RuPaul 420! Drag Queen Sasha Colby Dressed Up As A Joint And Launched Her Cannabis Kit

Tennessee First State To Ban Drag Shows For Minors Last Thursday, Tennessee became the first U.S. state to explicitly ban drag performances in public spaces accessible to minors. As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill into law after he himself had cause some controversy when high school year book pictures of him dressed in drag resurfaced. While the state is currently the only one with such a law, this could soon change. According to Time Magazine, 11 more states - in the U.S. South, Midwest or West - have seen similar bills introduced. Arkansas recently passed a law restricting adult-oriented shows, but language specific to drag shows was removed previously. You will find more infographics at Statista The bills are all aimed at drag show performances, but differ in their specifics. For example, Arizona's introduced bill looks to ban drag performances for those under the age of 15, while Nebraska wants to put that cutoff at 19. While a bill in Missouri only aims to outlaw drag performances on public property, most others target all public spaces where minors could be present. While drag performances in bars would carry an age limit of 21 in the U.S. anyways, the bills could affect drag shows for example at street festivals or theaters as well as during a format that drew special ire from conservatives - drag queen story hour. The initiative started by a San Francisco-based drag performer to educate and foster acceptance for the LGBT community has seen drag queens read to children in bookshops and libraries since 2015. While not all drag performers are LBGT (and being a drag performer is distinct from being trans), the practice has a strong history in the LGBT community, especially among gay men.  Today, more than 7 percent of adults in the U.S. identify as LGBT. Tyler Durden Tue, 03/07/2023 - 23:45.....»»

Whitney: The Plan To Wreck America Authored by Mike Whitney, In America, we have an oligarch problem, and it’s much bigger than the oligarch problem that Putin faced when he became president in 2000. The entire West is now in the grips of billionaire elites who have a stranglehold on the media, the political establishment and all of our important institutions. In recent years we have seen these oligarchs expand their influence from markets, finance and trade to politics, social issues and even public health. The impact this group has had on these other areas of interest, has been nothing short of breathtaking. Establishment elites and their media not only stood foursquare behind Russiagate, the Trump impeachment, the BLM riots and the January 6 fiasco, they also had a hand in the Covid hysteria and the host of repressive measures that were imposed in the name of public health. What we’d like to know is to what extent this group is actively involved in the shaping of other events that are aimed at transforming the American Republic into a more authoritarian system? In other words, are the mandated injections, the forced lockdowns, the aggressive government-implemented censorship, the dubious presidential elections, the burning of food processing plants, the derailing of trains, the attacks on the power grid, the BLM-Antifa riots, the drag queen shows for schoolchildren, the maniacal focus on gender issues, and glitzy public show-trials merely random incidents occurring spontaneously during a period of great social change or are they, in fact, evidence of a stealthily orchestrated operation conducted by agents of the state acting on behalf of their elite benefactors? We already know that the FBI, the DOJ and the intel agencies were directly involved in Russiagate –which was a covert attack on the sitting president of the United States. So, the question is not “whether” these agencies are actively involved in other acts of treachery but, rather, to what extent these acts impact the lives or ordinary Americans, our politics and the country? But before we answer that question, take a look at this quote from from a recent interview by Colonel Douglas MacGregor: I was reading a document that was authored by George Soros over 10 years ago in which he talks specifically about this all-out war that would ultimately come against Russia because he said this ‘was the last nationalist state that rests on a foundation of orthodox christian culture with Russian identity at its core. That has to be removed. So I think that the people who are in charge in the west and the people in charge in Washington think they have successfully destroyed the identities of the European and American peoples, that we have no sense of ourselves, our borders are undefended, we present no resistance to the incoming migrants from the developing world who essentially roll over us as though we owe them a living and that our laws do not count. Thus, far I would say that is an accurate evaluation of what we’ve been doing. And I think that’s a great victory for George Soros and the globalists, the anti-nationalists; those who want open borders what they call it an “Open Society” because you end up with nothing, an amorphous mass of people struggling to survive who are reduced to the lowest levels of subsistence … (Soros) even goes so far as to talk about how useful it would be if it was east Europeans whose lives were expended in this process and not west Europeans who simply won’t take the casualties. This is not a minor matter. This is the kind of thinking that is so destructive and so evil, in my judgement, that that’s what we’re really dealing with in our own countries and I think Putin recognizes that.” (Douglas Macgregor – A Huge Offensive”, You Tube;, 11:20 minute) The reason I transcribed this comment from MacGregor was because it sums up the perceptions of a great many people who see things the same way. It expresses the hatred that globalist billionaires have toward Christians and patriots, both of which they see as obstacles to their goal of a borderless one-world government. MacGregor discusses this phenom in relation to Russia which Soros sees as “the last nationalist state that rests on a foundation of orthodox Christian culture with Russian identity at its core.” But the same rule could be applied to the January 6 protestors, could it not? Isn’t that the real reason the protestors were rounded up and thrown into the Washington gulag. After all, everyone knows there was no “insurrection” nor were there any “white supremacists”. The protestors were locked up because they’re nationalists (patriots) which are the natural enemy of the globalists. The MacGregor quote lays it out in black and white. Elites don’t believe that nationalists can be persuaded by propaganda,. They must be eradicated through incarceration or worse. Isn’t that the underlying message of January 6? The other underlying message of January 6, is that ordinary people are no longer allowed to challenge the authority of the people in power. Again, political legitimacy in the US has always been determined by elections. What January 6 indicates, is that legitimacy no longer matters. What matters is power, and the person who can have you arrested for questioning his authority, has all the power he needs. Check out this excerpt from a post on Substack by political analyst Kurt Nimmo: “Klaus Schwab, a student of the war criminal Henry Kissinger, is a mentor to power-hungry and narcissistic sociopaths. The WEF “Great Reset” is designed to turn the world into an impoverished social concentration camp, where destitute serfs “own nothing” and this, in true Orwellian fashion, will set them free… I challenge people to investigate the WEF’s Global Redesign Initiative. According to the Transnational Institute in the Netherlands, this “initiative” proposes a transition away from intergovernmental decision-making towards a system of multi-stakeholder governance. In other words, by stealth, they are marginalizing a recognized model where we vote in governments who then negotiate treaties which are then ratified by our elected representatives with a model where a self-selected group of ‘stakeholders’ make decisions on our behalf. (Emphasis added.) In other words, large transnational corporate “stakeholders” will be deciding where you live, what you eat (insects and weeds), how you reproduce (or not reproduce; children produce carbon emissions), and what you can “rent” from them, or not be allowed to rent if you complain about an unelected globalist “economic” cartel driving humanity into serfdom, worldwide poverty, and depopulation.” (“WEF Calls for Destruction of America’s Middle Class“, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics) What Nimmo is saying is that these billionaire elites are now so powerful, that they can openly say they’re going to “transition away from intergovernmental decision-making” (ie– representative government”) to a system of “multi-stakeholder governance.” If I’m not mistaken, that is a pretty unambiguous declaration of a new form of supra-national government, in which only the billionaire stakeholders have a vote in what policies are implemented. But isn’t that the way things work already? On any number of topics from ESG, to digital currencies, to vaccine passports, to AI, to gain-of-function research, to 15-minute cities, to transhumanism, to war with Russia; the decisions are all being made by a handful of people of whom we know every little and who were never voted into office. And that brings us back to our original question: How many of these oddball events (in recent years) were conjured up and implemented by agents of the deep state to advance the elitist agenda? This seem like an impossible question since it’s hard to find a link between these dramatically divers events. For example, what is the link between a Drag Queen Children’s Hour and, let’s say, firebombing a food processing plant in Oklahoma? Or the relentless political exploitation of gender issues and the January 6 public show trials? If there was a connection, we’d see it, right? Not necessarily, because the link might not have anything to do with the incident itself, but instead, with its impact on the people who experience it. In other words, all of these events could be aimed at generating fear, uncertainty, anxiety, alienation and even terror. Have the intelligence agencies launched such destabilizing operations before? Indeed, they have, many times. Here’s an excerpt from an article that will help you to see where I’m going with this. It’s from a piece at The Saker titled Operation Gladio: NATO’s Secret War for International Fascism.” See if you notice any similarities with the way things have been unfolding in America for the last few years: Yves Guerin-Serac: the Black Ops Grandmaster behind Operation Gladio…. wrote the basic training and propaganda manuals which can be fairly described as the Gladio order of battle.”… Guerin-Serac was a war hero, agent provocateur, assassin, bomber, intelligence agent, Messianic Catholic, and the intellectual grandmaster behind the ‘Strategy of Tension’ essential to the success of Operation Gladio. Guerin-Serac published via Aginter Press the Gladio manual, including Our Political Activity in what can aptly be described as Gladio’s First Commandment: “Our belief is that the first phase of political activity ought to be to create the conditions favoring the installation of chaos in all of the regime’s structures…In our view the first move we should make is to destroy the structure of the democratic state under the cover of Communist and pro-Soviet activities…Moreover, we have people who have infiltrated these groups.” Guerin-Serac continues: “Two forms of terrorism can provoke such a situation [breakdown of the state]: blind terrorism (committing massacres indiscriminately which cause a large number of victims), and selective terrorism (eliminate chosen persons)… This destruction of the state must be carried out under the cover of ‘communist activities.’ After that, we must intervene at the heart of the military, the juridical power and the church, in order to influence popular opinion, suggest a solution, and clearly demonstrate the weakness of the present legal apparatus. Popular opinion must be polarized in such a way, that we are being presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation.” Anarchic random violence was to be the solution to bring about such a state of instability thus allowing for a completely new system, a global authoritarian order. Yves Guerin-Serac, who was an open fascist, would not be the first to use false-flag tactics that were blamed on communists and used to justify more stringent police and military control from the state….” (“Operation Gladio: NATO’s Secret War for International Facism”, The Saker) Repeat: the first phase of political activity ought to be to create the conditions favoring the installation of chaos in all of the regime’s structures… This destruction of the state must be carried out under the cover of (communist) activities…. Popular opinion must be polarized in such a way, that we are being presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation.” In other words, the objective of the operation is to completely disrupt all social relations and interaction, cultivate feelings of uncertainty, polarization and terror, find a group that can be scapegoated for the wide societal collapse, and, then, present yourself (elites) as the best choice for restoring order. Is this what’s going on? It’s very possible. It could all be part of a Grand Strategy aimed at “wiping the slate clean” in order to “transition away from intergovernmental decision-making” to a system of “multi-stakeholder governance.” That could explain why there has been such a vicious and sustained attack on our history, culture, traditions, religious beliefs, monuments, heroes, and founders. They want to replace our idealism with feelings of shame, humiliation and guilt. They want to erase our past, our collective values, our heritage, our commitment to personal freedom, and the very idea of America itself. They want to raze everything to the ground and start over. That is their basic Gameplan writ large. The destruction of the state is being carried out behind the cover of seemingly random events that are spreading chaos, exacerbating political divisions, increasing the incidents of public mayhem, and clearing the way for a violent restructuring of the government. They can’t build a new world order until the old one is destroyed. Tyler Durden Mon, 02/27/2023 - 23:00.....»»

Drag has evolved throughout history. Learn what a drag queen is, how drag differs from crossdressing, and why drag queen story hours are under threat. RuPaul and Trixie Mattel during the finale of "RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars" season 3.VH1 Drag culture has centuries of history behind it, from Ancient Greece to the Harlem Renaissance. LGBTQ historians and experts explained the origins of drag to Insider. Here's a guide to drag culture in the US and how what it means today. An art form. A political statement. A source of entertainment. A communal activity.Drag has many functions and a rich history that goes back centuries. But what is it, exactly, and what isn't it? Insider spoke to historians to find out everything you need to know.Is drag the same as cross-dressing?Drag is the act of highlighting and emphasizing various feminine and masculine features, and it provides an avenue through which people can both subvert and celebrate gender expressions. Drag often gets conflated with cross-dressing, but the two are not synonymous, said Melanie Walsh, a psychology professor at the University of New Haven. Drag emphasizes community and celebration, while cross-dressing is generally a more solitary activity."What separates the two is the performative element," Walsh said. Cross-dressing "is not part of that collective community."The popular Robin Williams movie Mrs. Doubtfire, for example, in which the actor pretends to be a woman housekeeper to spend more time around his kids, does not constitute drag, said humanities professor Harris Kornstein with the University of Arizona. Drag is not simply a man putting on a dress, and that's a "simplistic definition of drag that's really focused on the cross-gendered elements," he said.Oftentimes, there are elements of humor, camp, and over-the-top aesthetics incorporated into drag performances, Korstein said."It really pokes fun at what we think is normal and offers some sort of commentary on culture," he said.Robin Williams in "Mrs. Doubtfire."20th CenturyWhere does drag come from? Experts believe drag evolved from theater. In Ancient Greece and during Shakespearean times, for example, men used to play women's parts because women weren't allowed to, Walsh said. But the way we understand drag today is vastly different. In American society, drag is oftentimes understood as something transgressive, according to Christopher Mitchell, a gender studies professor at CUNY Hunter College. And since the 20th century, it's an activity that's become closely associated with gay culture.The first person to use drag in this context was William Dorsey Swann, an LGBTQ activist who's widely known as the Queen of Drag, Mitchell said. Swann was born in the 1850s and started what's commonly described as the first drag house or drag family, in which he hosted drag balls with his friends. That goal, Mitchell said, seemed to be to create community.Drag as we know it today really surfaced during the late 1800s in the lead-up to the Harlem Renaissance, Walsh told Insider. New York City at the turn of the century was a sociopolitical hub with a booming economy, and gender roles for Black people were particularly stringent, Walsh said. This led to the rise of a drag ball culture. The balls were underground because they were largely illegal, Walsh said. What is a drag queen? Can women be drag queens? The common misconception about drag is that only cis gay men do it, Walsh said. But anyone can do drag. When men do drag, they're called drag queens. And when women do it, they're drag kings. But in drag, cis men don't have to present as women, and cis women don't have to present as men. And trans people can certainly do drag as well. Cis people who do drag are oftentimes exploring aspects of femininity, masculinity, or androgyny, Kornstein told Insider. "Drag is for anyone. Drag is for everyone," Walsh said. Within the drag community in the United States, however, there are disagreements about the function of drag. Walsh said some parts of the deep South, for example, do drag mainly for entertainment, while coastal areas like California and New York might use drag as a politicized action. There's sometimes gatekeeping within the drag community and questions about what is appropriately drag or not, Walsh said. But "there is no right or wrong way to do that art, to do that expression, to do drag," Walsh said.  It's also no longer a western concept, thanks in part to the global popularization of drag through mainstream shows like RuPaul's Drag Race. "Drag is performed in pretty much every corner of the world," Kornstein said.What is the connection between drag and politics?Drag has also always been political, Walsh said. It's always been a legal issue that the state has tried to sanction, she said. Leading up to the middle of the 20th century, drag was "almost an acceptable form of entertainment," Mitchell told Insider. Photos from the 50s in New York City show straight couples attending and enjoying drag performances, he said. But as drag became more closely associated with LGBTQ culture, it was stigmatized, according to Mitchell. That stigmatization continues today and is reflected, in part, by the increasing number of bills attempting to suppress it.Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, told Insider that there's been an "explosion" of legislation targeting drag performances all over the country in the last year. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were laws that targeted people who wore clothing that wasn't consistent with their sex assigned at birth. This new wave of legislation is "a modern take on that," Warbelow said. In addition to legislation, right-wing activists are also targeting drag performances. Last year, members of the Proud Boys and neo-Nazi groups, for example, protested and stormed drag story hours at local libraries and churches. In this September 8, 2018, file photo, a drag performer by the name of Champagne Monroe reads the children's book "Rainbow Fish" to a group of kids and parents at the Mobile Public Library in Mobile, Alabama.AP Photo/Dan AndersonThere have been instances of powerful cis men mocking drag as well. Former New York City Rudy Giuliani dressed up as a woman in 2000 at an event with former President Donald Trump. The scene, which was intended to be a comedy skit, ended with Trump motorboating Giuliani after calling him beautiful."If we look at those instances of these cis white men who have done that, engaged in that, it's always to make a joke," Walsh said. Their intention, Walsh said, is to devalue the idea of femininity. But at the end of the day, Giuliani wasn't actually participating in drag, Walsh said. "One is a celebration of embracing gender differences, and the other is to put down one gender under the other," she said. What's the future of drag?Despite the threats, drag continues to grow. There's been a lot of grassroots-level organization around drag recently, Walsh said, partly in response to the uptick in violence against drag culture. Drag has become mainstream and accessible through technological advances like the internet, Walsh pointed out. Warbelow said drag can keep proliferating through the support of politicians. Conservative legislators need to "stop demonizing a group of people simply because they don't understand or don't want to understand that community," she said. The way to fight these threats?"The answer is more drag, baby," Harris said. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Jan Sport said the reported drag persona of Rep. George Santos, Kitara Ravache, is actually pretty impressive for an early attempt at drag. Jan Sport, left, and Rep. George Santos, right, in a composite image.Getty Images Photos and videos have emerged of George Santos apparently dressed in drag as "Kitara Ravache." Jan Sport, a star of "RuPaul's Drag Race," rated Kitara Rivache's drag look for Insider. She said it was surprisingly good but could benefit from more eyeliner and a personality overhaul. A star of the hit reality competition show "RuPaul's Drag Race" said she thinks Rep. George Santos' drag efforts are actually pretty impressive, but could benefit from a bit more makeup and a personality makeover."Upping your drag aesthetic in any way, shape, or form would start from the interior," Jan Sport, often known simply as Jan, said during an interview with Insider."Let's make some changes from inside out first, but, if anything, maybe just a little more eyeliner," she added.—Pop Crave (@PopCrave) January 19, 2023 Photos and videos of newly elected Republican congressman Santos apparently dressed in drag, dating from over a decade ago, started to emerge earlier this month.One Brazilian drag queen, Eula Rochard, claimed she knew Santos by drag name Kitara Ravache, and alleged that he competed in drag queen beauty pageants in 2008."I've seen a lot worse first-time drag than Miss Kitara," Jan said. "I'm not going to say that she's the ugliest duckling I've ever seen out there, I think she actually doesn't look too bad."Jan added: "She said she was young and having fun at a festival, and if I was young and going to be having fun at a festival, I would just slap it on too."Santos, who initially denied claims he ever performed as a drag queen, later appeared to admit that he had dressed in drag, telling reporters: "I was not a drag queen. I was young, and I had fun at a festival."Jan said "all drag is valid," but suggested that Santos might be hypocritical for now aligning himself with far-right lawmakers, elements of which have demonized drag shows."I think improving any aesthetic would involve not being such a hypocrite," she said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

