SRI stands for socially responsible investing. Whether you invest money in stocks or time and energy, your investment should make sense from both a financial and a sustainability standpoint.
Photo:jmtimages, Creative Commons, Flickr
The same can be said for political candidates. Barack Obama and his wife have a reported $350,000 in actual investments, almost equally divided between the Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund (a socially responsible fund) and the Vanguard Wellesley Income, which is a 60-40 mix of bonds and stocks.
Obama, a Democratic member of the U.S. Senate since 2004, previously served in the Illinois senate. He is 47 years old, and the fifth African American senator in U.S. history. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard (Magna Cum Laude), Obama is a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, the Veterans Affairs Committee, and a former member of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
His position on education is clear. He believes that Americans must be properly educated to compete in the global community, has voted yes on every education-advancement amendment brought before the Senate, and opposes renewing the No Child Left Behind act unless matching funds are also made available (as they were not under the Bush administration).
Obama shows his Democratic leanings by proposing that some version of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 be put back in place. This act established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and included banking reforms which were designed to control speculation.
Unfortunately. the two most relevant clauses of Glass-Steagall (the rate of interest on savings, and conflict-of-interest purchases by bank holding companies) were repealed before the millennium, leading – according to some experts – to the current Citigroup, UBS, subprime meltdown.
Whether Obama’s appeal for legislation is an attempt to staunch the blood flowing from Wall Street into the American household, or just more empty rhetoric, remains to be seen. The Fed has so far trumped any legislation by rescuing Bear Stearns, but this doesn’t mean that a November victory won’t see some type of Obama legislation over financial enterprises enacted.
Obama has stated his ideal of a government that exists to make the free market more effective through transparency, coupled with a safety net that encourages entrepreneurship. Obama voted no to raising the limit on the national debt, but in 2005 – his first full senatorial year – voted only once to support the interests of the National Taxpayers Union.
He favors nuclear power, but only if the U.S. develops an appropriate storage policy for nuclear waste which can deter terrorists. He voted to remove oil and gas exploration subsidies, and also voted to make oil-producing and exporting cartels illegal. His most significant environmental vote was a resounding yes on factoring global warming into every planned federal project. His voting to support environmental agencies like the American Wilderness Coalition has been almost 100 percent across the board.
His record on civil rights and terrorism also speaks for itself. He voted to renew the Patriot Act, but vetoed the provision that makes wiretaps legal, and continues to push for a Patriot Act that protects against terrorism while maintaining civil liberties. Whether he can accomplish this as president, given the power of the military/industrial complex, remains to be seen.
He is absolutely against torturing suspected or known terrorists and makes no exception to this rule. His stated intent as president is to close Guantanamo as a terrorist prison camp and restore habeas corpus (the right to a trial before a judge) to reach Muslims who have fled abroad. He has repeatedly said that we (Americans) are no safer now than we were before 9/11, but has made few specific proposals for change beyond the ones mentioned above. However, as an Illinois state senator, he sponsored a bill to require the police to videotape interrogations in capital crime cases; Illinois was the first state to do this.
Obama is against privatization of Social Security, saying it will destroy the only system that serves as a safety net for the aged and incapacitated. He is equally supportive of veterans, and proposes to address the shortcomings of the Veteran’s Administration (VA) system, which have been a thorn in the sides of presidents ever since Eisenhower. Again, his ability to make changes to the VA will depend in large part on the cooperation of the military/industrial complex, which traditionally spends more creating bullets holes than healing them.
Obama’s most telling contribution to date has been the Iraq War De-escalation Act, a bill that proposes to immediately cap Iraq troop levels and eventually bring American soldiers home. The original troop-withdrawal date of April 2008 has come and gone and our men and women remain in a foreign land at the mercy of roadside bombs and defective equipment. As president, Obama may be able to implement a rapid and effective Iraq pullout, but he intends to remain at full presence in Afghanistan, which he considers both a justifiable and a "winnable" war.
He opposes the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and charges past and current presidents with selling out both American labor and environmental/sustainability issues to push CAFTA-like agreements (which many call investor rights’ agreements) through. Obama is supported by the Teamsters Union. a negative endorsement among people who oppose labor unions, as well as those who think the Teamsters Union has gained an unsavory reputation. Support by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) is equally dubious, as the DLC purportedly exists to insure that favored candidates like Obama have received the stamp of approval from the Democratic elite – the ones who hold the money and power. Obama has proposed $80 billion in tax cuts for middle-class Americans and increased taxes for the richest. Unfortunately, so has every other American presidential candidate since the 1960’s, creating a credibility gap that spans generations.
Obama is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). To my thirty-something friends, this is evidence of his duplicity, since the CFR is viewed as a global policy club for the New World Order, which is hell-bent on destroying the U.S. In my view, the CFR is so huge, membership is equivalent to that of MySpace and just about as relevant. It seems like every politically active celebrity, except former candidate Mike Huckabee is a member, including Angelina Jolie.
Obama’s heroes are Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, Pablo Picasso, and John Coltrane. No matter how the Clinton campaign tries to malign, misquote, or mistreat Obama, he responds with the calm demeanor and wisdom reminiscent of the great men in history. He is able to extemporaneously answer questions with ease and presence of mind. A lifetime spent serving the people (as a lawyer defending against discrimination and in defense of voting rights) is visible proof of his commitment to the common human.
Despite the obvious disadvantages that his racial background posed, Barack Obama has advanced himself through hard work, intelligence and tremendous effort to arrive on the scene of American politics as a serious contender for the American presidency. The problem American voters see is his youth and inexperience. Obama has not been tested in the fires of altruism versus self-interest long enough for us to decide if he is as good as he looks and sounds.
Remember that a candidate’s vote speaks louder than words.
Disclosure: I am registered as an Independent and do not endorse any specific presidential candidate.