North Dakota state and local employees have a lot of dollars in their defined benefit pensions. Right now they are invested within broad categories, but all the money is on wall-street.

As a result in 2008 they all saw a huge hit in their portfolio values. In fact people have been questioning the wisdom of "diversification" within the publicly traded market as a solution to avoid huge drops in portfolio value.

My idea is to use a percentage of that money to do the things most of us realize would be good for the world around us, and on a local level rather than in New York. Some specific ideas could be purchasing a wind turbine and setting percentage of electricity that Fargo needs to use from renewables, which ensures the investment is safe. There are many other ideas as well such as investing in local businesses after a professional gives them the thumbs up. These two specific ideas and more could be possible, and we'd be effecting OUR town rather than New York, at least we'd be using some of our money to affect our town :)