"He was a big dreamer," drag artist Eula Rochard said of George Santos. "He wanted to get famous no matter what." Rep. George Santos leaves the US Capitol on January 12, 2023 in Washington, DC.Win McNamee/Getty Images Embattled Rep. George Santos once wanted to be Miss Gay Rio De Janeiro, a drag artist told Insider. But he lost the pageant in 2008, Eula Rochard said in an interview. Santos now faces scrutiny over multiple fabrications about his past. Rep. George Santos once wanted to be Miss Gay Rio De Janeiro. But that title wasn't in the cards for his admittedly embellished resume, drag artist Eula Rochard told Insider.The New York Republican, who has embraced ultra-conservative positions considered anti-LGBTQ, competed in the contest in 2008, said Rochard, who says she knew him in Brazil."But he lost," Rochard said in Portuguese. "Because when I say 'beauty pageant,' what do you think? A skinny, tall woman with long hair. Super beautiful. And it's the same for the gay ones.""The beauty pageant is for boys who dress like women," she continued. "They are beautiful. The boys are beautiful. And he lost because he was fat."Santos' staff did not respond to a request for comment.Santos, now facing scrutiny about his multiple fabrications about his past, at first denied that he performed as a drag queen. But he later told reporters, "I was young, and I had fun at a festival. Sue me for having a life." More videos have since emerged, suggesting it was more than a one-off.Reuters reported that Santos "aspired to be Miss Gay Rio de Janeiro."Rochard, who made headlines after circulating a photo she says is of Santos in a red dress, said Santos wasn't a professional drag queen. But he would occasionally dress up.She identified Santos dressed in drag in a video at about the 4:20 mark from the 2005 Niterói pride parade, where he tells a reporter about clubs where he performed drag shows.Rochard said that was a lie because, at the time Santos wouldn't have been able to afford such performances."When you work with this you spend a lot of money. Anthony wouldn't do this," she said, using an alias for Santos. Though he bragged about his father being rich, his mother was a maid in Brazil, Rochard said."He was a big dreamer," Rochard. "He wanted to get famous no matter what."Santos left Brazil in 2005 and returned in 2008 "with a lot of money," Rochard said. "He got a bunch of expensive drag outfits made" and competed in the beauty pageant."These beauty pageants are very valued here in Brazil," she said. "The gay ones. I don't know how it is in the US but gay people here go crazy for them and order expensive outfits. It's very expensive."Rochard, who met Santos when he was about 17 years old, said she used to catch Santos in "little white lies.""He wasn't a bad person," Rochard said. "He was a regular gay teenager in a country where there were no laws protecting gay people."Rochard said she hasn't seen Santos since 2008. "I don't know what happened in his life," she said. "I'm only telling you what I lived."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The ultra-conservative congressman once supported Brazil's left-wing president in the mid-2000s, Eula Rochard told Insider. Rep. George Santos has been caught in a maze of lies and has become something of a national punchline.John Locher/AP Photo Embattled Rep. George Santos campaigned as an ultra conservative. A drag artist who knew him in the mid-2000s told Insider Santos supported Brazil's left-wing president then. Santos now faces scrutiny over multiple fabrications about his past. A Brazilian drag artist who says she knew George Santos when he dressed in drag in Brazil remembers the congressman during his younger years as a supporter of the country's progressive president, not as the ultra-conservative politician he says he is now.The artist Eula Rochard made headlines for circulating a photo she says is of Santos dressed in a red dress.But in an interview with Insider, she said what's puzzling to her is how Santos went from backing left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as "Lula," to his current political incarnation.Rochard said Santos supported Lula and then "goes to the US and turns into this crazy thing there. What craziness is this?"Santos, who represents parts of Queens and Long Island, now embraces former President Donald Trump and policies considered anti-LGBTQ. He has accused the left of trying to "groom" kids, a conservative talking point equating gender and sexuality discussion with priming for sexual abuse. But in the mid-2000s, Rochard supported a Brazilian president who one expert said had more in common, at least on economic policy, with the progressive politics of Sen. Bernie Sanders.Rochard said many gay people living in the city of Niterói at the time supported Lula, a left-wing reformer who served as president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010 and who was just reelected for a third term, starting this month."Lula promised to make laws to help us gays. They were all Lulistas and Anthony was too because he hung out with us," Rochard told Insider, using the name Rochard says Santos used in Brazil, "Anthony."Brazilian drag artist Eula Rochard holds a newspaper from 2008 that she says shows GOP Rep. George Santos in drag attire.Insider screen shot.It's not surprising that Santos, as a gay person, would have supported Lula in the 2000s, said Rafael Ioris, a professor of Latin American history at the University of Denver. Lula represented the chance for the expansion of civil rights for minority groups in Brazil, and most members of the LGBTQ community were aligned with that perspective, he said.It's hard to imagine a member of today's Republican Party in the US aligning with Lula, even as he became more moderate while governing. Lula is a former trade unionist who built his political career on policies similar to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party: a higher minimum wage and spending more on health care and education. Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted his congratulations to Lula in October when he defeated far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, whose supporters this month stormed government buildings, refusing to accept the results."It's a pretty dramatic shift," Ioris said of Santos. People change, he said, but "how did that happen?"It's one of the many questions swirling around Santos, who is at the center of a scandal about lies on his resume, falsely claiming his mother died on 9/11, and unexplained wealth that helped finance his congressional bid.Freelance journalist Marisa Kabas broke the story in a Substack post about Santos dressing in drag under the name Kitara in the mid-2000s. Rochard also told Kabas that Santos' friends in Brazil were left-leaning.Santos, whose staff did not respond to a request for comment, at first denied that he performed as a drag queen but later told reporters, "I was young and I had fun at a festival. Sue me for having a life." More videos have since emerged, suggesting it was more than a one-off.Rochard met Santos when he was about 17 years old and said she used to catch Santos in "little white lies." She said he wanted to be famous "no matter what.""He wasn't a bad person," Rochard said. "He was a regular gay teenager in a country where there were no laws protecting gay people."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Rep. George Santos' ex-boyfriend, Pedro Vilarva, told The Daily Beast that he rejected Santos' proposals and the engagement party "never happened." Prior to being sworn in, Rep.-elect George Santos, R-N.Y., stands during the 10 round of voting for speaker in the House chamber in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023.Andrew Harnik/AP Rep. George Santos planned an engagement party for his boyfriend while he was married to his then-wife. Santos' ex-boyfriend told The Daily Beast that the engagement "never happened." Controversy has followed newly-elected Santos, who has been caught lying about his background George Santos, the embattled New York congressman, sent out engagement party invitations in 2014 to celebrate a marriage proposal to his boyfriend – while he was apparently still married to his then-wife, The Daily Beast reported. "Good evening everyone! As you all may already know Pedro and I have decided to join our toothbrushes! Lol and a very few friends have been selected to share this special moment with us!" Santos wrote in a Facebook invitation to the engagement dinner in 2014, per the outlet. The Daily Beast reported it obtained the invitation courtesy of Greg Morey-Parker, Santos' former roommate, and the aforementioned Pedro Vilarva, Santos' ex-boyfriend. The invite requested guests join Santos and his supposed betrothed at New York City's La Bonne Soupe for a Sunday night dinner, per the outlet. "I hope to see everyone [sic] of you there and be sharp and make it count," Santos wrote with a winking emoji, per The Daily Beast. "Thanks for sharing this very important day in our lives! See you all there."Vilarva told the outlet that he rejected Santos' proposals and that the engagement party "never happened." "He asked me 3x but I didn't accept it," Vilarva told the Beast via text. "There was never a party [or] anything in regards to it."At the time of the planned event, Santos was still married to his ex-wife, Uadla Santos. The couple divorced in 2019 weeks before Santos launched his 2020 campaign, The Daily Beast previously reported. The news appeared to contradict Santos' claims that he had been "openly gay" for years; he did not previously disclose he was married to a woman, according to Insider. Pressure has mounted on Santos to resign amid reports that he lied about his education and work experience, once performed as a drag queen, which he has denied, and obscured the truth on his religious beliefs by claiming to be "Jew-ish."A spokesperson for Santos did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

In the two years since the Capitol riot, the US government has arrested nearly 1,000 people and handed out hundreds of jail sentences and fines. US Capitol siege in Washington DC on January 6, 2021.Samuel Corum/Getty Images Hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters have been arrested and charged in the two years since a mob stormed the Capitol. Many were easy to identify thanks to their brazen behavior inside and outside of the building that day. Here are some of the least shocking ways Jan. 6 rioters got caught. A mob of Trump supporters laid siege to the US Capitol almost exactly two years ago. In the months since the US government has arrested and charged nearly 1,000 people in connection with the attack and handed out hundreds of jail sentences and fines to those who pleaded and were found guilty. The insurrection launched an unprecedented federal investigation that has seen prosecutors scour hotel and phone records, countless hours of surveillance footage, and scores of social media posts to track down the thousands of people inside and outside the Capitol that day.In some respects, identifying the rioters, while a massive endeavor in scope, hasn't been a particularly difficult task: A majority of rioters seemingly had little to hide about their behavior on January 6, 2021. Several gave interviews to the media in the immediate aftermath, outwardly identifying themselves on camera; others were photographed in bizarre mid-riot activities — who could forget lectern guy or the man who posed with his feet atop Speaker Nancy Pelosi's desk? — that made them easily trackable targets.But there are some accused rioters who were so brazen in their riot and post-riot conduct, that Insider believed they deserved their own special list.Without further adieu: The least surprising ways Capitol rioters got caught.2 accused rioters made big Bumble blundersThese accused rioters' reach for romance landed them in trouble with the law. In an apparent attempt to impress a Bumble match, Andrew Quentin Taake boasted about his apparent role in the siege, telling an anonymous woman on the dating app that he was among the insurrectionists from "the very beginning," prosecutors said.After the pair's online conversation fizzled, the unnamed woman contacted the FBI on January 9, 2021, sharing screenshots of Taake's own admissions via messages between the two, according to a July 2021 criminal complaint. In one exchange, the Texas man told his potential paramour about being pepper-sprayed outside the Capitol: "I was the very first person to be sprayed that day, all while just standing there," he claimed. But federal prosecutors ultimately accused him of doing much more than "just standing there," arresting him in July 2021 on several charges related to the attack, including assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, and obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder. Taake pleaded not guilty to all charges in late 2021 and is awaiting trial, according to court records. In a strikingly similar story, Robert Chapman, of New York, found himself charged with four counts related to the Capitol riot after a Bumble user tipped off the FBI, sharing a screenshot of an incriminating exchange between the two non-love-birds.The anonymous woman contacted the FBI on January 13, 2021, with photos of her conversation with Chapman in which he blatantly admitted: "I did storm the Capitol" and "I made it all the way to Statuary Hall," referencing a room inside the Capitol. Chapman went on to tell his match that he had already spoken with reporters at both The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal."We are not a match," the woman responded."I suppose not," Chapman said.A judge sentenced Chapman to three months of home detention earlier this year after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor picketing charge. A composite image of Robert Chapman and messages he sent on Bumble. Both images are from a federal criminal complaint against Chapman.FBIFamilial fumings have led to weighty consequences  Several accused rioters at the Capitol on January 6 were brought down by members of their own families. There was Guy Reffitt, the notorious militia man who was sentenced to seven years in prison on five felony charges earlier this year after his teenage son turned him in to the FBI, in defiance of his dad's own direct threats to keep his mouth shut.Or take the case of Zachary Alam, a Pennsylvania man who prosecutors say was filmed shattering a window in the Speaker's Lobby and subsequently arrested after an unnamed relative sent a tip to the FBI. Officials charged Alam with several counts last year and he pleaded guilty to all charges in December 2021, according to the Justice Department. But there is perhaps no case more baffling than that of Thomas Fee, a retired New York City firefighter who texted his girlfriend's brother — who also happened to be a federal agent with the US Diplomatic Security Service — a selfie showing him inside the Capitol rotunda during the riot. According to charging documents, Fee also sent his girlfriend's brother a video of himself inside the building where other rioters could be heard screaming "Pelosi" and "tyranny." The unnamed special agent initially deleted the messages but was later able to retrieve them, after which he sent them to DSS. The agency then sent the evidence to the Joint Terrorism Task Force.Fee turned himself in soon after and was sentenced to 24 months of probation earlier this year.This rioter's ex-girlfriend got payback for his put-downRichard Michetti learned the hard way the inevitable consequences of scorning an ex-lover.A judge sentenced the Pennsylvania man to nine months in prison earlier this year after his ex-girlfriend turned him in to the FBI, according to court documents. The unnamed woman blew Michetti's cover after he called her a "moron" for not supporting former President Donald Trump, prosecutors said."If you can't see the election was stolen, you're a moron," Michetti texted his ex-girlfriend, according to the criminal complaint. "This is our country do you think we live like kings because no one sacrificed anything?"After Michetti's insults, his ex-girlfriend provided the FBI with text messages and videos a day after the siege. She even identified him in other images that appeared to show him inside the building, prosecutors said. WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 6: Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. - Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification.Brent Stirton/Getty ImagesThis accused rioter faced religious repercussions thanks to a fellow worshipperThe FBI arrested Glenn Allen Brooks in August 2021 on two January 6-related charges after a member of his church prayer group turned him in, according to court documents. Prosecutors said Brooks "boasted of his active participation" in the attack and "sent photos of his attendance" to a text chat group full of other prayer group members. Brooks sent the digital evidence to his fellow worshippers on the day of the riot, according to prosecutors, but the unnamed prayer group member who tipped off investigators did so weeks after the insurrection. The California man pleaded not guilty to the charges against him in August 2021, according to court records.An unbelievable Uber ride was this accused rioter's downfallAlleged defendant Jerry Daniel Braun was turned in by his get-away car driver, according to court documents.Authorities arrested the California man in April 2022 after the Uber driver who took Braun away from the January 6 attack tipped off the FBI, according to court documents.Braun faces three charges related to his alleged role in the insurrection after a Washington, DC-area Uber driver contacted the FBI in January 2021 to share information about an apparent rioter. The driver told investigators that one of his passengers acknowledged tearing down a barricade at the US Capitol immediately following the siege. Braun has yet to enter a plea in the case, according to court records. A portion of Braun's ride was captured on video by a dash cam in the Uber, according to court documents, during which the driver engaged Braun in conversation about the siege. "So, has it been violent all day?" the driver asked, according to prosecutors."Well, it started around right when I got there," Braun responded, per prosecutors. "I tore down the barricades.""You did?" the driver asked. "Why?""Well, because, so we could get to the Capitol," Braun replied."Well, how'd that work out for ya?" the driver responded."Well, it looks like, uh, Biden's gonna be our president," Braun said.An Uber dash cam video captured Jerry Daniel Braun immediately after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.The Department of Justice.Self-promoters helped investigators by identifying themselvesSome industrious rioters couldn't help but use an unprecedented American insurrection as an opportunity to drum up business.Texas real estate agent Jenna Ryan, who has continually made headlines for her post-riot behavior and commentary, seemed to be in hustle mode on January 6, posting a since-deleted video from the Capitol in which she promoted herself."We're gonna…go in there, life of death! It doesn't matter!" she said in the video, according to The Washington Post. "Y'all know who to hire for your realtor: Jenna Ryan."In another video from inside the building, Ryan continued to sell herself: "You guys, can you believe this? I'm not messing around. When I come to sell your house, this is what I'll do."Ryan completed a 60-day prison sentence earlier this year after pleading guilty to a single federal misdemeanor charge of parading. Among the entrepreneurial insurrectionists that day was also Troy Faulkner, who was sentenced to five months in prison earlier this year after pleading guilty. According to an FBI affidavit, Faulkner stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, while wearing a jacket advertising his Ohio painting company. The promotional outerwear helped FBI agents identify him, according to investigators. On the back of his jacket, Faulkner advertised his namesake painting business and the telephone number for the company.Memorable fashion choices made some rioters instantly recognizableAdorned with a headdress, horns, and red, white, and blue face paint, Jacob Chansley — alternatively known as the QAnon Shaman — dressed his way into becoming the unofficial mascot for the January 6 insurrection. Chansley is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable faces of the Capitol riot. Thanks to his larger-than-life get-up, he was photographed several times throughout the day walking with his bullhorn and flagpole. Authorities arrested him just three days later in his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona, where he was charged with two felonies and four misdemeanors. "He made himself the image of the riot, didn't he?" Judge Royce Lamberth said in November 2021 before sentencing Chansley to 41 months in prison following his guilty plea to obstruction.A protester screams "Freedom" inside the Senate chamber after the U.S. Capitol was breached by a mob during a joint session of Congress on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC.Win McNamee/Getty ImagesSeveral other bizarrely-dressed rioters have since been arrested and sentenced, including Aaron Mostofsky, who donned fur pelts while inside the Capitol; Kevin Seefried, who carried a giant Confederate Flag throughout the Capitol's hall; and Robert Keith Packer, who was photographed wearing a "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirt.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

   The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Charlie Ellis on Vanguard’s Rules of Investing is below. You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here. ~~~ ANNOUNCER: This is Masters… Read More The post Transcript: Charlie Ellis appeared first on The Big Picture.    The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Charlie Ellis on Vanguard’s Rules of Investing is below. You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here. ~~~ ANNOUNCER: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio. BARRY RITHOLTZ, HOST, MASTERS IN BUSINESS: This week on the podcast, what can I say? Charlie Ellis is a legend in the world of finance, whether it was at Greenwich Associates, or as chair of the Yale endowment, or a board member at Vanguard. He has seen pretty much everything in the world of investing. His career spans the entire modern era dating back to, you know, the Paul Volcker era, and what took place during the boom periods of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and how technology has changed the world of investing. He’s just one of these people who is so thoughtful and insightful about everything. It’s just always a pleasure to chat with him. I found our discussion to be absolutely fascinating, and I think you will also. With no further ado, my conversation with Greenwich Associates’ Charlie Ellis. The last time we spoke, we really were talking about the retirement crisis, and we spent a little bit of time discussing Vanguard. But this new book is so interesting and so filled with details that only an insider can have. Let’s delve into it a little bit. Tell us what first led you to Vanguard. How did you get involved with them? CHARLIE ELLIS, FOUNDER AND FORMER MANAGING PARTNER, GREENWICH ASSOCIATES: Well, it started a long time ago, 1966, I was working with a securities firm in New York, and Wellington was a client in Philadelphia. And I would go down to Philadelphia and meet with John Neff, Jack Bogle and the others, and I got convinced that these were very bright and interesting people doing interesting things. But old Wellington was not really a great and interesting place. It was a balanced portfolio. The assets were going down year by year by year. As people said, you know, it’s just out of date, I’m going to get a performance fund. I’m going to beat the market. These guys will never get out of the slow that they’re in. But still, there was something special about Jack and John. So — RITHOLTZ: The irony of that is in 1966, hey, we were about to start, you know, a long period of equity underperformance. You would have guessed, had you known that a balanced fund, the stock and bond portfolio was going to do a lot better than just the pure stock funds over the next 16 years. ELLIS: That’s the way the world works. Just when you least expect it, something goes in a different direction. I’ve really liked the guys. When Jack said he was going to be leaving after the merger made in heaven, with the Boston group, Jack, you really are stretching it. This is a very unlikely proposition. You’ve got less than 30 people working with you. You’re in charge of the back office activities. That’s an activity you never ever personally enjoyed at all. You always assigned that to somebody else. And he would say to me, don’t worry about it. Jim Reid (ph), he’s going to take responsibility for that. RITHOLTZ: Right. ELLIS: I don’t have to do it. You’re not allowed to do anything in investment management, and then allow it to do anything in sales. The mutual fund business is all about sales and investing. What are you going to do? And the answer was, I’m going to hang in there and find a way to make this thing work. RITHOLTZ: And the fascinating story is the argument that he concocted around indexing, first, it’s not investment management because, hey, we’re not making any decisions. We’re just buying all the stocks in the index. And second, there’s no sales. People are going to come to us. So therefore, this is outside of the deal he cut with the folks at Wellington. ELLIS: Right. And it was just barely enough over a period of several months to convince his board of directors it’s okay to do that. RITHOLTZ: And he just kind of skated through. They barely approved it. ELLIS: Very close run. But Jack was a very argumentative, persuasive, always had the facts supporting whatever case like a really good litigating lawyer. He was always able to make his own case very, very, very well. RITHOLTZ: So let’s talk about that initial fund. The plan was to do an IPO to raise $200 million in new client assets for the funds. How much did they end up actually raising? ELLIS: This is the first index fund. RITHOLTZ: The first index fund? ELLIS: It’s a very interesting story. Going to raise a pretty serious amount of money, it was very hard to get Wall Street to agree to do the underwriting. And then it was really hard to get salespeople in the various cities to say, yeah, I’m going to pitch this to my clients for a very good reason. Everybody knew in those days, the purpose of investment management is to beat the market. Everybody understood that was the game. So you’re looking for a manager who’s going to beat the market. Everybody talked that way. And here’s a guy coming along, saying, hey, I got a really good idea for you. I’m not going to beat the market. Jack would have argued, well, wait a minute. 