Weekend Digest: The sick white people and fishing boats of the dead edition

TV PREVIEW
On this week’s TV edition of Talk Business & Politics with Roby Brock, which airs Sunday at 9:30 a.m. on KATV Ch. 7:

A mass shooting in California ramps up the national debate on domestic terrorism, mental illness, and gun control. Karen Finney, senior advisor to Hillary Clinton, joins the show for a conversation.

Good roads. Everybody wants them, but how will we pay for them? New polling from the Good Roads Foundation offers a road map of sorts. Good Roads director Craig Douglass and pollster Chris Perkins offer insight.

The health care debate in Arkansas carries on. It’s enrollment period for many, lawmakers are whittling down their choices, and a mid-December final report is not far away. State surgeon general Greg Bledsoe and Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace director Cheryl Gardner are guests.

Plus, KATV’s Janelle Lilley discusses the state’s lethal injection politics and runs through the top headlines of the week.

Tune in to Talk Business & Politics with Roby Brock on KATV Ch. 7, Sunday at 9:30 a.m.

A CLOSER LOOK AT ZUCKERBERG’S BIG GIFT
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this past week a “pledge to donate 99% of his Facebook shares by the end of his lifetime to the newly formed Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.”

How much will it actually be, what are the restrictions and is this the biggest gift pledge ever?

Beyond the initial excitement of Monday’s headlines, here are some things you should know about Zuckerberg’s big gift.

Forbes has the story at this link.

FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIR LIKES WHAT SHE SEES
Bloomberg News reports, “Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is counting on continued strength in the U.S. economy to support the central bank’s move to slightly higher interest rates while the manufacturing sector struggles with the stronger dollar’s drag on exports.”

“Household spending growth has been particularly solid in 2015,” Yellen told Congress’s Joint Economic Committee Thursday. She noted that auto sales have been strong, while increases in home and stock prices, along with reductions in debt, have boosted Americans’ balance sheets.

The Chair’s comments represent the conclusion that various shocks to the U.S. economy this year – from the slowdown in China’s growth rate to the bust in the oil industry and weaker exports – haven’t leaked into other areas, and won’t obstruct the first rate increase since 2006.

“They are looking at how the domestic economy is doing and if it is strong enough to withstand tightening,” said Laura Rosner, U.S. economist for BNP Paribas in New York. “They think it is, and that is really key.”

For the complete report and a target date for when rates are expected to rise, go to this link.

THE MOST IMPORTANT BILLION-DOLLAR COMPANY YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF
Inc. posts, “Jahangir Mohammed didn’t create the internet of things – but his company, Jasper, runs the software connecting much of it.”

Inc. reports Jasper is “a 400-plus-person firm built on a love of the mechanical, the automated, and the data-driven.”

Jasper likes to call itself “the ‘on switch’ for the internet of things,” the increasingly vast body of devices that now speak to one another over the internet. And that’s a pretty apt description. With the cost of computing power and internet connectivity falling fast, networked intelligence is turning up just about everywhere these days: the moisture sensor on an apple tree, an assembly line full of industrial robots, the watch on your wrist, or the Ford you drive home every night. And Jasper, valued at $1.4 billion and widely expected to go public soon, is the reptilian brain for much of that network, ensuring that the nodes are on and aware and functioning as they should be.

For the full story on this extremely important Santa Clara, California based software company, connect here.

THE WORLD’S BIGGEST CONTENT DISCOVERY TOOL
Fast Company says, “With 1 billion monthly clicks, Taboola Is the world’s biggest content discovery tool.”

“Taboola, the content discovery engine that serves up recommended links on many sites, just pulled far ahead of competitors like Outbrain and Gravity.”

Last month, it clocked 1.15 billion clicks, through its ubiquitous “Recommended From The Web” and “Content You Might Like” widgets. The company, which rarely releases public metrics on usage, also added that, according to analytics tool Comscore, it now reaches 640 million unique users on desktop.

“We crossed one billion clicks a month, which means that over a billion times a month people discovered articles and stories someone wrote through our platform, which is a lot,” Taboola CEO Adam Singolda said in a conversation with Fast Company. “At the same time last year, it was 363 million.” Singolda credits much of the growth to aggressive expansion in overseas markets like South Korea, Brazil, and Germany. He added that the firm is launching operations in India next year as well.

Go inside for a closer look at Taboola, at this link.

AMERICAN POLITICS AND MIDDLE AGE WHITE PEOPLE
TPM calls it “one of the most important studies in years in terms of understanding the current state of American politics and society.”

“The study is the work of two Princeton University scholars, Ann Case and Angus Deaton, who analyzed vast quantities of federal government data about mortality rates across age cohorts, racial and ethnic groups and genders.”

They made a startling discovery. As you would expect, every age and ethnic/racial grouping has continued to see a steady reduction of morbidity (disease) and increase in lifespans for decades. But there’s one major exception: middle aged (45-54) white people. Since roughly 1998, disease and death rates for middle aged white men and women has begun to rise.

To put these numbers in context, this reversal is contrary to the trend in France, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Sweden. Indeed, it goes against the trend in every wealthy, industrialized democracy we know of.

