Weekend Digest: The Daylight Savings Time Edition

Editor’s note: Don’t forget on Saturday night to set your clocks back one hour for Daylight Savings Time.

TV PREVIEW: ELECTION DAY HEADED OUR WAY
A busy final week in politics included polls, reports, and last minute rallies. TB&P bloggers Jason Tolbert and Michael Cook join KATV’s lead capitol reporter Janelle Lilley at the political roundtable.

We’ll also run through some likely scenarios for election outcomes. Who has the advantage heading into Election Day?  Tolbert and Cook make their picks. We’ll also run through our election night coverage from Talk Business & Politics and KATV Ch. 7. Where can you tune in, what will we be covering? We’ll clue you in on our Election Night line-up.

Plus, Hendrix College has a new president who happens to be an expert on Godzilla. I’ll sit down with President Dr. Bill Tsutsui. The cost of higher education, rising student debt, and a deep dive into the culture of Godzilla movies.

Tune in to Talk Business & Politics Sunday morning at 9 a.m. on KATV Ch. 7.

EXECUTIVE SEEKS ALTERNATIVE FOR SKY HIGH VETERAN UNEMPLOYMENT
The executive director of a research foundation and advocacy organization for technology entrepreneurship in a post for Forbes says tech companies are having a hard time finding talent, but veterans could be a solution in the waiting.

The unemployment rate for veterans is high. Way too high, especially for those who have served since September 11. The official number hovers around 10 percent, higher than for non-veterans. This means that nearly 250,000 Americans who have served are out of work. It is unacceptable.

What’s worse, it seems likely that this number will only grow as the military cuts back the size of its active duty force and sequestration cuts further reduce the number of jobs in other branches of government or among government contractors. Traditionally, many of these jobs have been filled by veterans. As a result, more veterans return from duty with fewer employment opportunities.

Forbes writer Julie Samuels points out that, “According to the U.S. Department of Labor, by 2020, there will be 1.4 million ‘computer specialist’ job openings in the United States.” Yet, training is lagging behind these market trends.

To find out how the “round peg can meet the round hole,” go to this link.

DO LEADERS SUCCESSFULLY MANAGE STRESS?
Many do through a variety of methods that channel stress and its harmful effects out of their system, reports Harvard Business Review. But are those executives and leaders, who have found ways to manage stress, passing it on to employees?

While 79% of the surveyed executives say they recognize the importance of renewal, only 35% say their firms have programs to encourage such activities.

More surprising is the finding that executives who recognize the value of renewal don’t do much to encourage their own direct reports to follow their example. Only 50% say they encourage renewal activities among their staffs.

So HBR asks, “Why do executives who understand and have experienced the value of renewal keep their stress relief knowledge to themselves?”

Click on this link to read more.

THE KEY TO CORPORATE CHANGE
Harvard Business Review says it “middle management.”

Change efforts often crumble into excruciatingly dull meetings and PowerPoint presentations.

I studied large-scale change and innovation efforts in 56 randomly selected companies in the high-tech, retail, pharmaceutical, banking, automotive, insurance, energy, non-profit, and health care industries. My research found that the majority of the efforts failed.

A hallmark of the successful 32% was the involvement of mid-level managers two or more levels below the CEO. In those cases, mid-level managers weren’t merely managing incremental change; they were leading it by working levers of power up, across and down in their organizations.

What makes the agenda of these change leaders successful? Follow this link for the answers.

BANNER ADS 20 YEARS OLD AND STILL EVOLVING
Inc. reports, “Twenty years ago this week, the first Internet advertisement, or banner ad, made its less-than-spectacular debut.”

Hotwired, the precursor of Wired, placed a simple online advert that ran on the popular web browser, Netscape. Although the banner ad was hardly impressive (Netscape only offered a palette of 16 available colors to use), it set in motion a revolution in advertising.

Inc. says 10 years later…”online advertising represented only 3.5 percent of the total global expenditure.”

So what has happened in the Last 10 years, and what is the future for banner ads? Follow this link for the full story.

