FLASHREPORT

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) is the largest public pension fund in the United States. It manages $190 billion in assets, and it's chief actuary stated in August that it pension costs are "unsustainable."

So, when someone calls for a "sustainable" CalPERS, you'd think they were calling for reining in the state's swollen public pension benefit system.

Well, that would all depend on what you mean by "sustainable." Muriel Strand, a candidate for one of two member-at-large spots on the CalPERS Board of Administration, has an entirely different meaning in mind when she talks about a "sustainable CalPERS."

Strand, an air resources engineer retired from CARB, thinks money isn't the most important thing when it comes to managing CalPERS:

"I believe retirees' real economic needs - clean air and water, healthy food, and warmth - are more important than strictly financial benefits..."

Pffft...lousy money! It's so overrated when it comes to retirement! Muriel thinks CalPERS biggest problem isn't unsustainable growth or a massive unfunded liability -- it's climate change:

Climate de-stabilization caused by our cheap-energy fossil-fuel addiction has already begun to change the physical world we depend on, a reality that money only reflects. Thus, conventional concepts about money, interest rates, investment, benefits, etc., must be constantly questioned. The theories which CalPERS staff use to guide investment must be regularly reconsidered and recalibrated.

That's right -- CalPERS needs to get beyond "return on investment," "interest rates" and other distracting "money concepts" and focus on healing the planet! really -- CalPERS needs to get it's priorities straight.

Ask yourself: would you hire someone with Strand's attitude to manage your investments? Shouldn't CalPERS board members place "strictly financial benefits" pretty high up the financial priorities totem pole?

Is Strand a political extremist? Of course. What's scary is someone with her radical ideas about the relationship between the citizen and the state was working at a state agency dedicated altogether with regulating how people live and work. Even scarier is there isn't that much substantive difference, when it comes to politico-environmental philosophy, between a "fringe" personality like Strand and "mainstream" politicians like Arnold Schwarzenegger and most Democratic legislators.