Saturday, August 20, 2022

ESG investing brings political fights to the investing world: Morning Brief

Our society is not just divided along political lines — media, culture, and even coffee shops have become delineated between red and blue.

So perhaps it is inevitable that these fissures would come to the world of investing.

I’m speaking about the growth of so-called ESG investing — which stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance — and the growing backlash against this trend. Battle lines are being formed in the heretofore apolitical, clubby world of money management.

The roots of social investing go back decades, when activists called for pension funds to boycott investments in tobacco stocks and companies that did business in apartheid-era South Africa.

ESG was birthed in 2004 by Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, who asked major financial institutions to help identify ways to integrate environmental, social, and governance concerns into capital markets.

This call resulted in a global compact, "Who Cares Wins," which included Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as signatories.

A decade or so later, some institutional investors and money managers, including BlackRock, the world's largest money manager with nearly $10 trillion under management, began establishing the support of shareholder initiatives and stood up investment products that focused on ESG.

Members of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and other labor leaders picket about the union's strike at Warrior Met Coal Mine, outside BlackRock's Headquarters in New York City, U.S., July 28, 2021.  REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Members of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and other labor leaders picket about the union's strike at Warrior Met Coal Mine, outside BlackRock's Headquarters in New York City, U.S., July 28, 2021. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

To a degree, BlackRock and its cohort did so in response to pressure from the political left.

Now, those same investment managers, BlackRock in particular, are facing criticism from the political right.

As you can see below, there’s been a disparate flurry of activity from conservative politicians pushing back against ESG investment initiatives:

The latter article pertains to an eight page letter the AGs wrote to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink on August 4th, complaining about his company’s ESG mandate and asking him to respond by yesterday.

“As a matter of policy, we don’t comment on our engagements with legislators and regulators,” a BlackRock spokesperson emailed us.

The oil & gas industry and red state politicians argue the ESG movement is raising the cost of capital, making it more expensive to drill and carry out other business investment, and in the process costing Americans jobs.

When I asked a veteran domestic oil and gas CEO about this, they told me: “The cost of capital has certainly gone up for the industry."

"Bank capital is very scarce, mostly for smaller companies," this CEO said. "Many banks that used to participate in syndicates are no longer doing any new energy lending. What commercial lending that is available comes with tighter underwriting standards. Part of this is ESG, but another is investors' — both banks and equity holders — very recent memories of deep losses in the industry sector."

It may be that ESG is causing some investors to shun oil and gas stocks, depressing share prices and making raising capital from public markets more expensive.

But oil and gas stocks as measured by P/Es have been cheap for years. Exxon, for instance sells at a hair over 10 times next year's earnings, almost exactly the same as 13 years ago.

As for jobs, according to industry consulting firm IBIS World, employment in the U.S. oil and gas industry has soared to over 324,000 as of this month, the highest by far, in a decade.

Meanwhile, the energy sector has been the best performer in the S&P 500 this year. By a mile.

Through Friday's close, the energy sector is up over 40% this year. The next best performing sector, the utility sector, is up 10%. The S&P 500 is down 11% in 2022.

With BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, and the big Wall Street banks falling out of favor with red state politicians, Vivek Ramaswamy, a former biotech CEO and author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam” saw an opportunity, creating Strive Asset Management, funded with $20 million from the likes of Peter Thiel, Bill Ackman, and J.D. Vance.

Ramaswamy says the real problem [with ESG] is "the fiduciary breach at the heart of this, using someone else's money to advance social and political perspectives through voting power and shareholder advocacy that the owners of capital actually disagree with."

Strive — tiny compared to the Wall Street giants — will “mandate companies not to focus on environmental issues, not focus on social issues, not to focus on political or cultural issues, but to exclusively focus on products, products and services, and thereby serve their shareholders period.”

Author Vivek Ramaswamy speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, U.S., August 5, 2022.  REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Author Vivek Ramaswamy speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, U.S., August 5, 2022. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Bill McKibben, Middlebury professor and longstanding environmentalist, has a different perspective.

“This is the fossil fuel industry weaponizing their control of state governments,” he says. “It's to be expected. It'll be interesting to see whether the blue state treasurers and so on are up to the fight.”

Strive, which aims to have funds for institutions, recently launched an energy index ETF (DRLL) which "delivers a new ‘post-ESG’ shareholder mandate to U.S. energy companies" for retail investors.

Yes, "sin stock" investment vehicles have been around for years, such as the VICEX fund, and more recently the B.A.D ETF (BAD), but they never generated much buzz, nevermind returns, and unlike DRLL weren’t marketed as anti-ESG. That could change.

But to me, the world’s transition from carbon-based energy to other sources doesn’t lend itself to binary thinking. "We need to ban all drilling!" or: "ESG is an infringement on my freedom that must be stopped!" are viewpoints that won't get us closer to any solutions.

Facts: Climate change is real and we have to move away from fossil fuels. But we can’t do it overnight and might need some incentives to do so.

It is also possible to believe in climate change and to invest in some drilling for the time being. And Jamie Dimon told clients as much this month.

“Why can't we get it through our thick skulls, that if you want to solve climate [change], it is not against climate [change] for America to boost more oil and gas," Dimon said.

Warren Buffett who believes in climate change, has invested in oil stocks, most notably Occidental Petroleum, which Berkshire appears poised to take a 50% position in.

Is it mercenary or hypocritical of Buffett to believe in the science and buy oil and gas stocks? Perhaps. It’s also arguably an unemotional middle ground.

Behaviorists will tell you that some children — and grownups, too — have trouble with transitions and will act as things shift in front of them. I guess this applies to energy transitions as well.





As 'Woke' Businesses Face Right-Wing Wrath, Culture War Capitalists Cash In


BY PAUL BOND ON 08/03/22 


Jeremy Boreing had never planned to get into the razor business. That changed in March when online shaving gear seller Harry's yanked its ads from his conservative news site over what it called "inexcusable" views and a "values misalignment" relating to the LGBTQ+ community.

The Daily Wire CEO launched his own line of razors in March under the Jeremy's Razors brand—selling products remarkably similar to those of Harry's.

"They left us for saying boys are boys and girls are girls," complained Boreing, whose news site is known for its podcasts with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.

The battle of the razors is the latest in a growing war against "woke business" by conservatives who are starting their own companies or investment funds, using activist shareholder tactics and drafting legislation to target firms espousing liberal causes. The goal: to force executives to focus on profits rather than changing the world—or, at least, not changing the world in ways that align with liberal values.

The issue has taken center stage recently as a number of high-profile companies—including Disney, J.P. Morgan, Levi Strauss and Microsoft—announced plans to cover travel expenses for employees seeking an abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade. That followed other headline-making cases of businesses speaking out on social issues, such as Disney taking a stance on legislation in Florida restricting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity and dozens of companies from Silicon Valley to Wall Street pledging to fight racial injustice after George Floyd's death in 2020.

A New York City protest over the Supreme Court decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.
LEV RADIN/PACIFIC PRESS/GETTY

The right-wing backlash, though limited so far, is growing and poses a competing challenge for companies as they juggle demands from some employees, customers and social media campaigners to take a stand on social issues. If successful, the conservative movement could also chip away at the multi-trillion dollar and growing business of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing and, perhaps, the very idea of businesses being accountable for more than just making money.

"Firms are making polarizing bets," said Valentin Haddad, an assistant professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management and research fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research. "The initial stage of corporate activism is coming from the left, and now there's pushback from the right. Are companies gaining more from the left or losing more from the right? That's their debate."
A Growing Movement

Jeremy's Razors did remarkably well. In just three days, its Twitter account had 35,000 followers, 3,000 more than Harry's gained in 12 years. Within two months the new company had sold 63,000 shaving kits and the razor business was growing faster than The Daily Wire itself, Boreing tells Newsweek. Advertising that mocked liberal sensitivities didn't hurt.

"Do you remember when there were only two genders, and only one-and-a-half of them had to shave their mustaches?" Boreing asks in a commercial that was viewed over 21 million times in seven weeks on YouTube. It features scantily-clad women, burly security officers, a flame thrower, a bald eagle, a little girl shaving and a parody of a "homo-erotic moment." It also targets Gillette, which ran an ad in 2019 that featured a father helping his transgender son to shave for the first time. Harry's declined to respond to Newsweek's request for comment.

The Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing founded Jeremy's Razor's after online shaving gear seller Harry's yanked its ads from his conservative website.
KEITH GRINER/GETTY

Other new companies in the "anti-woke" battle include Rumble, an alternative to Twitter, and Truth Social, a social media firm backed by former President Donald Trump. There's a cell phone company called Patriot Mobile, which bills itself as "America's Christian conservative wireless service provider" and champions the Second Amendment. An email service provides reagan.com addresses, honoring the values of Ronald Reagan and boasting extra privacy to suppress "surveillance capitalism."


Some companies have been around a bit longer, such as the veteran-owned Black Rifle Coffee Company, which has been serving coffee to "people who love America"—and shun the famously liberal Starbucks—since 2014.

"You have to fight back against this one-sided situation in our culture," said Boreing.

A glimpse of the TRUTH Social platform created by Donald Trump.
STR/NURPHOTO/GETTY

Conservative suspicions of left-leaning corporate bias were reinforced after the Roe v. Wade decision in June, with the widespread company pledges of financial help to employees seeking abortions if they can no longer get them in their own states. "Roe v. Wade's Demise Is a Turning Point for Corporate America," said an article in the Harvard Business Review by Andrea Hagelgans and Soni Basi of PR firm Edelman.

"Employers are the only institution that Americans trust to do the right thing when it comes to social issues," they said, citing an Edelman Trust Barometer, which found that business had overtaken government, media and NGOs in terms of which institutions respondents said they trusted. In the U.S., business had a trust level of 49 percent compared to 39 percent trust in both government and the media. However, for the first time, the survey showed Republicans now distrusted business—with trust plummeting 12 percentage points to 48 percent. Among Democrats, it rose one point to 55 percent.

For some Republicans, the corporate response to the Roe v. Wade decision was horrifying.


"If corporations are paying $4,000+ to their female employees to kill their baby, they should pay them the same to celebrate life when their employees become mothers," tweeted Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Applying Pressure

Launching products to appeal to conservatives is only one front for anti-woke campaigners. Other conservatives are trying to apply pressure to existing businesses, investors and investment funds.

Among those pushing in the conservative direction is Scott Shepard, whose Free Enterprise Project (FEP) buys shares in publicly held companies so it can ask difficult questions at shareholder meetings. Last year, his targets included Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast, Twitter and Coca-Cola—criticized for including a lesson from LinkedIn Learning that instructed employees to "try to be less white" as part of its diversity training. (The lesson was removed from LinkedIn Learning after a whistleblower revealed its contents. Coca-Cola said it had been part of a learning plan to build an inclusive workplace.)

Coca-Cola was also among the companies that found themselves in the conservative firing line for opposing a bill in Georgia that, among other other provisions, requires voters to provide a driver's license number or other state-approved ID when filing an absentee ballot—a bill, opponents say, will disproportionately discourage Black voters.

Putting Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan on the spot, Shepard asked him to "explain specifically how requiring voters to show ID in order to avoid fraud is racist." Shepard took it as a small victory when Moynihan responded that maybe the bank needed a bipartisan commission to figure out when it should weigh into politics.


"All of the shareholder activism for the past 20 years has been on the left, and, increasingly, the hard left," Shepard tells Newsweek. "Our goal isn't for companies to suddenly embrace conservative political positions, but to get back to the business of flying us around the country and selling us fizzy drinks."

William Flaig agrees: so much so that the investment professional with two decades' experience has started the American Conservative Values Exchange Traded Fund, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange. The ETF, with assets of over $30 million, is a basket of stocks in the S&P 500, minus the ones that management has deemed too "woke" to support after surveying shareholders. Those include Apple, Nike, AmazonStarbucks, The New York Times and Disney.

While it can't be taken as a longer-term indication of performance, the conservative ETF has done somewhat better than the benchmark S&P 500 index over the past year—falling 5.9 percent vs. 8.6 percent for the benchmark index (through July 27).

NEWSWEEK

Disney climbed the wokeness list in March when it advocated overturning Florida's Parental Rights in Education bill. That prompted Governor Ron DeSantis to threaten to take away tax and regulatory favors that have been hugely valuable to Disney's theme park business since 1967. The law, dubbed the "Don't Say Gay Bill" by critics, dictates that educators should not teach sexual orientation or gender identity until after the third grade.

Disney drew further ire from conservatives when a leaked video of an internal meeting showed a children's programming executive boasting of a "not-so-secret gay agenda." Another staffer said his team was making sure there was no shortage of trans, asexual and bisexual characters in cartoons.


The video raised more disquiet. A poll from the Trafalgar Group, sponsored by the conservative group Convention of States Action, said it prompted over 68 percent of likely voters to say they're less inclined to do business with Disney—including nearly half of Democrats.

Disney did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment.

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who made the Disney video public, has become a leading force in the anti-woke movement. He tells Newsweek that conservatives can use reputational, financial and political leverage on corporations. "With Disney, the conservative movement successfully pulled all three levers and created the new playbook for taming woke capital," Rufo says.


Internal documents sourced by Rufo were also part of a campaign against American Express—dubbed UnAmerican Express by its critics, who accuse it of prioritizing the hiring of non-white employees and complain staff, as part of an anti-racist initiative, were instructed not to use phrases like "I don't see color," and "everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough" because they are "microaggressions."

Amex declined Newsweek's request for comment.

Conservative competition has meanwhile been emerging to AARP, a nonprofit interest group for the over 50s whose critics say it leans left, pointing to its support for former President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. One right-wing alternative is dubbed Christ Above Politics. The most popular is The Association of Mature American Citizens, which lists its core values as "faith, family and freedom." It has grown to more than 2 million members in 2020 from fewer than 100,000 in little over a decade.

Targeting ESG


One of the most ambitious efforts by conservatives to fight corporate wokeness challenges the investment management industry, whose biggest firms have placed growing emphasis on environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing worth trillions of dollars worldwide.

Strive Asset Management says it "will compete directly with the world's largest asset managers by creating investment funds that advocate for the pursuit of excellence over politics in boardrooms."

Strive was founded in May by Vivek Ramaswamy, the author of Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam. It argues that asset managers such as State Street Corp., Vanguard Group and BlackRock Inc. are using client money to advocate for pet causes rather than prioritizing corporate performance. Among Strive's initial investors is Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, first outside investor in Facebook and bogeyman for Silicon Valley liberals.

Fund manager Vivek Ramaswamy, founder of Strive Asset Management.
LISA LAKE/GETTY

Among what Ramaswamy cites as bad examples of corporate behavior is the way State Street, Vanguard and BlackRock have pushed energy companies to focus more on climate change than producing oil and gas.

"If the CEOs of the largest energy producers got in a room together and decided they'd keep oil in the ground and jack up prices, this would be the stuff of movies, people would be arrested and it would be the biggest antitrust violation in history," said Justin Danhof, who joined the company this year from the Free Enterprise Project, the conservative shareholder activism and education program. "BlackRock changed the game in 2018. Asset managers had largely been passive, then BlackRock began to weaponize their money."

BlackRock says in public documents that "risks of climate change and the transition to a lower carbon economy present material regulatory, reputational and legal risks to companies that may significantly impair their financial position," thus it is honoring its fiduciary duty when it negotiates with all companies to lessen their carbon footprint.

In a 2022 letter to the CEOs of companies that his firm invests in, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink seemingly addressed the conservative criticism by writing: "Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics. It is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not 'woke.' It is capitalism, driven by mutually beneficial relationships between you and the employees, customers, suppliers, and communities your company relies on to prosper."
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
STEFAN WERMUTH/BLOOMBERG/GETTY


State Street global head of asset stewardship Ben Colton told Newsweek that his firm is consistent and transparent in the way it evaluates "proposals on social and environmental matters" and that its "efforts will continue to be focused on creating value and fulfilling our fiduciary duty." Vanguard told Newsweek that it has "a diverse group of more than 30 million individual investors" with a "broad range of personal beliefs and priorities" and that it is "grounded in our duty to act in their best interests."

Ramaswamy isn't buying it, saying all the activism is in one, liberal direction, and that his goal is to take politics out of the industry.

"You tell me of a right-wing company in the S&P 500 and I'd be glad to tell you how we'd advocate for depoliticizing it," he says. "BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard are using the capital of their clients—everyday Americans—to advocate for policies most of them probably don't agree with. The role of a depoliticized private sector is to bring us together, whether we are Black or white, red or blue. A divided body politic is dangerous, and this problem is caused in part by asset managers who demand that CEOs engage in a political agenda."


BlackRock, in fact, told Newsweek it is "pursuing an initiative to use technology to give more of our clients the option to have a say in how proxy votes are cast at companies their money is invested in," as opposed to BlackRock managers making all of the decisions about which way to vote on sometimes divisive issues.

