INDIANAPOLIS – Attorney General Todd Rokita today pushed an asset management company investing pension funds of Indiana state employees to refrain from funneling Hoosiers’ hard-earned money to support leftist causes.
“We expect an asset manager’s commitment to the financial return of our state pensions to be undivided,” Attorney General Rokita said. “I intend to exercise every option available to me to make sure that Indiana state employees’ retirement savings are wisely invested rather than frittered away by left-wing activists.”
Attorney General Rokita signed a letter to BlackRock Inc. decrying the company’s indications that climate change advocacy is a factor guiding its investment strategy.
“BlackRock has an obligation to act in the sole financial interest of its clients,” states the letter, which is signed by 19 state attorneys general. “BlackRock’s actions . . . appear to have been motivated by interests other than maximizing financial return.”
The company has “committed to accelerating net zero emissions across all of its assets, regardless of client wishes,” the letter further states, adding that BlackRock aspires “to retire fossil fuels.”
In July, Attorney General Rokita wrote an op-ed about the phenomenon of “ESG investing,” a strategy that purports to be concerned with environmental, social, and governance issues.
“The primary impetus for this leftward drift of corporate America,” Attorney General Rokita wrote in that piece, “is the rise of ‘woke capital,’ or investment designed not to maximize financial returns but to impose a leftist social and economic agenda that cannot otherwise be implemented through the ballot box.”
Attorney General Rokita’s op-ed mentioned BlackRock by name, noting that while the company aims to hamper America’s energy-producing capabilities, it simultaneously invests in China — undercutting U.S. national interests.
“ESG supporters argue that their activism does not interfere with making money,” the op-ed states. “They are wrong and are deliberately trying to disguise the fact that ESG investing is a ploy to subvert the will of the people for the sake of ‘progressive’ politics.”
The letter to BlackRock is attached.