75% of the active funds are underperforming what they said they were going to do. If I meet the market, match it, I’m going to beat most of them. I’ll be in the top quartile as a consequence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Jack, you’re going to charge a sales load of 8% on this index fund, so people’s first day are 8% behind the market, how are they ever going to catch up with the market? Don’t let that bother you. We’ll find a way to make it work out. But that was a killer, and people would look at him and say, straight faced, I’m not going to go to my clients and say, go into this investment opportunity, you’re guaranteed to be behind the market for the rest of the time that you hold on to it. RITHOLTZ: Now, some of the data that Jack had showed that the active managers, all of whom were high fee, not even counting the fees after a period of time, the vast majority, some 95%, lag the market. And then once you work the fees and after 10 or 15 years, they’re way behind the market. Why did it take so long for that concept to be recognized by investors? ELLIS: We’re all governed by our beliefs, and beliefs are much more powerful than data. And as we’ve seen in politics, as we’ll see in all kinds of other subject areas, what people believed is what drives them to their behavior and decisions. Don’t bother me with the facts, is a reality of human beings. So if you’re fact-based, you got to be prepared for people to say, you’re crazy, that doesn’t make any sense. I know what’s right. RITHOLTZ: And when you look back to the 1970s and ‘80s, you know, we’ve taken for granted how much data is available today, how easy it is for us to access historical returns for various indices versus inflation, versus dividends, versus everything. That technology and that information wasn’t all that readily available 40, 50 years ago. ELLIS: What do you mean it wasn’t readily available? It wasn’t available, period. I mean, we go back a little bit of personal history. I was privileged to have the responsibility for representing Greenwich Associates consulting with Wall Street firms. The smartest people on Wall Street in terms of picking up an understanding, this is really good information, I can really put it to work. John Whitehead at Goldman Sachs, who was unbelievably demanding and rigorous as a client, but I loved working for him because he always took everything very, very seriously. And there’s one other person, Mike Bloomberg at Salomon Brothers, and Mike took the information and convert it into decisions on a regular basis. That put him in a very strong position competitively, but it also proved to him the value of having good hard information. And you can’t deny, anybody can have good hard information and not use it. He was really good at using it. And that’s characteristic of why he’s been so extraordinary and as successful as years and years and years later. RITHOLTZ: So all of this is really fascinating. What made you 19 books and decide to say, hey, you know, it’s time to tell the inside story of Vanguard, what led you to saying now’s the time? ELLIS: I was a director of Vanguard. I had worked with Vanguard as a strategy consultant before being a director. And I was deeply convinced that this was for almost any American investor, the right way to do your investing. And that it was low cost, yup; high value, yup; reliably delivered in a systematic way. And that looking at it as a director, it seemed to me very, very clear that Vanguard was way underestimated by almost everybody. The clients of Vanguard underestimated how good a deal they were really getting. People who weren’t clients of Vanguard were crazy not to know what the facts were. They can make their own decision, but they should know at least what the facts are. Here’s a better way of being able to get good investment, guidance and information. And as a director, I said, you know, I think we really are making a big mistake not to make it clear to our own people how good a deal they’re getting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, everything about Vanguard as an organization is modesty, and particularly with Jack Brennan, who was very much, Mr. Modesty, and it just didn’t take off. And then after I left the board, Jack and I were both advisors to a very, very large investment fund, and so it gave me an opportunity to make the pitch to him one more time. And he said, you know, I think you’re right. I think this would be good for investors. I said, but Jack, it’s going to be good for Vanguard too. He said, yeah, but it’s really good for investors. So let’s go ahead. RITHOLTZ: So I like the concept of Vanguard’s culture as unique in the world of finance, low cost, high integrity. And tell us a little bit about the Vanguard culture. ELLIS: Well, it starts with one very simple proposition, nobody is making a profit. Every other investment organization got a problem that somebody is taking money out of the pot every day, every month, every year as a profit. That’s the American way. It’s a good incentive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But here’s a group who’s highly motivated, they’re doing all kinds of leadership things, and nobody is taking a profit. Everybody who’s an investor in Vanguard is an owner of Vanguard. The only owners of Vanguard are the investors in Vanguard. So it’s a nice tight little situation where you eat your own cooking and you’re doing what’s really right because it’s what’s really right for everybody. RITHOLTZ: Really interesting. So given how the world has changed over the past few decades, have you noticed any changes in the culture at Vanguard over that period? ELLIS: Honestly, no. It’s astonishing. It’s still Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts gathered together every day to do — as they like to say, to do the right thing. And that’s the only metric by which they make a judgement. What’s the right thing to do for our investor clients? Because it’s their shop and we’re here to do the right thing for them. RITHOLTZ: So when we look around at the world of low cost indexes, they’re all pretty much the same. They’re cheap. They tend to hold almost identical portfolios. What makes the Vanguard version of this so different? How does Vanguard brand itself in what is essentially a commodity product? ELLIS: It’s really fascinating, essentially, a commodity product. If you have a client, they will understand and appreciate. They get good service, not fabulous service, but good service at low cost, on a very unreliable basis. And there’s a group of people who are working full time to protect them from anything dumb or getting conned. Not bad. RITHOLTZ: So let’s talk about the enigma that is Jack Bogle. He spent the first 25 years of his career on the active side of the street. It seems like it’s almost a coincidence that Vanguard was even launched. Tell us about that. ELLIS: A lot of different ways you’d commit to answer your question. First, Jack engineered what was supposed to be the great merger made in heaven, combining old fashioned Wellington with all of the integrity that it might have had in days gone by, heavy sales load, heavy on sales activities, not so good on investing, combined with a hot ticket group in Boston. And it looked like that would be a winning proposition for everybody. Only problem, culture, personality, way of thinking, way of doing business. Jack always wanted to have complete control of everything. The guy said the Thorndike, Doran, Paine & Lewis Partnership, which is now the core of modern Wellington, believed deeply in a consensus development as friends talking things out, figuring out together what’s the best thing to do, take a long term point of view. The two cultures did not mix. And Jack insisted on his culture being dominant because that was key to his personality. And that made it worse, not better. And then he insisted more on having it his way, and that made it even worse. And so, finally, they got to the point of saying you have to go. RITHOLTZ: And essentially, they deposed him. They tossed out the king, eventually winning a vote at a board level where he was removed from Wellington, the investment firm. But Jack had a clever backdoor way around it. He was still a participant and part of the board, where there were numerous independent directors. And the way the mutual fund industry is set up, the administration of the funds and the management of the investments are two different creatures. So he was able to stay with the admin side. Tell us a little bit about that. ELLIS: You’ve said such a nice job of summarizing it, there’s almost nothing to say other than you got it exactly right. RITHOLTZ: Oh, I got a couple of chapters just on that. ELLIS: Jack Bogle understood that the directors had certain kinds of power that could not be taken away. And they were because of the SEC and the whole concept of regulation of mutual fund industry, representatives of the investors in the mutual funds. That was a very strong base. And so, legally, the directors were responsible for figuring out what to do about investing, then the directors were responsible for figuring out what to do about sales. That’s legally. That’s not the way it actually worked. The way it actually worked is the directors did exactly what they were told by the management company, because otherwise they wouldn’t get the very nice fees that they were getting and they wouldn’t have the privilege of coming to the meetings, and so on and so on. RITHOLTZ: All the directors were buddies of the folks running the investment. ELLIS: Why else would you choose one? RITHOLTZ: Right. ELLIS: Obedient directors, friends of the firm, all this sort of stuff, it’s really not a nice part of the history. It’s very different today. But 25, 30 years ago, it was a different world. So Jack had worked out that the directors would have responsibility for making the final decision on things that were important enough so that they had some real gravitas and some real strength. And he had a very close relationship with several of the directors. And several of the directors had a high regard for Jack as a man of integrity, and so they were very strong in support for him. Guys like Chuck Root for an example. He was the head of TF&C, the actuarial firm, and a really distinguished talent in the Philadelphia business community. And basically thought that Jack was good guy with strong intentions, and maybe too strong a personality sometimes, but a good guy for the long run, and was clear going to support him. And Jack had similar relationships with people who give him support, just enough so that he could get the vote on his side for things that had to do with administration. Interesting phenomenon. One of the guys said he was most focused on getting to be sure that he would get the right support, management consultant named Warden who was doing some terrific work for European companies, trying to understand American business after the Second World War, and built up a very nice franchise. He died and if he hadn’t died, the vote might have — RITHOLTZ: The night before the vote. ELLIS: If it hadn’t happened that way, vote might have gone the other way, so that close. Jack won by marginal vote, the right to be able to do the administration. What a win. You think about Pyrrhic victories, what a win. Let me just be sure I understand this. I’m Jack Bogle. The one thing I don’t care about at all, have no interest in whatsoever is fund administration. RITHOLTZ: Right. ELLIS: That’s my sole business. And I’m going to have less than 30 people working with me. And the crowd of funds that I’m managing are basically going downhill because redemptions are larger than new sales. That’s not much to start with, but — RITHOLTZ: Not at all. ELLIS: — you’ve got to understand at the start, there’s a magic missing ingredient. Jack’s ability to be ferociously angry and beautifully articulate for any case he ever wanted to make was a major competitive factor. And then a couple of things were lucky breaks, money market funds came out and you could charge 1% on a money market fund, which is a lot to charge for something. This is plain vanilla on some money market fund. But a money market fund was sure to be a winner compared to the bank CDs that were limited by regulation to 5% interest. Then Paul Volcker was driving the interest rates up to 8%, 10%, 12%, even 14% on money market instruments. All you had to do as a money market fund manager is buying the standard stuff, Treasury bills, commercial paper and the like. You could put together a portfolio that’s producing a very high income, and the banks that had all the money were limited to that 5.5%. So then when they float out of the banks into the mutual funds, and Vanguard made itself obvious choice by having slightly lower fees, and then lower fees, and then lower fees as their assets built up. So they had low fees for an identical product. Then you don’t have to be that smart to figure out, hey, wait a minute, these are identical products — RITHOLTZ: Right. ELLIS: — and one is low cost, why not? RITHOLTZ: Why not? So let’s also talk about what was then thought of as a fairly radical concept, neutralizing the mutual funds business. Tell us a little bit about that idea, where instead of being profit-driven, the profits would eventually flow back to the owners, the investors in the funds, through lower fees. ELLIS: Well, you just said beautifully. RITHOLTZ: Well, you know, I’ve been — ELLIS: The proposition. RITHOLTZ: I’ve been educated with this book, so it’s deep in my thought process. ELLIS: And you know, once you get 2 and 2 is 4, it’s easy to remember and put to work. But the secret here over and over and over again is ferocious drive to not fail, which was Jack, ferocious drive to be recognized as Mr. Wonderful, which was a very important part of Jack Bogle all through his career, but — RITHOLTZ: Saint Jack. ELLIS: — to get more and more and more important as he got deeper into Vanguard. Those two phenomena show up over and over and over again. RITHOLTZ: So given how successful the mutualization was, why didn’t any other asset managers copy the structure? It seems like — ELLIS: Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what’s the American way? I start a business to make a profit. If I do a good job, people will come to my business. I’ll get bigger, I’ll make more profits. So I do a good job, I keep getting more. And it’s a positive cycle. Okay. What would attract anybody to get into a business where you do a really good job and you break even? You do a really, really good job for years and you breakeven. You do a really, really, really good job for year after year after year for all kinds of people, and you breakeven. You mean you never ever make a profit? That’s right. You never ever make a profit. Well, what’s in it for me? RITHOLTZ: Well, you — ELLIS: And that is a stopper for almost everybody who starts a business. If you can’t make a profit, why in the world would you get going? RITHOLTZ: Well — ELLIS: It goes back to Adam Smith and all the way through since then. RITHOLTZ: You do end up achieving a certain size where there are economies of scale, and you pay yourself a very nice salary. Hey, maybe you don’t go public, maybe you don’t sell the firm. But you sleep at night and you know you’re doing the right thing for your clients. There’s got to be some appeal for that. ELLIS: Now you’re getting to why is the culture at Vanguard so steadily the same and why do people at Vanguard enjoy being where they are? First, they really like doing a good job and doing the right thing in doing a good job. It’s amazing. People really do like being honest. People really do like delivering good value. People really do like doing a great job for other people as customers. And particularly if you make clear, when you join Vanguard, you’re never going to get rich. It is not going to happen. So if that’s the main item on your agenda, go somewhere else. And there are plenty of places as Wall Street, where they’ll say you want to get rich? Come here. So if you don’t want to get rich, but you do want to do something you’re proud of every day, with a group of people who are just like you, proud of what they’re doing. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, pretty soon you start to say, you know, there’s something to this, maybe being a Jesuit is not all that bad an idea. Then pretty soon, you start finding, hey, wait a minute, this works. RITHOLTZ: Let’s talk a little bit about not just Jack Bogle, but the era and the team he assembled that was so crucial to Vanguard’s success. Tell us a little bit about how this, you know, 1927 Yankees came together. ELLIS: Great question. First, Jack was a man with a mission. And if you spent time with him, you could be infected with that sense of mission and purpose. And if that rang the bell for what you wanted to do with your working career, it was almost magic because there wasn’t very much competition from other people doing things in the investment world. Secondly, this was a man of tremendous conviction about what was going to be the right thing to do. Sometimes that worked very much at the advantage of Vanguard. There were some times when it worked just the other way and it was a real negative, but decisive. Whichever way, it was characteristic of Jack. As a personality, he could put on the charm in a way in which almost anybody would melt. And then, of course, there were hard-hitting times when he was absolutely determined that everybody was going to do this or that. You were already onboard and you sort of say, well, you take the good with the bad, we can work this one out, so on and so on. RITHOLTZ: Really interesting. Tell us a little bit about Jack Brennan, the man who succeeded Bogle as the second CEO of Vanguard. He’s really quite a fascinating character. ELLIS: Well, he had a terrific impact. And if you look at the impact in terms of assets under management, what Bogle did in his time, Brennan did 10 times as much in his time — RITHOLTZ: Wow. ELLIS: — 10 times as much. And he did it by putting together a team of other people, empowering them to be strong and effective of what they were doing. Then it goes back to a couple of different root factors; Boston, Irish, Catholic, training. His dad was told by his guidance counselor in high school, no kid, you’re not going to become a mechanic. You’re going to go to school because you’re too good and too smart to stop your life right at this, graduating from high school. You’re going to college. And that was a breakthrough. And Jack’s father became a consequential banker in the Boston area. But he always stayed clear to his basic roots. Jack Brennan grows up as a son of that kind of straightforward guy, and becomes a very, very straightforward guy himself. The second characteristic is he was a very good athlete, and he was very good at lacrosse in particular. And one day his kids were asking him, well, Dad, were you the highest scorer? He said, that’s not the right question. What do you mean, Dad? They gave him a copy of the Dartmouth Indian, the student newspaper, Brennan 28 assists — RITHOLTZ: Right. ELLIS: — 8 goals. He said it’s not whether you score, it’s whether your team scores. RITHOLTZ: Right. ELLIS: And that’s Jack Brennan all the way through. He’s all about bringing the team forward. As he said himself, being famous is not on my agenda. RITHOLTZ: Right. Right. ELLIS: And it’s very clear. Most people have never heard of Jack Brennan. He’s probably the most important person in the development of Vanguard as an organization. RITHOLTZ: That’s quite a statement. I don’t disagree, but I don’t think most people are aware how he professionalized Vanguard, how he brought in a huge team of people. But he also found all sorts of both cost savings and growth that as good as Bogle was, it was just outside of his expertise. ELLIS: Yeah. And what Jack Bogle always said, I’m a small company guy. And Jack Brennan understood to be the really right Vanguard in the future, you’re going to have to be a big organization. Second, you’re going to have to have a lot of computing power because technology is the secret to keeping costs low, low, low in the long run. Jack Bogle would say over and over again, computers are too damn expensive. And he was right on the day that you buy them, but if you can only think of them as that moment — RITHOLTZ: Right. ELLIS: — you’re not going to be able to get a payoff. If you think of them as going on for 5 years or 10 years and going to use them as tools to bring the cost of the operation down, it’s a completely different answer. And so Jack Brennan was absolutely key to the whole idea of using technology, particularly computers, and moving in advancement to that direction. Second thing is he’s very good at distributing responsibility and hiring in outstanding individuals to do in a quiet way, the things that needed to get done. So shift from one person to a team, and the team has got maybe a dozen key players on it. Then you get something that’s got tremendous capacity to manage a larger and larger organization which Vanguard had to become in order to get the economic power that it has today. RITHOLTZ: Right, to keep driving costs lower. So Brennan and Bogle were very close. Eventually to Brennan’s dismay, the relationship fell apart. Tell us a little bit about that episode. ELLIS: Well, easy analogy would be father and son, older guy, younger guy, Mr. Outside Jack Bogle, Mr. Inside Jack Brennan. So long as that was the working relationship, things were great. But Jack Bogle always thought of Vanguard as my company. And when you have a possessive view like that, you can talk yourself into making serious mistakes. He had agreed with Jim Rabe (ph) way back when that the longest that anybody ought to work at Vanguard would be maybe till 70. So let’s have 70 be our retirement age. They get closer and closer and closer to it, and Jack Bogle said, well, yeah, but it doesn’t apply to the chairman. It doesn’t apply to me. It can’t be really the right thing in the board of director. He said, no, it really is the right thing. In fact, the company has already gone past your skill set. RITHOLTZ: Right. ELLIS: And Jack Brennan has got the skill set, and he’s proving it over and over and over again. We want to make that change in a very clear way. I don’t want to make that change. Then Jack Bogle really, really resisted it. Finally, it turned out he was deeply upset about not having made a fortune the way Ned Johnson had made a fortune at Fidelity. So they gave him a substantial settlement to leave with good behavior and a great opportunity for him to start Bogle Research, which turned out to be a marvelous success for Jack Bogle and for people who are paying attention in that direction, but take him out of the controls position on Vanguard, so it could basically grow in its natural way as a major phenomenon. RITHOLTZ: So let’s talk a little bit about John Neff, another name that made a huge difference early on, doesn’t really get talked about all that much. Tell us what he did and why he was so pivotal to Vanguard’s success. ELLIS: People don’t talk about John Neff today. But in the ‘60s and the ‘70s and the ‘80s, people talked about John Neff because he had the best record of any mutual fund manager in the country. RITHOLTZ: Wow. ELLIS: And you could argue that one of the great managers at Capital Group had an even better record, but Capital broke up the funds into multiple different portfolio managers, so it was not public. But among the public recorded, John Neff had the best performance over the long term. Wow. Does that make a difference when you’re looking at year after year after year after year? With some exceptions sometimes for two or three years, but over any long-term investment, he had the best record of anybody in the investment business. RITHOLTZ: What about Gus Sauter? He was the first chief investment officer at Vanguard Group, highly regarded. Tell us a little bit about his contributions. ELLIS: A terrific quant with a great deal of modesty and a wonderful ability to think things through. And Gus Sauter was critical to development of the ETF business, and critical to the development of the indexing business and the capacity to manage with the quantitative group, substantial fractions of the actively managed portfolios because he could replicate what an active manager might do. And one of his quiet, soft spoken, it’s not about me, it’s about the interesting work that my team is doing; the team builder and just terrific technology understander, who was able to put things together in a way that was really wonderful. RITHOLTZ: You mentioned how important Jack Brennan was. Let’s talk a little bit about Bill McNabb. He was running Vanguard right in the heart of the financial crisis. He’s the one who basically told all the crew members, hey, nobody is getting fired, just get on the phone, speak to the clients, and don’t worry about your jobs. We’re all safe. Tell us a bit about his decision-making and how important he was not just during the financial crisis, but, you know, I think Vanguard was about $800 billion pre crisis. And now, it’s 10x. It’s $8 trillion. Tell us a little bit about what Bill McNabb brought to the table. ELLIS: The secret to Bill McNabb is modesty, competence and discipline. And if you look at how would you understand that, think of him as he was for many, many years, a rower. In crew, there are no fabulous individual performers. It’s all about how the whole group of eight people rose simultaneously to a level of perfection. And if they get it really, really right, perform in a way that you can’t match. And that’s what Bill McNabb was all about, is disciplined, steady, reliable performance. And aw-shucks personality on the outside, but Mr. Trustworthy on the inside, and everybody knew he was the kind of solid citizen that you would like to have your sister marry, or you’d like to have your mother marry, or you’d like to have your daughter marry, one of those things. He’s just Mr. Good guy. And while every other firm in the investment business was cutting costs because the market was down and looked like it was going to go down a lot, he said, no, we’re not going to cut costs at all. Nobody is losing their job. We’re all going to stay here together because the number of customers is not going down. It’s just that the profitability of the business is going down, and we are not a profit-minded organization. We’re a service-minded organization. We’re all about the customers because they are owners, that we’re going to stay right steady on through. And that made a terrific impact internally. But of course, it also meant that they had a wonderfully strong organization coming out of the financial crisis