Weekend Digest: The Happy Hour For Cows Edition

For our weekend business and political readers:

HOW TO LIGHTEN YOUR STATE’S TAX BURDEN
According to Bloomberg News, it’s a pretty easy routine. What you do is make other states pay for it, and that’s exactly what Alaska and Wyoming have done.

Alaska charges a “severance” tax on oil extraction that ends up being paid by consumers of petroleum products in other states. The tax pulls in so much revenue that Alaska actually writes checks to families in the state every year.

Wyoming, another resource-rich state, works the same angle and in 2011, for the first time in several decades, it had a lower per-capita tax burden than Alaska.

The strategy is called “tax exporting,” but other states “have different ways to export their tax burden.” What are they and what states are involved?

Go to this link to find out.

THE MILLENNIAL TRAINS PROJECT
It was a journey from San Francisco to Washington D.C. inspired by a train trip in India that a Fulbright scholar and former J.P. Morgan investment banking analyst took along with a select view to research economic and social problems facing India. His name is Patrick Dowd.

Back in the U.S., he started working as an investment banking analyst in New York just as the Occupy Wall Street movement was gaining momentum. As the protests gathered steam, Dowd couldn’t help but think about how differently he’d seen people around his age coming together around the Jagriti Yatra in India. He wondered if a similar trip across the U.S could prove a more positive way of engaging with America’s problems.

Inspired to bring this idea to life, Dowd quit J.P Morgan and set out to begin building what would become the Millennial Trains Project. The idea was for each individual to crowdfund $5,000 for their project which they work on with mentors, stopping at seven cities across the country – a low-risk locomotive incubator to see whether their ideas could work nationally without making too big a commitment.

So what was the outcome and what was a day on the train like? Will the train roll again and how could you get involved? Go to this link for the complete story of the journey.

FACEBOOK WRITES BIG CHECKS FOR COMPANIES IT DOESN’T NEED
Forbes reports Facebook spent $2 billion last week acquiring a company called Oculus Rift. Ever heard of it?

As the dust settles on Facebook’s $2BN purchase of virtual reality headset maker Oculus Rift last week, this remains the question on everyone’s lips. What’s more it is the second time we’ve made this exclamation in as many months after Facebook spent a seemingly ludicrous amount of money ($19BN) on WhatsApp. Look a little further back and the pattern repeated itself when Facebook spent $1BN acquiring Instagram.

Each time the deal has become more outlandish.  So Forbes asks the question, and we quote, “Why? Why? Why?”

Forbes says the answer is simple. Or is it?

Click on this link to find out.

GOOGLE GLASS APPS ALLOW HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS TO SHARE IMAGES
We all know medicine incubates some of the leading technology that doctors and other healthcare providers can use and share. Now with Google Glass and the mind of one young genius and her sister, that technology has advanced to improve health.

Noor Siddiqui is only 19, but she’s already designed a way for new technology to help improve health.

Beam, a secure Google Glass platform that allows health care providers to share images, text, video and location, was developed by Siddiqui and her sister Gina, a former medical student at the University of Pennsylvania. When Siddiqui began her fellowship in 2012, she was focused on the ambitious goal of ending poverty (every Thiel fellow works on a project).

But after visiting Gina at school, she was struck by the lack of technological innovation in the medical world. Gina left school and joined Siddiqui in San Francisco to work on the app full-time.

Want to learn more about these brilliant sisters and how their technology is saving lives?  Go to this link for the full story.

A NEW KIND OF HAPPY HOUR THREATENED
Seriously this is about booze, but it involves cows and we’re not kidding.

Though few Americans realize it, the by-products of their booze consumption actually help feed dairy cows and beef cattle across the country. And if you drink beer from Flying Dog Brewery, your habit helps feed bulls used in professional rodeos.

But a proposed rule from the FDA that aims to ensure the safety of animal feed and pet food — part of a sweeping new food safety reform law signed by President Barack Obama in 2011 — includes new regulatory requirements that could make the practice cost-prohibitive, sending grains left over from beer and whiskey into landfills.

So what is the new rule and how does it intersect cows and booze?

Click on this link from POLITICO to get all the bull.

McCUTCHEON v. FEC RULING OUTCOME
In a landmark ruling handed down last week, the Supreme Court struck down a 40-year-old ban on aggregate contributions that a single donor can give to candidates and party committees.

In short, the court’s ruling means that a single contributor is no longer capped on how many candidates and party committees he/she can give to in a given election cycle. It keeps in place the federal campaign limits that restrict how much a donor can give to any one candidate or to any one party committee.

It’s the biggest campaign financing ruling from the court since the Citizens United ruling and, as such, produces a handful of winners and, yes, some losers.

So who are those winners and losers? Go to this link from The Washington Post to find out.

MORE MONEY IN POLITICS
The New York Times reports that the sweeping language and logic of Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision on campaign finance may imperil other legal restrictions on money in politics.

The 5-to-4 decision, which struck down overall limits on contributions by individuals to candidates and parties, was the latest in a series of campaign finance decisions from the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. that took an expansive view of First Amendment rights and a narrow one of political corruption.

According to experts in election law, there is no reason to think that the march toward deregulating election spending will stop with the ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.

“Those who support limits see the court right now as the T. Rex from ‘Jurassic Park,’” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “What’s next? ‘Just don’t move. He can’t see us if we don’t move.’”

For complete analysis and what this means for deregulation of election spending in the future, go to this link.

MINIMUM-WAGE FIGHT A DEMOCRATIC HOPEFUL FOR VOTER TURNOUT
The Wall Street Journal says, “Democrats aren’t exactly rushing to share the stage with President Barack Obama these days, especially those in tight races.”

But his unpopularity didn’t deter Michigan Rep. Gary Peters who is running for an open Senate seat, from appearing alongside Mr. Obama during a stop Wednesday in Ann Arbor to press Congress to raise the federal minimum wage.

That’s because Democrats are banking heavily on the minimum-wage fight to drive turnout this fall, highlighting the issue to energize their base and to paint the GOP as a party that doesn’t care about the middle class.

So for the full story including Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor’s take on this issue, click on this link.

LETTERMAN SAYS GOODBYE
He says it will be sometime in 2015, but CBS’ late night constant, David Letterman, says he is through and retiring from the “Late Show.”

Letterman, who is the longest running late-night talk show host in U.S. TV history, said, “We don’t have the timetable for this precisely down – I think it will be at least a year or so, but sometime in the not too distant future, 2015 for the love of God, in fact, Paul and I will be wrapping things up.”

For more on this evolving story, click on this link from CBS News.

ARE YOU A FAN OF VERONICA MARS?
Texas Monthly reports, “Much of the reason Veronica Mars has attracted so much attention, of course, is because director and co-writer Rob Thomas funded the film on Kickstarter (and subsequently raised millions from the show’s devoted fans), and if he’s successful with this production, there’s a strong possibility that other shelved properties might get run up the crowdfunding flagpole to see who salutes with their PayPal accounts.”

For a movie spun-off from a cult TV show that lasted only three seasons, and got steadily less critically-acclaimed as those seasons progressed, the fanfare around Veronica Mars the past year has been unlikely: big feature stories in major magazines, the attention of the entire film industry, and the possibility of a new paradigm for funding small-budget studio pictures (and a subsequent debate about the ethics of that funding option).

Click on this link if you are fan or wannabe.