also for Thursday, at the Los Angeles office of Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm that owns gun manufacturer Freedom Group.
The protests are tied to CalSTRS’ investment in Cerberus, valued at $375 million. The teachers’ pension fund demanded that Cerberus sell Freedom after a Bushmaster rifle was used in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in late 2012. Some 26 students and teachers died in the shooting. Bushmaster is one of Freedom’s brands.
Because yeah, that will fund my retirement.
You'd think a union would want to ensure that its members' retirement money would be well-invested, profitable, and safe. Clearly you'd be wrong, what matters most is political ideology.
Yes, every divestment idea ever has been economically flawed. How do I know? because Cal STRS and Cal PERS typically out perform most mutual funds -- and if a stock is not performing well, it divests itself. Therefore, if you need to tell them to divest, you are by definition encouraging economic loss … Q.E.D. This is what happens when people don't take economics. Or are teachers. Or both.
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