Mediaboss Marketing

Joe Bidens rhetorical strategy is simple. Everything is about jobs, America, and more jobs.

Some of you at home wonder whether these jobs are for you. You feel left behind and forgotten in an economy thats rapidly changing, said Biden in his first address to a joint session of Congress. The Americans Jobs Plan [his $2 trillion infrastructure initiative] is a blue-collar blueprint to build America.

The pitch is deceptively simple. Unemployment reached apocalyptic heights last year. Infrastructure spending is popularly associated with jobs and, especially, with well-paid work that doesnt require a college education. But historically, public works projects have a complicated history when it comes to quickly getting a lot of people back to work.

Here are some key lessons from that federal response to the Great Recession and how vice president Bidens work with state and local policymakers frames his presidential policymaking.

The only thing that went wrong with the infrastructure part of the stimulus in 2009 is that the president had an unrealistic expectation of how fast the money could be spent, says Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania. He thought the federal government gives us the money on Monday and on Tuesday we break ground. Joe Biden learned from this experience that you cant expect immediate results.

Time was of the essence and priority was given to policies that would stimulate the economy immediately. Tax cuts were included to court Republican votes and because they inject money into the economy quickly. Aid to state and local governments had a similar effect, as did boosts to unemployment insurance, food stamps, and other social safety net programs.

But Obama avidly promoted public works spending as well. Comparisons with the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt abounded, with many Democrats and progressives vaguely recalling the Works Progress Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority. In a Dec. 6, 2008, radio address to the nation, Obama promised to enact the single largest new investment in our infrastructure since the creation of the interstate highway system.

But despite the popular imagination of public works providing rapid relief, historically it hasnt quite worked that way.

But building bridges and roads is more popular than tax cuts (which the left often disapproves of) or social spending (which the right often attacks), and it appeals to a gauzy vision of the unemployed being handed hard hats and being transformed into construction workers. As Rahm Emanuel told Grunwald, the one thing that brings Democrats and Republicans together [is] concrete. That vision was particularly appealing during the Great Recession, when actual construction workers were suffering mass unemployment after the housing market collapsed.

Infrastructure spending was included in Obamas stimulus package, but the realities of how such projects work clashed with the administrations imperative to quickly shoot money through the economy. Federal agencies, state governments, and municipal politicians dont have big drawers of pre-planned projects ready to break ground at any moment. Building anything takes time. Design, permitting, and environmental reviews dont come already prepared, no matter how pressing the emergency.

Infrastructure projects are full of lags at many different levels, says Amanda Page-Hoongrajok, assistant professor of economics at Saint Peters University. One of the biggest takeaways from trying to incorporate state and local government capital spending into stimulus policy during the Great Recession was that capital projects are just different from direct stimulus.

Then-President Barack Obama included a call for long-term investments in the nations roads, railways and airports as part of the $50 billion stimulus plan in Septemeber 2010. (Source: AP)

I think we can get a lot of work done fast, Obama said in a December 2008 interview on Meet The Press. When I met with the governors, all of them have projects that are shovel ready, that are going to require us to get the money out the door, but theyve already lined up the projects and they can make them work.

A Google Trends search for the term shovel ready finds almost no use until a massive spike started forming in December 2008 and ended in February 2009 when the stimulus passed. Smaller spikes occurred in 2010 and 2011 as the media narrative soured and it became clear how long many of the projects were taking to get going.

Page-Hoongrajok interviewed dozens of state and local politicians about how they approached capital spending in the wake of the Great Recession. The overwhelming majority saw their public works efforts, even if funded by federal dollars, as distinct from the Keynesian countercyclical stimulus Obamas administration was attempting.

In 2008, Obama literally said I have all these shovel ready projects ready to go, says Page-Hoongrajok. But actually, if those projects were truly shovel ready, they would have already had funding. If you have a big design ready for a huge bridge, or a public library, you most likely had the funding online.

Page-Hoongrajoks research found that the only agencies that had projects ready to launch immediately were transit agencies. A policymaker in Philadelphia told her that in other areas of local governance it took at least one year to set up a project and another two to three years to actually spend the money. Representatives from almost all 50 states said that it took them four or more years to spend stimulus funds for capital projects. Within the first year of receipt, half of states reported spending less than 25 percent of their federal capital dollars.

