Weekend Digest: The new music industry war, swing-state warfare, and Trump-loving Christians edition
by August 13, 2016 6:55 am 182 views
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 in Northeast Arkansas on KAIT-NBC, Sundays at 10 a.m.:
Children First
Marcy Doderer, CEO of Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Children’s is well on its way to planting a new campus in Northwest Arkansas, but Doderer has even bigger plans for the specialty hospital.
Poore on Policy
Mike Poore – Little Rock School Superintendent. What does he want to see from state policy leaders to help the struggling school district he’s been tasked to lead?
Political Animals
Bring on the Political Animals. Andrea Allen on the right, L.J. Bryant on the left. The two leaders of the Northeast Arkansas Political Animals Club are in studio for a conversation on the state of Presidential and local politics.
Tune in to Talk Business & Politics in Central Arkansas on KATV Channel 7, Sundays at 9:30 a.m. and in Northeast Arkansas on KAIT-NBC, Sundays at 10 a.m.
HERE’S HOW CLINTON AND TRUMP SEE THE U.S. ECONOMY, IN CHARTS
Bloomberg News posts, “Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton elaborated on her economic growth strategy in Michigan on Thursday, just days after Republican candidate Donald Trump put forward his own ideas.”
On inequality, Clinton said: The economy needs more fairness. At the outset of her speech, she summed up her focus, by saying “there’s too much inequality, too little upward mobility, and it’s just too hard to get ahead.”
Trump said: Tax cuts and deregulation can help resolve poverty and economic malaise. Trump avoided the term “inequality” in his speech in Michigan on Monday.
That’s just one economic chart topic. For a myriad of others between the candidates, connect here.
MORE WOMEN STARTING COMPANIES FROM THE GROUND UP, LITERALLY
And Forbes mean the ground “literally” as in agriculture.
Today, 30 percent of farm operators in the U.S. are women, about three times as many as in the 1970s.
“Also, in recent years, the concept of agriculture has become ever more closely associated with issues of climate change, health and technology, potentially upping the attraction for women. Working in ag is no longer seen as back-breaking, dirty work fit for a man, but as a set of challenges in engineering, ecology, policy, nutrition and managerial knowledge.”
For more on this “groundbreaking” story, click on this link.
THE MUSIC INDUSTRY’S NEW WAR
“Taylor Swift has “declared war” on YouTube. Or at least that’s how some have characterized the open letter signed by Swift, U2, and around 180 other artists last month, calling on lawmakers to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, or DMCA,” says Fast Company.
The DMCA, says the letter, “is broken and no longer works for creators.” The letter takes aim specifically at Section 512 of the law, which gives user-generated content platforms “safe harbor” from liabilities related to copyright infringement. In other words, artists say, YouTube profits off pirated copies of their music. That directly diminishes songwriters’ and artists’ earnings while allowing “major tech companies to grow and generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone.” YouTube, Google, and Alphabet aren’t mentioned by name, but it’s obvious which “major tech companies” they’re talking about.
“While global music consumption is at an all-time high—and YouTube is the number one source of music streams, boasting more listeners than Spotify and Apple Music combined—only a small amount of the revenue generated by that consumption is passed along to artists and musicians, according to the letter.”
Check out these charts that back it up.
THE STOCK MARKET MADE A MOVE NOT SEEN SINCE DEC. 31, 1999
“Brace yourselves,” says Business Insider.
On Thursday, all three major indices closed at all-time highs:
Nasdaq: 5,228.40
Dow: 18,613.52
S&P 500: 2,185.79
“Given the rarity of this occurrence, we decided to take a look at what happened the last time stocks hit such a major milestone.”
Learn more about the historic move at this link.
INSIDE THE SWING-STATE TRENCH WARFARE
“Donald Trump is taking an interest in the most important counties in the key battleground states.” but POLITICO reports, “Democrats have been methodically working those places for months.”
“For Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, their strategies for winning in November are compounded by a significant obstacle: They’ve already lost once in some of the most important counties in this election’s most important swing states.”
