Why not get KPERS out of Sudan?

There was a rare bit of good news regarding Darfur this week — the Sudanese government’s tentative agreement to a joint African Union and United Nations peacekeeping force. Meanwhile, back in Kansas, members of a joint House-Senate committee on pensions showed an unseemly lack of interest in using the one tool they have to help stop the genocide in Sudan — legislation to divest the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System from Sudan. Six states already have done so. True, Rep. Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, probably summed it up for a lot of lawmakers and Kansans when he said: “It’s not a problem that you can solve with KPERS, so I don’t think there’s any interest in going there.”
But KPERS had a similar ban on South African investments from 1986 to 1994, when such divestitures helped end apartheid in that nation. KPERS’ links to Sudan are few, and divestiture would have a cost. But as we ask in our editorial on today’s Opinion page: “Will Kansas lead as it can on this issue, or look the other way?”
Posted by Rhonda Holman

2 Comments

  1. political_mom
    Posted November 18, 2006 at 8:26 am | Permalink

    As long as we (the US) remain hypocrites, divesting isn’t going to make a hill of beans. I like the idea really I do, and it does affect our pocketbooks because we have KPERS, but will we also divest from others like China?

  2. mrbill
    Posted November 18, 2006 at 8:07 pm | Permalink

    This map will indicate why no one is going into Darfur. Note who owns the concessions #6 and 4. They have told everyone to stay out…This gives an indication of who/why is running this catastrophe.

    http://www.guntruck.com/DavyCrockett.html

    It doesnt make one whit of difference what these little grunt funds do. They make more money in a day than you can haul out in a truck or several trucks. When the Chinese grow tired of the local Islamist whining they will eventually spank them and send them to bed – possibly without their oil.