Weekend Digest: The Tubman-on-the-$20, Susan B. Anthony and yada yada yada edition

SUNDAY TV PREVIEW
On this week’s TV edition of Talk Business & Politics, which airs Sundays at 9:30 a.m. on KATV Channel 7 in Central Arkansas and now in Northeast Arkansas on KAIT-NBC, Sundays at 10 a.m.:

Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Successful in funding his Arkansas Works health insurance plan, but controversy surrounds a decision to replace Little Rock School Superintendent Baker Kurrus. What’s next on the governor’s agenda?

Is the line-item veto that the governor used legal? He says it is, others say it isn’t. We’ll explore with KATV’s Janelle Lilley and TB&P legal analyst Dustin McDaniel.

Plus, earnings reports roll out. Great news for Arkansas banks, great trouble for the natural gas industry. Business editor Wes Brown joins us for a conversation.

Tune in to Talk Business & Politics in Central Arkansas on KATV Channel 7, Sundays at 9:30 a.m. and now in Northeast Arkansas on KAIT-NBC, Sundays at 10 a.m.

TIME TO END THE QUARTERLY EARNINGS DANCE?
The Wall Street Journal reports, “That’s not an idle question. The Securities and Exchange Commission is mulling the idea.”

The agency unveiled a broad “concept release” last week that explores the myriad rules and regulations around financial disclosures. Included in the 285-page document is a discussion on quarterly earnings requirements, and whether they should be changed.

“This appears to be at least partly in response to renewed complaints that cropped up last summer. The law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz started a crusade against quarterly reports, calling on the SEC to end the practice, and Hillary Clinton among others jumped aboard the crusade against what has been dubbed “quarterly capitalism.”

So when did “this classic form of corporate communication” begin and when did the mandate to change from semi-annual reports to quarterly start?

For more on this post, click here.

WHAT MY THREE YEARS AT NETFLIX TAUGHT ME ABOUT SCALING A STARTUP
“I joined Netflix at the beginning of 2011, just as the company was making the transition from operating in the data center to the public cloud. My job was to help build out Netflix’s cloud platform and manage streaming operations. It was an incredible three-year experience seeing the company scale its people, culture, and technology.”

In my life since then as an investor, I still apply what I learned in my time at Netflix to companies big and small. These lessons I picked up there might not save your life, but they might save your business.

“Ariel Tseitlin began working on Netflix’s cloud platform in 2011. Here’s what it taught him about culture and high-speed innovation.”

Fast Company has the story at this link.

WHY HARRIET TUBMAN DESERVES TO FRONT THE $20 BILL
Mashable says, “The news is out: Harriet Tubman is (eventually) coming to the $20 bill, joining former president Andrew Jackson.”

“While the U.S. Treasury Department’s announcement garnered strong support on social media, the move has ruffled some feathers.”

Obviously, some are in need of a history lesson. Nicknamed “Moses,” Tubman helped usher dozens of slaves to freedom, conduct a Civil War operation and nurse slaves who had become “contraband of war,” among other accomplishments, making her worthy of bumping a former president to the backside of the currency.

Follow this link for more on Tubman and this historic change to the currency.

NO BABIES IN JAPAN
MarketPlace posts, “Japan’s population is shrinking – fast. Plummeting birthrates are a larger problem faced by countries around the world, including Italy, Germany and Greece. But Japan is at the forefront.”

Yu Korekawa, a senior researcher with the Population Dynamics Research department at Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research showed me a report on the future of the country’s population. It’s 42 pages long, but bottom line the numbers don’t look good – Japan’s population is expected to shrink in half by the year 2082.

“In 2010, the country’s population was 128 million. By 2082, that number is projected to drop to 64 million.”

Why is this happening? Go to this link to find out.

HOW DID TRUMP RECAPTURE THE MOMENTUM?
CNN’s David Gergen reports, “Two weeks ago, after his decisive win in Wisconsin, it appeared that the odds for winning the GOP presidential nomination had suddenly and unexpectedly shifted in favor of Sen. Ted Cruz.”

“Donald Trump was then on the ropes, as he had failed to assure voters about fights breaking out at his rallies, engaged in needless attacks on Heidi Cruz, and then — outrageously – said that women who obtained illegal abortions should be criminally punished. Rarely have we seen so much self-destruction by a front-runner, so much so that one wondered whether Trump had a death wish.”

