Originally published on Forbes.com.
I was a little bit puzzled by the skimpiness of Jill Stein’s tax disclosure. When I interviewed her in 2012, she said that she would be releasing her returns “soon”, but it never happened. Finally, she did do something for the 2016 campaign. Her website refers to Tax Returns, but all that is there is the front two pages of her 2015 Form 1040, which to be strictly accurate is part of one tax return. The only thing plural is pages and by that standard, thanks to the New York Times, we have more from Donald Trump.
What Is Lurking On The Other Returns?
My speculation for the cause of her reticence was that details in her returns that were fairly mundane would, seen through glasses with Green lenses, appear quite shocking. Dr. Stein’s mother, Gladys Stein, died in 2010. Assuming conventional estate planning, assets accumulated not only during her parent’s lives, but also. possibly, something from her grandfather who invested in Chicago real estate might leave some traces on her 2012 or 2013 returns.
It probably does not hurt Mike Pence that he had an ownership interest in a chain of gas station convenience stores, but if Jill Stein owned something like that even on a transitory basis, there would be somebody at the Green Party convention calling for her to make reparation. That was my thinking, anyway. We’ll probably never know.
Tough Standard For A Green Candidate
As it turns out, though, the standard that Dr. Stein might be held to in some circles was even more ridiculous than I thought. Yashar Ali has a piece in The Daily Beast titled Jill Stein’s Ideology Says One Thing – Her Investment Portfolio Says Another. It is based on Stein’s financial disclosures, not her tax return. Here is the essence of his charge:
Yet Stein has invested $995,011 to $2.2 million in funds such as the Vanguard 500 fund that maintain significant stakes in Exxon and other energy companies like Chevron, Duke Energy, Conoco Phillips, and Toho Gas, a Japanese company that engages in the sale of natural gas, tar, and coke, a fuel made from coal.
Yet Stein has invested roughly $1.2 to $2.65 million in funds like the TIAA-CREF Equity Index that have big stakes in the financial-services industry. Holdings in these funds include big banks like JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank as major parts of their investment portfolios.
A Vanguard index fund and, TIAA-CREF. TIAA-CREF which every college professor and not-for-profit employee that will not be eating cat food instead of tuna fish in old age had a stake in. Shocking, shocking.
The really ironic thing is the only dividend that shows up on a Clinton tax return during the last six years or so is Vanguard 500 Index Fund. The Clintons seem to have made an effort to have nothing controversial on their returns other than high income, but even they were not afraid of investing in an ]S & P 500 index fund, which is kind of like investing in American business in general.
Campaign Responds
The Stein campaign response to Mr. Ali’s piece started off with a counterattack.
If Mr. Ali is truly interested in conflicts of interest of political candidates and their families, where is his disclosure on the conflict of interest posed by Chelsea Clinton’s position as a director of the corporate owner of the Daily Beast, IAC? He has created an imagined conflict of interest, perhaps to distract from the very real, harmful conflicts of interest in the Clintons’ pay-to-play schemes, back-room fundraising, and quarter-million dollar speeches for the predatory banks, health insurance industry, and fossil fuel tycoons, who have directly benefited from Hillary Clinton’s policy record as Senator and Secretary of State, as well as from Bill Clinton’s actions as President
From there, it went to a pretty sensible response. Essentially, Dr. Stein wants to change the way the American economy works, but in the meantime lives in the economy as it is.
Like many Americans who hold retirement accounts, pension funds, or who invest in the American economy, my finances are largely held in index funds or mutual funds over which I have no control in management or decision-making. Sadly, most of these broad investments are as compromised as the American economy – massively degraded as it is by the fossil fuel, defense and finance industries. Over the years I have taken steps to divest from the worst of these holdings – transferring my checking and savings accounts from Bank of America largely to a credit union, and divesting from GE, Dupont and Merck stocks I had been given decades ago.
While I have explored “green” mutual funds, I found their investments in fracking and large scale biofuels not much better than the non-green funds. I have not yet found the mutual funds that represent my goals of advancing the cause of people, planet and peace. Admittedly I have not spent a lot of time researching elusive ethical investments. I prefer using my time fighting for social, economic and ecological transformation, and recycling capitalist money into the fight to do so.
Historical Precedent
The thing I find most interesting about the response is Dr. Stein’s somewhat dismissive attitude toward socially responsible investment. The notion of using your individual actions to effect social change is deeply rooted. When a bill to abolish slavery in the British colonies failed to pass Parliament in 1791, William Fox started a campaign to get people to stop buying slave produced sugar.
