by Omri Ceren

Sorry about the headline – we wanted to build certain we grabbed it before anyone else got it.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a statement earlier that week promising to sign AB 221, the legislation to divest California’s pensions from Iran. We got the press release via Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles, who helped push that bill on the grassroots and legislative levels. Note additionally the letters next to the Governor’s name and next to the name of Joel Anderson, the legislation’s author. The R’s supply only a tip of the huge effort that the Republican Jewish Coalition expended to help get that passed and signed.

California has a faraway history of leadership and doing what’s right with our
investment portfolio. Last year, I was proud to sign legislation to divest from the Sudan to take a energetic stand against genocide. I look forward to signing legislation to divest from Iran to take an equally almighty stand against terrorism.

AB 221 by Assembly member Joel Anderson (R- La Mesa) composes the California Public Divest from Iran Act which prohibits CalPERS and CalSTRS from investing public employee retirement funds in a company with business operations in Iran. CalPERS, the state’s employee retirement fund, is the largest pension fund in the nation and CalSTRS, the state’s public education retirement fund, is the second largest pension fund in the nation.
In September 2006 Gov. Schwarzenegger signed two bills, AB 2179 and AB 2941, prohibiting the state’s pension funds from investing in companies with active business in Sudan and indemnified the University of California from liability that might aftermath from its divestments from Sudan.
In the 1980s, the state approved similar measures to allow state entities to divest in South Africa in order to protest its apartheid policies.

Hey, you think Columbia will be divesting any date soon?

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

Iran, Los Angeles, Republicans

Original post by Omri Ceren