State can’t afford ‘virtue-signaling’ with divestment

June 18, 2018
State can’t afford ‘virtue-signaling’ with divestmentSensible observation about oil and gas deserves special attention when it comes from a former Democrat—who says she “voted accordingly”—in a city no longer much connected with the industry.
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Sensible observation about oil and gas deserves special attention when it comes from a former Democrat—who says she “voted accordingly”—in a city no longer much connected with the industry.

In a June 8 column in the Chicago Sun-Times, radio personality Stephanie Trussell pummels liberal efforts to make public funds divest oil-company holdings.

“Divestment might be emotionally satisfying, but it won’t help the environment,” Trussell writes. “It would, however, rob Illinois workers of their pensions.”

In the state’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, candidate Daniel Biss proposed divestment by Illinois pension funds.

Although Biss didn’t win, Trussell expects the issue to resurface.

“Divestment remains a top priority for progressive activists, who hate the idea of investing public money in companies that emit greenhouse gases,” she notes.

But it’s trouble for state-worker pension funds, which need an extra $250 billion to meet promises to workers. Illinois itself has liabilities of $15 billion and a $6 billion budget deficit.

“Given this looming fiscal crisis,” Trussell writes, “it’s sheer lunacy to propose selling some of the pension funds’ most lucrative assets.”

According to Trussell, whose show runs on Chicago’s WLS-AM, gains by oil and gas assets of Illinois’s teachers’ and state workers’ retirement systems well exceeded their shares of total investments during 2005-13.

The performance period preceded the oil-price crash of 2014, of course. Still, the analysis provides context for the liberal urge to, as Trussell puts it, “put politics ahead of workers’ retirement security.”

She notes that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently announced divestment plans.

And she observes that the efforts won’t remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, adding, “Illinois’s and New York’s virtue-signaling won’t persuade energy companies to suddenly stop drilling.”

Trussell speaks with the pithy insight of a grandmother whose political conversion came from listening to the AM-only radio in a used car her husband bought in 1993.

Her message now, according to the WLS website: “Being a conservative is common sense.”

(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted June 8, 2018; author’s email: [email protected])