(Photo Credit: Jay Mallin/ZUMA)
***CAF Note: The information age is now permitting us to look across our balance sheets and notice the multiple personality disorder throughout our finances. One way or the other we are all investing in things that are both helpful and harmful, or that agree or disagree with our personal values. As some one who has spent many years trying to determine how we could integrate these, it is easier said than done. Ultimately, integration requires illuminating overt and covert budgets both by sector and by place, and facing many issues outside the official reality. It is a progression of “mirror, mirror on the wall” moments. One of the best series in this vein was one done in the 90’s gaps between the Gates Foundation¹s stated goals and the reality of their endowments. Many good people in the social responsibility movement have grappled with these issues, and achieved a lot. Unfortunately, many of them were funded by the people and institutions who most profit from organized crime and black budgets or related money laundering and who have often used the process to keep the good hearted folks from interfering with the deeper train tracks. No matter where we have been, we are on our way to mapping out financial ecosystems and that is not unrelated to why our leadership would like drones flying overhead and want to listen in on everything we say and do.***
By Molly Redden
When Obamacare compelled businesses to include emergency contraception in employee health care plans, Hobby Lobby, a national chain of craft stores, fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court. The Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, the company’s owners argued, forced them to violate their religious beliefs. But while it was suing the government, Hobby Lobby spent millions of dollars on an employee retirement plan that invested in the manufacturers of the same contraceptive products the firm’s owners cite in their lawsuit.
Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company’s owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).
Related Reading:
Financial Ecosystems – Capitalism 3.0