and that was a big help too. RITHOLTZ: Yeah, perfectly positioned. Tell us about Charlie Root, what was his role as an advisor and a board member. ELLIS: He was the head of the major actuarial consulting firm in Philadelphia, very disciplined thinker, and an organizationally-minded person, and one of those people that you’d love to have as a director of your corporation. Unfortunately, shortly after some of the most important decisions, he was cleaning out the gutters in his home and the ladder he had climbed up to the gutters on, started to slip a little bit to the side. RITHOLTZ: Uh-oh. ELLIS: And I’m afraid that has caused his death. And it was a real loss to Vanguard and a real loss to the Philadelphia community. RITHOLTZ: There’s one person I really have to ask about and that’s you. You were a director of Vanguard for over a decade. You were a strategy consultant. Tell us about how you felt your role was and what your contributions were during that era. ELLIS: In all fairness, I have to feel — RITHOLTZ: Look at you, you’re blushing. I can’t believe this. ELLIS: I really enjoyed being a director. We didn’t get paid very much. I have to admit the food that we were served at meals was really pretty crummy. But it was all part of the keep the cost down, keep the cost down attitude. Management was so candid and so open with us as directors. It was a privilege to be working with them. And it didn’t hurt that I was sitting side by side with Burt Malkiel, who is one of those outstanding people in the investments world. And Burt has just turned 90. RITHOLTZ: Wow. ELLIS: And his great book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, has just come out with a new, very considerably updated version. And to sit with him and to realize, on item after item after item, Burton and I agreed, Burton and I agreed, Burton and I agreed. So it was a wonderful privilege and opportunity to be able to be candid, direct, blunt spoken, and to have a really capable guy sitting right beside you, I think you’re on the right track, keep going, keep going. And to have a management team that was so glad to hear what we had to say, even when it might be really in disagreement with them or might be slightly in disagreement with them, they’d love to having the candor coming from the outside. RITHOLTZ: Let’s talk a little bit about the current state of Vanguard. But I have to preface it with Jack Bogle’s CMH, not EMH, not the efficient market hypothesis, but the costs matter hypothesis, which really dates back to his Princeton thesis. It wasn’t so much about active versus passive, it was about expensive versus inexpensive. Tell us a little bit about how that impacted the development at Vanguard. ELLIS: First, you got to understand that Jack Bogle was a master of the personality franchise development business. When nobody else gave a damn about becoming clearly identified in a very specific way, Jack cared greatly about that. And it goes back to when he likes to tell the story on himself, at least did tell the story on himself whether he likes it or not. When he was in school, he came in second in his academic performance. And he went around to each one of his teachers, pleading with them to really examine and modify his grade so he could come in first. He wanted to be the valedictorian, not the salutatorian. Now, why would he care so much about that? It is not the be all and end all of the world. It’s because of his personality. Something deep inside him drove him to always enhance things, make things look better, make things look better, make things look better. And so all the way through the story of Vanguard, you’ll find Jack Bogle doing things or saying things to make the record look much more positive about what he contributed than the reality. And one of the awkwardness is the franchise building was done so beautifully, so consistently, so skillfully by a master of that craft, that it’s still 20 years later, 30 years later, carries on. And most people if you ask them, when you think of Vanguard, who do you think of? Bang, they’ve got it. Well, Jack Bogle was terribly important to the starting. Nobody could have started the organization without being Jack Bogle, partly angry, partly talent, partly skills of various particular characteristics, one of which was building the personal franchise. Nobody could have started Vanguard. But if Jack Bogle had stayed in control, it would never have become the organization it is today. It would be substantially smaller. It would be deeply outclassed by people who use automation to make their offering a better and more effective proposition. And we wouldn’t see the Vanguard that’s been developed since then. RITHOLTZ: So let’s talk a little bit about that Vanguard, very huge in ETFs, big overseas investing, lots of other things that Vanguard and Bogle didn’t see eye to eye about. How often did the company disagree with its founder? ELLIS: Interesting question, and I’m not sure I could do it in terms of numerical quantitative. But if you look back the concepts that Jack Bogle really believed in, computers, he thought were terribly expensive. That would have been a stopper today. RITHOLTZ: Real, for sure. ELLIS: He couldn’t do it. RITHOLTZ: Right. He really believed in he’s making the decisions. It’s too complicated of a business. There are too many things going on. There are too many different responsibilities for one person to do all of the decision-making. If you look at Vanguard today, you’re looking at a substantial organization that’s going through a substantial transformation towards becoming more of an effective organization, at serving clients’ interests, and doing a better and better job for the people who are already the investor-owners of Vanguard. So they are not making a major commitment internationally. They are not spending a lot of money to build a future business. In other countries, they’re looking for places where the resistance by the banking establishment or the financial establishment in those different countries is more open to non-local competition. But it’s hard to find, very hard to find. They’ve made some changes that we’re keeping up with the times. They’ve got a substantial institutional business. If you’re in the investment business as an institution, you really want to know something about private equity. If Vanguard doesn’t have private equity, that’s going to take them out of the running. So they’ve developed a really interesting joint venture, where they’re able to get access to a very competent private equity investment organization at a very controlled cost. They’re not aiming to be the very best, but second quartile of performance on a reliable basis, with broadly diversified capability. Okay, that will work very nicely. They’re doing the same sort of a change in going towards more and more advice. And anybody who has been in the investment management business, as you have been, looking back on things, you can tell almost everybody would be well-advised to have been more a long-term investor, make fewer choices and decisions, figure out what’s really right for you. And at the same time, you’d recognize that every individual is unique. Nobody is exactly the same. Now, if you look at personality, for example, your eyeglasses, I wear eyeglasses; your shoe size, my shoe size; your shirt sizes, color, size, sleeve length. Pretty soon you realize Barry’s clothes are different from mine because Barry is different from me. And he ought to wear the clothes that are right for him, and I want to wear the clothes that are more right for me. I might get advice from my wife or something on what to wear, but we’re two different guys. RITHOLTZ: We’re actually dressed shockingly similarly with our collared shirts and a blue sweater on top. But doesn’t that kind of raise the point of, well, everybody is different. But everybody needs to save for retirement to pay for their kids’ college, to leave something to the next generation. It shouldn’t vary radically. The broad strokes should all be fairly similar, shouldn’t they? ELLIS: In terms of the macro proposition, you’re exactly right. But everybody is different from everybody else in age, income, wealth, attitude towards life, how many years you want to keep working, things like risk tolerance. RITHOLTZ: Sure. ELLIS: Everybody differs. So it turns out that almost everybody is specifically individually themselves different from somebody else, specifically individually themselves. And as a result, advice to individuals is increasingly obviously a useful part of the total investment proposition. And Vanguard is moving in that direction, and capable probably of more power in a direction that anybody would ever understand or estimate. RITHOLTZ: I read a crazy statistic somewhere, I don’t recall if it was in the book or elsewhere, in the state of Pennsylvania, the certified financial planners, something like 96% of them in the state work for Vanguard. That’s just a crazy number as they’ve pushed into the advisory business and hiring all of these CFPs. ELLIS: They’ve made a major commitment to serving the investor with what they really need. And most people really ought to have a good investment plan, but they don’t. Most people ought to have a clear definition of their long-term purpose as investors, other than I want to do better than the market, or I want to do at least as well as the market, or I want to do well or something vague and general like that. Very hard to get people to be very specific about what do they really, really want to do and why. And if you’ve got a good advisor, you can do a lot to improve on your results by figuring out together, what makes sense to you that’s available in the marketplace, and making the right decisions of what’s available and realistic as opposed to dreams that may or may not come true. RITHOLTZ: So let’s talk about two areas that are a little controversial. One is the thought that as indexing became more and more appealing and attracted more and more assets, Jack Bogle was a little concerned about oligopoly, about potential any trust issues. At what size is passive or indexing too large? ELLIS: I think it’s a wonderful question. But if you don’t mind, I’m going to say it’s the wrong question. RITHOLTZ: Okay. ELLIS: The right question is when will active investors say to themselves, as the professionals, the people who are making their living as active investors, say to themselves, I think I’m going to get a different career? I think I’m going to leave this business and go in a different direction. At what age will they say to their children, look, it was okay for me in my time, but it’s not a good place for you. Don’t do it, don’t do it. At what point are you going to see fewer people taking courses on investment management at business schools? We’re nowhere near that. RITHOLTZ: Right. ELLIS: We’re putting more people through the learning process of how to be pretty damn good as an analyst through business school courses, and then out into the industry that are coming out of the industry through retirement. And that’s where the market is really controlled for market efficiency, or correct pricing. There’s really smart people. If you go back 50 years ago, there were a small number of people who made their living as analysts, and a small number of people made their living as portfolio managers, maybe as many as 500 people in the world. And today, it’s somewhere between one and a half and 2 million people. RITHOLTZ: Wow. ELLIS: That’s a big change, and there have been lots of other changes. The one that I think is the most powerful, here we are at Bloomberg Radio, think about how many people own a terminal, a Bloomberg terminal that will give you any answer to any question you ever want to ask for the rest of your life within seconds. RITHOLTZ: It’s all data and technology. ELLIS: It’s all over the place. Everybody has computing power in their pocket that is much as a 360, which was IBM’s magical power force 50 years ago. And everybody has access to the Internet and it’s instantaneous communication worldwide. And thank goodness, we speak the English language because that’s the language of investing worldwide. But it means that there’s a huge transformation that’s taking place, and it has made the markets more and more skillful at finding the right price. But makes it harder for active managers. And as you and I’ve talked about before, active managers underperform the chosen segment of the market they went after. And now, we’re somewhere between 85% and 90% of active managers fall short of their intention. And when they fall short, they often get desperate and fall very short by Hail Mary passes and other kinds of dramatic efforts. RITHOLTZ: The paradox of skill is the better the professionals get; it becomes increasingly harder to even beat the market. So that’s quite fascinating. One other question that’s a little controversial, we’ve seen some pushback to ESG, environmental, social, governance investing and the voting of proxies. How does an entity like Vanguard manage these issues on behalf of their huge 30 million clients and their $8 trillion in assets? ELLIS: Very simple. They do what you would like to. If you were a corporate executive, what would you like to have your shareholders do? Pay attention to the votes, be quite consistent about always voting. And as you know, most people don’t vote at all. And then many institutional investors say, it’s not our decision to make because we’re on behalf of others. So your very best client, if you’re a corporate executive, best shareholder is to be somebody who is in it for the long run. And if you’re a Vanguard and indexing, you’re in it permanently for the long, long, long run, cares about certain basic principles and they do, and they advertise what those principles are. For example, they believe that a board of directors should have an incentive in the company stock. They’re very strong to have diversification of personality and background. Okay, fine. Those are pretty much straightforward things. Nobody would have any trouble with that. Yeah. And they’re very much in favor of certain kinds of incentives, but not others. And most people look at and say, yeah, those are the right things to be in favor of. So it’s one after another after another items where Vanguard and State Street, and BlackRock are all three in agreement, basically, that good governance is an important characteristic of a board of directors, and they really want to see that going. What is it that you wouldn’t like about the way in which the voting is done? It’s a terrifically powerful answer. What wouldn’t you like? And there is nothing that you wouldn’t like. Now, is it possible that a group could quietly somehow skillfully get together and agree, let’s do something that’s really not going to be right for our investors? Yeah, you could say mechanically, it’s possible. But there’s Canada for an example, it’s a country right next to one of the most powerful military organization, nations in the world. Are the Canadians afraid the Americans are going to attack again? Of course not. In fact, we cooperate in our activities. RITHOLTZ: Right. ELLIS: Yeah. Okay. What would happen if somebody at any one of the indexing leaders were to do something that was not quite Boy Scout/Girl Scout right down the line? They get called out. I think they’d called out. Would it be the newspapers? Yes. Would it be on Bloomberg Radio? Yes. Would you have an interview with somebody who had called them out? Yes. One of those perfectly marvelous situations where you’re forced to do what you damn well want to do. RITHOLTZ: State Street, Vanguard, BlackRock, they all have pretty good businesses. Why would you want to mess with that? Really, really fascinating stuff, Charlie. Let’s jump to some of our favorite questions that we ask all of our guests. And I want to start with the last time I saw you was before the pandemic, what have you been doing during the pandemic? And tell us what what’s been keeping you entertained. ELLIS: Well, part of the entertainment value is that our children, our daughter and her husband and their two kids under 5 have moved into our house. So we’ve had the privilege of watching little kids again, and I have to tell you that is a dream come true. It’s a lot of fun. Second thing is we have an agreement in our family that we’re worried about the children and COVID. So we don’t do very much at all in the way of travel. And I used to be five days a week get on a train into Manhattan — RITHOLTZ: Right. ELLIS: — as a way of doing business. I’ve been in New York City three times in three years. RITHOLTZ: Wow. ELLIS: It’s really something else. And so I’m delighted to be here today. But in our family, I have to drive in, and then turn around and drive back. Then as you know, the traffic is not all that convenient, and so on and so on. But things like that have been distractions. I’ve enjoyed the privilege — Zoom has made a wonderful difference to my life and I’m sure to most other people, the freedom to be able to do repeat messages and communication in a serious way through Zoom. It’s really been terrific. The third thing is I’ve got a real bee in my bonnet that I want to be able to try to be helpful to people. And so doing investment advice is just as easy for me, located where I am. Once you make the communication contact, it works out fine. And I’ve really enjoyed being able to provide some useful investment advice to individuals as we’re going along. And then the third thing is I’ve been quite active in writing. I’ve written for the Financial Times several different pieces and I’ve written a couple of different books. I’ve got three books in the process of coming out. So have I been busy? Yeah, I’ve been busy. RITHOLTZ: So one of the things I always like to ask people is about their mentors who helped shape your career. ELLIS: Well, the most important person probably is Nellie Walsh, my sixth grade school teacher, who called me on the carpet one day and I was terribly surprised because I thought I was doing just the right thing. And she said, you were wrestling with Peter Neely, weren’t you? Well, I was. But that’s because of I couldn’t get him to stop throwing the snowballs with cinders in with the little kids, and he was picking on the little kids and I didn’t think that was fair. And she said, Charles, she never called me Charlie, always Charles, I think more of you, I expect more of you that you would lower yourself to the likes of Peter Neely. You may go. And ever since then, I’ve been held to a higher account, higher standard, higher expectation in every way to be responsive to Nellie Walsh. And more serious, people in the investment world, Joe Lasser, who was the director of Research at Wertheim, a traditional Wall Street firm. He believed deeply in security analysis, and was a very strong advocate of the CFA program. And so he got me in a training group to take the CFA exam as soon as we could. That was an important breakaway time. Another would be Coyler Crum who was a terrific professor of Investment Management at Harvard Business School. I enjoyed very much working with him. You could argue also, Ben Graham and David Dodd because of their wonderful book, Security Analysis, which was the first affirmation of professionalism in the financial analysis and securities pricing industry. And it really made a big difference to me. One of the great privileges of my life was to work, when I was working in Wall Street, and then working for Greenwich Associates for 30 years, working all day, every day with some of the smartest, most capable people in the world. And they were all involved in investment management. And if any one of them competed, all the others competed, and they all wanted to try to find ways to be better. And they’re all willing to tell you any insights that they had. And they’re all willing to provide a chorus of teachers and guidance in terms of what’s going on in investment management. And for me, that’s really the most important single place for learning that I had, and what a privilege all day, every day, is to be with the smartest people in the room, who are trying to figure out investment management. Then when you add it all together, you realize they’re competing with themselves. And they’re not going to be able to beat each other on a systematic and regular basis, voice that make a big difference to your way of thinking. RITHOLTZ: So you mentioned Graham and Dodd, and their books on Security Analysis. Tell us some of your other favorites and what else you’ve been reading more recently. ELLIS: Well, more recently, I have to tell you, I haven’t found a book on investment management that I thought was really compelling. You could argue, no, come on, there is a very recent book. That’s the new edition of an established book, Burton Malkiel’s A Random Walk Down Wall Street. It’s got to be one of the best books that’s ever been written about investment management, and about the markets and how to think about them. A wonderful guy and a wonderful book, and has done so much for so many people. Then if you look at other books that I would like to read, then you tend towards history, biography. and I’m always looking for suggestions of more books to read in that general field because I think you’ll learn so much about the way human beings do things, if you study about them, study about them, and study about them. And so I’m a nut for trying to learn from others. RITHOLTZ: I like the suggestions. What sort of advice would you give to a recent college graduate who is thinking about a career in investment management? ELLIS: Here I have a very strong opinion that you should think very candidly about why you’re interested. We all know for an example, that it’s a very well paid line of work. Most people don’t really appreciate how well paid it is, but it is wonderfully well paid. Secondly, you don’t have to retire at 65. In fact, many people work into their 70s. Many people even work into their 80s. At 85, I’m still working. I have just very wonderful privilege of not having to stop work at some arbitrary date like 65 or 60. Now, that’s a characteristic. When you look at the lifetime compensation of being in the markets all the time and free to pick anytime you want to, to pick a stock individually, that can be for some people, a very attractive characteristic. So if you like to make some substantial financial success, that’s one reason. If that’s your motivation, I think you’re in trouble. Because, yes, of course, you will make a substantial amount of income. But it’s not the most important part of your life. When you get to the end of life and you’re off standing in front of St. Peter at the pearly gates, and he said, well, you had your life, you were very lucky to be born at all. But there you were, and you chose the investment management world. What did you really do during that that you’re proud of? I made a lot of money. That’s not a good answer to a really great question. So be sure that if you’re going into the investment management field, that you know, is it because you want to make a lot of money, or is it because you like the idea of competing all the time with some of the smartest, most hardworking people in the world, which could be a terrific motivator and you could understand, or is it because you want to serve people and help them with what they’re trying to figure out about what they want to accomplish? If you’re the latter group, then you’re going to be in a profession and you will also get paid well, but your compensation will come primarily from being good as a profession. That lasts a lifetime. But you have to be clear about what is your motivation. RITHOLTZ: Really, really very interesting. And our final question, what do you know about the world of finance and investing in Wall Street today that you wish you knew 50 or so years ago? ELLIS: Well, you know, it’s pretty obvious in a way, I wish I’ve understood how much change was going to take place in the investment management activity and field. Computers for an example, when I first got started, there were no computers being used — RITHOLTZ: Wow. ELLIS: — or maybe in the back office, but they were clunky kinds of operations. And the idea that there would be the transformation of information worldwide is available to you instantaneously through Mike Bloomberg’s wonderful invention, the terminal, that the Bloomberg Terminal has transformed the world of information gathering. The Internet has transformed the world of information gathering. And as a consequence, the world of investing is now worldwide. And everybody in the world is competing with everybody else in the world in the investment management fields. So I wish I’ve understood how dramatic a change there would be, because it would make a big difference. If you understood that, you’d have the forces of change working for you and you could have made a completely different transformation of life. RITHOLTZ: Quite fascinating. Charlie, thank you for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking with Charlie Ellis, author of the new book Inside Vanguard: Leadership Secrets From the Company That Continues to Rewrite the Rules of the Investing Business. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and check out any of the previous 475 podcasts we’ve done over the past eight years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your favorite podcasts from. Be sure and sign up for my daily reading list at ritholtz.com. Follow me on Twitter @ritholtz. You can follow all of the Bloomberg podcasts at podcasts on Twitter. I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack team that helps put these conversations together each week. Justin Milner is my audio engineer. Atika Valbrun is my project manager. Paris Wald is my producer. Sean Russo is my head of Research. I’m Barry Ritholtz. You’ve been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. END   ~~~   The post Transcript: Charlie Ellis appeared first on The Big Picture......»»