But as we have seen in this most peculiar of all peculiar campaigns, two weeks can change the world. And so they have, climaxing in Trump’s thumping victory in New York on Tuesday night.

“What happened?”, asks Gergen. Get the details here.

HOW SANDERS FELL SHORT OF CHANGING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
“Bernie’s failed revolution,” POLITICO calls it.

“By any measure, the Bernie Sanders campaign has vastly outperformed expectations of what a self-described democratic socialist could accomplish at the presidential level in 2016.”

And yet, the “revolution” that Sanders called for didn’t show up. Clinton’s 16-point New York win is simply the exclamation point. First, electorally, Sanders hasn’t been able to win any states on Clinton’s natural turf, while she picked off states like blue-collar Ohio and quintessentially liberal Massachusetts. Eleven of his 16 state wins were in low-turnout caucus states, while she has dominated well-populated primary states. He struggled to win the votes of older voters and whiffed with Southern African-Americans.

“But on a more important level, Sanders has also failed to substantially change the Democratic Party at its core.”

Why? Find out at this link.

IT’S GOING TO BE TRUMP VS CLINTON
“Resign yourself to the depressing reality,” says the New York Post.

“We New Yorkers were excited by the fact that for the first time in 24 years (on the Democratic side) or the first time ever (on the Republican side), our votes were going to make a difference in the nomination of a presidential candidate.”

“This means New York’s Democrats have brought the Bernie insurgency closer to its inevitable end.”

It’s a glorious night for Trumpkins for the same reason it’s a sobering night for those of us who believe a Trump nomination would be disastrous for the party and the country.

“The next five contests over the next two weeks take place on fertile ground for Trump, and if his ability to gain ground persists, he is going to be aiming a dagger at the hearts of the so-called “#neverTrump” crowd.”

For the complete read, connect here.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY GRAVE COVERED WITH ‘I VOTED’ STICKERS
The Washington Post reports, “After they cast their votes in Tuesday’s New York primary, several dozen New Yorkers visited the pioneer of the women’s rights movement.”

Throughout the day, they arrived at the grave of Susan B. Anthony in Rochester’s Mount Hope Cemetery. They came to say thank you to the woman who paved the way for them to be able to fulfill their civic right. They took their “I Voted” sticker and pressed it on the tombstone.

Because, in a sense, she had.

For the rest of this remarkable story about “Anthony, who led the women’s suffrage movement in the middle of the 19th century” and the stickers on her grave, follow this link.

SNL’S CLINTON AND BERNIE TAKE QUESTIONS FROM ‘REAL NEW YORKER’
Oh my. Political humor doesn’t get much better than this.

“SNL: Hillary Clinton (Kate McKinnon) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (Larry David) field questions from real New Yorkers like Seinfeld’s Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) at their Brooklyn debate.”

“Elaine asks Sanders how he will break up too-big-to-fail banks.”

“Once I’m elected president, I’ll have a nice schvitz in the White House gym, I’ll sit them down and yada yada yada, they’ll be broken up,” Sanders replied.

To bust a gut laughing, click here for the video.

2016 PULITZER PRIZES
“The Pulitzers are now in their centennial year, and the winners announced by Columbia University on Monday reflected some of the changes sweeping the media landscape,” posts The New York Times.

Among the winners was The Marshall Project, an online outlet founded 17 months ago. The Washington Post took the national reporting prize for a project that used data, graphics and other tools of digital journalism to chronicle every killing by a police officer in 2015, unearthing fresh insights into a subject that has dominated the national political debate.

Which news organization had the most nominations? Click on this link for all the winners.

WHY WAS FREDDIE MERCURY’S VOICE ‘SO AMAZING AND UNIQUE?’
boingboing posts, “In a new scientific study, researchers conducted acoustical analysis of Queen singer Freddie Mercury’s singing voice. While he spoke in a baritone voice, Mercury had a tremendous singing range.”

So what were his “vocal superpowers?”

Be a “Champion” and go here to learn.

PRINCE, PURPLE RAIN & REAL RAIN AT THE SUPER BOWL
The NFL Network has a great tribute to musical legend Prince, who died last week at the age of 57. Prince was the halftime show at Super Bowl XLI and the performance was soaked by a torrential downpour and driving rainstorm.

Undeterred, Prince asked the halftime production staff if they could make it rain harder. Watch the video of interviews behind the scenes and the once-in-a-lifetime performance by one of the greatest musical artists of all time at this link.