Even during the New Deal, which placed infrastructure spending at the heart of its recovery efforts, public works projects faced similar challenges. By the end of 1933, the Public Works Administration was being attacked for not employing people fast enough. Whos Holding Back Public Works asked an article in a September edition of The New Republic. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes responded by blaming states and localities for being sluggish in suggesting projects.

But the Rescue Act also focused on direct aid to American citizens and businesses, boosting unemployment insurance, covering COBRA payments, and sending $1,400 checks directly to individuals. Public works were not in the picture. Instead, they have their own bill so that Bidens recovery plans decouple infrastructure spending from stimulus.

Theres no talk about shovel ready projects [this time]; theyre talking about an eight-year plan, says Bill Dupor, assistant vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, in reference to Bidens American Jobs Act. For [Bidens] first two [bills], one is about recovery and one is about reinvestment. Theyve split things up.

The Biden administrations rhetoric around the American Jobs Act is, obviously, about job creation. But the $2 trillion plan is not about juicing the economy in 2021, or even in the crucial midterm election year of 2022. Instead, it is meant to unfold over the course of a decade. It is about long-term economic development.

Contemporary scholarship about the New Deal has emphasized that if the great public works projects of the time did not defeat the specter of unemployment, that doesnt mean they failed as conservative critics have suggested. (Its also worth noting that recent research found that an additional dollar of New Deal public works and relief spending in a county during the 1930s raised 1939 income by nearly a dollar.)

New Deal public works programs are better understood not as unsuccessful state-employment measures, but rather as a strikingly effective method of state-sponsored economic development, writes Jason Scott Smith, assistant professor of history at the University of New Mexico.

In this way, at least, the Roosevelt comparisons are much more apt for Joe Biden than they were for Barack Obama. Promising more jobs is probably a better way to make sure he justifies that comparison, even if todays unemployment crisis is a distant memory by the time the money actually gets spent.

[The Obama administration] did a poor job of setting out expectations [for the stimulus acts infrastructure spending] and a poor job of promoting their good work afterwards, says Rendell. Biden learned from those mistakes.

Read the rest here:
The Economic Lessons Biden Learned from Obama and Roosevelt - Governing

Damon Weaver, who at age 11 became one of the youngest people to interview a sitting president, and who later gained attention for scoring other high-profile interviews with celebrities like Dwyane Wade and Oprah Winfrey, died on May 1. He was 23.

The death was confirmed by Candace Hardy, Mr. Weavers sister. The cause was not made known.

Ms. Hardy told WPTV-TV in West Palm Beach, Fla., that her brother had texted her while she was at work that he was in the hospital. By the time she went to see him, she said, he had already died.

In 2009, Mr. Weaver, then 11, conducted a sit-down interview with President Barack Obama in the Diplomatic Room of the White House, questioning him on topics including the Obama administrations efforts to improve education in lower-income areas like Mr. Weavers hometown, Pahokee, Fla., and Mr. Obamas basketball skills.

You did a great job at this interview, so someone must be doing something right at that school, Mr. Obama told Mr. Weaver after the 11-year-old extended an invitation to come visit him at Kathryn E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary School in South Florida.

Before his meeting with Mr. Obama, Mr. Weaver gained sizable attention from an interview in 2008 with Joseph R. Biden Jr., then Mr. Obamas running mate.

Damon Lazar Weaver Jr. was born on April 1, 1998, according to his funeral announcement. His sister told WPTV that Mr. Weaver was a light and the life of the party. According to the station, Mr. Weaver graduated from high school with a full scholarship to Albany State University in Georgia. He graduated from the university in 2020, according to a post on his Instagram page.

Everybody just couldnt wait to be around him, Ms. Hardy told WPTV. Family gatherings, they were always fun just because of his presence.

Mr. Weaver also covered Mr. Obamas inauguration as the 44th president for his schools television news program, interviewing inauguration attendees and celebrities including Ms. Winfrey and Samuel L. Jackson. In an interview with The Associated Press before heading to Washington, Mr. Weaver highlighted what he enjoyed most about being a reporter.