In October, Salem sees about 100,000 daily tourists buying witchcraft supplies, wearing costumes, and touring local haunts. We joined them for a day. Ann Matica Ann Matica visited Salem, Massachusetts, to see what the tourism industry is like in October.  She went window shopping, explored a "haunted" house, and got her tarot cards read by a psychic.  While the crowds of people were a lot, she said Salem did help get her into the spirit of Halloween. Every year in October, thousands of tourists flock to Salem, Massachusetts, to revel in the one of the largest Halloween celebrations in the world. Visitors can enjoy parades, historic attractions, psychic readings, and local vendor fairs.Ann MaticaTourism is a major source of income for Salem and its businesses. For years, annual tourism spending in Salem has hovered around $100 million.Ann MaticaSource: The Salem News I decided to visit Salem to see the "Haunted Happenings" extravaganza for myself and figure out what draws so many tourists to the New England city every fall.Ann MaticaAfter driving around for 20 minutes to find parking, my first stop was the Witch City Mall. The building is located smack in the middle of prime tourist real estate, with thousands of people swarming the surrounding city streets.Ann MaticaThe mall was filled with places to eat, businesses to shop at, and psychic readings to sign up for.Ann MaticaAfter the mall, I popped into the local apothecary, called Artemisia Botanicals. The owner, Teri Kalgren, first opened the shop in 1997.Ann MaticaYou can read more about local businesses in Salem here. Kalgren said that over the past 25 years of business, the biggest change she's seen in Salem's tourism is people becoming more open and interested in the city's witches and witchcraft.Ann MaticaWhile walking about, I stumbled upon multiple groups on walking tours around the city.Ann MaticaRead more about what it's like to work as a tour guide in Salem here. A long line was cued up for the trolley car tours around Salem.Ann MaticaThere were also quite a few signs advertising haunted attractions for visitors to walk through.Ann MaticaThe tours take visitors to historically significant locations that have to do with the Salem Witch Trails. During the trials, which happened between 1692 and 1693, people were accused of practising witchcraft and sometimes were executed because of it.Ann MaticaThe Salem Witch Museum is a popular tourist attraction and an educational resource for those wishing to learn more about the trials.Ann MaticaA statue that pays tribute to the founder of Salem, Roger Conant, is located near the museum.Ann MaticaIn the fall, the Salem Commons are transformed into a place for local vendors to set up tents and sell their wares.Ann MaticaWitch hats and garb were some of the most popular items being sold.Ann MaticaThere were also artists selling their paintings and drawings to passersby. Twin brothers Ryan and Matt Murray said they set up their tent on the Commons every weekend while also running a brick-and-mortar tattoo shop in town.Ann MaticaWhile walking around Salem, I realized that long lines are commonplace at many storefronts in downtown.Ann MaticaPeople lined up for a variety of food options, including fluffy pink cotton candy ...Ann Matica... fried dough ...Ann Matica... and hot dogs with all the toppings.Ann MaticaMany homes in downtown Salem had "private residence" signs to keep tourists from trespassing.Ann MaticaHowever, many locals seemed to still want to participate in the festivities.Ann MaticaHouses were outfitted with spooky decorations for people walking by.Ann MaticaAlmost everywhere I went, a Skeleton decoration wasn't far away.Ann MaticaThey were even propped up in store windows ...Ann Matica... and climbing up porches.Ann MaticaOnce I had wandered around the neighborhood, I made a stop at the Henry Derby House, located just a few minutes from downtown Salem.Jakob MenendezSee inside the Henry Derby House here.The house was built in 1838 by Henry Derby, who worked as a tailor in town. It's now owned by Phil Marchand, who runs it as an Airbnb.Jakob MenendezRead how Phil Marchand runs a haunted Airbnb here.Marchand said the house is specifically popular during October due rumors that it is haunted by ghosts.Ann MaticaRead more about the haunted reputation of the Henry Derby House here.I didn't want to stay too long to find out if there was indeed a ghost haunting the house, so I headed back downtown to explore the "Haunted Happenings Marketplace."Ann MaticaAlong the blocked off street were many street performers. Tourists gathered in groups around them to goggle and toss cash in their tip jars.Ann MaticaA drag queen sang a song for a large audience while collecting tips.Ann MaticaWhile exploring the downtown, I saw many visitors dressed up in costumes — along with their dogs!Ann MaticaThis fluffy white dog dressed as a pumpkin seemed to be enjoying Salem more than its owner.Ann MaticaEverywhere I looked, there were people wearing witch hats. Some were pink ...Ann Matica... while others were completely black ...Ann Matica... some visitors wore small ones ...Ann Matica... and others opted for large ones.Ann MaticaBefore leaving Salem, I was determined to have my tarot cards read by a psychic. I signed up for a 15-minute slot, but had to wait 45 minutes before it was my turn.Ann MaticaBailey Merlin, who has been reading tarot cards professionally for three years, gave me insight on my career, love life, and health.Ann MaticaOn my way back to the car, I stopped to look at the many street performers dressed as scary Halloween characters.Ann MaticaPeople lined up to take photos with the characters for free, although tips were gladly accepted.Ann MaticaThe Salem Slashers were particularly popular for a photo op.Ann MaticaI stopped to take one before leaving.Ann MaticaWhile I could have done without the large crowds and tourist traps, I did enjoy meeting the local vendors and having my tarot cards read.Ann MaticaOverall, Salem truly was what I had imagined and more — and it got me in the fall spirit just in time for Halloween.Ann MaticaRead the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The pandemic tested many companies' cultures. Here's how they responded Martha Rivas had never met the CEO of JBS USA, the food processing giant she worked for in Grand Island, Neb. So, she had good reason to be nervous when CEO Tim Schellpeper requested to speak with her earlier this year about a new, college tuition payment program at the company’s largest plant, which employs 3,800 workers. Instead of kissing up to the Big Boss, however, she rattled off ways to make the program more effective. She suggested that each plant appoint an ambassador to work directly with local colleges and even devote time to working with the non-English speaking parents of some employees who might want to be part of the free-tuition program. The CEO’s response was immediate: he named her ambassador at the plant and she’s since been promoted from the plant’s health and safety coordinator to its human resources supervisor. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “He caught me by surprise,” says Rivas. “Now, I’m growing with the company.” A company’s culture—often dependent on CEO actions—is arguably in the DNA of how its workers are treated. When the pandemic came along, it acted much like a stress test, in part, because so many companies were suddenly faced with the difficult task of sharing, creating, or even changing their culture with employees working from home. But change doesn’t always come easily. In fact, only 30% of companies ultimately figure out how to successfully change their culture, according to a McKinsey & Co. study. So, what exactly is a company’s culture It’s not simply a set of values written down on a piece of paper or posted on a website. Rather, it’s a collective view of how to behave, what norms are followed and what rights, rituals, language, and, yes, behavior is accepted, says Bill Schaninger, senior partner at McKinsey. Even more important, he says, is how critical it is for the company to be both thoughtful and consistent “in calling out behavior that’s inconsistent with that culture.” Read More: Employers Take Note: Young Workers Are Seeking Jobs with a Higher Purpose TIME reached out to three companies of varied sizes—JBS USA, LinkedIn, and Jones Soda—to find out how their company cultures were tested by the pandemic, and how they responded. At JBS, the world’s largest global poultry producer and second biggest pork producer, it was less about completely changing the company culture and more about taking specific steps to better engage with employees and create additional opportunities for them to succeed. “When I travel to plants, I sit in on listening sessions with team members,” says CEO Tim Schellpeper. Some of these sessions took place before the pandemic, but since then, he says, the company has greatly increased the frequency and the pace of these sessions. Consulting giant Deloitte has even created a term for this workplace cultural shift: work as fashion. “Employers are trying to figure out what employees want and then give them that,” says Jonathan Pearce, workforce strategies practice leader at Deloitte. Much like fashion, employee preferences change over time and companies have to keep surveying workers to discover what they want, he says. The most successful companies tend to lean into their own values and cultures instead of simply trying to keep up with what other companies are doing, Pearce says. An effective way to do this is to decentralize decision-making by empowering team leaders with the tools and technologies they need to succeed. “Company cultures can change, do change, and are changing all the time,” says Pearce. “To survive through all the changing values, you need to find ways to have transparent and inclusive dialogue that includes the voices of employees.” Read More: In Some Workplaces, It’s Now OK Not to Be OK JBS’s Rivas is a perfect example. She wasn’t just listened to but actually rewarded for helping to tweak the culture at JBS during the pandemic. At LinkedIn, the company’s cultural vibe also has stood firm during the pandemic. Perhaps the single most important thing that LinkedIn did, was to add this critical question to its quarterly employee survey: How are you? “We just wanted to know how our employees were faring?” says Teuila Hanson, chief people officer. It was the honest responses that employees gave to that question, in particular, that resulted in the company taking action to roll out several new employee-focused initiatives, she says. The many emotionally penetrating responses enlightened management to the extent of serious issues like employee burnout and deep feelings of isolation. It gave employees the opportunity to explain their serious struggles to balance work life and family life. And it gave them a chance to discuss how greatly they missed employee interaction. As a result, LinkedIn took a hard look at what steps it could take to not only help employees move forward but how to reassert what the company’s culture really is all about. It launched a program called “Lift Up” that gave almost all employees a week off in April, 2021, to fight burnout and help them deal with personal matters. More recently, as most employees adopt a hybrid work schedule, it launched another program called “Reconnect,” which encourages gatherings with company-provided music and food and will culminate with a celebration of LinkedIn’s 20th anniversary next May. “We want to continue to surprise and delight employees and ensure we’re having fun along the way,” says Hanson. Courtesy Teuila HansonTeuila Hanson, chief people officer at LinkedIn One of those new LinkedIn employees is Alison Crawford, senior manager of employee resource group enterprise strategy, who started working for LinkedIn in last May. Onboarding remotely is never simple and newbies can have a particularly tough time getting a grasp on the culture at any company. So Crawford appreciated it when her manager shared a slide presentation that detailed an overview of her team and listed precisely who to contact for what. The slides even advised her what to focus on during her first few weeks. Then, just two months after she started at LinkedIn, Crawford got the nicest gift of all: one week of paid time off. It was LinkedIn’s annual summer “shutdown,” which typically takes place the first week of July. That’s when the company gives most employees a full week off (with pay). She spent the time off in Lake Tahoe with family and friends, kayaking and attending yoga classes. “I am grateful to be at a company that prioritizes wellness,” she says. The pandemic has tested the endurance of company cultures nationwide like nothing before it. When most folks were still working in the office, companies could get away with not being as clear and intentional about their culture because employees could generally pick up on the vibe simply by working together in the office, says David J. Friedman, CEO of the consulting firm High Performing Culture and author of Culture by Design. The pandemic changed all that. Those companies that remain fully reliant on the close proximity of workers to spread their cultural message will mostly fail, he says. When workers aren’t regularly going to lunch together or no longer playing together on the company softball team, it’s easy for the cultural aura to quickly fade, says Friedman. Read More: Research Shows Working From Home Doesn’t Work. Here’s How Employers Should Tackle the Problem That’s why companies need to be very intentional about showing and even spreading the cultural message, says Friedman. At his company, for example, whenever there is a group meeting that’s scheduled online, several minutes are set aside to discuss one of the company’s cultural fundamentals. For example, in his most recent meeting they took five minutes to discuss ways to “practice the human touch” at work, he says. They discussed everything from how to celebrate employee birthdays from a distance to when it’s appropriate to handwrite notes of appreciation to employees. Nothing is more critical to the success of any company’s cultural initiative than CEO buy-in, says Friedman. “If the CEO doesn’t see culture as one of the most important things, it doesn’t go anywhere,” he says. “Culture is a leadership function—not an HR or PR function,” he says. Eric Chastain totally gets this. He’s president of the beverage division of Jones Soda, the quirky craft beverage company that has been raising eyebrows in the industry for years with flavors like turkey and gravy, and its recent introduction of Mary Jones, a cannabis-infused soda. Before the pandemic, the Seattle-based company, regularly hosted employee get-togethers at a craft beer restaurant that’s literally next door, which set a tone for camaraderie. Since the pandemic, it has instead organized online Friday afternoon happy hours where the majority of the company’s 20 employees typically show up and shoot the breeze, he says. Read More: A Year After Striketober, Employers and Labor Unions Aren’t Getting Along “We continue to maintain and initiate these relationships with each other, and that’s what makes our company special,” says Chastain. To get folks together in person, he also organizes occasional meet-and-greets at the same nearby craft beer joint. “Our culture is far and away the number one reason this place is so special,” says Chastain. Two years ago, Erin Moriarty joined Jones Soda as social media manager and quickly became digital marketing manager. Six days after she was hired, the pandemic came along and the office was shut down. She has had to fully learn the Jones Soda culture while working from home. Moriarty says the company has made it easier by regularly reaching out to ask for her input. This, despite the fact that there has been plenty of turnover at the top and serious belt-tightening at the company over the past two years. Read More: How to Ask Your Employer if You Can Work Remotely Permanently She actually felt empowered by working from home. No more 45-minute commutes to and from the office. “I roll out of bed and just start working, and that’s so nice,” she says. Moriarty is thinking of moving to Arizona or Texas for job opportunities for her husband. And when she told the top brass, they commended her work and said she could keep her job if she moved. Moriarty says by working at Jones Soda she has become a part of something much bigger than herself. It’s a cultural vibe of fun and outside-the-box thinking. What’s more, with just 20 employees at Jones, she says, “Each of us is 5% of the company.” “I get to make a difference,” she says. “I get to have an opinion at the table.”.....»»