For companies to reject ESG benchmarks could be a mistake, said Professor Kirk Snyder of the USC Marshall School of Business.

"ESG contributes to conveying to stakeholders, including employees, why a company exists," he says. "Companies wading into politics provides an opportunity to further define its values and what it stands for. Of course, this will not be received in a positive way by all stakeholders."

The Left Pushes Back


Progressive campaigners are noticing the rise of opposition from conservatives.

One player is the nonprofit As You Sow, which says it harnesses "corporate responsibility and shareholder power to create lasting change" with programs that "address gender inequalities, workplace equity, environmental health, and more."

It recorded that the number of conservative proposals to corporate boards had nearly quadrupled to almost 40 during the period between 2013 and 2021—though the group's CEO Andrew Behar notes those proposals earned an average shareholder vote of less than 3 percent compared to 30 percent for actual ESG resolutions.

"This is because the underlying ideas expressed in these resolutions increase risk to all corporate stakeholders," he tells Newsweek. "I do not see anti-ESG shareholder advocacy as undermining the trend toward a regenerative economy based on justice and sustainability."

Levi Strauss & Co. ran into a storm over politics when brand president Jennifer Sey disclosed she had quit in February because the company famous for its blue jeans objected to her outside advocacy of reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although she described herself as a center-left liberal who had supported Elizabeth Warren for president, the right embraced her as a hero. She wrote in Substack that the "last straw" for Levi's had been her appearance on Laura Ingraham's Fox News show, after which she said colleagues accused her of being anti-science, anti-fat, anti-trans and racist. Rather than going on an "apology tour," as she says Levi's had requested, she left and moved from San Francisco to Denver, where public schools were open. Levi's declined Newsweek's request for comment.
Levi Strauss ran into a storm over politics when a brand president quit earlier this year because the jeans maker objected to her outside advocacy of reopening schools during the pandemic.
SEAN GALLUP/GETTY


"We think it would be great for America not to have a red soda or blue soda, and not have red jeans or blue jeans," says Danhof of Strive Asset Management. "Everyone should be able to engage in commerce without having a fight on their hands."

That said, a Trafalgar poll in May shows that many consumers do care about the positions taken publicly by companies whose products and services they use. It indicated that 87 percent of likely voters say they are "likely to stop doing business with a company that takes a political stand they disagree with."
Defending Capitalism

To help guide consumers, conservatives have started ranking companies by their politics. One index is CancelThisCompany.com, which recently added Harry's to its list of "'woke' companies to boycott." The PublicSq.app, launched last year, lists "freedom loving" businesses, saying "It's time to stop buying from companies that hate you."


Another guide is 2ndVote, which ranks Levi Strauss a "1"—as far as it is possible to go on the liberal spectrum. Disney, Coca-Cola, Amex and Facebook are all 1s too.

Some 87 percent of likely voters say they are "likely to stop doing business with a company that take a political stand they disagree with." Here, protesters air their views about Netflix.
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/GETTY

With a rating of 4.13 out of 5 is Chick-fil-A, which took a stand more than a decade ago when its CEO spoke out against same-sex marriage. While liberals called a boycott, it has still thrived. By sales, it has grown to rank as America's third biggest fast-food chain, according to the Restaurant Business website.

In April, the Free Enterprise Project and 2ndVote, along with the Job Creators Network of Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, partnered with former McDonald's CEO Ed Rensi and former Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson to create what they dubbed The Boardroom Initiative in defense of capitalism.

"Free-market capitalism—a system responsible for lifting billions of people out of poverty and improving the worldwide standard of living—is now under attack," its website says. "Elitist investment fund managers...are slowly infiltrating American corporations by embracing woke cancel culture and prioritizing ESG scores."

In June, the Job Creators Network launched a "Rock the Woke" campaign, promising national advertising and possible legal actions "to highlight egregious examples of "wokeness" hijacking free-market capitalism and to pressure companies to focus on providing products and services that consumers want—not on being culture warriors." Meanwhile, the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce, or AmFree Chamber, is positioning itself as a rival to the 110-year-old U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with a promise to fight for "equal economic opportunity for every American" and against regulation, tax, corporate cronyism and "backroom DC deal making."

As conservatives see it, part of the problem lies with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which wants publicly traded companies to disclose their board diversity and the risks to climate change that their businesses pose.

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Such initiatives have caught the eye of Marco Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida, who introduced in September the "Mind Your Own Business Act," which he says "would put the burden of proof on corporations to show that their far-left actions were in shareholders' best interests, and make corporate directors and officers personally liable if they can't prove it." Florida Governor DeSantis, in an attack on what he called businesses 'imposing woke ideology' and using ESG metrics, announced measures this month to prohibit the state's money from being invested based on "political factors".

Whether on the right or the left, big businesses need to beware of the risk of communicating a socio-political stance, said Vanessa Burbano, a professor at Columbia Business School who authored a 2021 study on the subject.

Among its conclusions, Burbano says: "Employees who disagree with a political stance taken by their companies are demotivated—they do less extra work and do lower quality work." On the flip side, "Those who agree with a political stance taken by their companies are not motivated—they behave no statistically differently than a control group." There's similarly a downside in regard to wooing consumers, as they are likely to boycott over a political position they don't like but are not likely to "buycott" over stances they agree with.

Taking no stance on politics can also be problematic, Burbano says.
That was the case last year for Jason Fried, the CEO of Chicago-based software company, Basecamp, who banned talk about politics in the workplace.

"Every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant," Fried wrote in a blog post. "You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target." After that, roughly a third of his 60 employees accepted buyouts to leave the firm, and many reportedly said it was due to the new restrictions.

"What remains to be seen is whether companies that communicate apolitical stances are inferred as being conservative," says Burbano. "If every other company takes a liberal stance and one says it is staying out of politics, how will people interpret that?"
The Netflix Conundrum

One company trying to navigate the perilous political dynamics is Netflix, which has long been considered a liberal company by conservatives, due to the political donations of co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos. Hastings has made big contributions to educational institutions serving students of color and also for police reform efforts. Sarandos has made frequent donations to Democratic politicians, according to the Open Secrets website. The world's dominant streaming-media company struck a multimillion dollar production deal with the Obamas. And in February, Netflix VP of Inclusion Vernā Myers brought in White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo to offer "light and healing" to its employees and to equip them with "an inclusion lens."

Verna Myers leads inclusion efforts at Netflix.
MARLA AUFMUTH/GETTY

But the left appeared to sour on the company, and many employees staged a walkout, when it streamed programs in which comedian Dave Chappelle told jokes that the LGBTQ+ community complained were demeaning. Netflix then impressed conservatives by standing firm and issuing an internal memo that said, in part, "Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you'd find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you." After that, Netflix streamed comedian and actor Ricky Gervais also telling jokes deemed insensitive by LGBTQ+ advocates.

"Netflix told its employees, 'Too bad,' and that's the right message," says Danhof. "Netflix lived in that ESG universe, but ESG is a luxury that you can afford in a bull market."

Tesla founder Elon Musk, a rising hero for the right, in part after he said he voted for a Republican for the first time this year, tweeted "the woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable" after Netflix reported its first loss of subscribers in a decade.

In May, Netflix "scrapped a host of woke shows," as The Daily Mail put it. Those included Meghan Markle's animated project about a socially conscious girl; Antiracist Baby, an animated series based on Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's children's book of the same name; and Wings of Fire, which was to explore racism with Black filmmaker Ava DuVernay. Netflix did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment.

Fresh from his success selling razors, Boreing still sees Netflix—along with Disney—as a target of an expansion by The Daily Wire into streaming movies and TV shows. Its first release was 2020's Run Hide Fight, a movie about a 17-year-old girl who uses her survival skills to protect herself and her classmates against school shooters. Boreing says the movie paid for itself in its first week on The Daily Wire's subscription streaming platform despite poor reviews from established critics.

Last month, it released Terror on the Prairie, a western starring Gina Carano, the actress who was fired from the Disney+ streaming show The Mandalorian for social media posts that Disney said denigrated people "based on their cultural and religious identities." She had compared "hating someone for their political views" in the polarized U.S. to the way the Nazis treated Jews during the Holocaust. She accused Disney of bullying.

The Daily Wire, which has 600,000 subscribers, has also said it will spend $100 million on children's content. They're actually a little late to this party, as Angel Studios has for more than a year been producing The Tuttle Twins, an animated show about a boy and girl whose adventures promote free markets and decry socialism and has been streamed 1 million times on the VidAngel streaming platform and Angel app. But such competition doesn't bother Boreing.