I liked seeing people on TV, so I thought that I could do that job one day, Mr. Weaver said. I like being a reporter because you get to learn a lot of things, you get to meet nice people and you get to travel a lot.

Mr. Weaver said that his favorite subjects in school at the time were reading and math, and that he had goals of becoming a journalist one day and maybe even a football player, an astronaut or president.

Im very proud of him, Regina Weaver, Mr. Weavers mother, told The Associated Press. I never imagined that this project would go as far as it has gone.

Complete information about his survivors was not immediately available.

See original here:
Damon Weaver, Child Reporter Who Interviewed Obama, Dies at 23 - The New York Times

For almost as long as humans have been capable of defying gravity, flinging ourselves into the heavens with metal wings, we've seen things in the sky that we can't explain. It's an area of study that's been, for the most part, confined to the fringes of polite society. But now these unexplained flying objects have captured the attention of mainstream America and Congress.

I knew that I regarded myself as more of a Dana Scully than a Fox Mulder, as dedicated to rational inquiry, logic and science as you can be at the age of 8.

I never watched "The X-Files" when it was on the air as a somewhat cowardly lad who self-censored his media consumption, I knew that it was probably too scary for my developing tastes. But I still knew that I regarded myself as more of a Dana Scully than a Fox Mulder, as dedicated to rational inquiry, logic and science as you can be at the age of 8. I still do, to be honest. That's why I'm deeply skeptical that the objects we see in the grainy videos that have been circulating online for years are from another planet.

But now that I'm older, I find myself understanding Mulder a little better, with his belief in things unknown. And like the poster in his FBI office read, "I want to believe." I just need the evidence.

I will say, though, the evidence that UFOs actually are zipping around out there has grown considerably since I was a kid. It's not hard to see why the public has been so fascinated since last year, when the Defense Department confirmed the provenance of some of the videos out there. Just in the last few days, a recently leaked video from the Navy showed ... something disappearing into the water off California.

That clip was released just ahead of CBS' "60 Minutes" interview with two former Navy pilots who recounted their experiences with unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs the official term the U.S. government uses for these kinds of things. And they knew how wild their claims sound, which is a good first step to establishing a witness's credibility.

"Over beers we've said, 'Hey man, if I saw this solo, I don't know that I would have come back and said anything,'" Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich said. "Because it sounds so crazy when I say it."

Even former President Barack Obama weighed in on these objects Monday. "What is true, and I'm actually being serious here, is that there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are," Obama said on CBS' "The Late Late Show with James Corden." (Sidebar: What a bit of synergy there for the "60 Minutes" segment; well done, everyone on the CBS crew who made that happen.)

"We can't explain how they move, their trajectory," Obama continued. "They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is."

We apologize, this video has expired.

Let me pause to say that yes, I do believe that alien life exists somewhere out there. But as I said in an essay last year, I think we're not exactly the first stop on the galactic traveler's itinerary nor should we be. Humanity has a long way to go before we're ready for visitors from beyond.

It's the folks who do think we're Grand Central Station for various alien species who have kept the discussion about what pilots have seen confined to the realm of kooks and cranks for decades. But that could change soon in the next few weeks, Congress will receive a "detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence" from the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and the FBI.

"Oh, but Congress has so many other things it could be doing!" I hear you say out there. First of all, shut up. This is amazing; let me have this. But also, there is an actual legitimate non-extraterrestrial reason that I'm glad that Congress is looking into these zippy little aircraft. Whatever they are, they're in U.S. airspace, and, if these videos are any indication, they move in a way that isn't like anything else the public has seen.

If and this is a big if! these things are aircraft that another country has developed, that seems like a pretty big deal. (And if you were to pitch me a theory that the U.S. actually knows what these things are but can't say because it doesn't want any other country to get the tech, well, that's more believable than aliens to me.) On this front, I find that I, wildly enough, agree with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., which in normal circumstances would be evidence that I had been replaced with an alien replica.

"Some of my colleagues are very interested in this topic, and some kind of, you know, giggle when you bring it up," Rubio, the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, said on "60 Minutes." "But I don't think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question."

He's right. It's a national security issue to have things flying around that we can't ID. That's probably part of why the fascination with UFOs was so high during the post-World War II era, as the fear of the Soviets' developing a secret airplane probably freaked a lot of people out. So, I, for one, am super excited to see what the unclassified report to Congress has to say about this.