MIDTERM ELECTION MEDIA SPENDING REACHES RECORD LEVELS
In a recent interview, CNBC talked to two experts – one well-known in Arkansas political circles – about the “astronomical spending” for midterm races across the country.

CEO of The Duberstein Group, Ken Duberstein, says media ads are…”the name of the ground game.”

But Duberstein says spending has gone up “to the point of pure insanity.”

Former Clinton chief of staff, Thomas “Mack” McLarty, told CNBC there is, “Too much money from outside the state where voters reside.”

Watch their interview at this link.

FAILURE OF OBAMACARE IN ‘THE COUNTRY’S UNHEALTHIEST STATE’
Obamacare has failed miserably in Mississippi, and it’s a “group effort” reports Kaiser Health News.

The first year of the Affordable Care Act in Mississippi was, by almost every measure, an unmitigated disaster. In a state stricken by diabetes, heart disease, obesity and the highest infant mortality rate in the nation, President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law has barely registered, leaving the country’s poorest and perhaps most segregated state trapped in a severe and intractable health care crisis.

Of the nearly 300,000 people who could have bought coverage, just 61,494 — some 20 percent — did so. When all was said and done, Mississippi would be the only state in the union where the percentage of uninsured residents has gone up, not down, according to one analysis.

What happened? Click on this link to read more.

WEDGE ISSUE FROM HELL
For Republicans that is, contends Politico. What is it? Raising the minimum wage.

Even as Democrats lurch toward a potentially disastrous midterm election, support for raising the federal minimum wage is resonating with voters. In fact, it may be the only issue on which Democrats are winning: A Pew Research Center poll earlier this year found 90 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of Republicans favored raising the federal minimum to $10.10 from its current $7.25, as proposed by President Barack Obama.

Increasing the minimum wage in Arkansas to $8.50 per hour is on the ballot for next Tuesday’s election along with three other states.

Democrats anticipate these measures will boost Democratic turnout in all five states, particularly among African-Americans.

For more on this story, follow this link.

DATELINE: POSSUM GRAPE, ARKANSAS
This Tuesday Arkansans will decide, “whether to toss out Prohibition-style local laws that ban the sale of alcohol in half of the state’s 75 counties, making this semi-dry Southern state decidedly wet, border to border,” reports the L.A. Times. The west coast newspaper’s reporter files her story from Possum Grape, Arkansas.

Package stores have forged an unlikely coalition here in the heart of the Bible Belt, joining preachers pounding their pulpits against the Arkansas Alcohol Beverage Amendment, which they say will spread the evils of drink.

“This fight has made for some unusual alliances,” said Brian Richardson, chairman of the Citizens for Locals Rights, which opposes the amendment. “The package stores and religious moral objectors — they’re certainly strange bedfellows.”

Some say more alcohol sales will encourage outside investment in Arkansas. Others want the Natural State to abandon what they consider out-of-touch laws.

What has brought on these unusual alliances?

Go inside this intriguing subject that the L.A. Times suggests, “In some ways, the Arkansas ballot is a referendum on urban versus rural life,” at this link.

SHARK TANK AND HORSE PANTS
Leave it to Jimmy Kimmel to pitch “horse pants” in a hilarious bit before the grizzled Shark Tank panel. But what was the host of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live really up to?

Well, it’s a little complicated, a lot of fun and a whole lot of satire that “hits close to home,” posts Forbes.

Curious? Go to this link for the reveal.

RECIPE FOR A STARTUP SCENE
Pick a city. Any city. Fast Company has the recipe for building a startup scene from entrepreneur Tyler Crowley.

Crowley has devised a not-so-secret recipe for creating startup neighborhoods from scratch. They are no match for the Silicon Valley mothership, or even New York City’s Silicon Alley (wherever that is on the map these days).

But after building Silicon Beach in Los Angeles, and helping to establish the Silicon Roundabout in London in time for the 2012 Olympics, and now with STHLMTech growing fast, Crowley is someone a government can reliably call on to bring an entrepreneurial tech community to life.

What’s the recipe? Connect to this link for the ingredients.