"The target is to make the left compete," he says. "It's going to take a lot more than just The Daily Wire, since the left controls every major institution, including business. The bad news is, 99 percent of everything belongs to them; the good news is that everything is low-hanging fruit of opportunity."


AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM
In Moscow, Idaho, conservative 'Christian Reconstructionists' are thriving amid evangelical turmoil



Crawford Gribben, Professor of history, Queen's University Belfast
Sat, August 20, 2022
THE CONVERSATION

Members of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, protest an order to either socially distance or wear a face mask in public. Geoff Crimmins/The Moscow-Pullman Daily News, CC BY-SA

Evangelical groups in the U.S. have for years faced dwindling numbers. And a messy cultural fight over the direction of the movement might serve to drive further defections.

But while some of the largest Protestant denominations in America, such as Southern Baptists, continue to hemorrhage members, one small group of conservative evangelicals appears to be bucking the trend – despite numbering only around 1,300 or so.

For the past 30 years, believers from across the United States and beyond have been gathering in Moscow, a city in northern Idaho with a population of around 25,000. Here, as part of the Christ Church congregation, they have set their face against the cultures of American modernity. Guided by a controversial social theory known as “Christian Reconstruction,” which holds that biblical law should apply in today’s setting, they look to the Bible to understand how they believe American institutions should be reformed. Followers believe that abortion rights and same-sex marriage, among other evidences of what they would see as moral decline, will eventually be repealed. Their goal is simple – the conversion of the people of Moscow to their way of thinking as the first step toward the conversion of the world.

This hope might appear to be unrealistic. But as a scholar who has charted the rise of the movement in my book “Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America,” I know that these believers have already made steps toward that goal.
Growing influence

In Moscow, the community has established churches, a classical Christian school, a liberal arts college, a music conservatory, a publishing house, and the makings of a media empire. With books published by major trade and academic presses, and a talk show on Amazon Prime, the community is setting the agenda for a theologically vigorous and politically reactionary evangelical revival.

These believers are led by conservative pastor Douglas Wilson, whose views on gender, marriage and many other topics are controversial, even among the most conservative Christians. For over 30 years, Wilson has been campaigning against the influence of everything from atheism to feminism.

In so doing, he has attracted some significant critical attention – not least from the late journalist and prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens, with whom he debated whether Christianity was good for the world in a series of exchanges that was later turned into a book.

The community that Wilson leads in Moscow is still small. It is hard to obtain figures for the growth of Christ Church in terms of numbers, but my research and conversations with members of the congregation suggest it is expanding. What is clear is that in little more than three decades, Christ Church has gone from being a little-known congregation to one generating media attention and getting attention from senior political figures.


Pastor Douglas Wilson and followers at a protest. 
Geoff Crimmins/The Moscow-Pullman Daily News, CC BY-SA

The community has established a K-12 school, a member of an association of hundreds of classical Christian schools heavily influenced by the educational beliefs of Wilson. In a testament to the political reach of the group, in 2019 Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska was one of the speakers at the association’s annual convention.

As I note in my book, the community’s liberal arts college sends students into doctoral programs in various disciplines at Ivy League and leading European universities – it isn’t an insular educational world. Its small and closely connected group of authors has worked with publishers such as Random House and Oxford University Press.

And then there is the talk show on Amazon Prime.

This talk show, “Man Rampant,” gives an indication of why this community is growing in influence despite the evangelical decline. Wilson, as its host, uses the platform to set out the ideas that undergird his vision of Christian renewal – developing an agenda drawn explicitly from the Bible about the revival of traditional masculinity.

As its title suggests, “Man Rampant” promotes an extremely muscular Christianity. Forget Jesus as well-meaning, meek and mild; the first episode condemned the “sin of empathy.” Empathy, says Wilson, “is not a good thing.”

The “Man Rampant” agenda is reinforced on Wilson’s website, which draws upon the creative people living in the Moscow community to turn his arguments into striking visual metaphors, and where, while dismissing racism, he argues that “it really is OK to be white.”

Going local to convert America


In America’s crowded religious marketplace, Wilson’s message is clearly distinct.

One of Wilson’s most important influences is the late R.J. Rushdoony, an Armenian-American Presbyterian theologian who was driven by protecting Protestants in the U.S. from suffering the kind of genocide from which his parents escaped. Frustrated by the other-worldliness of many American Christian denominations, whose adherents he feared preached more about heaven than earth, and their complacency in what he perceived to be a hostile liberal culture, Rushdoony set about developing biblical principles for how society should be organized.

The Ten Commandments were no longer to be considered as an artifact in the history of morality, Rushdoony argued. Instead, they should be understood as setting out the core principles for the running of the modern state. “Thou shalt not steal” ruled out the possibility of inflation, which Rushdoony argued devalued monetary assets and was therefore was a form of theft. And “Thou shalt have no other gods besides me” ruled out any possibility of religious pluralism.

Rushdoony promoted these ideals in titles such as 1973’s “Institutes of Biblical Law” – a 1,000-page exposition of the Ten Commandments that argued for both the abolition of the prison system and a massive extension of capital punishment.

Christians would be secure in American society only when it was shaped by their religious values, he argued. But the Christian America that he anticipated would not be secured through revolution or any form of top-down political change – only by the transformation of individual lives, families, towns and states.

This strategy of promoting beliefs at the local level explains why Christian Reconstructionists, like those led by Wilson, prefer to focus energies in small towns. The Reconstructionists in Moscow believe that they can achieve much more significant cultural impact if they can secure significant demographic change, either by the conversion of existing inhabitants or by encouraging others to move to the area.
Eschewing the existential crisis


The stated goal of Wilson’s congregation is to make Moscow a Christian town; at present only around a third of Moscow residents identify as “religious,” according to a 2019 report.

But it is Wilson’s attitude about public health measures during the pandemic that has most recently brought him and his church back to the attention of political leaders. Throughout the pandemic, he has argued that mask requirements reveal the hypocrisy of government. In September 2020, Wilson led his congregation in the illegal hymn-sing in front of City Hall that led to the arrests of several church members – footage of which was retweeted by President Trump, who suggested that the Moscow congregation’s arrests were emblematic of what would happen to evangelicals if Democrats took control. “DEMS WANT TO SHUT YOUR CHURCHES DOWN, PERMANENTLY,” the former president tweeted in all caps.

And yet, whatever the former president’s fears, Wilson’s congregation is growing. While large denominations, like the Southern Baptists, divide in the debate about critical race theory, Wilson’s church shows how some congregations could respond to evangelicalism’s existential crisis – and possibly thrive.

[3 media outlets, 1 religion newsletter. Get stories from The Conversation, AP and RNS.]

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. If you found it interesting, you could subscribe to our weekly newsletter.


It was written by: Crawford Gribben, Queen's University Belfast.

Read more:

Why refusing the COVID-19 vaccine isn’t just immoral – it’s ‘un-American’


What is a cult?


‘The blood of Jesus is my vaccine’: how a fringe group of Christians hijacks faith in a war against science

Crawford Gribben received funding from the Irish Research Council for a research project on "Radical religion in the trans-Atlantic world."
Robert Kennedy Jr's anti-vaccine group was banned from Facebook and Instagram for spreading misinformation. Here's a look at years of Kennedy's controversial claims.


Travis Clark
Fri, August 19, 2022

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrives in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York in 2017 for a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.Evan Vucci/AP Images

Facebook and Instagram removed Robert Kennedy Jr's anti-vaccine nonprofit Children's Health Defense.


The group was spreading medical misinformation on the platforms.


Kennedy is a prominent anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist whose claims have been debunked.


Robert Kennedy Jr's anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense was removed by Facebook and Instagram this week after an initial 30-day suspension. Meta, which owns the social platforms, said the group repeatedly violated the company's medical-misinformation policies. In a newsletter email, the group called the decision a "clearly orchestrated attempt to stop the impact we have during a time of heightened criticism of our public health institutions."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Evan Vucci/AP Photo

Source: The New York Times

This isn't the first time Children's Health Defense, which Kennedy founded, has clashed with Meta. In 2020, it sued Facebook claiming the platform was censoring "valid and truthful speech." It's currently appealing a decision to dismiss the lawsuit.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (C), greets people during an anti-lockdown protest in Berlin, Germany as Michael Ballweg (L), founder of the Querdenker movement, looks on, on August 29, 2020.Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Sources: Vanity Fair and Deadline

Kennedy's personal account was removed from Instagram last year, though his Facebook page (with more than 340,000 followers) and his Twitter account (with nearly 440,000 followers) are still active.