Why is this happening and what does it have to do with politics? Go to this link to find out.

GOP LEADERSHIP STANDOFF WITH DONALD TRUMP
The New York Times reports, “For months, much of the Republican Party’s establishment has been uneasy about the rise of Donald J. Trump, concerned that he was overwhelming the presidential primary contest and encouraging other candidates to mimic his incendiary speech. Now, though, irritation is giving way to panic as it becomes increasingly plausible that Mr. Trump could be the party’s standard-bearer and imperil the careers of other Republicans.”

Many leading Republican officials, strategists and donors now say they fear that Mr. Trump’s nomination would lead to an electoral wipeout, a sweeping defeat that could undo some of the gains Republicans have made in recent congressional, state and local elections. But in a party that lacks a true leader or anything in the way of consensus – and with the combative Mr. Trump certain to scorch anyone who takes him on – a fierce dispute has arisen about what can be done to stop his candidacy and whether anyone should even try.

Will they? Go to this link to learn more.

RISE OF THE CYBERVOTER
POLITICO says there is a new bloc of voters politicians must woo.

“…a section of the electorate that uses the Internet regularly and shows a surprising ability to coalesce behind issues that affect their digital life.” Call them “cybercitizens.” 

It’s hard to know just how many motivated cybercitizens are out there, but a good starting point is to look at the slice of the population that spends the most time on the Internet. To be sure, not all heavy Internet users are politically active. But if you count them, their total numbers are surprisingly large: In the 2014 midterms, people who spent at least six hours a day on the Internet made up a quarter of the voting bloc. And a significant number of these voters seem to care deeply about politicians’ stances on technology issues, such as support for a free and open Internet.

For more on this story, click here.

RICH FAMILIES REMAKING ILLINOIS AND OTHER STATES
The New York Times reports, “The rich families remaking Illinois are among a small group around the country who have channeled their extraordinary wealth into political power, taking advantage of regulatory, legal and cultural shifts that have carved new paths for infusing money into campaigns. Economic winners in an age of rising inequality, operating largely out of public view, they are reshaping government with fortunes so large as to defy the ordinary financial scale of politics.”

In the 2016 presidential race, a New York Times analysis found last month, just 158 families had provided nearly half of the early campaign money.

Most of them lean Republican; some are Democrats. But to a remarkable degree, their philosophies are becoming part of a widely adopted blueprint for public officials around the country: Critical of the power of unions, many are also determined to reduce spending and taxation, and are skeptical of government-led efforts to mitigate the growing gap between the rich and everyone else.

This is especially true in Illinois.

Follow this link to learn more about how big money is changing the landscape of American politics.

KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR PENS POEM FOR KOBE
Former NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has written a poem to Los Angeles Laker star Kobe Bryant, who has announced this will be his last season in the NBA.

Here’s a teaser:

Dear Retirement from Basketball,

(for Kobe Bryant)

You don’t suck, retirement. I thought
You would. With no crowds to cheer.
No competitors to pump addicting adrenalin every day.
No satisfying sound of the ball swooshing through the net
Like a melon through silk.
No frown of frustration on your opponents’ faces.
No salty smell of victory as exhausted bodies
rush to the locker room.
No purpose.

I was wrong.

You gave me other gifts I wasn’t expecting. That final year
when each city I visited showered me with glory and gifts
and pure love. The fans cheered, stomped feet, battered hands,
not because I was scoring points in one last game,
but because they wished me well on whatever I did next.

To read the rest, you’ll have to click this link.

BLACK FRIDAY BEFORE IT WAS CALLED BLACK FRIDAY
You think Black Fridays are crazy now?  Time says, “Macy’s preparations for the Christmas season in 1948 required 14,000 employees to prepare for a rush of 250,000 daily shoppers.”

“Black Friday wasn’t yet called Black Friday in 1948 – nor do the newspapers from that era offer evidence of stampedes or overnight lines that have become par for the course on the day after Thanksgiving – but the kick-off to the holiday shopping season has long been a red-letter retail day.”

Especially at Macy’s in New York, then the world’s largest department store.

Planning entailed both logistical and motivational efforts. At a giant pep rally, the morale of staff members was lifted by a harmonious rendition of “Jingle Bells.” Telephone operators prepared to respond to as many as six questions per minute. Plainclothes employee detectives trained to spot shoplifters from among the hordes. And clerks readied themselves to handle fluid pricing on that year’s hottest items – from striped pajamas to “simulated” pearls to Macy’s house-brand Scotch – which fluctuated as many as five times per day as reports of competitors’ pricing came in.

Take a look back here.

FISHING BOATS OF THE DEAD
ABC News reports, “Ghostly wooden fishing boats containing decomposing dead bodies, skulls and other human remains have been mysteriously washing ashore on Japan’s northwestern coast over the past two months, according to the country’s coast guard.”

At least 11 wrecked boats carrying corpses have showed up since October, Japan Coast Guard official Yuka Amao told the Associated Press. Amao said the latest boat found in Fukui prefecture on Nov. 22 contained six skulls, various bones and human remains and a nearly intact decomposing body.

Where are these boats coming from and have authorities solved the mystery? Find out at this link.