California may divest from companies building Trump’s wall
Never change, California
While California’s Governor Jerry Brown is in Washington, D.C., asking for the Trump administration for funding to help pay for storm damage repair and train construction, the state’s legislators have been busy working against the American President.
The border wall is the cornerstone of President Trump’s campaign platform. This week, Sacramento politicians proposed a bill that that would divest its pension funds from companies engaged in the building of that wall.
Assembly Bill 946 would give CalPERS and CalSTRS, the state’s massive public employee and teacher retirement systems, one year to identify and liquidate any holdings in companies working on the wall, a central campaign promise of Trump’s for which his administration is now accepting bids.
…With portfolios worth hundreds of billions of dollars, CalPERS and CalSTRS are frequent targets for groups seeking to make a powerful political statement by pressuring the funds into cutting ties with a particular industry. Recent years have brought debates over whether California should be invested in tobacco, coal, guns and the Dakota Access Pipeline.
I suspect that this proposal will not be as successful as the politicians believe. History suggests that anti-Trump boycotts have proven that they have an opposite effect. Businesses that have bet against President Trump have lost…bigly.
Additionally, involving businesses offers a wonderful approach to the public-private funding. For example, through the Sponsor-A-Highway Program, businesses sponsor a section of highway and pay a monthly fee in order for work crews to pick up litter.
Trump can start a Sponsor-A-Section to build portions of the wall. The logos of participating companies can be emblazoned on a section, and American can make their buying choices accordingly. Communities impacted by illegal immigration can pool their monies together and also support construction efforts.
It could be YUGE!
In terms of actual border-wall construction, it turns out my home town will be at the center of early activities.
Select companies from around the nation, and even some international firms, bidding to build the wall will be required to construct an example of their proposal in San Diego, said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The federal government isn’t saying exactly where bidders will display their designs, but it chose San Diego because of existing border work at Tijuana — and possibly where future construction may begin.
“(Customs and Border Patrol) identified San Diego . . . as the location to construct wall prototypes because of site accessibility to construct, and the ability to evaluate the wall as part of our larger, existing border infrastructure system,” wrote Ralph Desio, a border patrol spokesman, in an email to the Union-Tribune on Wednesday.
I suspect that Sacramento’s politicians will remain irrelevant, and that the only people that harm are the Californians they were originally elected to serve.
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Comments
1. Let me point out something here that I was not aware of. There is actual work on the wall going on.
2. I think that Trump should issue an executive order that any subentity of a local government, any financial trust run for the benefit of a group of people working for a local government can no longer receive federal funds if they boycott companies for working for the federal government. Not should any entity or trust from which money is taken to benefit above entities, be eligible to receive money from the federal government. Anyone with more experience feel free to rephrase it better.
3. Why would any private organization choose to work for a group which is already at risk of defaulting on their payments, instead of working for the federal government?
4. The result locally. Company A works on the wall, gets boycotted. Company B gets the state jobs that Company A would have gotten had they not been boycotted. In the meantime, Company B has withdrawn from some private bids because they no longer have the resources to compete for them due to their new government contracts. They also jack up their prices to the government because of scarcity of government contractors. Company A also gets to jack it’s prices to new private businesses. Result California government pays more, California business pays more. End result California poorer.
I almost duplicated your para 2 but you said it much more efficiently that I was going to.
I’m betting any company that does get the contract in California will have no end of “permit”, “supplies”, “vandalism” and “labor” problems.
@Roux someone somewhere else suggested the wall be run westward to Yuma, then a hard right turn and run it to Canada. I heartily approve.
CalPERS and CalSTRS are frequent targets for groups seeking to make a powerful political statement by pressuring the funds into cutting ties with a particular industry.
Any bets on what year Calpers & Calstrs will run out of industries to sever ties with?
Maybe they can invest in unicorn futures.
So, the companies will make nice incomes on these construction contracts, and the pension funds will divest from companies making nice incomes. They don’t really have the best interests of the pensioners in mind, do they?
I hope my retired Californian brother gets his pension for the remainder of his life, but I’m not betting on it.
I have no problem with SF doing this. I boycott many movies because of the stupid people in them and feel that is my right. If these companies want to lose money and good job producing contracts good on ’em. The answer to stupidity is not more stupidity. Let people and companies make their own stupid mistakes and if they do not learn from them then goodbye.
Isn’t this illegal when done by government entities? Like refusing to hire firms who’s owners are Republicans?
Let’s put California on the other side of the wall.
I will state the obvious: CAPER has no significant money in any construction firms. This is Fake News.
Pro-Choicers including: anti-native factions, [class] diversitists, abortionists, social justice adventurists, and those who reap profit through labor arbitrage, are desperate to secure a right to privacy that obfuscates the forcings and motives of catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform.
Elective abortion (e.g. selective-child) is inhumane.
[class] diversity (i.e. “color of skin”) is exclusive.
Social justice adventurism that forces Catastrophic Anthropogenic Immigration Reform is cruel.
Love Hates Abortion
Oh, for an function.
Hate Loves Abortion
Well…
I’d just go where the paying work is.
If California starts talking like that, you’d have to wonder if you did do a job for them, would they actually pay up?
They have absolutely no right or business to advance an ideology while they are supposed to be in service to the Citizens of the State.