Facebook

Source: New York Times

Kennedy, a former attorney for the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council and a nephew of President John F. Kennedy, has become the most prominent face of the anti-vaccine movement, which has launched countless claims and conspiracy theories that have been debunked.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attends a "Green Our Vaccines" rally in 2008Paul Morigi/Getty

His vaccine skepticism stretches back to 2005, when he published an article falsely claiming that the mercury-based preservative thimerosal was related to autism in children, which has been refuted by scientific organizations like the CDC.

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Sources: Washington Post and Scientific American

Kennedy, the son of the assassinated U.S. attorney general, has doubled down on his anti-vaccine stance since, despite the medical community's pushback. During his Air America radio program in 2011, he claimed that government scientists were covering up a "massive fraud."

Rich Polk/Getty Images for Waterkeeper Alliance

Source: Washington Post

Last year, he published an open letter to President Biden on the Children's Health Defense's online newsletter The Defender, claiming that the COVID-19 vaccines "cause injuries and death" — a mischaracterization in that "injuries" were common side effects like headaches, and that "deaths" were largely unrelated.

President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attend the 44th Kennedy Center Honors at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, on December 05, 2021.Paul Morigi/Getty Images

Source: Vanity Fair

Also last year, Kennedy released an online film fueling distrust in the vaccines among communities of color, invoking past medical-related trauma. Scientists and experts have pushed back against its misleading statistics and imagery.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaks against legislation to narrow exemptions to state mandated vaccines during a rally at the state Capitol Tuesday, May 14, 2019, in Albany, N.Y.AP Photo/Hans Pennink

Source: NPR

Kennedy has repeatedly attacked the nation's top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, including last year in a book that made the baseless claim that Fauci and Bill Gates were profiting from COVID-19 vaccines. He's also accused Fauci, without evidence, of having a financial stake in Moderna, a pharmaceutical company that developed one of the vaccines.

Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, testifies during a US Senate Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing to examine Covid-19, focusing on an update on the federal response in Washington, DC, on September 23, 2020.GRAEME JENNINGS/POOL/AFP via Getty ImagesMore

Source: New York Times and Newsweek

Earlier this year, Kennedy railed against vaccine mandates at a rally in Washington, saying that they will "make you a slave." He also compared government efforts to mitigate the pandemic's effects to the Holocaust, implying that the US now is worse: "Even in Hitler Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland."

Eric Vitale/Getty Images

Sources: New York Times and CNN

Kennedy's anti-vaccine stance and rhetoric have alarmed his family. In January, after the rally, his sister Kerry tweeted that his "lies and fear-mongering yesterday were both sickening and destructive."

Twitter

Source: Twitter
Canada beats out the US for the most liveable cities in North America – but can you afford to live there?


Dina Al-Shibeeb
Fri, August 19, 2022


Canada beats out the US for the most liveable cities in North America – but can you afford to live there?

If you're looking for the best place to live, you might have to look outside the U.S.

No American cities ranked in the top 10 of the Global Liveability Ranking, a yearly assessment published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the Economist’s sister company. The survey ranks 172 cities (previously 140) for their urban quality of life based on factors such as health care and political stability.

No North American cities managed to break the top three with those spots going to Vienna, Copenhagen and Zurich. Three major Canadian cities — Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver — were listed within the top 10.

The survey also breaks down their rankings to look at the best cities in regions, like North America.

Atlanta is the U.S.’s No. 1 city, ranking fifth in North America. Notably, Los Angeles has moved up the ranks to take the 37 spot and Houston took a tumble down the list coming in at 87 this year. Four out of the top five North American cities to live in are in Canada, with Calgary, Alberta ranked as No. 1, followed by Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

However, if you're considering a move up north, know that "liveable" doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be cheaper to live there.

What makes a city liveable?

More than 30 factors related to education, culture, the environment, health care, infrastructure and stability were analyzed. The index’s authors also explained that top cities were chosen by how they rebounded from the pandemic in addition to factoring in stability, good infrastructure and services and enjoyable leisure activities.

“Western European and Canadian cities dominate the top of our rankings,” the report said, citing how everyday life is “almost back to normal in these cities” after achieving high COVID-19 vaccination rates and ending lockdowns. In terms of the U.S.'s presence on the list, Houston was one of the biggest risers in the early 2021 survey after an early lifting of covid restrictions. However, as other cities followed suit, Houston fell 25 spots in the 2022 rankings.
High ranking in spite of the housing affordability problem?

When publishing our report for the five best Canadian cities for housing affordability and job growth, none of the EIU’s picks made the list.

While the large urban hubs — like Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal — offer the most lucrative jobs and career options, they also have some of the most expensive real estate in the nation.

A July 20 Leger survey, commissioned by RE/MAX, revealed that about 64% of Canadians list relocation among the top sacrifices they’d be willing to make to buy affordable homes.

The survey also found that 43% said the high price of real estate in their area was a barrier to entry into the market. Other hurdles include a higher cost of living (35%); a shortfall in salary (24%); market volatility (24%), and rising interest rates (24%).

This explains why the Canadian federal government is providing $1.5 billion Canadian ($1.1 billion U.S.) to extend the Rapid Housing Initiative and create at least 6,000 additional affordable housing units across Canada.

Is there hope with Calgary and Montreal?


When looking at benchmark real estate prices, both Calgary and Montreal are significantly more affordable when compared to Toronto and Vancouver, where prices for a detached home start at around $1 million.

In Montreal, the average home price reached $576,760 in July after a 6% annual increase. The highly-coveted detached homes for Canadian families saw their prices increase by 10% year-over-year to reach $550,000 in Montreal, and a median condo's average price increased by 9% year-over-year to $392,000.

So how about income? According to Statistics Canada, the average income in Montreal for 2020 is $49,600. This is lower than Canada’s national average, of $51,300 in 2020.

Calgary’s benchmark price of real estate reached $581,600 in July, going up 13% higher than levels reported last year. Detached homes in Calgary rose by 9% year-over-year to reach about $637,000 in July, and condos went up 6% to hit $275,000.

Calgary’s average income, meanwhile, is above the national average at $58,500 in 2020.

The issue of income vs housing prices

Vancouver’s benchmark price for detached homes is more than $2 million, representing a 13.4% increase from June 2021. Condo prices in Vancouver rose by 11.4% from July last year to hit a benchmark price of CA$755,000 (roughly $600,000).

With Vancouver’s real estate market being so expensive, one would expect the average income to be higher or even higher than Calgary’s, right?

Not exactly. According to Statistics Canada, the average income in Vancouver equals the national average at $52,600.

For Toronto, the average selling price is about $1.5 million, which remained 5.3% above the June 2021 level. The Greater Toronto Area’s prices for detached homes in July averaged about $1.4 million, semi-detached were about CA$1 million, and condo apartments were about $719,237.

Toronto’s average income too isn’t that much higher than the national average. For 2020, Torontians on average earned $52,700.

For many Americans and Canadians, seeing their country’s home prices outgrowing its income isn’t breaking news.

While all G7 countries have seen their house price-to-income ratio rise over the past year, Canada has one of the highest house price-to-income ratios out of 38 developed countries, according to the latest index from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, the ratio index reached a whopping 141.9, meaning, home prices surged at a rate 41.9% faster than incomes since 2015, OECD’s data showed. Meanwhile, the U.S. ratio index was 130.5 in Q4 2021.

What makes Toronto and Vancouver so expensive?

Last year, Ontario received half of all the newcomers to Canada, with the majority aiming to settle in Toronto where all the lucrative job opportunities are.

Known for its picturesque beauty, metro Vancouver also attracts lots of immigrants. It is expected that population growth in British Columbia will once again be driven by immigration this year, when it will welcome a record of more than 70,000 permanent residents.

“Our region continues to grow because we attract people and businesses from all around the world,” said Toronto Regional Real Estate Board CEO John DiMichele in July.

DiMichele also urged policymakers at all levels to build more homes as “housing demand” will “remain strong over the long term.”

WHAT WE HAVE IS; 
MEDICARE FOR ALL, 
A SECURE PROFITABLE PUBLIC PENSION PLAN, 
A NATIONAL EI SYSTEM,
AND A SOCIALIST PARTY FEDERALLY AND PROVINCIALLY THE NDP


IMAGINE THIS A DECADE AGO
USA
Judge orders Brighton to put marijuana proposal to voters


Jennifer Eberbach, Livingston Daily
Fri, August 19, 2022 

Marijuana businesses in Pinckney may make the long held secrecy of pot use a thing of the past.


A Livingston County judge ordered the city of Brighton to allow voters to decide whether recreational marijuana stores can open in the city after the city's clerk rejected signed ballot petitions from a citizen's group earlier this month on a technicality.

