Targeting Iran: PERA, The Center for Security Policy, Conflict Security Advisory Group (2)
1, It's Big: Gold in Them Thar Hills
It’s called Colorado PERA. For many who do not participate, either by paying in or receiving pension benefits, it’s an obscure term people hardly read about. The acronym stands for Public Employees Retirement Association. It is Colorado’s state pension fund which state employees and the state pay into in lieu of Social Security.
And it is big.
According to its website in 2006, PERA is the 25th largest public pension fund in the United States, managing some $40 billion in assets making it the largest single economic entity in the Rocky Mountain region. Founded in 1931 and operating under the authority of the state legislature, in 2006 it was paying benefits of roughly $2.18 billion to more than 73,000 recipients. 182,400 public employees from more than 400 state-related enterprises and agencies were paying in.
In this age of the privatization of everything with the country still strong in the grips of what might be called the `Milton Friedman delusion’, PERA has become a target of all kinds of initiatives, scams, and cynical maneuvers - coming mostly from legislators - to politicize its activities and undermine its mission.
Put simply...there is simply too much gold in them thar hills and it is too tempting a target for financial vultures and those with political agendas to leave well enough alone. As a result, PERA participants, both those paying in and those receiving benefits have had to be on guard to take care that the state legislature doesn’t undermine the system. Every session - including the one coming up - there are PERA-related bills - not one but many - which need careful perusal. One result is that two PERA-member lobbying groups have come into existence, a smaller one of 400 called Friends of PERA was formed to follow unfriendly ballot initiatives. It joins the much larger and politically influential Colorado Retired School Employees Association CRSEA with its 8000 members (make that 8001 - I'm signing up today) to watchdog the retirement pensions of more than a quarter million Coloradoans.
Together the two have some political muscle. With its 28 `local units’ - as they are called - in every corner of Colorado, CRSEA can mobilize its members for political campaigns as effectively as any group that I know of in the state. Although smaller, Friends of PERA seems, given my brief exposure to it, to compensate for its size with a great deal of political acumen.
2.Retirement just isn’t what it used to be
Retirement just isn’t what it used to be. No lounging around for Don Schaeffer and Sandy Green.
Don Schaefer is an alert former PERA employee who previously spent time in the military. He’s a board member of Friends of PERA. Sandy Green taught fifth grade for 28 years in Mapleton’s (n. of Denver) school district and is now the president of CRSEA. Neither of them thought they’d have to spend so much time in retirement, defending the integrity of their pension fund, but that is exactly how they spend a good deal of their time. Two days ago, at Common Grounds, my occasional northwest Denver `office' (shared with hundreds of coffee addicts) the two of them were kind enough to meet with me.
Green and Schaefer - and good many of the 8500 PERA members they represent are strongly against the current colorado state legislative initiatve that would mandate PERA to divest from companies doing business with Iran. They appear to be committed to fighting even the introduction of such a bill in the legislature, .if introduced to killing it in committee and if it gets out of committee to launching a full scale campaign to defeat it in the legislature. Not that it means that much in the general scheme of things, but I will rally my forces too (wife, two daughters, dog and Common Grounds coffee mates) to help in the effort.
Green's and Schaefer's case against PERA divesting from Iran gravitates around a number of points, laid out in a leaflet Friends of PERA has recently produced. The Iran divestment issue is followed rather closely on their website . The leaflet cites five major arguments against the Iran divestment plan:
While one might take issue with one or another of these points, the overall impact is clear: the legislature and the supporters of the intiative are playing politics with the pension funds of Colorado state employees in a big way.
3. The Genocide Issue
Interestingly enough, although there have been newspaper articles and op eds from legislators calling for legislation for PERA to divest from Iran and, although the legislative session will soon open and several legislators have declared themselves sponsors in advance, to date no particular bill on this subject to be seen. Could this be because, already feeling the pinch of opposition, the sponsors what to hold back the bill as long as possible? Perhaps. But they'll have to show their hand before long.
And the fight is already on.
Besides the fact that PERA members in their great majority oppose such legislation, the opposition stems in part from the fact that this is the second time in several years that such an initiative has been introduced. A measure to have PERA divest from companies doing business with Sudan passed in the last session mandating state institutions to divest from companies with interests in the Sudan. Although many Colorado institutions were involved, PERA is by far the largest one influenced because of the size of its assets. One reason that Sudan investment took place was that the situation in its Dhafur province was defined as a genocide.
