Weekend Digest: The Never Ending Election Edition

For our weekend business and political readers:

OBAMACARE GUIDE FOR ENROLLMENT 2015
Inc. has posted a business guide for Obamacare guide that includes “what you need to know for the 2015 enrollment.”

After multiple delays, the Obamacare employer mandate will finally take effect on January 1, 2015. Is your business affected? Where can you get coverage? Here’s a quick recap of what’s new and what questions you should be asking now.

Is my business affected?

How do I count full-time equivalents?

Are there subsidies available?

Where can I shop for insurance plans?

When do I need to act?

For concise answers to these questions, click on this link.

WHY FACEBOOK WAS SO AGGRESSIVE PUSHING MESSENGER
Fast Company offers insight on why Facebook was so aggressive in pushing its users to Messenger a few months ago. A revealing leaked screenshot indicates there is a future business angle to the migration.

In June, Facebook announced that users who wanted to send private messages from their phones would have to download a separate app – Messenger – in order to do so. As I wrote at the time, it was an unusually aggressive tactic, even for Facebook, which hasn’t hid its desire to unbundle its services as dedicated, standalone applications.

If the idea was to get lots of people using Messenger, the strategy seems to have worked: Messenger is the #1 most-downloaded free application in iOS, albeit with an average rating of 1.5 out of 5 stars. Quartz went so far to call Messenger a “monster hit.” As of April, Messenger was said to have more than 200 million monthly active users globally.

Hit or no hit, why did Facebook do it? Go here to find out.

WHAT TWO COMPANIES WANT TO BE LIKE WAL-MART?
Forbes reports one wants to be like Wal-Mart in size, and one wants to be like Wal-Mart in physical store presence.

One of these companies is set to open its first physical store in New York’s Empire State building.

Who are these two companies and what is their business model to compete with the world’s largest retailer?

Follow this link for complete details.

A PROJECTED LOOK AT 2022
Harvard Business Review says the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has looked into its crystal ball for the year 2022 and reports that an aging population in need of care and a construction industry still rebounding from the Great Recession will drive the jobs of the future.

In the decade from 2012 to 2022, the fastest growth in U.S. employment will take place in the health care, health care support, construction, and personal care fields. These four categories are expected to account for more than a third — about 6.6 million — of all new jobs. Farming, fishing, and forestry is the only category expected to shrink.

Will a college degree be as important as it is now, and what will the fastest-disappearing jobs be? Go to this link for a future look at a really long-term jobs report.

THE NEVER ENDING ELECTION
If you’re enjoying or enduring the 2014 campaign cycle, here’s a theory you might want to contemplate: what if it could extend to 2015?

Happy? Sad? Political animals are well aware of the extended elections that could happen in Louisiana due to that state’s open election process. That could further the U.S. Senate’s final outcome into December.

However, Georgia has a requirement for run-off elections that could leave its Senate race unsettled until January.

Do you folks love the 2014 election?… Anybody? Well, in case you do, good news! It might last three more months.

That’s because it’s looking increasingly likely — if not likely, period — that the Georgia Senate race is headed for a runoff. And that runoff, as it happens, wouldn’t even be decided in 2014. It would be decided on Jan. 6, 2015, just more than two months after Election Day.

Read more analysis from The Fix’s Aaron Blake at this link.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN FOR REPUBLICANS
The Washington Post says the 2014 midterms are “increasingly” showing parallels to the 2006 midterm election for Republicans.

A half-dozen senators fighting for their political lives — and their party’s hold on the majority — in tough races while trying to avoid being dragged down by an unpopular president and the stark reality that second-term midterm elections almost never work out for the side controlling the White House.

2014? Yes — but also 2006, an election cycle that Republicans are increasingly beginning to see as a parallel to this one as the fight for control of the Senate enters its final four weeks.

For the complete story, click on this link.

140 CHARACTERS OR LESS NOTHING NEW FOR OREGON POLITICIANS
The Washington Post reports that “Politicians in Oregon battled in bite-size campaigns for nearly 75 years.”

The practice of ballot slogans began in 1909 in the state. State law allowed candidates to append a 12-word statement to their name on the ballot. Judicial candidates were allotted only 10 words.

“One theory,” a local news story from 1966 posited, “is that they are smarter than politicians and should be able to say more with fewer words.”

Different strategies for how to best use the ballot slogans – the equivalent of being limited to sending one tweet to your supporters every election cycle – abounded, and the trends changed with the seasons.

“Styles in ballot slogans change as rapidly as women’s hemlines,” one Oregonian reporter wrote in 1968.

For a fascinating history of Oregon’s ballot slogans, follow this link.

‘BLOWING OFF MEDICAID’ CAMPAIGN
It’s a campaign of reverse psychology, and drivers in Alabama have been getting the message on billboards recently.

Drivers in Mobile County during the past few days have begun to see billboards suggesting that Alabama’s refusal to expand its Medicaid program is worse than any natural disaster.

Doug Hoffman, founder of Engage Alabama, said his group paid half the cost of four billboards in Mobile County. Donations from local sources paid the rest. He estimated that cost is about $6,000 or less to have the billboards for three months.

AL.com says, “Hoffman, a former hospital executive in Birmingham, has made it something of a personal mission to win hearts and minds on the Medicaid issue.”

Find out at this link what the rest of the sign says and why Hoffman and his group call “Blowing Off Medicaid” worse than any natural disaster.

TRUE CLINTON CAMPAIGN DONORS
Bloomberg Politics has uncovered “The 12 Families Who Have Given to Every Single Clinton Campaign.”

Bllomberg says, “For these couples, who’ve given more than two hundred dollars to every Clinton campaign and charity over the past 22 years, money does buy a kind of happiness.”

Jeanne Sweeney loved the Clintons so much that she displayed life-sized cardboard cutouts of the couple in her Cincinnati home. When Bill Clinton was “bad,” like during the Monica imbroglio, he was placed in the closet. Hillary never went in the closet.

Go to this link to learn more about these loyal donors and how much they gave, even after death.

FORTY YEARS, FOUR SISTERS
It was on a whim in 1975 when photographer Nicholas Nixon while visiting his wife’s family asked to take a picture of her and her three sisters.

It was summer 1975, and a black-and-white photograph of four young women — elbows casually attenuated, in summer shirts and pants, standing pale and luminous against a velvety background of trees and lawn — was the result.

A year later, at the graduation of one of the sisters, while readying a shot of them, he suggested they line up in the same order. After he saw the image, he asked them if they might do it every year.

“They seemed O.K. with it,” he said. Thus began a project that has spanned almost his whole career.

And now, all in black-and-white, the photographs will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art, coinciding with the museum’s publication of the book “The Brown Sisters: Forty Years” in November.

But you can look at them now at this link.

WHEN ELLEN MET ELIAS
He is a 7-year-old piano prodigy, but in this YouTube video it is easy to see why this little boy is one of the most memorable guests in history on the “Ellen” show.

Watch below to see how Elias brought more than just musical skill to his on-air performance.