These battlegrounds – spread across the 11 battleground states from Jefferson County in Colorado to Brown County in Wisconsin to Scott County in Iowa – have become epicenters of the 2016 campaign. Both campaigns know it too, and that’s why the candidates and their surrogates have been scrambling to crisscross the country for personal visits to these places as the White House race enters a final lap.
For more, follow this link.
DOUBTING A DOWN-BALLOT WAVE
National Journal posts, “It’s clear that Hillary Clinton is winning, but much less so that her victory would have a big effect on other races.”
So there isn’t much question who is ahead, only how real and durable that lead is, how much of it is bounce or froth – and how strongly the effects will be felt down ballot.
“Around Capitol Hill and in campaign headquarters across the country, the operative question is what will be the down ballot impact. On whether respondents would prefer a Congress controlled by Democrats or one controlled by Republicans, Democrats came out on top by 4 points in the NBC/WSJ poll, 47 to 43 percent. The current 4-point Democratic edge is the same as in an October 2014 poll, just before Republicans actually picked up 13 seats. No sign of a wave there.”
For the complete read, plus analysis go to this link.
TOP CLINTON STATE DEPARTMENT AIDE HELPED CLINTON FOUNDATION
“A top aide to Hillary Clinton at the State Department traveled to New York to interview job candidates for a top job at the Clinton Foundation, a CNN investigation has found.”
The fact that the aide, Cheryl Mills, was taking part in such a high level task for the Clinton foundation while also working as chief of staff for the secretary of state raises new questions about the blurred lines that have dogged the Clintons in recent years.
Upon entering office as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation agreed to a set of rules to ensure any activities by the foundation would not “create conflicts or the appearance of conflicts for Senator Clinton as Secretary of State.”
“On June 19, 2012, Mills, then the chief of staff for Clinton at the State Department, boarded a New York City-bound Amtrak train in Washington’s Union station. The next morning, at the offices of a New York based executive search firm, Mills would interview two high-level business executives. Her mission was to help the Clinton Foundation find a new leader, a source told CNN.”
For the full story on this exclusive CNN investigation, connect to this link.
TRUMP-LOVING CHRISTIANS OWE BILL CLINTON AN APOLOGY
“Conservative evangelicals were unwilling to offer forgiveness to a Democrat who asked for it. But they have freely offered it to a Republican who doesn’t want it,” posts The Atlantic.
“Character counts.” That was evangelicals’ rallying cry in their all-out assault against Bill Clinton beginning in 1993. In response to what they perceived as widespread moral decline, some religious groups had become aligned with the Republican Party during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. To them, the allegedly draft-dodging, pot-smoking, honesty-challenged womanizer symbolized everything that was wrong with America.
“More than two decades after Clinton’s first inauguration, many evangelical leaders of that era have endorsed the draft-dodging, foul-mouthed, honesty-challenged womanizer named Donald Trump for president. Only a handful refuse to follow suit, including Albert Mohler, the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. During the Clinton years, he regularly argued in mainstream media outlets that the Arkansan was morally unfit to serve as Commander-in-Chief.”
To read the complete Atlantic post, go here.
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ‘STRATEGIC HUMOR’ IN CARTOONS
HBR says, “Enjoy these cartoons from the September issue of HBR, and test your management wit in the HBR Caption Contest. If we choose your caption as the winner, you will be featured in an upcoming magazine issue and win a free Harvard Business Review Press book.”
For rules of the new HBR Caption Contest, go to this link.
HOW THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON EARTH GOT SAFER
“Programs funded by the United States are helping transform Honduras.” And The New York Times asks, “Who says American power is dead?”
“Three years ago, Honduras had the highest homicide rate in the world. The city of San Pedro Sula had the highest homicide rate in the country. And the Rivera Hernández neighborhood, where 194 people were killed or hacked to death in 2013, had the highest homicide rate in the city. Tens of thousands of young Hondurans traveled to the United States to plead for asylum from the drug gangs’ violence.”
This summer I returned to Rivera Hernández to find a remarkable reduction in violence, much of it thanks to programs funded by the United States that have helped community leaders tackle crime. By treating violence as if it were a communicable disease and changing the environment in which it propagates, the United States has not only helped to make these places safer, but has also reduced the strain on our own country.
For a true inside take told brilliantly, connect here.