Where Are The Divestment Demonstrators?

About a month ago, I heard Frank Gaffney discussing his new Divest Terror campaign, which is directed at pension funds that have investments in companies that do work for regimes that support terror.

Really? This is a big enough problem to worry about? Who would invest in terror? Well ...

"Terrorism Investments of the 50 States" is the first national security-based statistical analysis of the investment patterns of America's public pension funds. This report proves empirically that this nation's largest and most prominent public pension systems tend to be heavily invested in global publicly traded companies that have business activities in terrorist-sponsoring states.

Together, these funds invest over $1 trillion in stock alone on behalf of this country's fire fighters, police officers, teachers, state and local officials and other public employees, making this collection of funds one of the most powerful investment blocks in the world. Given this extraordinary financial influence and the important role played by public companies in the economies of terrorist-sponsoring states,the Center for Security Policy has reached a key finding: America's 100 largest and most prominent pension systems have the power to help defeat terrorism.

From the pension system of this country's smallest state, Rhode Island, which has close to $400 million invested in 41 companies that are active in terrorist-sponsoring states, to America's largest public pension system -- the California Public Employees Retirement System -- which has over $17 billion invested in 201 such companies, the results were remarkably uniform: On average, America's Top 100 pension systems invest between 15 and 23 percent of their portfolio in companies that do business in terrorist-sponsoring states.

Upon reading this, I immediately called my brother-in-law, who sits on the board of the Fresno County pension. He'd beat me to the punch. A vet, cop and director of Brotherhood of the Badge, he said he'd convinced their board to begin divesting a couple months earllier, and was pressuring other boards to do the same.

Fresno's public employee pension is probably the best managed in the state, so his recommendation has some clout.

But is anyone listening? When the Darling Left started a similar campaign a couple decades ago directed at apartheid -- a bad system for sure, but not as bad as terrorism -- the media jumped on it and city councils and university boards couldn't divest quickly enough to salve their consciences.

Where are the media and the boards on this one? Where are the activists cramming the board rooms, demanding action now?

The answer is simple. The Left, which does care about demonstrating and shouting cute rhyming slogans, doesn't care about terror because they're blurred out in the whole "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" relativity sump.

University regents, city councils and the media, which plead for us to see them as unbiased, are deeply moved by these demonstrations, and they are unmoved by thoughtful letters and policy statements from conservatives. So much for being unbiased.

Their refusal to be moved by Gaffney's well-reasoned and unchallengable thesis that terror-sponsoring states should not benefit from the agencies and institutions that serve the American people is tragic. Because they are unmoved, terrorists are moving weapons and jihadists closer to us and our troops every day.

If you have influence over a city council member, county supervisor, university regent or pension board officer, drive them to this site. Better, dress dirty and loudly shout these verses:

O, O-sama bin Laden!
Don't send him money 'cuz he's rotten!

It's pathetically dumb, but they understand that language.

Related Tags: Terror, Terrorism, Divest, Gaffney