Weekend Digest: The First Month On The Job Edition

TV PREVIEW: FIRST MONTH ON THE JOB
On this week’s edition of Talk Business & Politics, which airs Sundays at 9 a.m. on KATV Ch. 7:

Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the legislature approve and sign a major tax cut bill. Plus the private option clears its toughest hurdles. What does this say about the Governor and legislature? Our roundtable guests – Jessica DeLoach Sabin and Jason Tolbert discuss.

Plus, our first look at the job approval ratings of the new governor and legislature. Just a month into office, our latest polling looks at this and others, including Tom Cotton, John Boozman and President Obama.

What other bills are kicking around the capitol? LobbyUp’s Bradley Phillips explores, and KATV’s Janelle Lilley sits down with Rep. Charlie Collins to discuss his controversial guns on college campuses bill.

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

For our weekend business and political readers:

HOW ONE UBER DRIVER MAKES A QUARTER OF A BILLION ANNUALLY
Yes, Gavin Escolar is indeed an Uber driver, but he’s not just a driver, he’s also an entrepreneur and while driving his customers to-and-fro, he has something else going on inside his Uber car. Forbes calls him an “Uberpreneur.”

We’re cruising down Valencia street when I notice diamond earrings dangling on the dashboard. Around his wrist, an emerald bracelet gleams through the sunlight. In the seat pockets, glossy catalogs display more jewelry. The cover reads: Gavin Escolar’s 2014 Collection.

The man sitting beside me is sharing the most insightful business advice I’ve heard lately. His ideas are as unconventional as the location of our conversation. We’re not in a coffee shop or a corner office. We’re in an Uber and he’s my driver.

Want to learn more about this “Uberpreneur” and how he developed his extremely successful “mobile showroom”? Then click on this link.

THE CREDIBILITY OF NBC NEWS ANCHOR BRIAN WILLIAMS
“Damaging revelations” have rattled and perhaps permanently tarnished NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams’ credibility. He has recanted a story claiming he was on a U.S. military helicopter that took enemy fire during the early stages of the Iraq war.

CNN Money reports Williams has claimed this story actually happened, “as recently as last Friday” and other times including an appearance on David Letterman’s late night talk show in 2013.

The incident happened on March 24, 2003. A Chinook helicopter was forced down by enemy fire. But Williams was not aboard.

Stars and Stripes reported on Wednesday that “Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter,” one that “took no fire and landed later beside the damaged helicopter due to an impending sandstorm from the Iraqi desert.”

Williams apologized during the news broadcast this past Wednesday. What did he say and how could he have gotten the facts so wrong? And how did the actual facts finally surface? For the full story and reactions, go to this link.

YOUR GOAL IS ACHIEVED, NOW WHAT?
How do you stay motivated for the next challenge? It’s not always easy for high achievers posts Harvard Business Review.

Many of us have experienced some of the same feelings after completing a major project, or winning a big sale, or making a crucial presentation to the board. For months or weeks, you were ruthlessly focused on a single, herculean undertaking. And then inevitably, that assignment is done.

When we think about achieving a major goal, we picture the exhilaration of reaching new heights. What we often fail to anticipate, however, is that once we’ve scaled that mountain, it can be surprisingly chilly on the other side.

How can you go back to your old routine when that “also means the work is no longer as stimulating.”

What does HBR say is the major reason for this letdown and what are “some adjustments worth considering the next time you transition from a big win back to your normal routine?”

Connect here to find out.

MOMS FIGHTING FOR WORKPLACE EQUALITY
One million of them, reports Fast Company and it says, “From a kitchen table to Washington, D.C., this grassroots organization is doing whatever it takes to get attention for working parents’ issues.”

It’s called MomsRising, “a Kirkland, Washington-based advocacy group that focuses on issues pertaining to parents and families such as paid leave, equal pay, health care access, and others.” Its co-founder and executive director is Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner.

MomsRising is now a national movement with more than a million members and a virtual staff of 30, and it’s growing fast—the group added more than 70,000 members in the last three months.

But the group had humble beginnings, it started around a kitchen table over eight years ago. After coauthoring The Motherhood Manifesto: What America’s Moms Want And What To Do About It with Joan Blades in 2006, Rowe-Finkbeiner says it was clear that they had to take some kind of action to deliver on the book’s premise.

At the time, she says issues related to family economic security like paid leave, access to affordable child care, increasing the minimum wage, and access to healthcare and tax credits for families weren’t on the radar of many national politicians. But she’s finally starting to see a shift.

