Weekend Digest: The Huckabee Announcement Of An Announcement Edition

TV PREVIEW – HEALTH CARE CROSSROADS
This week on Talk Business & Politics:

Health care in Arkansas is at a crossroads. Next week, a task force charged with ending the private option and reshaping the state’s health care market gets underway. Arkansas Surgeon General Greg Bledsoe is our guest for an in-depth conversation.

Takeover targets, startup activity and the race to a trillion dollar company. TB&P business editor Wesley Brown discusses these questions and more.

New polling highlights voter attitudes on Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Sens. Tom Cotton and John Boozman. Dr. Jay Barth from Hendrix College is in studio for analysis.

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

U.S. SHALE OIL DRILLERS SEE PRODUCTION DROP
Bloomberg Business reports, “Shale drillers will see production drop sooner than expected under a U.S. government forecast, a momentum change that hints at an eventual price rally.”

Just five months after Saudi Arabia put the market into a tailspin by refusing to cut supply despite a global glut, the shale oil industry will record its first monthly dip since U.S. officials began weighing output in 2013.

Totaling about half of the U.S. production, how much has shale dropped and how is this affecting the overall market?

Follow this link for a closer look.

GATHERING PLACES GET BOOST FROM UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
They”ve given it a fancy name, “entrepreneurial spaces,” but in reality what we”re talking about here are informal places where people hang out.

In his book The Great Good Place, urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg highlights how informal public gathering places are essential to community and public life. He argues that bars, coffee shops and other “third places,” are central to local community vitality. With that concept in mind, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced that it will grant $650,000 to The University of Miami School of Architecture‘s project to bring entrepreneurial spaces to two underserved neighborhoods in MIami.

It will be called the Third Place Project.

…the Third Place Project will not only provide spaces to create collisions between people “from different economic backgrounds and neighborhoods” but it will also “tap into the strong desire that the ‘creative class” and millennials have for informal gathering places.”

Go to this link to find out where the inspiration for this project came from and how “the idea is perfect for a traditionally decentralized city like Miami, where the barriers to entry for entrepreneurs are high.”

16 STARTUPS POISED TO DISRUPT THE EDUCATION MARKET
Inc. posts, “Colleges and universities are facing new competition for customers–students and their parents–from startups delivering similar goods (knowledge, credentials, prestige) more affordably and efficiently.”

In a new book, The End of College:  Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere, author Kevin Carey distills a brave new world in which a myriad of lower-cost solutions–most in their infancy–threaten to upend the four-year, high-tuition business model by which colleges and universities have traditionally thrived. 

Whether Carey or his publishers are overstating their case–“the end of college” is no small claim, hedged as it is in the subtitle–is a question time will settle. What matters more, for entrepreneurs, is how fertile the opportunity is for startups to explore what Carey reports is a $4.6 trillion market for global education. 

For a look at 16 of those startups “taking aim” connect here.

CORPORATE TAX OVERHAUL NEEDED SAY MANUFACTURING GROUPS
Manufacturing.Net reports, “…the National Association of Manufacturers and the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation Foundation said the U.S. should exempt its companies’ foreign earnings from corporate taxes.”

In contrast to current tax policy, the groups’ analysis argued that exempting those earnings would allow corporations to return them to U.S. shores.

“Converting from a global to a territorial tax system would make U.S. rules more internationally competitive and unlock an estimated $2.1 trillion in stranded profits held abroad by U.S. multinationals,” the groups said.

How do these analysts say the current law is hurting U.S. companies and exactly how high is the corporate tax rate when compared to other countries? Go to this link for the full story.

HUCKABEE TO ANNOUNCE PRESIDENTIAL PLANS MAY 5
Mike Huckabee teased the national media with his announcement of an announcement.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told Fox News Friday he would officially announce his presidential campaign plans casino online May 5 in his — and former President Bill Clinton”s — hometown of Hope, Ark.

Speaking with reporters in Washington earlier in the day, Huckabee insisted he had not made a decision yet about running, although he said that “things are progressing along” in his preparations. He sounded like an all-but-declared candidate, saying a super PAC has been formed to support his likely candidacy and touting his supporter network in Iowa, home to the nation”s first presidential caucuses, which Huckabee won in 2008.

What does Huckabee see as his strengths and shortcomings? Plus, he”s already laying into Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Read all about it here.

IN HER PRESIDENTIAL RUN, WILL CLINTON BE HUMBLE?
The New York Times thinks so.  It reports, “For a Clinton, It’s not hard to be humble in an effort to regain power.”

There has been no such explicit mea culpa from Hillary Rodham Clinton in the first days of her second try at the White House. But her actions have sent the same message her husband delivered more than three decades ago: Lesson learned.

An almost otherworldly resilience has characterized the 40-year arc of the Clintons’ political lives, a well-documented pattern of dazzling success, shattering setback and inevitable recovery. But what their admirers call grit and critics deem shamelessness can overshadow another essential element of the Clinton school: a willingness to put on the hair shirt of humility to regain power.

Just as Mr. Clinton began a comeback with a down-home plea for forgiveness, Mrs. Clinton now seems determined to prove, perhaps to the point of overcompensation, that she will not repeat the mistakes that plagued her 2008 campaign.

For the complete story go to this link.

WHO IS THE GOP”S STRONGEST CANDIDATE?
Very intriguing question posed by POLITICO.

So who is “the most electable Republican candidate running” in a big field that seems to be getting bigger?

One thing we can say for sure is that the prospects for any GOP victory in 2016 run through the Midwest. Four states that Obama took in 2012 are states that Republicans need to take for a win (or at least three out of the four): Ohio (18 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (10).

POLITICO has the current score card at this link.

“RELIGIOUS FREEDOM” LAW SINKS INDIANA GOVERNOR”S RATINGS
Indiana Governor Mike Pence probably wishes he”d never heard of the “religious freedom” law after the controversy over it enveloped the nation.  Now a new poll shows his ratings have taken a dive because of it.

POLITICO reports, “The “religious freedom” law signed by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence has taken a toll on the potential presidential candidate’s image in his home state, according to a poll released Thursday that shows most Hoosiers think the law was not necessary.”

The survey of 607 registered voters was conducted April 12-14, less than a month after Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law hailed as a reaffirmation of the First Amendment by supporters but derided as bigoted against gays and lesbians by critics.

How far did his ratings drop?  Click on this link to find out.

10 MEMORABLE QUOTES BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN
It was on April 14, 1865, 150 years ago, when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

Lincoln was shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth while attending a special performance at the Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C.

The National Journal has compiled a list of 10 of the former president”s “most famous and lesser-known quotes.” You can read them all here.

DID JOHN WILKES BOOTH ESCAPE?
Now wait a minute.  History writes over and over that, “Twelve days after John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, he was fatally shot by an army sergeant as the barn he was hiding in burned to the ground.”

At least that”s the conventional theory?

Want to learn the unconventional theory posed by conspiracy types?  We have it at this link from Time.

33 RARE COLOR PHOTOS OF THE REAL ROSIE THE RIVETERS
“These women rocked the machine shops and labs of the 1940s to build everything we needed to win World War II. Let them be your inspiration—for a future in a STEM field or for working hard at whatever wonderful thing you”re up to.”

Take a look at these wonderful shots of our hero “engineers” from All Day here.