BS Summary: This video contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Appeal to Authority, and Recency Bias, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 24.5% saturation with 213 hits. Analysis detected 2,162 faulty-reasoning hits from 868 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 68.6% and a BS Rank of 77% (5,095 of 21,887 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 76.70% of the video peer group.
At next education watchdog Consumers Research is warning that the American Federation of Teachers may be using pensions to advance its own political agenda.
And joining us now is the executive director of America's oldest consumer protection agency Consumers Research.
That is Will Hild.
Good to have you with us this morning, Will.
What kinds of actions from the teachers union does your organization believe shows cause for concern here?
>> Well, we're seeing from them calls for boycotts and encouraging pension funds across the country to divest of some of these different companies based on political motives.
And this is a complete abrogation of pension fund trustees duty to focus on returns for for beneficiaries.
Not every teacher is a far left progressive Democrat.
So they and they count on those funds to make money for their retirement, not to push a political agenda.
So having the teachers union encourage that kind of behavior from pension fund trustees from across the country.
We're talking about state and local pension funds for teachers.
Having it encourage its members who may be trustees on these these boards to divest of companies that would otherwise be incredibly profitable, but just because they don't share the politics of the union is extremely dangerous.
Now Consumers Research has written to acting US Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling.
That was just Wednesday.
What are you requesting?
>> Well, Department of Labor has jurisdiction over a lot of pension funds across the country because of the way that Congress set that agency up.
So we're asking them to look into this and make sure that there hasn't been a violation of fiduciary duty by these trustees.
Like I said, it's very important that American teachers know that their pension funds aren't being misused at the behest of the you know, teachers union.
A lot of teachers aren't even members of the teachers union.
So to suggest that they represent all teachers is just crazy.
And certainly, they never signed up to have the teachers union determining what investments should be made or not be made, as the case may be, in their investment funds.
So, we're asking for an investigation.
>> Yeah, so you mentioned, you know, many teachers may not agree with the political direction um of this kind of lobbying.
Some teachers will agree, but why does this matter to all teachers?
>> Uh that's a great point, which is there's a whole mix of political backgrounds in teaching, right?
And what the pension fund is set up there for, what the state local pension funds are set up there for, is to make sure that teachers receive their full retirements, not to push a political uh agenda.
One way or the other, I wouldn't want this going in the other direction, either, if the teachers union suddenly became a right-wing organization.
It's not there to make advice on investments for teachers' funds.
It's there to uh sensibly represent teachers and their interests in the labor marketplace.
>> And while just researching this issue, it became apparent to me that there's concern among many teachers that they may not have enough money at retirement, despite having a pension fund.
How can teachers, as consumers, address this, based on your research?
>> Yeah, that's a great point, which is a lot of pension funds across the country, government pension funds, are underfunded, meaning they do not have enough assets in the bank, as as we speak, to cover all the promises they've made.
Making sure that you're paying attention to your pension fund trustee elections, where you have them, some states have, you know, teachers are elected to serve on these boards.
Making sure that those people are committed to following their fiduciary duty, rather than a political objective.
That's the number one thing you can do to make sure that your pension's going to be there at the end of the day.
>> And is there anything more that lawmakers can do to ensure fair management of public pension funds?
>> Absolutely.
I don't think this is an area that's gotten the oversight that it deserves.
There's has a pension funds, not just teachers, but uh uh firemen, police officers, state workers.
They've been misused by a lot of different actors, including large asset managers.
I've been on this show many times talking about BlackRock and State Street and some of the others that have misused pension funds.
Keeping more of an eye on that and having more oversight would go a long way to keeping this kind of hijinks out of the management of pension funds as more and more boomers retire, we're hitting a crunch point where it really matters how those returns are doing more than it has in the past.
And so, it's important that they're not being used to push political agenda, but focused on returns and making sure that people have the retirements they were promised they would have.
>> And those potential horizons coming up pretty quick, it seems.
Thank you so much, Will Hild.
Good to speak with you.
>> Great to be with you.
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