Weekend Digest: The Super Bowl and Olympics Edition

For our weekend business and political readers:

BANKROLLING THE OLYMPICS
They are Putin’s pals and have enough consonants in their names to win a gold medal at Scrabble. But the gold medals that will begin to be awarded next week are just a small part of the cache of $50 billion Russia has spent on the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Russia has managed to spend $50 billion, more than quadruple its initial $12 billion budget and more than any other Olympics, according to a report by Forbes’ SportsMoney, surpassing even the summer events in Athens ($15 billion), London ($14 billion) and the previous spending champion, Beijing ($40 billion). Among those helping foot the record-high bill for Russian president Vladimir Putin’s dream are a handful of Russia’s wealthiest individuals.

Who are these cast of characters, how much are they worth, and what is their investment in Sochi’s Winter Olympics? Click here to find out.

RUSSIAN ACTIVIST ATTACKS BILLIONS SPENT FOR SOCHI OLYMPICS
His name is Alexei Navalny and he is a Russian anti-corruption campaigner. The Guardian reports that Navalny has launched a website to publish a wide range of data alleging corruption related to the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Navalny claims that Russia spent twice as much as necessary to build at least 10 of the Olympic venues, including the Bolshoi Ice Palace, the Fisht Stadium and the speed-skating arena.

Allegations of corruption have dogged preparations for the Sochi Games for years. Navalny’s new website Sochi.FBK.com combines data gathered in his own investigations with media reports and other activists’ analysis.

The website details its information in both Russian and English.

“Athletes are not the only people who compete in Sochi,” Navalny, who finished second in Moscow’s mayoral election last year, wrote on the website. “Officials and businessmen also took part in the Games and turned them into a source of income.”

For the rest of the story and Russian President Vladamir Putin’s reaction, go to this link.

ONE SMALL BUSINESS WILL WIN BIG DURING SUPER BOWL
An NFL Champion will be crowned and one small business will join the parade of ads during the Super Bowl. The catch…that little business will not have to pay the estimated $4 million for the spot. It will be free to the winner of a contest sponsored by Intuit.

Intuit, the company that sells software tools including Quicken and TurboTax, is sponsoring a promotion called Small Business, Big Game. It’s giving a professionally produced ad during the Super Bowl to the small business with, among other things, the most votes and the most inspiring story. Intuit says some 15,000 small businesses entered the contest, from an organic ice cream truck in Los Angeles to a pet spa in Ashburn, Va. Call it American Idol for little entrepreneurs.

NPR reports that Intuit’s primary customers are small businesses, and “So the whole idea was, ‘How do we put them on the world stage in a way that’s never been done before?’ And that led us to the concept of a commercial in the big game.”

To be eligible, businesses had to have no more than 50 employees. Contestants posted online videos on a special website, telling their stories and urging people to vote for them. Ultimately, four finalists were selected.

Who are they?  Click on this link to find out.

HOME BUSINESS BOOM IN CALIFORNIA
After being busted for selling homemade bread, Los Angeles resident Mark Stambler became an activist and fought back.

He started researching other states’ cottage food laws, which allow homemade food to be sold. To qualify as a cottage food, it must be designated by the state as “non-potnetially hazardous,” meaning it has a low risk of spreading bacteria.

Out of the blue, he got a call from his Assemblyman, Mike Gatto, who read The Los Angeles Times profile, and wanted to help him and other small businesses.

Forbes details how Stambler helped Assemblyman Gatto draft the California Homemade Food Act (AB 1616) to legalize cottage food. Upon signing the bill, Gov. Jerry Brown praised AB 1616 as a way to “make it easier for people to do business in California.”

To find out how many homemade food brokers now prepare food at home after the law went in to effect a year ago, and how business is “cooking-along” go to this link.

THE NO AUTO SUPER BOWL
Lucky ticket holders able to get inside Sunday’s Super Bowl, who will have journeyed from all-over to get there, possibly will have one more journey to make before they get inside the New Jersey stadium.

Sunday’s big game, at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., will be the first edition of the Super Bowl to take place in the most transit-heavy region of the country. And New Jersey and New York officials have made clear they plan to take full advantage of the panoply of rail and bus options while limiting how many fans can use private vehicles to get to the game.

“This is a mass transit Super Bowl,” New Jersey State Police Superintendent Col. Rick Fuentes said at a briefing for reporters on Wednesday.

For the 80,000 attending, there are only three ways to get to the game.

What are they? And you’ll be shocked at the tailgaiting rules. POLITICO has the story at this link.

UNPOPULARITY OF HOUSE MAY PLAY ROLE IN SENATE RACES
The ratings for Congress are at all-time lows and a lot of that unpopularity is saddled on the Republican-controlled House Of Representatives. The New York Times reports Democratic Senate hopefuls are aiming to take full advantage.