These 10 cities are the best places to plan your next weed-infused trip, according to Upgraded Points. Savanna Durr/Insider Upgraded Points ranked the best US cities to visit for a 'canna-cation' based on 26 factors. Cannabis tourism is a $17 billion industry, reports say. Activities include ganja yoga, paint-and-puff, and a cannabis-infused dinner. Cannabis may not be legal in every US state, but the places that permit recreational use have carved out a unique corner in the travel industry.Weed-infused tourism is a $17 billion industry despite only being legal in 19 states. As people become more comfortable experimenting with it, we're seeing more weed-friendly travel guides for those who want to experience the high life.Upgraded Points — a site dedicated to information on all things travel and reward programs — ranked the best and worst places for a "canna-cation" based on 26 factors including cost and weed friendly activities.On Thursday, President Biden moved to pardon thousands with federal marijuana convictions and encourage states to follow suit. If you're feeling more empowered to dive into the world of cannabis, here are the top 10 best cities for a ganja getaway, according to Upgraded Points.10. Las Vegas, NevadaCourtesy of Supreme Cannabis LoungeAlthough the use of weed is prohibited in public places, Las Vegas still managed to crack the top 10 best cities. Travelers can find activities and places to stay that permit the use of cannabis — including cannabis bus tours and smoking at the Las Vegas location of popular chain Topgolf.Overall score out of 50: 32.199. San Jose, CaliforniaCourtesy of Purple LotusLike another California city on the list, San Jose's location in the Bay Area means you're just an hour away from San Francisco. You've heard of food delivery services, but in San Jose you can get weed delivered to your door.Overall score out of 50: 32.508. Colorado Springs, ColoradoCourtesy of The Painter's Pot ColoradoAccording to Upgraded Points, Colorado is the third cheapest place to buy an ounce of marijuana for an average cost of $241.75. It's no wonder three Colorado cities have landed on the list — including Colorado Springs.The creative weed user might enjoy painting some "pothead pottery."Overall score out of 50: 33.957. Henderson, NevadaCourtesy of The Source+Henderson landed itself in the top 10 thanks to its 118 weed-friendly Airbnb listings per 100,000 people, according to Upgraded Points.Like others on the list, its wide offering of affordable lodging where weed is allowed earned it the seventh spot. And, of course, there are multiple local dispensaries to visit.Overall score out of 50: 34.896. Scottsdale, ArizonaCourtesy of Higher TalksLocated just 13 miles outside of Phoenix, Scottsdale, offers cheaper accommodations with a proximity to activities, including a cannabis-infused dinner with private chefs.Overall score out of 50: 35.455. Portland, OregonCourtesy of Yoga on YamhillAccording to Upgraded Points, Portland offers a wide variety of fun that doesn't just allow the use of cannabis, but also includes it in the activity.Yoga enthusiasts can enjoy ganja yoga where each session begins with marijuana use followed by a yoga class for all levels. Wake-and-bake drag shows also are not to be missed if you're in Portland, Upgrade Points says. Overall score out of 50: 36.094. Boulder, ColoradoCourtesy of Colorado Cannabis ToursThe city of Boulder describes itself as a "perfect balance of urban and outdoors." In addition to being able to enjoy a joint while you hike, it offers cannabis tours of local dispensaries for those who want a look behind the scenes of the industry.Overall score out of 50: 36.703. Oakland, CaliforniaCourtesy of Visit OaklandComing in at number three, Oakland offers its very own Cannabis Trail — a map of cannabis-friendly businesses and activities for visitors. Situated in the Bay Area of California, the city has proximity to San Francisco and the wine country as well.According to Upgraded Points, Oakland is the cheapest city for a four-day cannabis vacation for one person.Overall score out of 50: 36.902. Portland, MaineCourtesy of Maine Day VenturesLike Henderson, Portland, Maine, finds itself on this traveler's list for its many 420-friendly stays. Activities include a walking tour for the cannabis curious and many "bud and breakfasts."Overall score out of 50: 37.681. Denver, ColoradoCourtesy of Puff Pass PaintDenver ranks number one on Upgraded Points' list by quite a few points. According to the site, cannabis-friendly accommodations are much more affordable compared to cities like Los Angeles or Reno, Nevada.Those planning a trip to Colorado's capital can add a paint-and-puff class to their itinerary if they want to paint while enjoying marijuana.Overall score out of 50: 41.19Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

A clash of radically different cultures has implications for the future of the economy and technology in America To the untrained ear, Hester Peirce’s comment sounded anodyne, but everyone in the audience knew what she was doing: selling out her boss. “It’s fairly clear,” the U.S. Securities and Exchange commissioner said from the Washington conference stage, “that we’ve been taking an enforcement-first approach in an area where we should be taking a regulatory-first approach. I think we’ve got the balance wrong right now.” Peirce was speaking at the D.C. Blockchain Summit in May, to an audience of the cryptocurrency faithful. Outside the auditorium, geeks, lobbyists and investors mingled in a cavernous converted warehouse. “Trust is non-fungible,” read a banner for the accounting firm Deloitte, hung from a balcony where the company was sponsoring a lavish spread of snacks. Most attendees were done up in D.C. drag—conservative suits and dresses, more boardroom than Burning Man. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The message was clear: crypto has arrived in Washington. With more than 800 attendees, the summit was the largest ever hosted by the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a trade association representing blockchain companies. In prior years, the conference was co-sponsored with Georgetown University and had a sleepy, academic feel, with panels devoted to explaining or making the case for a technology that still seemed obscure. This year, its attendance and square footage had more than doubled from the last time it was held in 2019. “We’ve gone from ‘Is this magical internet money for real?’ to ’No question, this is definitely a thing,’” the Digital Chamber’s founder and president, Perianne Boring, proclaimed from the stage. The industry has spent the past year making a major play for D.C.’s attention and affection—a sea change for the utopian technology, with its animating vision of frictionless, borderless, intangible exchange. Bitcoin has been around for more than a decade, but until recently the rapid growth of an industry valued at $3 trillion at its peak has operated at arm’s length from the government—an arrangement that seemed to satisfy both sides. Now D.C. has moved into crypto’s territory, with regulatory crackdowns, tax proposals, and demands for compliance. And crypto has pushed into D.C.’s terrain, standing up multiple trade associations, think tanks, and political action committees and hiring hundreds of lobbyists. “The industry has gone from 0 to 100 in record time,” says one D.C. consultant who advises crypto and other tech firms and has seen business skyrocket in the past year. “Even small companies have some footprint now. The venture capital firms are stacked like cordwood with former regulators.” A collision is under way—not just the usual maneuvering between government and business, but a clash of radically different cultures. To crypto’s whiz-kid techno-futurists, the stodgy pencil-pushers of the Washington bureaucracy are nothing but a hindrance. To Washington’s straitlaced rule-makers, crypto’s wild, utopian promises are merely cover for dangerous fads and scams. The still-unknown potential of an ephemeral new technology has run up against the power of the state, and neither quite understands how the other works. How it shakes out will have major implications for the future of the economy and technology in America and the world. Right now, cryptocurrency exists in a legal gray area, scarcely mentioned in federal code. That has left financial regulators to try to interpret definitions created for ordinary markets and apply them to a nascent technology. The most prominent such dispute is over whether cryptocurrencies and related products should be categorized as securities—investments, like stocks and bonds—or commodities, interchangeable assets like oil or grain. At stake in the definition is whether crypto entities are regulated by Peirce’s agency, the SEC, or its smaller sister agency, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Both agencies have asserted jurisdiction without issuing any official guidance about where they believe the lines ought to be drawn. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has stiff-armed companies that try to ascertain their status, only to turn around and sue them for failing to comply with securities laws. This is the “enforcement-first approach” Peirce was describing, and it has drawn loud complaints and major lawsuits from the crypto industry. (Gensler, appointed by President Biden, isn’t technically the boss of Peirce, appointed by President Trump, since commissioners are independently appointed and confirmed, but he is her superior; differences of opinion are common on the bipartisan panel.) Melissa Lyttle—Bloomberg/Getty ImagesGary Gensler, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has drawn the ire of the cryptocurrency industry for his tough stance The inter-agency pissing match is the subject of endless speculation and argument among crypto people, but it’s important less in its particulars than what it signifies: would-be crypto innovators who are not trying to scam anybody have no way to be confident they’re following the law. Industry advocates warn that the resulting confusion not only hurts consumers but also damages a sector that acolytes say holds the keys to a technological revolution akin to the invention of the Web. U.S. crypto companies want to comply with the law, the industry says, but instead have been bankrupted or driven offshore by regulators’ approach. “We need a definition of which digital assets are securities or which ones are not,” the Digital Chamber’s Boring says in an interview. “The SEC has said, ‘We’re not going to tell you which ones meet our test, but make no mistake, we will come after you if you guess wrong.’ We have companies that want to be regulated, but they need to know who the regulator is, and if they are going to be regulated by the SEC, they need to know how to register. A lot of projects are in complete limbo today, and it has forced a significant amount of business activity outside of the United States, because they’re not willing to operate in a gray area with potential enforcement hanging over their head.” D.C. is beginning to listen. On Sept. 15, the Senate agriculture committee held the first hearing on the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, a bipartisan proposal coauthored by Senators John Boozman and Debbie Stabenow. The bill is one of numerous crypto-related pieces of legislation introduced on Capitol Hill in recent months—Boring counts more than 60, with more in the process of being drafted. Meanwhile, on Sept. 16, the White House released its first-ever framework for crypto regulation, a follow-up to a first-of-its-kind March executive order in which President Biden directed agencies to research and report on the matter. The Blockchain Summit’s program featured four senators and three members of Congress, almost evenly divided between the parties. The industry says it wants rules it can live with; policymakers say they want to protect consumers and foster innovation. Those goals would seem to be compatible. But this is D.C., where finding common ground can come with its own costs. “When politicians say, ‘We hope to get this done by the end of the year,’ what I hear is ‘We want crypto lobbyists at our next fundraiser, and we’re going to milk this for at least three Congresses,’” a veteran D.C. tech lawyer says, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to be frank about how Washington really works. As soon as the law gets passed, the spigot of money turns off, or at least down. “It’s worth noting,” the lawyer says, “that in the California gold rush, the folks who supplied the picks and shovels and donkeys made a lot more than the miners.” There’s a common saying on Capitol Hill: if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. The crypto industry discovered this principle in remarkably literal fashion last year. In August 2021, a bipartisan group of senators was negotiating infrastructure legislation to fund roads, bridges, and broadband across America. To pay for all this, the senators consulted a “menu” of revenue options staff had prepared. Among them was a tax on cryptocurrency brokers that would raise an estimated $5 billion. The lead Republican negotiator, Rob Portman of Ohio, picked it off the list, sources familiar with the process confirmed. Crypto firms who would be affected by the provision were blindsided and scrambled to mount a response. The unexpected fight stalled the bill’s passage as exhausted senators worked around the clock to finalize the legislation. Lawmakers sympathetic to the industry proposed a compromise, but just when one seemed imminent, Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama nixed it to protest the blockage of an unrelated bill. The tax went through. (Industry leaders remain hopeful that the provision, which is set to take effect next year, can be repealed.) The episode was a dramatic demonstration of crypto’s political vulnerability. “It was a last-minute addition, and all these crypto lobbyists were like, ‘Wait, what’s going on?’ They were asleep at the switch, basically,” says Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank. Old pros like the pharmaceutical lobby, he notes, know that the time to stop Congress from doing this sort of thing is to keep it off the menu. “The crypto people did make a lot of noise, but it wasn’t enough to change the trajectory, which shows they were still pretty politically weak.” Representatives of numerous major blockchain companies cited this as the industry’s “aha” moment. “That was when people woke up and realized they’ve got to get involved,” says a lobbyist for a major crypto group. Determined not to let it happen again, the industry went on a spending spree, hiring platoons of lobbyists and advocates—many of them former policymakers and regulators fresh from the revolving door—and mounting a full-court press on D.C. The Chamber of Digital Commerce is the oldest blockchain trade association, but these days its competitors include the Blockchain Association, the Association for Digital Asset Markets, and the Crypto Council for Innovation. All have grown rapidly over the past year, flush with money from member companies suddenly desperate to have a voice in the policy process. Sarah Silbiger—Bloomberg/Getty ImagesPerianne Boring, founder and CEO of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, testifies before a congressional committee Read More: The Man Behind Ethereum Is Worried About Crypto’s Future. Industry bigwigs, such as FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and the venture capitalist Marc Andreesen, made major contributions to a handful of new political-action committees—$500,000 to $1 million was the baseline expectation. GMI PAC, the most prominent, backed by Trump Administration official-turned-crypto dabbler Anthony Scaramucci, has raised more than $10 million since its founding in January. Few expect these vehicles to play a major role in electoral politics; despite some wishful thinking, there’s little evidence crypto is a top concern for most voters. It’s more about demonstrating that the industry knows how the game is played. “All the leaders in crypto, almost to a person, have been very intentional about trying to show that they have skin in the game,” says a D.C. tech policy leader. “Left to their own devices, they want nothing to do with Washington, but they’re coming around to the idea that it’s necessary and coalescing around a small handful of super PACs and donation platforms. They want in aggregate to send the message that the industry has matured and engaged.” Fending off unwanted taxes might have been the trigger, but the goal now is to do more than play defense. While many countries have a single, centralized regulatory body that oversees financial products, the U.S. system is fragmented, with an alphabet soup of different regulators. Gensler has become an outsize player in this dispute—the industry’s Public Enemy No. 1. A former Goldman Sachs partner, Gensler has served in government since the Clinton Administration and headed the CFTC during the Obama years. When Biden named him to lead the SEC, many crypto players were hopeful that he would bring needed expertise. Instead, they charge, he has mounted wide-ranging and arbitrary crackdowns while rebuffing calls for clearer rules. (Gensler, through a spokesperson, declined to comment for this story.) In an August Wall Street Journal column, Gensler wrote, “There’s no reason to treat the crypto market differently from the rest of the capital markets just because it uses a different technology.” In a Sept. 8 speech, he added, “Some in the crypto industry have called for greater ‘guidance’ with respect to crypto tokens. For the past five years, though, the Commission has spoken with a pretty clear voice,” through its orders and enforcement actions. “Not liking the message isn’t the same thing as not receiving it.” Crypto insiders find this position maddening. “We’ve seen Gary Gensler state many times that we do have clarity, but we don’t,” says the Digital Chamber’s Boring. “I represent over 200 businesses that have to navigate these laws, and I haven’t had one tell me that we do. I believe the SEC is the number one blocker to economic progress not only for the crypto space but also for our economy, because they’ve refused to put forward a framework for digital assets and to bring clarity. It’s holding back economic innovation, and it’s harming investors as well.” Without explicit rules, companies say they’re forced to parse Gensler’s public statements for clues. Even crypto skeptics who want scammers kept in line can see the benefit of knowing what, exactly, the government considers a scam, versus a legitimate enterprise. “Gary is out there stating over and over again, ‘I have jurisdiction over all of this, everyone needs to come in and register [with the SEC],’” says a lobbyist for a top crypto platform. “Well, people have tried to do that, but the staff is not helpful.” Coinbase, a publicly listed crypto exchange, has been blocked from issuing a bitcoin lending product and separately sued for alleged insider trading. BlockFi was fined $100 million for issuing an unregistered yield product, while two other companies, Celsius and Voyager, were threatened with lawsuits but went bankrupt instead. As the Bloomberg financial columnist Matt Levine has noted, the SEC seems to target companies that are trying to go legit, rather than obvious fly-by-night scammers. ”It is conspicuously the case that Gensler’s SEC mainly goes after the more law-abiding crypto actors,” Levine wrote. “Gensler’s posture is that he should be in charge of writing the rules for crypto, but not write them. I don’t see how that can work. “ Lacking regulatory guidance, the industry has turned to Congress to create the rules of the road. Many are pressing lawmakers to give the CFTC primary authority, sparking criticism from crypto skeptics that they’re venue-shopping for a less formidable regulator that would presumably take a less aggressive approach. (CFTC Chairman Rostin Benham pushed back against that perception at a recent congressional hearing: “We are one of the toughest cops on the beat in the world,” he said. On Sept. 22, the CFTC filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the Ooki decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, sparking fears of a broader crackdown.) Boring insists that any rules at all would be preferable to the current situation. “We would like to see a definition of a digital asset security,” she says. “That really would solve the majority of the issues that we have. It’s really quite simple.” Crypto founders are an idealistic bunch, and many are philosophically committed to a techno-libertarian ethos that shuns government involvement, says Alan Konevsky of the blockchain trading platform tZERO. But as a practical matter, they’re coming around to the need for regulation. “Setting aside some of the maximalist libertarian types, most responsible participants—whether they’re pioneers who survived and made big or traditional finance entities looking to enter the space—all support positive regulation,” he says. “The consensus is that it’s not about whether but how you regulate.” The situation reminds many observers of the 1990s, when the internet was new and barely regulated and Silicon Valley went gangbusters—until it crashed in the early 2000s, leaving major sports teams with stadiums named for defunct companies. A few titans emerged from the wreckage to become today’s tech behemoths: Amazon, Google, Facebook. In what might be a cautionary tale for Web 3.0, lawmakers are still struggling to rein them in, and public sentiment has turned sharply negative. “The internet had the advantage that everyone believed their bull—t for a long time,” the veteran tech lawyer says. “This amazing new technology is going to change the world and bring everybody together! Then we found out, yes, it’s transformed the world, but it’s brought a whole bunch of new problems.” Valerie Plesch—Bloomberg/Getty ImagesHester Peirce, commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, speaks at the DC Blockchain Summit Back in July 2019, then-President Donald Trump tweeted about cryptocurrency. His take was not a positive one. “I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” Trump wrote. He expressed concern that they could “facilitate unlawful behavior” and singled out Facebook’s plans to create a virtual currency called Libra. “We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever,” Trump concluded. “It is called the United States Dollar!” The U.S. President condemning your whole sector might seem like a discouraging development, but Perianne Boring was ecstatic. She printed out the tweets, mounted them in big gold frames, and hung them in her office, where she refers to them as “the crown jewels.” “It was the first time a sitting president tweeted about bitcoin. So I was like, well, at least we’re relevant!” she says. The Trump Administration’s stance toward crypto largely reflected the former President’s disdain. But on Capitol Hill, crypto’s loudest skeptics have been on the left, particularly Senator Elizabeth Warren, who famously derided the industry as a “shadowy, faceless group of supercoders.” The congressional blockchain caucus, which was started in 2016 by then-Reps. Mick Mulvaney and Jared Polis and now boasts nearly 40 members from both parties, is about two-thirds Republican. Ideologically, GOP crypto boosters tend to focus on the potential economic opportunity while Democrats tend to highlight the need to protect consumers. But so far the industry has succeeded in being seen as nonpartisan, which benefits its interests. The political divide over crypto, insiders say, tends to be more generational; older lawmakers often find blockchain technology befuddling. “We’ve got people out there investing in this and don’t have a clue what they’re doing, including me,” Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville said at a recent congressional hearing on crypto legislation. Read More: A Top Ethereum Developer On the Risks and Rewards of the Merge. The Biden Administration has made more favorable noises than its predecessor. In March, the President issued an executive order directing agencies to research the risks and benefits of crypto. “The United States must maintain technological leadership in this rapidly growing space, supporting innovation while mitigating the risks for consumers, businesses, the broader financial system, and the climate,” the White House said. This was a major milestone for the industry: not just recognition, but an acknowledgement that crypto is here to stay and has significant upside. “When there began to be chatter in D.C. around the White House putting something out, many people were concerned it might be quite punitive, but it ended up being something that most view as positive,” says Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale, a publicly traded bitcoin investment fund. Now the Administration has followed up by issuing its proposed regulatory framework, aimed at “laying the groundwork for a thoughtful, comprehensive approach to mitigating digital assets’ acute risks and—where proven—harnessing their benefits,” according to a joint White House statement by Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. (The framework directs both the SEC and CFTC to “aggressively pursue” misconduct, but does not take a position on the question of jurisdiction.) Things are moving on Capitol Hill too, albeit slowly. In June, a bipartisan pair of senators, Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand, released a wide-ranging bill covering all aspects of crypto regulation; it would define and expand the CFTC’s authority while leaving some digital securities under the SEC’s purview, and also would create new rules for NFTs, stablecoins and other blockchain-related products. Lummis, a conservative Republican from Wyoming, has been dubbed the Senate’s “crypto queen.” Gillibrand, a liberal Democrat from New York, joined the push earlier this year, pointing to her state’s centrality to the financial industry. Other prominent efforts include the House agriculture committee’s Digital Commodities Exchange Act, introduced in April, and the Senate agriculture committee’s Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, introduced in August. While the Digital Chamber counts 68 current crypto-related pieces of legislation, aides involved in the process consider those the top three currently introduced. Most observers see these major bills as complementary rather than in competition, and expect them to take time to work through the process. Gillibrand and Lummis have said their measure might have to go through four different committees and indicated they expect it to eventually be broken up into component pieces and modified rather than passed wholesale. Some are hopeful that legislation on stablecoins or regulatory jurisdiction could be attached to must-pass bills in Congress’s post-election lame-duck session. The top Democrat and Republican on the House banking committee, Maxine Waters and Patrick McHenry, have been working for months to draft a bipartisan stablecoin bill, but it has yet to see the light of day. At the D.C. Blockchain Summit, the excitement was palpable. “Bring these geniuses back on our soil!” Kevin O’Leary of ABC’s “Shark Tank” hollered onstage, rueing the business brains that have allegedly been lost to offshore havens. Two algorithmic stablecoins had just crashed, wiping out a trillion dollars in value, and a “crypto winter” of crashing prices was on the way, but everyone seemed to be taking it in stride. By afternoon, with cocktail hour looming, a brave new future of legal crypto working hand in hand with the regulatory state seemed within reach. Then Michael Hsu got up to speak. Hsu, whose title is acting comptroller of the currency, opened a folder on the lectern and began to read a tersely scripted speech. With center-parted black hair, oval glasses and a neat suit and tie, Hsu looked every inch the bureaucrat. He was there, he said, to provide “a bank regulator’s perspective.” (Despite its name, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a division of the Treasury Department, does not issue currency—the Federal Reserve does that. Rather, it charters banks.) It quickly became clear that he had not gotten the Brave New World memo. Hsu said he had grave concerns about what he had observed from the world of cryptocurrency. It posed a contagion risk to the broader financial sector; it was a good thing it was under tight oversight by the SEC; it was too dependent on hype and Ponzi schemes. “The industry has grown too fast,” he said, “and recent events should be a wake-up call.” Crypto may believe its time has come. But Washington is not so sure—and Washington still has the upper hand. With reporting by Mariah Espada and Anisha Kohli.....»»

