State contracts with

Which was worse: Abu Ghraib or Oil-for-Food?

The question sounds like talk-radio fodder. But such debates are also
playing out somewhere they actually matter: in state pension funds worth
hundreds of billions of dollars.

Like other states, politicians in California have called on their states to
sever economic ties with companies linked to terrorism. Earlier this year,
state Treasurer Phil Angelides said state retirement funds should divest
themselves of shares of CACI International Inc., because that company
refused to discuss its alleged involvement in the Abu Ghraib prisoner
abuses. An interrogator paid by CACI, Steven Stefanowicz, had been
implicated in some of these incidents.

Republicans charged Angelides with playing politics, and the divestment
effort appears to be stalled.

Meanwhile, Angelides helped approve millions of dollars in state bonds
financed by the European investment bank BNP Parabis, which is owned by the
French government. The bank has been savaged by conservatives, and dubbed
“Saddam