“They’re just trying to remind you these guys are members of a very unpopular body,” said Jennifer Duffy, the Senate analyst at Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election newsletter. “It’s something that worked well for them in 2012.”

Republicans start this election year with the strongest hand they have had since 2010: a Democratic president with weak approval ratings, an economy still struggling to spread the benefits of a slow recovery, the disastrous rollout of President Obama’s health care law, contested races for six Democratically held Senate seats in states carried by Mitt Romney, and the historical pattern that the party controlling the White House loses seats in a second midterm.

But to take control of the Senate, Republicans need to net six seats, and they will probably need to do it with candidates currently serving in House seats in Montana, Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia and Georgia.

It’s pretty simple,” said Ty Matsdorf, spokesman for the Senate Majority PAC, the main “super PAC” devoted to keeping the Senate in Democratic hands. “House Republicans are advancing and advocating an irresponsible, reckless agenda, and we are going to make sure voters in every one of these states know their record.”

For the complete story and analysis plus comments from the Mark Pryor and Tom Cotton camps, click on this link.

WWJD — WHAT WILL JEB DO?
Will he, or won’t he? Florida Governor Jeb Bush says he will make a decision on whether to run for president in 2016 at “the right time — later this year.”

“I don’t wake up each day saying, ‘Now what am I going do today to make the decision?’ I’m deferring the decision to the right time, which is later this year,” Bush said in an interview Wednesday with Miami CBS affiliate, WFOR.

The brother of former President George W. Bush and son of former President George H.W. Bush said he will make up his mind based on whether he can run an uplifting campaign.

“The decision will be based on, can I do it joyfully? Because I think we need candidates to lift our spirits; it’s a pretty pessimistic country right now,” Bush said. “And is it right for my family? So I don’t want to even think about that until the right time, and that’s later on.”

For a link to the interview and more on this developing story, go to this link from POLITICO.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON AND HER MIDDLE EAST CONTROVERSY
It has turned in to an international political controversy and it began when starlet Scarlett Johansson took a “lucrative” deal as a spokesperson for SodaStream, an at-home soda machine company. Problem is SodaStream is owned by an Israeli company that is located on the West Bank.

The complication is that, since 2007, she’s been a “global ambassador” for Oxfam, a well-respected NGO that fights poverty around the world, and which also opposes SodaStream’s decision to build a big factory in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

Oxfam did not like that Johansson was repping a company that, in its view, benefits from the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and from the Israeli settlements it sees as illegal and as “further[ing] the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support.”

Johansson defended SodaStream and this past Wednesday resigned her position at Oxfam. The controversy has grown complicated legs and to add to it all, Johansson is starring in a SodaStream ad that will air during the Super Bowl. (Not related to the political controversy, the original ad content was censored.)

You can take a look at the whole sticky situation and all the players by going to this link from The Washington Post.

“PUPPY LOVE” FROM BUDWEISER
Remember the heart-warming ad from last year’s Super Bowl involving a young Clydesdale and the man who raised the colt? It was voted the most popular ad and guess what? Get ready for the sequel this time involving a puppy and a Clydesdale.

The actor Don Jeanes returns to his role as the head of Warm Springs Ranch in Missouri, where the beer company raises its iconic Clydesdale horses. Actress (and former swimsuit model) Melissa Keller is introduced as the owner of a puppy adoption center next door.

A wily little Labrador Retriever manages to keep escaping to the horse farm to see his best bud, a Clydesdale.

What happens next?  Want to see it?  Go to this link for the full effect.

DISASTER INSPIRED SHELTER
After Hurricane Katrina, the disaster inspired Michael McDaniel to create an “innovative emergency housing system” he calls EXO. Fast Company says, “It’s a surprisingly simple alternative to house the over 32 million people who are displaced from natural disasters each year.”

Since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Michael McDaniell has spent the last eight years creating a rapid response emergency housing system that is unparalleled in the world of disaster relief solutions. McDaniel’s Reaction Housing Sytem prototype, The EXO, stands apart from its opponents through its low-cost, transportability, durability, and its easy-to-assemble “kit of parts” that can have you safe and warm inside its bullet-proof structure in under two minutes.

Unlike the infamous trailers that FEMA deployed in response to Katrina, which cost around $20,000 each and were mandated for one-time use only, EXOs are around $5,000, are reusable, recyclable, and because of their stackability, can be transported at a rate of 28 units per semi-truck load vs. one unit per truck for each FEMA Trailer.

Although not yet in production, the 80 square foot unit is based on the design “of a simple styrofoam cup” and comes in two pieces. To find out why the units are so rugged and how they work, go to this link.