Learn more about this “shift” and how MomsRising is “having a serious impact” at this link.

DOES IT SEEM LIKE THE 2016 ELECTION IS STARTING SOONER?
Actually no reports The Washington Post, “We might just be talking about it more.”

There are still 55.56 million seconds that need to pass before the 2016 presidential election, millions of blinks of the eye and heartbeats. And yet here we are: 2016 2016 2016 2016 2016 2016 2016 2016 2016 2016.

Is this normal? Are we getting way ahead of ourselves in poring over a thing that is far enough away that you could have two full-term babies in between?

For the answers about what the heck is going on along with some charts and graphs to back it up, click here.

THE COLLEGE LOAN BOMBSHELL HIDDEN IN THE BUDGET
Politico Magazine reports, “In obscure data tables buried deep in its 2016 budget proposal, the Obama administration revealed this week that its student loan program had a $21.8 billion shortfall last year, apparently the largest ever recorded for any government credit program.”

For more than two decades, budget analysts have recalculated the projected costs of about 120 credit programs every year, but they have never lowered their expectations of repayments this dramatically. The $21.8 billion revision—larger than the annual budget for NASA, or the Interior Department and EPA combined—will be tacked onto the federal deficit.

What is the main cause of this shortfall and how much will it increase the deficit? And is this a one-time revision “or a harbinger of oceans of red ink as millions more borrowers get relief on their payments to the government?”

For the complete story plus analysis, go to this link.

FIRST LADY OF OREGON ‘LET GO’ BY HER HUSBAND
Oregon governor John Kitzhaber had to face another controversy recently. It seems one of his staff member’s work in a policy role had come under fire again, so he removed her. That staff member is his fiancee Cylvia Hayes.

But after four years, it might be too late. Kitzhaber is already enacting policies Hayes was paid to promote. The state is rolling out a new economic measure Hayes championed, for example, both as a paid consultant and his unpaid adviser.

So what happened and why are some calling for Kitzhaber’s resignation?

All told at this link.

TENNESSEE & MEDICAID EXPANSION
Politico reports “Tennessee was widely seen as the next Republican state that could expand Medicaid under Obamacare, with (Gov. Bill) Haslam negotiating with federal officials for months on an approach that included conservative policy elements.”

But Gov. Haslam’s alternative plan was rejected by a Senate panel during a special legislative session “called solely for that issue.”

The 7-4 vote against the plan by the state Senate Health and Welfare Committee came after impassioned testimony on both sides of the debate. The plan has little chance of being revived during the regular legislative session.

In the Senate as well as the House, witnesses from the Tennessee Hospital Association, the Tennessee Business Roundtable and the Tennessee Medical Association all spoke in support of Haslam’s proposal. Yet the head of the conservative Beacon Center of Tennessee suggested the state could be locking itself into expansion long term, even if it wants to get out.

The plan, which still needed an official federal sign-off, would have covered more than 250,000 uninsured adults.

For more on this story, plus reactions connect here.

THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF BRUCE JENNER
He was an Olympic champion in the decathlon, breaking the world record at Montreal in 1976. “But now the buff heartthrob of America’s disco era is poised again to be the center of attention, in a way few fans could have imagined in 1976,” reports The Washington Post.

He is now on a new “journey.”

The transformation may be startling — but his decision to make it public shouldn’t be. Long before he was sucked into the Kardashian vortex, Jenner lived his life for the cameras. It was how the world watched him triumph in the punishing multi-skill Olympic sport, taking a victory lap while exhausted rivals writhed in pain. It was how he made a living after that: Wheaties commercials, movies, sitcoms, infomercials, sportscasting and everything in between.

So of course the cameras will be with him as he makes the most deeply personal choice a person can make.

Go to this link where The Post takes a look back at Jenner to explore, “How the 1970’s all-American hero ended up here.”

PAPER, IPAD’S SKETCH APP NOW FREE
Fast Company calls Paper iPad’s “best sketch app.”

Paper used to charge for its collection of brushes, but in a new update, they’re free for everyone.

Paper, the pre-eminent iPad sketching app, has always been free to download, but its advanced brushes and clever color mixer have cost $5 via in-app purchases. Today, all those tools go free, making one of the best pieces of software developed for the iPad completely free to use.

Fast Company asks “how” and “why?” So did we and we thought you might like to know at this link.