The city won't appeal Chief Circuit Court Judge Michael Hatty's order to put the question on the Nov. 8 ballot. A motion to appeal Hatty's decision failed in a 4-3 vote after council members went into a closed session to discuss it.

Mayor Pro Tem Jim Bohn said Friday city officials will hold a special meeting at 7:30 p.m. on Monday to review and approve ballot language.

"We have to comply with putting together ballot language," to submit to the county clerk, Bohn said.

City Clerk Tara Brown said Thursday she had not yet certified the petition because she had not yet received a copy of Hatty's final opinion and was waiting to see how city officials would decide to proceed.

A message seeking further comment was left with Brown Friday morning.

The Say Yes to Brighton Committee circulated ballot petitions to repeal the city's ban on adult-use retail marijuana establishments and allow at least two dispensaries to operate in the city.

The committee successfully collected 746 signatures, enough to get it on the ballot, and submitted petitions to Brown on Aug. 1, according to Livingston County court records.

MORE: Food Truck Fridays in downtown Pinckney expects biggest event yet on Friday

On Aug. 5, Brown notified the committee she had rejected the petitions due to a formatting issue that did not strictly comply with state election law.

The committee sued the city, its elections department and Brown, requesting an emergency hearing.

"Defendants (the city and Brown) are hereby enjoined from printing any ballots for the November 2022 general election that do not include the ballot question proposed by the Say Yes to Brighton Committee," Hatty wrote in an order signed Tuesday.

The city and Brown had an opportunity late Wednesday afternoon to make a case for why Hatty should not rule in the committee's favor at a show cause hearing.

John Janiszewski, an attorney representing Say Yes to Brighton Committee, with Detroit-based law firm Dykema Gossett, said Hatty ruled in the committee's favor at the hearing, upholding the terms of his previous order.

The judge's ruling "compels the city clerk to affirmatively act in a manner consistent with his ruling, meaning they have to certify everything and place the language on the ballot," Janiszewski said.

Messages seeking comment were left Thursday morning with Hatty's office and the city's attorney Michael Homier.

According to the ballot petition, voters would be asked whether to initiate an ordinance in the city that would allow for two adult-use retail marijuana establishments in the city, effective Dec. 1.

The petition language said the dispensaries would be allowed to offer delivery, drive-thru and exterior walk-up windows. The establishments would not be allowed within 800 feet of a public or private grade school or parks larger than 1 acre.
Will proposal make Nov. 8 ballot?

Livingston County Elections Coordinator Joseph Bridgman told the Livingston Daily Thursday that county elections officials are aware of the matter, but had not received any official notification from the city or court.

A message seeking further comment was left with Bridgman Friday morning.

The deadline for ballot language to be certified was Tuesday, and local clerks receiving ballot wording must forward it to the county clerk within two days of receiving it, he said Thursday.

Bridgman said the big question is whether the proposal will make it on the Nov. 8 ballot now that the deadlines have passed.

"At this point, the city hasn't certified it to us to be on the ballot."

Brown said she believes there would time to get it on the Nov. 8 ballot, depending on when the ballots are printed.

"It’s all a tight timeline, we’ll have to investigate that," she said.

In 2018, about 56% of voters in the city supported a state proposal that legalized recreational marijuana for adults 21 and older in the state.
Committee calls rejection 'frivolous'

"This is a frivolous attempt to disenfranchise the voters of the City of Brighton and should be rejected by the Court," the committee's attorneys argued in court documents.

Attorneys for the city argued Brown "properly performed her duties" and asked the court to dismiss the suit.

MORE: Howell nonprofit steps in to revive rundown motel in Howell Township

The city and Brown argued that a warning required to appear on ballot petitions was in the wrong place on the petitions.

The warning, which says if a petition circulator does not comply with election law, any signatures they collected will be invalid, appears on the upper right side of the petitions.

The city argued that the petitions were rejected because the warning should have appeared below a checkbox indicating whether the signature collector was paid or a volunteer.

In a letter Brown sent to the committee on Aug. 5, she said the petitions were rejected as "insufficient" due to the formatting issue.

"My job is pretty black and white, it’s to follow the law," Brown said Thursday. "That’s what I have to follow. I have no opinion on the matter, of course, because that's up for the voters to decide and not me."

City officials previously considered lifting the city's ban on marijuana businesses and creating an ordinance that would determine where in the city they could go and other regulations. They ultimately decided to reaffirm the ban.

Bohn said he was in favor of the city creating its own ordinance.

"I think the city needs to try to control their own destiny and have an ordinance," he said. "My view is we should try to get ahead of this and control where these would be best placed."

He said the process for creating an ordinance takes time and likely could not be done before the general election.

"With this one, I believe the train has left the station. It's basically fast-tracked, and we're heading down the home stretch now," he said.

Contact Livingston Daily reporter Jennifer Eberbach at jeberbach@livingstondaily.com.

This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: Brighton ordered to put recreational marijuana proposal to voters
We praise people as ‘Good Samaritans,’ but there’s a complex history behind the phrase

Terry Giles, Professor of Theology, Gannon University
Fri, August 19, 2022 
THE CIONVER

Samaritans celebrate Shavuot atop Mount Gerizim, near the West Bank. Nidal Eshtayeh/Xinhua via Getty Images

Good Samaritan” is a label often used to describe someone acting selflessly to benefit others, even if a total stranger.

Some may recognize that the phrase has its origin in a biblical story, one of Jesus’ parables recounted in the Book of Luke, Chapter 10. In this story, a traveler from the Samaritan community, a Middle Eastern ethnic and religious group, happens upon a man who had been robbed and beaten by the side of the road.

The injured man was ignored by two men passing by, both of whom belonged to groups who were religiously respected in Jesus’ Jewish community: a priest and a Levite, a tribe with special religious responsibilities. In contrast, the Samaritan gives first aid to the victim, places him upon his donkey, and transports him to an inn where the beaten man is housed, cared for and fed – with all his expenses paid by the Samaritan traveler.


As a professor of biblical studies who has written about Samaritans, I’ve learned that while most of my students have heard of the “good Samaritan,” fewer are aware of the social and historical realities reflected in the story – much less that the Samaritan community still exists today.

Samaritanism and Judaism share a common origin in ancient Israel, but the rift between the two communities had already been growing for centuries before Jesus’ birth.

The group’s sacred text is its own version of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: what Christians know as the Pentateuch, and Jews call the Torah. The Samaritan center of worship is on Mount Gerizim in the present-day West Bank, instead of Jerusalem, where the Jewish temple stood. The faith has its own priesthood, religious calendar and theology. According to Samaritan belief, a messianic figure called the Taheb will usher in an era of Divine Favor, during which the ark of the covenant will be revealed, and Mount Gerizim will be restored as the only recognized center for worship.


The Samaritan high priest sits in front of Samaritan religious scrolls around 1900. Print Collector/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Throughout the group’s history – particularly during the first century, the backdrop for the story in the Book of Luke – the Samaritans have often been marginalized and discriminated against by their neighbors. The relationship between ancient Jews and their Samaritan neighbors was hostile, so people listening to the story would have been shocked that the hero was a Samaritan.

Effectively, the parable turns social reality on its head. Those expected to act righteously and model behavior for others to imitate failed where the Samaritan succeeded. The parable challenged social norms and prejudice based simply on ethnic origin, religious affiliation and where people made their home.


‘The Parable of the Good Samaritan,’ painted around 1575, from the Art History Museum in Vienna. Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Biblical mentions


The story of the Good Samaritan is not the only time the Samaritan community makes its presence felt in the New Testament literature.

Just one chapter earlier, Luke 9, describes an unwelcome reception Jesus’ disciples receive as they are about to enter a Samaritan village. Jesus and his party are making their way to Jerusalem: an offense to the Samaritans’ belief that Mount Gerizim is the proper place for worship, an issue that often functioned as shorthand for all that separated the two communities.

The villagers therefore choose not to help the travelers on their way. In response, the disciples are ready to call down divine retribution as punishment from heaven. Jesus will have none of it, and rebukes the disciples while leaving the villagers in peace.

The Gospel of John depicts an especially significant conversation between Jesus and a Samaritan. Worn out by a recent journey, he asks a woman to draw water for him at a well. She is rather taken aback, for as the editor of the the chapter explains, Jews don’t mingle with Samaritans. Nevertheless, she does as he requests. Their ensuing conversation mentions major tenets of belief where Samaritanism and Judaism differ, despite their many similarities: their contrasting ideas about prophets, “Messiahs” and where to worship. According to the story, she and many people from the nearby vicinity become followers of Jesus.