The concept showed up in the United States as the Free produce movement. And, like Dr. Stein who has “not spent a lot of time researching elusive ethical investments”, not all abolitionists thought it was worthwhile.
Most abolitionists did not see the free produce movement as being vital to the cause. A few dedicated proponents were able to stay completely away from slave goods but a number of other abolitionists endorsed the concept only when convenient. Many more ignored the issue altogether. The movement never grew large enough to gain the benefit of the economies of scale, and the cost of “free produce” was always higher than competing goods.
William Lloyd Garrison came to believe that the boycott was a distraction from other more practical tactics.
Yashar Ali seems to be calling Jill Stein a hypocrite when he writes:
There’s little doubt that her decision to retire was made easier by the substantial returns her investments were producing, even if they went against her life’s work.
The reality seems to be more that Dr. Stein has chosen to allocate her time to political activism and paid little attention to her investing. I think the most I would get out of this matter is just a touch of irony. At her Northampton rally last month there were students there talking about how they felt triumphant that they had been able to get U Mass to divest from carbon companies. And there was Dr. Stein who thanks to Vanguard had not gotten around to divesting from them herself.
Could Jill Stein Have Dodged This Bullet?
I spoke with Terry Mollner of Stakeholders Capital, which is a “wealth management firm committed to integrating your values with your financial goals”. Not surprisingly, Terry thinks it was an error on the part of Dr. Stein to not pay attention to socially responsible investment. Besides using the services of a firm like Stakeholders or Trillium in Boston, there are mutual funds available. He specifically mentioned KLD 400 Social Index and the Calvert Social Index Fund (He noted that he is on the board of Calvert and one of the founders).
Terry is in no way condemning Dr. Stein. He actually intends to vote for her. He lives in Massachusetts, as do I, and thinks that he would not be contributing to a Trump victory with that move. (The left wing of my family, including my cousin who framed the autographed photo of Jill Stein, that I got in 2012 is voting for Hillary for whatever it is worth. Her state is up for grabs, as it happens.)
Matt Patsky, CEO of Trillium, in response to my inquiry indicated:
One can invest and incorporate environmental, social and governmental factors into the investment process without sacrificing financial returns. There are many existing products in this space which demonstrate that you can achieve market rate returns without forgoing your personal values.
Again, to look at the matter from Jill Stein’s perspective, when I looked at KLD 400, the exclusions they listed were alcohol, gambling, tobacco, military weapons, civilian firearms, nuclear power, adult entertainment and genetically modified organisms. Carbon is not on their list. Trillium, on its website, gave a link to Extracting Fossil Fuels From Your Portfolio and the process does seem rather involved.
If Jill Stein discounts socially responsible investing as a worthwhile strategy, criticism of her is more a matter of style rather than substance.
Other Coverage
Caitlin Johnstone of the Inquisitr came out strong in defense of Jill Stein
What I’m finding intensely interesting at this moment is this: why is Chelsea Clinton still having her henchmen run smear pieces against Jill Stein? The official narrative we’re hearing throughout all corporate media is that Trump has fallen too far behind to recover and the return of Chelsea’s parents to the White House in January is now an inevitability. So why are the attack articles still coming? Why aren’t they just ignoring Jill Stein if she’s an irrelevant non-factor?
John Laurits also takes the Daily Beast to task with – Propaganda Alert! Misleading Article About Jill Stein in the Daily Beast
If the editors of the Daily Beast really believe this **** — and let’s be real, they don’t; this is a character assassination job — then they also have to believe that, if you have a retirement plan, you can’t be an environmentalist, pro-universal healthcare, or anti-war because you would be a hypocrite who has “invested” in energy, drug, & defense companies. (**** I might translate what is in the article as “unpleasant matter”.)
Bo Gardiner of Patheos, on the other hand, is harder on Stein than The Daily Beast
Wealthy Americans whining “I’m not responsible” and “my personal actions don’t matter” are wiping out species after species; we will probably lose orangutans and Sumatran tigers from the wild within a decade. Our choices ******* matter. The one person on the planet who should be challenging that attitude is Jill Stein. (******* Expletive deleted)
There is more. I don’t know whether the whole thing is a tempest in a Green teapot or really meaningful. Regardless it makes me a little more forgiving of Dr. Stein not dumping all her returns out for scrutiny. So far I seem to be the only commentator who simply views this as a teachable moment on the pros and cons and trials and tribulations of socially responsible investing.