While PERA accepted this logic, and the legislature pushed it, it was not without considerable debate. When do crimes against humanity become genocide? And it is a highly selective and politicized use of the term genocide at best. If used to describe the situation in Dhafur, why not Bosnia, Congo,...and one of the more glaring examples never mentioned - the US occupation of Iraq which has caused up to 1 million deaths and lead to the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the 1940s?
While the Sudan divestment measure did pass the Colorado legislature and has since been implemented, it was done with reluctance and resistance from what might be called the PERA community, that insists that a rather high standard of genocide be proven before divestment measures be taken. But within months of the Sudan divestment measure, a new legislative initiative, to divest from Iran was undertaken. It was spearheaded, as mentioned earlier in the legislature by Ken Gordon and Joan Fitz-gerald and seemingly part of a national coordinated effort.
4. Who's Pushing This?
In yesterday's entry (Jan 6, 2008) I gave some evidence of the role of Colorado's mainstream Jewish Community in nothing short of mobilizing for this bill. Their efforts to this end are active, almost militant. They have unfortunately bought into the myth of the Iranian threat, and as they have so often done in the past, confused US and Israeli foreign policy concerns in an `Israel -right-or-wrong' (but when has Israel ever been `wrong' in their eyes?) manner.
There are other players though.
One is the Center for Security Policy (CSP). Google its website and the unmistakable face of Frank Gaffney, its president and CEO will smile back at you. One of the major architects of the war on terrorism, the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and for Israel to take the hardest line possible towards the Palestinians and its neighbors, Gaffney is a five star neo-con who has been pushing the United States for a more aggressive posture internationally (successfully it seems) for decades.
CSP's favorite political flavor is extreme militarism and reaction, and is little more than a bunch of right-wing military people and political analysts. Richard Perle, William Bennett, Douglas Feith among others serve on its national security advisory board. Henry Kissinger and Norman Podheretz (perhaps the father of the Jewish move toward what used be called `Cold War Liberalism' and who very much wants the US to attack Iran) are members of its `Board of Regents'. A rather elaborate organization - its banquets must be impressive - it's structure, meant to impress on paper, includes a board of directors, an advisory council, a board of regents, a military committee. I could only find one Colorado name among this cast of stars - a real shortcoming that John Andrews must be genuinely concerned about - that of Dr. Dennis Showalter of Colorado College in Colorado Springs.
CSP is pushing the divestment issue nationally and hard. You can follow the national divestment campaign rather closely on the website too by clicking on the link `Divest Terror'. Once there an internet surfer is greeted with a rather racist picture (interesting how they are all Third World figures) that includes the latest list of Third World leaders to be compared to Hitler: Osama Bin Laden (of course), Bashir Assad of Syria, Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir from Sudan, Kim Jong Il of North Korea, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and last but not least, Fidel Castro of Cuba. Perhaps Castro was just thrown in for good measure. You'd think because he's ill CSP might give Fidel a break, but no, hardly. Search the website far and wide but you won't find mention of Augusto Pinochet, the Argentinian junta cabal from the 1970s or the former Israeli prime minister now in a comma who has been indicted for crimes against humanity by the World Court for the 1982 massacres of Palestinians at Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps.
Another organization that is having nothing short of a field day on this divestment campaign is called the Conflict Security Advisory Group (CSAG) that offers its clients `terror free investing'. They are very hopeful that the Colorado legislation passed as they stand to make a bundle of money off of it. Since state legislatures, pension funds and the like actually don't have much of a clue which companies invest in Iran or not, they must turn to a research organization specializing in such ventures, the CSAG being one. At least it claims to have the best information on the subject and is more than willing to share such information - for a hefty fee of course. They do the research, PERA would pay the bills. I'm going to look into their operations a bit more closely in the weeks ahead.
Other well oiled groups are involved although exactly how isn't entirely clear. Take for example the sponsors of the still yet to be revealed legislation, Joe Rice (D-Littleton) and Steve Ward (R-Littleton). Although both hope to return to Colorado for the opening of the legislature, both are for the moment, actively deployed with the US military in Iraq where they serve in the military, Ward as a marine colonel, Rice as an army lieutenant colonel. Both are key point people in trying to persuade the state legislature that Iran is actively involved in supplying Iraqi opposition forces (that is opposing the US occupation) with the new generation of remote explosives that are doing so much damage to the US occupation forces there.
Other than claims from US military sources like Rice and Ward, no credible evidence implicating Iran in these activities has been offered. But as the connection between Iran and nuclear weapons has been pretty much undermined a new rationale - otherwise known as an excuse - for a US attack on Iran had to be constructed. No doubt the colonel and the lieutenant colonel will make a big impression on Colorado legislators, who in the main want to believe them. They represent what might be called `the military lobby' in the legislature.
To be continued...