Early converts


In fact, it is quite likely the Samaritans were among the first followers of Jesus’ movement.


In the Book of Matthew, Jesus directs his disciples to preach only to the house of Israel, and not to Samaritans or non-Jews, seeming to display an anti-Samaritan bias. The Gospel of John paints quite a different picture, however, first with the account of the Samaritan women at the well.

Later in John, when detractors accuse Jesus of having a demon and being a Samaritan, he only denies the first – seemingly refusing to distance himself from the Samaritans.

The Book of Acts, which describes the start of the Christian church, includes the story of Stephen, who is described as the first martyr among Jesus’ followers. Acts 7 depicts Stephen trying to defend himself against charges of blasphemy, using a text that is at least influenced by Samaritan tradition, if not a version of what will become the Samaritan Pentateuch itself.

The Book of Hebrews in the New Testament also shows Samaritan tendencies, such as referencing heroes from Samaritan tradition.

Despite this important role in the beginning of the Jesus movement, the relationship between Christianity and Samaritanism has not always been positive. The group has often been required to navigate between much larger and more powerful groups, whether they be Jewish, Christian or Muslim. Violence, displacement and conversions – both voluntary and forced – have dramatically diminished the Samaritan community over the centuries.
21st century Samaritans

Today, the Samaritans number somewhere around 1,000 people. Most are in communities outside Tel Aviv and near the West Bank city of Nablus, where they find themselves situated between Israeli and Palestinian cultures and institutions. Most Samaritans hold Israeli citizenship and have Israeli health insurance, but many also attend Palestinian schools, speak Arabic and have both Hebrew and Arabic names.

The small size of the modern Samaritan community makes them easy to overlook. But for those who are willing to listen, the message of the Good Samaritan – a message of kindness, not blinded by nationalistic, religious or ethnic prejudice – resonates as loudly as it ever has.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Terry Giles, Gannon University.

Read more:

Proclaim debt amnesty throughout all the land? A biblical solution to a present-day problem


What the Bible actually says about abortion may surprise you

HOUSING FOR $$$ NOT PEOPLE

Housing market ‘extremely volatile’ with private equity accounting for a third of the sales: Expert


Inflation and recession fears turned a once red hot housing market into a cool down.

Fluctuating mortgage rates dropped below 5% and then up again, with the rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage at 5.22% from 4.99% the week prior.

“Housing used to be a very stable asset class and now it's extremely volatile,” Glenn Kelman, CEO at Redfin, told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “One reason is that institutions used to account for about a quarter of the sales, but now it's about a third. You have real estate investment trusts (REITs) all active in the single family home market.”

Redfin analysis showed real estate investors bought 18.4% of homes sold in the fourth quarter of 2021, up from 12.6% a year earlier.

This year has been what some experts have called the worst housing affordability crisis, with many entry level and first-time buyers pushed out of the market.

For homebuyers wondering why it’s harder to win a bid, it may have something to do with the fact that they're not bidding against another family, but instead an institutional investor.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY 14th District) have criticized institutional investors for buying up homes, squeezing out first-time buyers and turning the properties into overpriced rentals.

When institutional investors buy and sell properties, the mindset is different from a traditional homebuyer or seller.

Huntington Beach, CA - April 22: The median home price in Orange Count has reached $1 million for the first time in history. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“An iBuyer is going to price ahead of the market and mark it down every week until it sells [and] makes the market more like the stock market, more volatile, more up and down,” Kelman said. “If you've lived in a house for 30 years and raised your kids there, there's no way you're going to mark it down after two weeks on the market.”

The strategy of private equity and REITs has caused a reduction in home prices, especially in areas that received a pandemic boom from domestic migration due to the ability to work remotely — like Boise, Salt Lake City, and Denver.

The upside is that this liquidation is causing home prices to come down, depending on where you are. If you’re still in the housing market, you may benefit — not good news if you’re selling your home.

“[REITs and iBuyers] are going to liquidate their inventory much faster, and they're the ones causing a correction more than anything,” Kelman said. “It's good when home prices go down.”

Ronda is a personal finance senior reporter for Yahoo Money and attorney with experience in law, insurance, education, and government. Follow her on Twitter @writesronda

‘This is war’: Protester arrested as KC approves change to housing affordability rate


Anna Spoerre, Kevin Hardy
Thu, August 18, 2022
 Kansas City, Missouri, United States


Chaos erupted Thursday at City Hall as Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas shouted for his colleagues to keep voting over the chanting of KC Tenants members who overpowered the council meeting.

One leader with the advocacy group was arrested and escorted out of council chambers as dozens of KC Tenants members demonstrated against an ordinance proposed by Lucas that would grow the city’s housing inventory.

Lucas’ proposal eases the requirements for developers to create affordable housing. Opponents have balked at the city’s calculation for affordability, which would classify nearly $1,200 a month for a one-bedroom apartment as affordable. Critics have said this cost doesn’t reflect affordable rent options for most working class Kansas Citians. Others have said the plan was too rushed. An attempt by Councilwoman Andrea Bough, District 6 at-large, to hold the ordinance a week failed.

Councilwoman Melissa Robinson, who represents District 3 on the East Side, voted in favor of the ordinance, arguing that it would make way for more homes and a growing middle class in the district.

Robinson grew up in the district where she shared a block with professionals like doctors and a judge. She wants to see that again.

“We need people to come back home to the 3rd District,” she said.

Yet, she acknowledged that the ordinance is not going to improve living situations for those most vulnerable.

“This is not affordability for everyone,” she said. “But it’s affordability for some people, especially middle-class people.”


Maya Neal, a member of KC Tenants, was handcuffed and led out of the Kansas City Council chamber Thursday afternoon after protesters began shouting as city council members debated legislation on affordable housing. About 50 members of the city wide tenant union were on hand to protest the passing of housing legislation despite tenants showing strong opposition to the current definition of affordability.


But Councilman Brandon Ellington, District 3 at-large, noted that the ordinance does nothing to incentivize development in distressed parts of the city.

“This ain’t for the East Side,” he said. “This ain’t for the 3rd District.”

Ellington underscored that all the ordinance does is change the affordability threshold for developers.

“Anything else is theory,” he said.

The ordinance ultimately passed 9-4 before the overwhelming chants of KC Tenants forced council members to prematurely adjourn the meeting and hold over remaining agenda items until next week.

Ellington voted against the ordinance alongside Bough, Councilman Eric Bunch, District 4, and Heather Hall, District 1.

The council also moved legislation putting a $175 million bond issue before voters in November. If approved, the new debt would fund improvements to Bartle Hall, city pools and add $50 million into the city’s affordable housing trust fund. All council members but Ellington voted in favor.
The housing plan

The housing plan will create more lenient affordable housing requirements for private developers seeking city incentives. Under this change, the city will need to set aside fewer affordable units or the cost of units marked affordable will be raised.

Lucas’ legislative package is in response to a measure unanimously approved by council in January 2021 requiring that real estate developers seeking government financial aid include affordable units in most apartment projects, or pay into the housing trust fund. That legislation required one-fifth of the units in most taxpayer-subsidized apartment buildings to be affordable. Half of those had to be affordable to families earning 70% of the area median income and the other half to those earning 30%.

The new proposal changes that. In exchange for incentives, developers will have to set aside one-fifth of their units to those earning 60% of the area median income.

At that rate, the city would deem a one-bedroom apartment that costs $1,172 per month affordable to a single person. A family of three earning about $53,000 per year, for example, would qualify for a subsidized two-bedroom apartment that rents for $1,319 per month.

In the past 18 months, since that legislation passed, no new apartment complexes seeking taxpayer-funded incentives were proposed in Kansas City. Lucas has said he hopes the latest legislation will boost the supply of housing in the city and help slow the rapid rise in rents for people who can least afford it.

“We’re a city that needs to build more housing, and I’m concerned when people aren’t building housing in Kansas City,” Lucas said in an earlier interview. “We need more product to make sure that we can have places for people to live in our city, and I think this is a bold proposal that does that.”

A second piece of the mayor’s legislative package was held Wednesday. That piece, if passed, would fundamentally alter the approval process for projects receiving taxpayer incentives by giving the city manager power to approve standardized incentives for projects, rather than the City Council and economic development boards that now have oversight.

The mayor has said this change would help “fast track” projects, adding that developers have said it’s too difficult to build in Kansas City. Affordable housing advocates have argued that this ordinance would reduce opportunities for debate through public meetings.


Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas struggled to communicate with City Council members while members of KC Tenants protested Thursday afternoon in council chambers at City Hall. The council left the chamber to continue their meeting elsewhere.


