2008 OK Senate Debate: on Homeland Security

Andrew Rice: Divest from terrorist states like we divested for apartheid

A: Well, on the war, there’s really no direct vote on the state level. Although somewhat related to it; I had a bill this year that the Republicans blocked. The bill would have had our state retirement pension plans, the judge retirements, the teacher retirements, all of our big state retirement plans that are invested in mutual funds, that would have forced us to divest our retirements out of mutual funds that invest in countries that are state sponsors of terrorism. Syria, North Korea, Iran. Our idea is that if they are national security threats, we shouldn’t be economically investing with their governments. And there have been a lot of states that have done these divestment plans. This is what we did in South Africa during Apartheid; we divested the money out of South Africa until they dealt with ending Apartheid. That bill was stopped. So that would have had somewhat of a direct effect on national security issues.