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Why I just closed my Schwab retirement accounts

We need to hold accountable the people and institutions responsible for the mob violence that engulfed the nation’s capital this week. That includes politicians, the people who desecrated the Capitol Building and the law enforcement agencies that failed to prevent it. 

But what I kept asking myself throughout 1/6 – a day that, to borrow a phrase, will live in infamy alongside 9/11 – was this question: What can I do? I have no control over Congress, the FBI, federal and state prosecutors, or the courts.

Other than being asked over and over again to give money, make phone calls and vote, the majority of Americans, especially older people like me disgusted by the constant lying of the Trump years, have been offered few ways to express their anger at the white supremacy, racism, immigrant bashing, institutionalized child abuse, Muslim bashing, misogyny, anti-environmentalism, anti-Semitism, gun violence, social cruelty, ever widening income and wealth inequality, and, the final indignity, his grossly incompetent pandemic response that has cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.

If you think the Trump era is finally coming to a close, don’t be fooled. He’ll be back – or someone like him will. The Josh Hawleys of the world are lining up to take their turn on the megaphone offered by the Radical Right’s political and media infrastructure. And so are their enablers, who created those twin engines for a movement that has now become overtly fascist.

Who are those enablers? Don’t look just at the rump faction of the Republican Party, which is now scurrying for the exits because their “Save America Rally” (designed to cement in their supporters’ minds the lie that the election was stolen) turned into a mob action.

And don’t look at just at Fox News and its growing number of competitors seeking to poison the minds of their viewers with misinformation; nor the conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, and white supremacist organizations whose adherents troll Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media platforms, which turn a blind eye to rake in billions in profits by publishing lies and slander without regard to its social consequences.

Rather, look instead at that portion of America’s economic elite who created the political infrastructure that made Trump possible. If you want their names, read Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.”

Some have become well known for years like the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson and the DeVos family. But others, like the owners of the online brokerage firms Charles Schwab and TDAmeritrade, have only been exposed upon occasion, or fly under the radar.

So what can a poor boy do? I decided I must now and forever cut all my financial ties to any firm whose leadership financially supports the dark money groups that have poisoned our political atmosphere and helped finance the most conservative politicians to disgrace the national political stage since the Ku Klux Klan achieved a modicum of electoral success in the 1920s.

For many years, I have kept my retirement accounts – my primary form of retirement savings – with Charles Schwab & Co. I never gave it much thought beyond its convenience and low-cost.

But on Thursday, I decided to spend a few hours looking into the company. What I learned about Mr. Schwab, who lives in San Francisco, was galling. In 2012, he spent nearly $9 million to pass a California anti-union initiative, which failed. 

He poured money into the Trump campaigns in 2016 and 2020. He personally writes maximum checks to Republican candidates almost exclusively, and that includes all of the most rabid right wingers in the House and Senate.

Schwab’s corporate political action committee has made major donations to so-called dark money groups like the Citizens for Free Enterprise, Ending Spending Action Fund and the America One PAC. These groups’ vitriolic advertising campaigns attacking Democratic Party candidates and progressive ballot initiatives has poisoned the airwaves in recent election cycles and contributed mightily to the climate of hate that now characterizes our politics.

I’m upset that even a dime of my money goes to an organization and a person who bears some responsibility for what happened in Washington this week. He is not personally responsible, but he helps finance the megaphones that have drowned out reason and dialogue.

So goodbye Schwab. I’m now with Fidelity, which offers all the services of Schwab at the same low or no cost, and whose website is rated as the best in the business.

But more significantly, its CEO, Abigail Johnson, gave nearly a quarter million dollars this year to Priorities USA, a Democratic Party-oriented PAC that works to mobilize voters around progressive solutions to America’s myriad problems.

So family, friends and readers, if you are like me, and don’t usually investigate the corporations you back with your consumer and investment dollars, now is time to rethink that mindlessness. Vote with your wallet. Send a message. And if you’re still with Schwab, there are definitely alternatives.