KC Tenants opposes mayor’s plan


KC Tenants has been among the most vocal opposition to the ordinance.

The advocacy group conducted a survey with more than 700 participants who reported earning $2,500 a month, on average, and spending about $1,400 of it on housing expenses.

This comes out to more than half of their monthly earnings.

Those who put more than 30% of their income towards housing are considered cost-burdened, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Those who put more than half their income towards housing are considered “severely cost-burdened.” This can affect people’s ability to afford other essential items, like groceries.

In Kansas City, the median cost of rent is $1,326, up 13% since July 2021. In certain ZIP codes, the median rent price is up by 42%. For many, these housing costs are rising much faster than incomes, Michael Frisch, urban planning professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, previously told The Star.


KC Tenants has pointed to inflation as a reason for affordability numbers looking higher than expected.

Tiana Caldwell, an organizer with the group and a member of the city’s health commission, was the sole person arrested Thursday, KC Tenants leaders said.

“I helped to found KC Tenants three and a half years ago and the mayor looked me in the face and promised he would fight for me. Now he’s selling me out,” she said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “They showed me I have to fight to survive. I’ll keep fighting. I’m going to be here and they’re going to have to face me every time. I have no fear. This is war.”

The Star’s Kynala Phillips and Mike Hendricks contributed.


Members of KC Tenants disrupted a City council meeting Thursday afternoon at City Hall. The protesters began shouting as city council members debated legislation on affordable housing. About 50 members of the city wide tenant union were on hand to protest the passing of housing legislation despite tenants showing strong opposition to the current definition of affordability.

Kansas City relaxes rules for housing developers. Here’s what that could mean for rent



Kynala Phillips
Sat, August 20, 2022 

In a heated Thursday meeting, the Kansas City Council voted to relax affordable housing requirements for developers seeking tax incentives from the city, walking back on a set of rules that the council approved unanimously about a year and a half ago.

Passed in a 9-4 vote, the ordinance allows tax incentives to go to developers without the requirement of setting aside “extremely affordable” units for tenants with low incomes. Developers will still have to set aside some units as affordable, but the rent rate for these units is higher: about $1,200 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.


The ordinance received intense pushback from housing groups, namely the citywide tenant union KC Tenants, but also Kansas City Public Schools because of the way tax breaks for developers affect how much potential property tax revenue will go to city schools.


Kansas City tenants make an average monthly income of $2,500 and pay more than half of that to housing costs, according to early findings from a KC Tenants online survey with 700 respondents. Paying the city-deemed affordable rent of $1,200 for the average survey respondent would still take up nearly half of their income, which the federal government considers a “severe cost-burden.”

This new ordinance was just a piece of a package of housing policies Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas proposed recently. Here’s what it actually means for renters, and how other recent city council decisions could affect rent, too.

What exactly did the city council pass?

The city council passed one piece of a new housing plan, also known as ordinance 220700.

In exchange for tax incentives from the city, the new ordinance requires housing developers to set aside one-fifth—or 20%—of the housing units in a new development as “affordable” for people who are earning 60% of the median family income. The remaining majority of housing units in proposed developments can be market rate.

The council also voted to add a $175 million bond issue for Kansas City voters to decide on in November. If approved, $50 million of that money would go toward the city’s affordable Housing Trust Fund—more on that in a second.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas struggled to communicate with city council members while members of KC Tenants protested Thursday afternoon in council chambers at City Hall. About 50 members of the citywide tenant union were on hand to oppose the passing of housing legislation.



How does the city decide what rent is affordable?

The city calculates what’s considered “affordable” based on the federally-set median family income for the Kansas City metro area. This median income number factors in the incomes of homeowners and renters in both rich and poor areas in the metro, including areas like Johnson County.

For a single person, the area median income is about $68,000. For a family of four, It’s about $98,000.

The city uses this federally-set number to come up with what the income limits and rent caps will be for specially set aside “affordable” apartments in new developments.

Affordable housing advocates criticize this method because they argue that including higher income homeowners and jurisdictions skews the median income higher than what many city tenants actually make. They argue that with this kind of calculation, even rents that are deemed “affordable” by the city are still unaffordable to many Kansas City tenants.

What’s so different about the new affordability rules from the old ones?

The main change is that the city raised the income threshold it will use to calculate what rent is affordable for the specially set aside units in new developments.

Under the newly passed rules, the city will base the rent caps and income limits for affordable apartments on 60% of the median income.

The past requirements included apartments for those making up to 30% of the median income, as well as those making up to 70% of the median income.

That change from the previous rules setting aside apartments for those making 30% of the median income, to the new rules setting aside apartments for those making 60% of the median income, almost doubles the cost of rent that the city now considers affordable.

The mayor’s reasoning for changing these rules is that no developers applied for tax incentives in the first year and a half these affordability rules were in place.

District 3 Councilwoman Melissa Robinson voted in favor of the relaxed requirements, but she acknowledged that the new rules won’t benefit Kansas Citians with lower incomes.

“This is not affordability for everyone,” she said on Thursday. “But it’s affordability for some people, especially middle-class people.”


Last week, Mayor Quinton Lucas unveiled a legislative package that relaxes affordability requirements for developers building new housing in Kansas City.


What do these new rules actually mean for rent?


When developers get money from the city to build new housing, they will need to keep the rent for a certain number of apartments affordable to those making up to 60% of the median income. Then after that, the majority of the units in these new tax-backed developments will be market rate.

According to the city’s calculations, 60% of the median income for a two-person household in the Kansas City metro is about $47,000. One of these set aside affordable one bedroom apartments for that household would have a rent around $1,200.

The benchmark for affordable rent changes depending on the size and income of the household.

A family of four earning around $59,000 per year, for instance, could qualify for a three bedroom apartment with rent around $1,500.

What’s the reason behind the change?

Since those previous regulations were put in place in 2021, the city didn’t get any applications from developers looking to receive tax incentives and build affordable housing. The mayor suggested that relaxing the requirements would encourage developers to break ground throughout the city.

The city’s Economic Development Corporation did receive 31 applications for housing projects looking for tax breaks right before the council passed the 2021 ordinance for affordability regulations. That was the most applications received for projects seeking tax breaks in over three years.

“Unfortunately, since that time we’ve not seen the production of units,” Lucas said during the Neighborhood Planning and Development Committee on Wednesday.
Did the council pass anything else that will affect housing?

Yes, council also voted to put a $175 million bond issue on Kansas City voters’ November ballot.

This money would be coming from a general obligation bond, which is almost like a loan for local governments.

If voters approve the bond, it would put money toward a number of projects in the city.

Those projects include $45 million in repairs to Bartle Hall, $80 million in community center renovations (think swimming pools, playgrounds and other amenities) and $50 million toward the city’s Housing Trust Fund.

City residents voted on a similar GO bond in 2017, which went toward repairing the city’s infrastructure. The $800 million bond will be paid back by way of city taxes, including property taxes.
What is the Housing Trust Fund, and how will the extra money be used?

The Housing Trust Fund is a pot of government money that the city has reserved for helping fund affordable housing projects throughout the city.

Last month, 14 affordable housing projects were approved for $8 million in funding.

The Housing Trust Fund currently does not have close to the amount of money in it that it was designed to have. The fund is made up of $12.5 million of federal COVID relief funds from the American Rescue Plan, and an additional $10.5 million in local money that will be distributed over the next 25 years.

If voters approve the upcoming $175 million bond issue in November, the Housing Trust Fund will receive $50 million, which will put it closer to its intended $75 million budget.

Projects applying to receive money from the trust fund are screened and reviewed by a board of local housing advocates and experts. Those proposals are then sent to the city council for approval.

So what’s next?


The mayor’s original housing plan also included a measure that would fundamentally change the way new development projects getting tax breaks are approved in City Hall by giving the city manager power to approve standardized incentives for projects, rather than the City Council and economic development boards that now have oversight.

The mayor has said this change would help “fast track” projects, adding that developers have said it’s too difficult to build in Kansas City. Affordable housing advocates have argued that this ordinance would reduce opportunities for debate through public meetings.

This piece of the plan was put on hold during Wednesday’s Neighborhood Planning and Development committee meeting, as well as an ordinance that would regulate accessory dwelling units.

The Star’s Kevin Hardy and Anna Spoerre contributed reporting.

This story was republished to change the headline from “Here’s how that could raise rents” to “Here’s what that could mean for rent” because the ordinance only directly changes the rules and raises the rent caps for future developments. It does not directly change current rents in Kansas City development projects.