Culture War Erupts In Texas Town Over Drag Bingo Event Hosted By Christian Church Authored by Darlene McCormack Sanchez via The Epoch Times, Outside a drag bingo event hosted by a pro-LGBT church in Texas, a microcosm of America’s culture war played out with liberals and conservatives screaming at each other across a boulevard on Saturday. About 300 Texas conservatives lined an entire block to protest the First Christian Church in Katy, which sponsored a sold-out family drag bingo event to raise money to benefit its “Transparent Closet.” The clothing boutique was for “trans and exploring teens, youth and young adults,” according to the church’s website. Its parking lot was full of cars as the family drag bingo event started around 5 p.m. The adults-only portion of the drag show was scheduled for 8:30 p.m. The conservative crowd dwarfed some 100 liberals who showed up to champion the church, which openly supports LGBT people. Protesters and counter-protesters alike were armed. Extremist groups from both sides of the political spectrum showed up, including far-left Antifa members dressed in black from head to toe carrying umbrellas, few members of neo-Nazi groups, and the Proud Boys, a pro-Western fraternal organization who were wearing Buc-ee’s masks. The Antifa and Proud Boys groups taunted each other as sheriff’s deputies donning helmets and riot gear straddled the boulevard to separate them. At one point, the factions clashed with an Antifa member hitting a Proud Boy over the head with a flag pole. Other Proud Boys ran to confront the Antifa members, launching a pepper spray attack. Proud Boys and Antifa face off at a drag bingo fundraiser at First Christian Church in Katy, Texas, on Sept. 24, 2022. (Bobby Sanchez/The Epoch Times) Several Catholics praying the rosary downwind fled the area coughing. Christian songs played over loudspeakers as cars and trucks with American flags cruised the boulevard honking their support. People knelt in the grass to pray. On the liberal side of the road, the new Little Mermaid song blared in the background. Overhead, a helicopter circled the spectacle. Loriann Belin, from the Houston area County Citizens Defending Freedom group, showed up to fight the sexualization of children. “We need to stand for the protection of the most vulnerable among us—our children,” she said. “We don’t hate those people on the other side. God loves them. They’re just lost and need Jesus,” Belin added. Fabiana Pimentel, an immigrant mother with children enrolled in the Katy Independent School District, said she left Brazil 14 years ago and can’t believe what is happening in America. During the pandemic, she grew concerned about what her children were learning in the classroom and reading in school libraries. “I realized things are worse than I thought,” she said. “I’m against the sexualization of kids.” Richard Harmier of New Caney protested in hopes the Texas Legislature would take note and pass laws protecting minors from gender transitioning. “My granddaughter is 13 years old, and she wants to be a boy now,” Harmier said, adding she cut off all her hair and avoids her father because he isn’t on board with her desire to transition. “We’ve got to stop this,” he said. “You shouldn’t be free to indoctrinate children.” A Texas Department of Public Safety trooper stands in the middle of a boulevard to keep drag bingo protestors separated A man holding a rifle stood guard over LGBT supporters on Sept. 24, 2022. (Bobby Sanchez/The Epoch Times) Across the boulevard, liberals dressed in rainbow T-shirts were just as passionate, chanting, “Fascists, go home!” A Katy woman on the liberal side said it was a shame people were protesting drag queens, so she came out to support the church. “To make sure the people attending tonight are safe,” said the woman, who declined to give her name. Another woman wearing a multicolored shirt watched the crowd from the liberal side. She was with a veteran group that was “for everybody’s rights,” including the LGTB community. Further down, a man with graying hair dressed in black said he was an anti-fascist who came to counter Kelly Neidert, pointing a finger toward a group of conservatives across the boulevard. Members of Antifa taunt protestors across the street Sept. 24, 2022. (Bobby Sanchez/The Epoch Times) Neidert, wearing a red Trump hat, said Antifa follows her around Texas, harassing her because she hosted conservative events at the University of North Texas as a student. She is the founder of Protect Texas Kids and wanted to attend the protest also to draw attention to the sexualization of children. On Twitter, a post by the Screwston Anti-Fascist Committee labeled all the parent groups attending as “fascists” who intended to disrupt a drag bingo event. “Nazi groups such as the Aryan Freedom Network plan to attend,” the post said. The post included a flier targeting Kelly Neidert, urging members to “mask up and bring a buddy.” “Join us in the streets to defend the queer community against this threat!” the flier said. The drag bingo event at First Christian Church, part of the Disciples of Christ denomination, drew more controversy after the church quietly dropped one drag performer, Jaysen Kettl, who was once involved in a school shooting plot. Kettl goes by the stage name of Tisha Flowers and portrays himself as a Goth drag queen. In 2004, Kettl, 17 at the time, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit capital murder for his role in plotting a school shooting at Vidor High School. The plot was foiled before anything occurred. Tyler Durden Sun, 09/25/2022 - 21:30.....»»

Idaho LGBT Pride Event Drops Children's Drag Show On 9/11 Anniversary After Sponsors Pull Funding Via Remix News, After multiple sponsors dropped financial support for an LGBT Pride festival in Boise, Idaho - which would have featured children performing in drag on the anniversary of 9/11 -  the organizers have now said that the child drag show has been cancelled. The Pride festival still features a 9/11 remembrance ceremony, which was originally supposed to be followed by a child drag queen dance event. The Drag Story Hour is still planned to go ahead. According to the schedule published on the website, attendees will be given 15 minutes to remember the thousands of lives lost on 9/11 after terrorists committed attacks on the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon. Immediately afterwards, drag story time will begin, which usually features a man dressed in women’s clothing reading to children. Shortly after, the children drag queen event, known as Drag Kids, was originally scheduled to begin. However, apparently the inclusion of children was too much for Zions Bank, which dropped funding for the event. After Zions Bank dropped its support, Idaho Power and the Department of Health and Welfare (DHW) also dropped out on Thursday. Both Zions Bank and DHW committed $18,000 to the event. The two-day festival has a total of 88 sponsors listed on its website. Festival organizers said the move to drop Drag Kids was a difficult decision. “While the vast majority of our sponsors and supporters have voiced their support for the Boise Pride Festival and the Drag Kids program, we have made the very difficult decision to postpone this performance due to increased safety concerns. The health and well-being of the kids, their parents, and the attendees of the Festival are our priority,” read a Pride press release. Zions Bank released a statement explaining its decision. “Over the years, Zions Bank has supported a variety of Pride events because they are an important part of our support for our LGBTQ employees and allies and are representative of our efforts to foster an inclusive, diverse and equitable workplace and community,” the statement reads. “This support for all of our employees and communities remains unchanged.” pic.twitter.com/IHBJxFT0wM — Zions Bank (@ZionsBank) September 7, 2022 The Boise Pride festival responded to Zions Bank, writing the organization is “saddened to learn this is how they have chosen to respond to clearly anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and actions.” Boise Pride's response to the statement from Zions Bank about pulling their participation in this weekend's Boise Pride Festival. #boisepride2022 #supportingoursuperhumans pic.twitter.com/Fm16eCHBIP — Boise Pride (@boisepride) September 7, 2022 The pro-LGBT event will last two days and take place in the State Capitol building and a nearby park. The controversial Drag Kids event was described as “a drag show like none other, the Drag Kids range from ages 11-18 and are ready to bring it all to the Boise Pride Festival Stage! Come and cheer them on as they bring drag to the younger generation!” The festival is also sponsored by some of the country’s top corporations, including Amazon, Well’s Fargo, Target, Jack Daniel’s, HP, AT&T, Macy’s, Proctor and Gamble, and Chase. The Idaho Republican Party responded to the drag show, with the party asking for residents to boycott the event. Republicans also released a statement with phone numbers of many of the major corporations and organizations involved with sponsoring the event. The statement urges concerned citizens to call and ask them to drop their support. The newly elected Idaho GOP Chairwoman Dorothy Moon issued a statement on Wednesday morning calling on “concerned Idahoans” to “disavow this attack on Idaho’s children and invest their sponsorship dollars” elsewhere. “To be clear, this is no sleight-of-hand or political wordsmithing: Idaho’s Democrat party believes it is not only okay but laudable to encourage children to engage in public displays of sexuality,” Moon wrote in the email statement. “For those who have been following the radicalization of the Democrat party, this should come as no surprise.” Tyler Durden Sat, 09/10/2022 - 14:30.....»»

Critics say Christian nationalism runs counter to American and Christian values as the concept is increasingly embraced by some Republican lawmakers. Tyler Le/Insider GOP lawmakers have recently touted Christian nationalist ideals, even embracing the description. Christian nationalism asserts an intrinsic connection between being American and being Christian. Critics say the political ideology is inconsistent with both Christian and American values. Christian nationalism goes back hundreds of years but the concept has drawn attention recently as Republican lawmakers openly embrace aspects of the ideology and call for Christianity to play a larger role in American life and institutions.Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado said in June she is "tired of this separation of church and state junk" and "the church is supposed to direct the government." Former President Donald Trump in July appeared to conflate being American with being Christian, saying "Americans kneel to God, and God alone." And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has repeatedly identified herself as a Christian nationalist, saying the GOP should be the party of Christian nationalism.Greene and other proponents of Christian nationalism have suggested those sounding the alarm on the concept are simply part of the "godless left" who hate both the US and God. But some Republicans and Christians have also condemned the concept, with critics saying it runs counter to both American and Christian values.So, what is Christian nationalism?'A fusion of Christianity with American civic life'Christian nationalism has been defined in several ways, but it can generally be boiled down to the belief that Christianity and the US are intrinsically linked and therefore the religion should have a privileged position in American society.Sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry provide a robust description in their 2020 book, "Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States.""Simply put, Christian nationalism is a culture framework — a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems — that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life," they write.This Sept. 7, 2020 file photo shows the "Oregon for Trump 2020 Labor Day Cruise Rally" at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City, Ore.Michael Arellano/Associated PressAmericans who support such ideas may not self-identify as Christian nationalists, so Whitehead and Perry used a set of survey questions to determine where a person falls on a Christian nationalism scale.The questions were part of national surveys on American religious beliefs periodically conducted by Baylor University. The questions used to develop the scale asked Americans to rate how much they agreed with the following statements, from strongly disagree to strongly agree:The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation.The federal government should advocate Christian values.The federal government should enforce strict separation of church and state.The federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces.The success of the United States is part of God's plan.The federal government should allow prayer in public schools.Positions on the scale varied widely, suggesting not all Americans can be divided into either supporting Christian nationalism or not. Instead, the authors said, people may embrace some aspects but not others.Americans of varying demographics landed all over the scale, but those who most embraced Christian nationalism were likely to come from a specific group: white, conservative, evangelical Christians.Who are Christian nationalists?The authors found that around 52% of Americans could be classified as either "ambassadors" or "accommodators" of Christian nationalism, while the rest could be considered "resisters" or "rejecters."Accommodators, defined as those who are less decided but lean towards accepting Christian nationalism, were the largest group at about 32%. Ambassadors, or those who fully embraced Christian nationalism, made up a fifth of Americans.Former President Donald Trump supporters wave flags outside the convention center at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Sunday, Feb. 28, 2021, in Orlando, Fla.John Raoux/Associated PressAmbassadors believe the US has a special relationship with God and that the government should declare the country a Christian nation, advocate for Christian values, and return prayer to public schools, the authors said.More than half identified as evangelical Protestant. They were also the oldest of the four groups, were predominantly white, and largely lived in small towns over cities, with many located in the South and Midwest. Two-thirds considered themselves politically conservative and more than half identified as Republicans, though one in five were Democrats.Those who scored high on the Christian nationalism scale were more likely to hold racially intolerant views and support racist or xenophobic policies. They were also more likely to view serving in the military as important to being a "good person." Christian nationalists may believe in freedom of religion, but also that Christianity should be favored over other faiths in American society.Although Christian nationalism is gaining support in the GOP, the authors said belief in the ideology has been declining over the past three decades, especially as more and more Americans identify as religiously unaffiliated.Christianity, Trump, and insurrectionA significant driver of recent discussions about Christian nationalism was the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Many Trump supporters were carrying Christian symbols when they stormed the building in order to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election, which they believed had been stolen from the former president.A report published in February by a group of faith leaders, historians, and religious scholars — including Whitehead and Perry — detailed the extent to which Christian nationalism both influenced and was displayed at the insurrection.Flags with messages like "Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president" and "Make America Godly Again" were common in the crowd. Photos showed phrases like "In God we trust" and "God bless the USA" written on a wooden gallows from which a noose was hanging.In one image, a man wearing a "Trump 2020" flag over his shoulders kneeled before a large cross to pray.A man dressed as George Washington kneels and prays near the Washington Monument with a Donald Trump flag on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, DC.Carolyn Kaster, File/Associated PressThe authors of the report — a joint project of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, Freedom From Religion Foundation, and Christians Against Christian Nationalism — argued Christian nationalism played a role in "bolstering, justifying, and intensifying" the attack on the US Capitol.The authors also examined the role of white Christian nationalism specifically, highlighting the overlap between Christian nationalist ideals and racism.Christians against Christian nationalismScholars and advocates are quick to point out that Christian nationalism is not the same as Christianity and that criticizing the ideology is not synonymous with criticizing the religion."I think what was most concerning to us was how Christian nationalism was becoming more violent," Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, told Insider, citing the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and the 2019 mosque shootings in New Zealand. In both cases the suspects espoused Christian nationalist ideas.Tyler is also the lead organizer of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, a campaign and coalition effort launched in 2019 that denounces Christian nationalism in a statement of principles that has since been signed by more than 27,000 Christians.Tyler said Christian nationalism is a distortion of Christianity in that it "leads people to idolatry of the country over worship of God." The ideology also violates the fundamental Christian belief of loving your neighbor as yourself, she said, because it proposes a "second class status for our neighbors who aren't Christian."She said it's especially important for Christians to speak out against Christian nationalism to show the ideology is also viewed as dangerous by people of faith."Many of our signers believe that pushing against Christian nationalism is essential not just for our democracy but also for the preservation of our faith."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato have worked with the world's most famous drag queen since the 1980s and made "RuPaul's Drag Race" a global hit. Fenton Bailey, RuPaul Charles and Randy Barbato at the premiere of "Mapplethorpe: Look At The Pictures" in 2016.Getty Images Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato have worked with RuPaul since they met on the 1980s NYC club scene. They launched his music career and their production company makes "RuPaul's Drag Race". "Drag Race" has won 24 Emmys and is nominated for another eight at next month's ceremony. Anyone who's watched "RuPaul's Drag Race" will have seen the names Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato flash on-screen in the opening credits.Bailey, 62, and Barbato, 61, are responsible for propelling drag culture into the mainstream by helping to turn RuPaul and "Drag Race" into global phenomenons.They have been at RuPaul's side through the many phases of his career, from singer to talk-show host to the reality star we know today."Drag Race" is set add more Emmys to its bulging collection. It's nominated for eight at the ceremony in September – the most for a nonfiction or reality program – and already has 24 wins to date. "We've just finished season 14, and the show just keeps growing," Barbato told Insider on a Zoom call from Los Angeles."Everyone can relate to the feeling of being an outsider. Drag is ultimately a universally relatable thing," Bailey said of the popularity of "Drag Race" and the stars it has helped create."Drag Race" has an average weekly audience of more than 600,000 in the US, and millions more around the world. Michelle Visage (left) and RuPaul with drag queens Gottmik and Symone (right) after Drag Race won the Emmy for Outstanding Competition Program for the fourth consecutive year in 2021.Getty ImagesBailey, who's originally from Portsmouth in the UK, and Barbato, from New Jersey, have worked with RuPaul since the 1980s after meeting him on the New York club scene.The duo run World of Wonder, the production company behind the reality competition that has spawned an ever-growing number of editions in countries from Canada to the Philippines, along with the spinoffs "All Stars" and "Untucked."Bailey and Barbato aren't strangers to performing themselves. While attending New York University's film school together in the '80s, they formed a disco-pop duo called the Fabulous Pop Tarts. They recorded two albums featuring guest stars like Lady Miss Kier, the singer for Deee-Lite, the band behind the infectious '90s classic "Groove Is in the Heart" — and an artist called RuPaul, who's gone on to become the world's most famous drag queen with their help.Bailey and Barbato produced Ru's first album in 1986 and became his manager. In 1991, they set up World of Wonder, borrowing its name from the title of a 1970s British educational magazine for children that Bailey once read. That year, they also made their first TV show, a compilation program called "Manhattan Cable." RuPaul was featured on the show, which Barbato once described as "YouTube before YouTube."RuPaul's first real taste of success came in 1993, when his song "Supermodel (You Better Work)" became a hit after being played in heavy rotation on MTV. The dance-pop song gently poked fun at the supermodels who then dominated the fashion world and provided a break from the grunge rock that dominated the charts at the time.RuPaul at the VH1 Fashion and Music Awards in December 1995 in New York City.Evan Agostini/Liaison/Getty ImagesBailey and Barbato then produced "The RuPaul Show," a talk show for VH1 that aired between 1996 and 1998.At the same time, they were creating productions like "The Adam and Joe Show," a comedy TV show for Britain's Channel 4 in the late 1990s, presented by Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish. (Cornish went on to direct "Attack the Block," the film that first brought John Boyega to the big screen).Bailey and Barbato also directed the 2000 documentary "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," which told the story of the rise and fall of the televangelist couple Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker, with RuPaul narrating.Daya Betty, Bosco, Jasmine Kennedie, Willow Pill, Angeria Paris VanMicheals, Kerri Colby, Lady Camden and Kornbread 'The Snack' Jeté at a party in West Hollywood in June.Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images"Drag Race" came about when Bailey and Barbato were discussing new projects with RuPaul in the late 2000s. According to them, RuPaul declared, "I will do anything!" They ultimately settled on a reality-competition series.But Bailey said at the time there was "a resistance to drag on TV" and "the door felt closed." World of Wonder ended up financing the first season themselves before it was picked up by Logo, a cable channel aimed at LGBTQ audiences, where it ran for eight seasons."It became clear to all of us very early on that there was something absolutely magical here," Barbato said, noting that RuPaul was an "incredible talent that you didn't ordinarily get to see on television.""Ru speaks TV fluently and has a very specific point of view that's a combination of comedy and wit and heart and sass and spirituality," Barbato said. "So even though those early seasons were a bit raw and rough around the edges, the format really hasn't changed."Randy Barbato, RuPaul and Fenton Bailey at the Fashion Does Drag Ball in New York City in September 2017.Santiago Felipe/Getty ImagesAs its rating steadily rose, the show's breakthrough came in 2017 when it moved to VH1, which is available to most US homes with cable TV. The first foreign versions appeared in Chile and Thailand, but the pinnacle arrived in October 2019 when "Drag Race UK" premiered on the BBC. Getting a British edition commissioned had taken "dozens" of attempts, Bailey said. Sky, the satellite-TV channel formerly owned by Rupert Murdoch, "thought it was too trashy for them," he said, but the BBC eventually said yes. "Drag Race" has become one of the most popular shows on its iPlayer streaming platform, with a fourth season underway. "Drag Race UK" was a turning point, because it helped demonstrate the show's universality, Barbato said.  "Drag is alive in every corner of the world," he said. "The format translates without overwhelming the regional aspects of drag in all these different territories. Each version has its own flavor. They wear their own set of heels and their own wigs, and we're all happier for that."The winner of RuPaul's Drag Race UK season three, Krystal Versace (centre), with the other queens in London in November 2021.Jeff Spicer/Getty ImagesThere are now versions of the show in Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Holland, the Philippines, and "Down Under," but only the UK and Australia-New Zealand iterations are presented by RuPaul. Some are hosted by former contestants, such as the Canadian version which has Brook Lynn Hytes at the helm.Barbato stressed that "Drag Race" is creating a platform that allows existing drag talent to be seen: "We are not creating a drag empire — a drag empire already exists. It's global and we are turning people on to it. That is an important distinction. "There's been this talent pool that's gone unrecognized for decades and people are just discovering that."He added: "One of the most satisfying things about working on this show is just watching these girls traveling around the world and working and making people happy."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

