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[philipjmoss.livejournal.com]

Comments

[caveatlector-09.livejournal.com]

Not to throw this discussion headlong into a political debate, but I'm having a difficult time discerning a few motivations of SDP. Why right-of-return mentioned for Palestinian refugees only? Why the link between questions 5 and 6? More importantly for my decision, how does someone who supports Israel as a concept, but not the current Israeli government make the "right" choice in the face of two seemingly opposing (yet narrow minded) sides? Any thoughts are appreciated.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm also frustrated with this issue in general. On one hand, I don't think that Somerville should be investing in anything other than Somerville, and certainly not investing in the Middle East. So I support the divestment ideaas a way to bring our money into the local business community, but the divestment group itself does seem to be rather meanspirited. And the anti-divestment group just seems silly and reactionary.

All I know is that when I vote, I'm going to ignore the groups and vote only based on the questions themselves. However, I wish there was a place that gave good background information about the questions. I have no idea what this refuge one is all about.

[mattdm [typekey.com] (from livejournal.com)]

You can also elect to vote neither yes nor no on and individual question. That's a completely valid voting choice.

[angerona.livejournal.com]

Even if you could have a ballot question requiring Somerville to invest in Somerville only, I'd say it'd be a very poor idea. Basically, you would be taking away employee's right to good investments (or to decide investments themselves) and forcing them to invest in something that may not be economically sound.

The point is, city of Somerville doesn't have all that much money on its own. A lot of the money it controls is in pension plans of its employees. It's unfair to jeopardize those pension plans in order to further someone's racist or some other agenda.

[turil.livejournal.com]

What happens to those Somerville pension plans when the Middle East erupts in all out war? Either we end up profiting off of the carnage (thus becoming dependent on war for money) or we end up losing it all. I don't see anything good coming out of investing in any place that is unstable. Know what I mean?

Ultimately, my agenda is to make Somerville financially sustainable on it's own. The only way I see to do that is to invest in Somerville, not someplace else. If Somerville businesses are not doing well, it seems to me that the best policy for the government would be to find out what they need to be successful and then invest in them. It would be good for Somerville in every way to be able to hold it's own in the world economy, wouldn't it? And you may think that this is a pipe dream. But it can't possibly happen if we don't want it to. So at least we could start by wanting it to happen and go from there...

[angerona.livejournal.com]

But you can't predict ahead of time which place will erupt in instability, violence and what not. Last year investing in New Orleans would've been a disaster, too, and there've been a lot of unpredictable events (heck, the whole point of the market is its unpredictability. Investments in the riskier places carry higher return and can be buffered by safer investments). The safest investment won't bring you much return.

But that's still besides the point. It's not my place to decide what someone's pension plan should look. Nor is it the place of the legislature to decide the investment portfolio -- that should be left to investment specialists.

A more profitable Somerville is the Somerville whose investments are economically sound, not dictated by whims of racist policies.

And even if I were to agree that investing only in Somerville would be a good thing, voting yes on prop. 5 and 6 is a very bad start to getting there.