CONROE, TX – Caney Creek High School principal Greg Poole is a man on a mission, although he’s not entirely certain how to accomplish it, given that his enemy hasn’t actually made an appearance.Poole is deeply concerned about the moral implications of his school district’s pension plan, where its $94 million is, and how it might be invested. Although there’s not a dime currently riding on pornography, Poole is worried that such might not always be the case – and he wants to make sure things don’t change.
The problem, of course, is that defining what is pornography and what is an investment in pornography is not as simple as it seems at first glance. Although the fund’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that it is clean of direct investment in anything x-rated, including magazines, videos, or even strip clubs, there are investments that could be considered associated with adult entertainment. For instance, New Frontier Media, which distributes adult content, received 64-percent of its revenue last year from distribution agreements with DISH Network, Time Warner Cable, Inc., and Comcast Corp. In Poole’s dream world, none of those companies would be associated with his school district since they are associated with something he considers to be entirely inappropriate.
Poole realizes that his proposal could include internet search engines and streaming video companies if taken to its logical extreme, but it’s a risk he’s willing to take since he believes that “educators got into this to help the youth of our state,” and investing in companies that promote or in any way support pornography runs counter to that goal.
Nonetheless, the idealistic educator plans to ask his fellow Texas public school employee pension plan trustees to ban investments in companies that produce porn – or work to privatize the education system, or avoid taxes by incorporating offshore. Even with this agenda, Poole insists that he’s “not seeking to create a social investing revolution in Texas.”
Last fall, Lion Capital and Apollo Investments both assured the Teacher Retirement System of Texas that they would not invest in pornography, after Poole requested the firms make the commitment. By doing so, he hoped not only to earn such assurances but also spark a discussion on the matter of activism at the retirement system level.
Some board members aren’t sure what to make of Poole’s ideas. As committee chair Jarvis Hollingsworth points out, the situation presents “somewhat of a slippery slope” since one could easily expand the definition of pornography to include music with explicit lyrics and other potentially offensive but not technically pornographic forms of controversial expression. In part because of this and, likely because, as left wing activists have discovered, such investment tactics rarely boost profits, Hollingsworth believes that the matter should be referred to the full board before making decisions about where the $65 billion in public stocks should be invested. Nonetheless, Poole is confident that the system could be retooled without harming the bottom line since it’s currently large and diversified.
During the past two decades a number of similar but unsuccessful proposals have been presented to the public pension programs, including efforts to ban investments in tobacco, in music companies that do business in South Africa, China, or the Sudan.