As a child, Brin fled Soviet Russia. Since then, he's helped build Google into a trillion-dollar business and become a billionaire several times over. Sergey Brin at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in March 2022.Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Sergey Brin and Larry Page launched Google from a dorm room near Stanford University in 1998. Since then, Google has become the world's most popular search engine and and branched out. Here's everything you need to know about the 48-year-old Brin, who is now worth almost $95 billion. Sergey Brin, 48, is now valued at almost $95 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. But he comes from more humble beginnings.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesSource: BloombergBrin was born in the Soviet Union during the summer of 1973. His father dreamed of being an astrophysicist, but his Jewish background and the USSR's anti-Semitism kept him from those ambitions. Instead, he ended up working as an economist for a government planning agency and crunching numbers for Soviet propaganda, according to journalist Steven Levy's book, "In the Plex."Soviet soldiers in 1988.(AP Photo/ Liu Heung-Shing)Source: In The Plex The family managed to get exit visas and flee the USSR when Brin was 6. But his family's stressful, troubled experience left the Google cofounder with a lasting appreciation for democracy and freedom.Soviet short-range missiles pass below an image of Lenin on Red Square in 1989.AP Photo/Boris Yurchenko/stfSource: In The Plex The Brin family ended up in Maryland, where the Google cofounder was enrolled in a Montessori school that emphasized independence and fostering creativity. Later on, Brin would discover that his Google cofounder, Larry Page, had also gone to a Montessori school.An educational toy used by Montessori teachers.Rolf Vennenbernd/picture alliance via Getty ImagesSource: In The Plex Brin didn't revisit Moscow until he was 17, during a class trip led by his father. "Thank you for taking us all out of Russia," Brin told his dad. Spurred by a blossoming defiant streak, he threw pebbles at a police car, and almost got in serious trouble when the officers inside noticed, according to a 2007 profile of Brin.Moscow, Russia in 1990.AP Photo/Boris YurchenkoSource: Moment MagazineBrin earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science at the University of Maryland, and then flew west to Stanford to get his Ph.D. in computer science. There, his love of high-adrenaline exercise flourished: he tried out skating, skiing, gymnastics, and even trapeze.Page, left, and Brin in 2004.Ben Margot/APSources: Founders of Google, Moment MagazineBrin's resume from back in 1996, as he was working toward his Ph.D. at Stanford, is still available online. Before Google, Brin was more focused on making an algorithm for personalized movie recommendations, or finding a way to automatically detect cases of copyright infringement.Page and Brin eat lunch with Google employees in the cafe at Google in 2001.LEA SUZUKI/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty ImagesSource: InsiderBrin met Google cofounder Larry Page at Stanford in 1995. The two reportedly found each other "obnoxious" at first, but they later became classmates and close friends who geeked out about computer science, according to a 2005 Wired profile.Larry Page, left, and Sergey Brin.RANDI LYNN BEACH / AP ImagesSource: WiredBrin and Page started collaborating in 1996 on a search engine they initially called BackRub. They registered the domain Google.com in September 1997 with the mission to organize the world's information, and dropped out of Stanford the following year to work on their search engine. The rest, as we now know, is history.Here's what Google.com looked like in 1997.The Internet ArchiveSource: WiredThe founders created the first Google Doodle in 1998 to let people know they weren't around to do damage control if the site broke — that's because they were at Burning Man, the freewheeling art festival in the middle of the Nevada desert.GoogleSource: InsiderBoth Brin and Page are "burners," meaning they're devout fans and attendees of Burning Man. When the time came to hire an outside CEO for Google, they approved the hire of Eric Schmidt in 2001 after learning he had attended the festival. They then brought him to Burning Man with them to "see how he would do."Jim Urquhart/ReutersSource: InsiderAs Google ballooned from simply a search engine to a massive corporation with dozens of diverse projects, Brin became the mastermind behind some of its most ambitious ones as the head of X, the company's moonshot factory. His projects included self-driving cars, smart contact lenses, and smart glasses.Dimitrios Kambouris/GettySource: The New Yorker For a long time, you couldn't spot Brin without the computerized Google Glass smart glasses. The New York Times reported that Brin may have played a big role in the product's rocky launch in 2012, rushing it into the world before it was ready for public scrutiny.Carlo Allegri/ReutersSource: The New York Times Brin also worked on Google's now-dismantled social network, Google Plus. He admitted onstage in 2014 that he should have never worked on it because he's "kind of a weirdo" and not very social. "It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to begin with," Brin said.APSource: The VergeThose who have known Brin say he believes in using knowledge and power for the greater good. The Economist once called him the "Enlightenment Man," for his dedication to using reason and science to solve huge world problems.Getty Images / Justin SullivanSource: The Economist"Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical," Brin has said. "And ultimately making a big difference in the world."Brin speaks to the media at a preview of Google's prototype autonomous vehicles in Mountain View, California, in 2015.Elijah Nouvelage/ReutersSource: ABC NewsBut even as Google grew into a multibillion-dollar company, Brin maintained the freewheeling spirit of the early days. Around Google's campus, he typically wore workout clothes and Vibram barefoot shoes, and he was frequently seen zipping around the office on Rollerblades, doing yoga stretches during meetings, or walking around on his hands for fun.Larry Page, left, and Sergey Brin on Google's campus in Mountain View, California, in 2003.Kim Kulish/Getty ImagesSource: Business Insider Brin also has a wild sense of humor. "He conducted job interviews once dressed as a cow," early Google employee Douglas Edwards once told Fast Company.Getty Images, Justin SullivanSource: Fast CompanyIn 2007, Brin married Anne Wojcicki, the CEO of genetics company 23andMe and the sister of early Google employee (and now YouTube CEO) Susan Wojcicki. For the wedding, the couple invited guests to a secret location in the Bahamas and wore bathing suits for the ceremony — which took place on a sandbar.Anne Wojcicki and Sergey Brin in 2012.Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesSource: Vanity Fair Brin and Wojcicki have two children together. Both kids have the last name Wojin, a portmanteau of their parents' last names.Anne Wojcicki and Sergey Brin. Steve Jennings / StringerSource: The New York TimesThe couple donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, including to Parkinson's research. The neurodegenerative disease runs in Brin's family (both his great aunt and mother had it) and a test through 23andMe — Wojcicki's company — revealed that Brin has a genetic mutation that makes him predisposed.Ruben Sprich/ReutersSource: Inside PhilanthropyTo lower his chances of getting Parkinson's, Brin started exercising even more intensely and drinking green tea twice a day. Due to his health regimen and scientific progress, he estimated in 2010 that he now has only about a 10% chance of getting the disease.From left: Brin, Eric Schmidt, and Larry Page.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersSource: WiredHowever, Brin's marriage to Wojcicki hit the rocks in 2013, and the couple separated. They officially finalized their divorce in June 2015 after eight years of marriage.Donald Bowers/Getty Images for The Weinstein CompanySource: InsiderIt later came out that around the time of his separation in 2013, Brin had started an affair with a Google employee who was also in a relationship with another high-level Google executive at the same time.Brin wearing Google Glass in 2013.Jeff Chiu/APSource: Vanity Fair, InsiderThe 2018 book "Valley of Genius" also described Brin as "the Google playboy" during the company's early days. "He was known for getting his fingers caught in the cookie jar with employees that worked for the company in the masseuse room," a former employee said. "He got around."Sergey Brin.Stephen Lam/ReutersSource: InsiderIn August 2015 Brin's title got a major upgrade when Google went through a major restructuring. Brin transitioned from director of special projects at the moonshot division, X, to become the president of Alphabet, Google's new parent company. Page was named Alphabet's CEO.Re/code, Asa MathatSource: InsiderMeanwhile, Brin and Page had become billionaires several times over. In 2005, they bought a 50-person plane together. Brin also owns a superyacht, Dragonfly, which he bought back in 2011 for $80 million.Larry Page and Sergey Brin.APSource: InsiderBrin owns real estate in both New York City and California. He's invested quite a bit of money in Los Altos, where he owns property, through a real estate investment firm called Passerelle Investment Co. The investments went toward helping mom-and-pop, kid-friendly stores and cafes spring up or stay in business.Houses in the hills in Los Altos, California.Andrei Stanescu/Getty ImagesSource: The Wall Street Journal In 2018, Brin married Nicole Shanahan, a lawyer and the founder of a legal-tech startup. The same year, they had a baby girl together.Sergey Brin and Nicole Shanahan.Kimberly White/Getty Images for Breakthrough PrizeSource: InsiderIn December 2019, Brin and Page shocked the world: They announced in a joint statement that they were stepping down from their respective roles at Alphabet. "We've never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there's a better way to run the company," they wrote. Both Page and Brin remain members of Alphabet's board of directors.Larry Page and Sergey Brin.GettySource: InsiderIn June 2022, Insider reported that Brin had quietly filed for divorce from Shanahan, citing "irreconcilable differences." They've been separated since December 2021, according to court filings obtained by Insider.Sergey Brin and Nicole Shanahan.Taylor Hill/Getty ImagesSource: InsiderJillian D'Onfro and Paige Leskin contributed to earlier versions of this article.Sergey Brin filed for divorce from his wife after learning of the brief affair she had with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, according to The Wall Street Journal.The affair ended Brin and Musk's friendship.Kelly Sullivan, Dimitrios Kambouris via Getty ImagesRead the original article on Business Insider.....»»

As a child, Brin fled Soviet Russia. Since then, he's helped build Google into a trillion-dollar business and become a billionaire several times over. Sergey Brin at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in March 2022.Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Sergey Brin and Larry Page launched Google from a dorm room near Stanford University in 1998. Since then, Google has built the world's most popular search engine and branched out into everything from self-driving cars to life-extension research. Here's everything you need to know about the 48-year-old Brin, who is now worth over $97 billion. Sergey Brin, 48, is now valued at an estimated $97 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. But he comes from more humble beginnings.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesSource: BloombergBrin was born in the Soviet Union during the summer of 1973. His father dreamed of being an astrophysicist, but his Jewish background and the USSR's anti-Semitism kept him from those ambitions. Instead, he ended up working as an economist for a government planning agency and crunching numbers for Soviet propaganda, according to journalist Steven Levy's book, "In the Plex."Soviet soldiers in 1988.(AP Photo/ Liu Heung-Shing)Source: In The Plex The family managed to get exit visas and flee the USSR when Brin was 6. But his family's stressful, troubled experience left the Google cofounder with a lasting appreciation for democracy and freedom.Soviet short-range missiles pass below an image of Lenin on Red Square in 1989.AP Photo/Boris Yurchenko/stfSource: In The Plex The Brin family ended up in Maryland, where the Google cofounder was enrolled in a Montessori school that emphasized independence and fostering creativity. Later on, Brin would discover that his Google cofounder, Larry Page, had also gone to a Montessori school.An educational toy used by Montessori teachers.Rolf Vennenbernd/picture alliance via Getty ImagesSource: In The Plex Brin didn't revisit Moscow until he was 17, during a class trip led by his father. "Thank you for taking us all out of Russia," Brin told his dad. Spurred by a blossoming defiant streak, he threw pebbles at a police car, and almost got in serious trouble when the officers inside noticed, according to a 2007 profile of Brin.Moscow, Russia in 1990.AP Photo/Boris YurchenkoSource: Moment MagazineBrin earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science at the University of Maryland, and then flew west to Stanford to get his Ph.D. in computer science. There, his love of high-adrenaline exercise flourished: he tried out skating, skiing, gymnastics, and even trapeze.Page, left, and Brin in 2004.Ben Margot/APSources: Founders of Google, Moment MagazineBrin's resume from back in 1996, as he was working toward his Ph.D. at Stanford, is still available online. Before Google, Brin was more focused on making an algorithm for personalized movie recommendations, or finding a way to automatically detect cases of copyright infringement.Page and Brin eat lunch with Google employees in the cafe at Google in 2001.LEA SUZUKI/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty ImagesSource: InsiderBrin met Google cofounder Larry Page at Stanford in 1995. The two reportedly found each other "obnoxious" at first, but they later became classmates and close friends who geeked out about computer science, according to a 2005 Wired profile.Larry Page, left, and Sergey Brin.RANDI LYNN BEACH / AP ImagesSource: WiredBrin and Page started collaborating in 1996 on a search engine they initially called BackRub. They registered the domain Google.com in September 1997 with the mission to organize the world's information, and dropped out of Stanford the following year to work on their search engine. The rest, as we now know, is history.Here's what Google.com looked like in 1997.The Internet ArchiveSource: WiredThe founders created the first Google Doodle in 1998 to let people know they weren't around to do damage control if the site broke — that's because they were at Burning Man, the freewheeling art festival in the middle of the Nevada desert.GoogleSource: InsiderBoth Brin and Page are "burners," meaning they're devout fans and attendees of Burning Man. When the time came to hire an outside CEO for Google, they approved the hire of Eric Schmidt in 2001 after learning he had attended the festival. They then brought him to Burning Man with them to "see how he would do."Jim Urquhart/ReutersSource: InsiderAs Google ballooned from simply a search engine to a massive corporation with dozens of diverse projects, Brin became the mastermind behind some of its most ambitious ones as the head of X, the company's moonshot factory. His projects included self-driving cars, smart contact lenses, and smart glasses.Dimitrios Kambouris/GettySource: The New Yorker For a long time, you couldn't spot Brin without the computerized Google Glass smart glasses. The New York Times reported that Brin may have played a big role in the product's rocky launch in 2012, rushing it into the world before it was ready for public scrutiny.Carlo Allegri/ReutersSource: The New York Times Brin also worked on Google's now-dismantled social network, Google Plus. He admitted onstage in 2014 that he should have never worked on it because he's "kind of a weirdo" and not very social. "It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to begin with," Brin said.APSource: The VergeThose who have known Brin say he believes in using knowledge and power for the greater good. The Economist once called him the "Enlightenment Man," for his dedication to using reason and science to solve huge world problems.Getty Images / Justin SullivanSource: The Economist"Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical," Brin has said. "And ultimately making a big difference in the world."Brin speaks to the media at a preview of Google's prototype autonomous vehicles in Mountain View, California, in 2015.Elijah Nouvelage/ReutersSource: ABC NewsBut even as Google grew into a multibillion-dollar company, Brin maintained the freewheeling spirit of the early days. Around Google's campus, he typically wore workout clothes and Vibram barefoot shoes, and he was frequently seen zipping around the office on Rollerblades, doing yoga stretches during meetings, or walking around on his hands for fun.Larry Page, left, and Sergey Brin on Google's campus in Mountain View, California, in 2003.Kim Kulish/Getty ImagesSource: Business Insider Brin also has a wild sense of humor. "He conducted job interviews once dressed as a cow," early Google employee Douglas Edwards once told Fast Company.Getty Images, Justin SullivanSource: Fast CompanyIn 2007, Brin married Anne Wojcicki, the CEO of genetics company 23andMe and the sister of early Google employee (and now YouTube CEO) Susan Wojcicki. For the wedding, the couple invited guests to a secret location in the Bahamas and wore bathing suits for the ceremony — which took place on a sandbar.Anne Wojcicki and Sergey Brin in 2012.Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesSource: Vanity Fair Brin and Wojcicki have two children together. Both kids have the last name Wojin, a portmanteau of their parents' last names.Anne Wojcicki and Sergey Brin. Steve Jennings / StringerSource: The New York TimesThe couple donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, including to Parkinson's research. The neurodegenerative disease runs in Brin's family (both his great aunt and mother had it) and a test through 23andMe — Wojcicki's company — revealed that Brin has a genetic mutation that makes him predisposed.Ruben Sprich/ReutersSource: Inside PhilanthropyTo lower his chances of getting Parkinson's, Brin started exercising even more intensely and drinking green tea twice a day. Due to his health regimen and scientific progress, he estimated in 2010 that he now has only about a 10% chance of getting the disease.From left: Brin, Eric Schmidt, and Larry Page.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersSource: WiredHowever, Brin's marriage to Wojcicki hit the rocks in 2013, and the couple separated. They officially finalized their divorce in June 2015 after eight years of marriage.Donald Bowers/Getty Images for The Weinstein CompanySource: InsiderIt later came out that around the time of his separation in 2013, Brin had started an affair with a Google employee who was also in a relationship with another high-level Google executive at the same time.Brin wearing Google Glass in 2013.Jeff Chiu/APSource: Vanity Fair, InsiderThe 2018 book "Valley of Genius" also described Brin as "the Google playboy" during the company's early days. "He was known for getting his fingers caught in the cookie jar with employees that worked for the company in the masseuse room," a former employee said. "He got around."Sergey Brin.Stephen Lam/ReutersSource: InsiderIn August 2015 Brin's title got a major upgrade when Google went through a major restructuring. Brin transitioned from director of special projects at the moonshot division, X, to become the president of Alphabet, Google's new parent company. Page was named Alphabet's CEO.Re/code, Asa MathatSource: InsiderMeanwhile, Brin and Page had become billionaires several times over. In 2005, they bought a 50-person plane together. Brin also owns a superyacht, Dragonfly, which he bought back in 2011 for $80 million.Larry Page and Sergey Brin.APSource: InsiderBrin owns real estate in both New York City and California. He's invested quite a bit of money in Los Altos, where he owns property, through a real estate investment firm called Passerelle Investment Co. The investments went toward helping mom-and-pop, kid-friendly stores and cafes spring up or stay in business.Houses in the hills in Los Altos, California.Andrei Stanescu/Getty ImagesSource: The Wall Street Journal In 2018, Brin married Nicole Shanahan, a lawyer and the founder of a legal-tech startup. The same year, they had a baby girl together.Sergey Brin and Nicole Shanahan.Kimberly White/Getty Images for Breakthrough PrizeSource: InsiderIn December 2019, Brin and Page shocked the world: They announced in a joint statement that they were stepping down from their respective roles at Alphabet. "We've never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there's a better way to run the company," they wrote. Both Page and Brin remain members of Alphabet's board of directors.Larry Page and Sergey Brin.GettySource: InsiderIn June 2022, Insider reported that Brin had quietly filed for divorce from Shanahan, citing "irreconcilable differences." They've been separated since December 2021, according to court filings obtained by Insider.Taylor Hill/Getty ImagesSource: InsiderJillian D'Onfro and Paige Leskin contributed to earlier versions of this article.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Arizona drag queen Barbra Seville posted photos with Lake and said he performed in front of Lake's daughter when she was around 9 or 10. Kari Lake is running for Arizona Governor.Brandon Bell/Getty Images A Phoenix drag queen says he was friends with Kari Lake, a Republican running for Arizona governor. Richard Stevens said he performed in drag in front of Lake's daughter, who was 9 or 10 at the time. Lake's campaign said Stevens claims were "full of lies" but said her daughter did see a Marilyn Monroe impersonator perform. A popular Phoenix drag queen called out Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, over her comments about drag queens.Richard Stevens, who has performed as drag queen Barbra Seville for decades, said in a Facebook post on Friday he and Lake used to be friends but her recent comments on drag queens showed she was a "complete hypocrite."He included several photos of him and Lake and wrote: "I've performed for Kari's birthday, I've performed in her home (with children present,) and I've performed for her at some of the seediest bars in Phoenix."In a text exchange with Insider, Stevens said he performed as Marilyn Monroe in front of Lake's daughter, who was around 9 or 10 at the time, and again said he performed inside Lake's home."I spoke up because her alarming rise to power under these new 'views' are scary and can lead to real harm to me and other marginalized people," Stevens said.—Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) June 18, 2022He spoke out after Lake waded into the latest target of conservative outrage: kids being exposed to drag queens. He included a screenshot of a tweet Lake had sent hours prior."They kicked God out of schools and welcomed the Drag Queens. They took down our Flag and replaced it with a rainbow," she wrote. "They seek to disarm Americans and militarize our Enemies. Let's bring back the basics: God, Guns & Glory."On June 4, Lake's campaign also tweeted condemning drag queens. The account retweeted a video that showed a drag queen performing in front of kids in Texas and added: "This is grooming. This is child abuse. Maybe that's acceptable in Dallas, Texas. But it will not be tolerated in a @KariLake-led Arizona."Lake did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.In a statement provided to KPNX reporter Brahm Resnik, Lake's campaign said Stevens' claims were "full of lies.""The event in question was a party at someone else's house, and the performer was there as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. It wasn't a drag show, and the issue we're talking about isn't adults attending drag shows, either. The issue is activists sexualizing young children, and that's got to stop," the statement said.Lake's campaign told The Arizona Republic Lake "is pursuing legal action and anyone that prints those lies should be prepared for a legal fight as well." The outlet also reported the campaign appeared to differentiate between a drag show and a man dressed up as a woman as an impersonation.When speaking to The Arizona Republic, Stevens got emotional when discussing Lake's friendship."Kari contacted me after my parents died," he said. "It meant the world to me, it really meant the world to me. So to see her just throw me under the bus for a vote, that's why I had to say something."In December 2014, Lake posted a photo on Instagram of her and Stevens dressed in drag, along with the caption: "Half of what I know about makeup I learned from watching friends like @barbraseville." A post shared by Kari Lake (@karilake) She also posted photos earlier that year from a drag show.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»