And if some of the evidence happens to point to an origin higher than the troposphere for these weird little aircraft well, I'll try to keep an open mind.

Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.

Read more here:
Obama says UFOs are out there. But are they aliens or humans? - MSNBC

by: Nexstar Media Wire, The Associated Press

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) The student reporter who gained national acclaim when he interviewed President Barack Obama at the White House in 2009 has died of natural causes, his family says.

Damon Weaver was 23 when he died May 1, his sister, Candace Hardy, told thePalm Beach Post. Further details were not released. He had been studying communications at Albany State University in Georgia.

Weaver was 11 when he interviewed Obama for 10 minutes in the Diplomatic Room on Aug. 13, 2009, asking questions that focused primarily on education. He covered school lunches, bullying, conflict resolution and how to succeed.

Weaver then asked Obama to be his homeboy, saying then-Vice President Joe Biden had already accepted.

Absolutely, a smiling Obama said, shaking the boys hand.

He used that meeting to later interview Oprah Winfrey and athletes like Dwyane Wade.

He was just a nice person, genuine, very intelligent, Hardy said. Very outspoken, outgoing. He never said no to anybody.

Weaver got his start in fifth grade when he volunteered for the school newscast at K.E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary in a farm community on the shores of Lake Okeechobee.

Damon was the kid who ran after me in the hall to tell me he was interested, his teacher, Brian Zimmerman, told the Post in 2016. And right away, I just saw the potential for the way he was on camera. You could see his personality come through. He wasnt nervous being on camera.

Continued here:
Damon Weaver, kid reporter who interviewed Obama, dies at 23 - WCBD News 2

Remember when we had a president that cared about sneakers? Obviously they were not as important as his political leanings, but important, nonetheless, to folks like me. Though the occasion was rare, seeing Barack Obama in a pair of cool sneakers engaged an area of my mind that I dont think I expected a politician to ever touch. It didnt seem forced.

It wasnt an effort by a politician to make it seem like he fit in with the cool crowd. Obamas appreciation for sneakers seemed to be an authentic part of his nature. While some might assume it was him alone, some of the ease with which he was able to break these invisible barriers was due to the people around him. He had a team of like-minded individuals that were masters in their respective fields surrounding him.

One of those people was Chris Holliday. A hard man to find and one of the most low-key people I have ever had the pleasure of speaking with, Holliday is a man of many connections. In fact, it was Holliday that helped Complex secure then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris for an appearance on Sneaker Shopping. When it came to Obama and sneakers, Holliday was the go-between. He says he sourced a lot of sneakers for the former president. However, he is more than just a sneaker guy.

Looking through Hollidays social media accountswell, accountthe first thing you notice is that he has some very influential friends. From the professional world of basketball to the White House, Holliday keeps company with those at the top of their game. The second thing you notice is that his sneaker collection runs pretty thick. And unlike most sneakerheads, hell rock a fresh pair while dressed in the usual political uniform of a suit and tie. Its a bit jarring and refreshing, but also speaks to the role he plays in connecting the dots between Black men and the political process that so often adversely affects them.

Lets be honest, when we think of politics, a Black man in a suit in a fresh pair of Jordans isnt the image that comes to mind. For Holliday, the sneakers are just a part of who he is. And as he navigates the world of politics, he is slowly changing the expectation and perception of a larger community that is now starting to understand their power.

As you grow up and you see different types of people from where youre from, he says, you realize who are the authentic people and who are not the authentic people.

Holliday was most recently the adviser to surrogate outreach for the Biden campaign. While the title sounds vague, the position helped the Biden campaign listen and connect to Black men. As Holliday describes it, his role was to curate the culture to translate and become a bridge for African-American men. With 2020 disrupted by the COVID pandemic, the job of connecting anyone to anyone was hard enough, let alone to a very specific group of people. Banking on his experience in marketing and promotions at iHeartRadio, Holliday developed a sense of how important the role of media can be in shaping the conversation. He also knows how individual voices can be more important than any media conglomerate.

One thing I realized is with athletes and entertainers, especially athletes right now, they are their own media companies, Holliday says. You wake up in the morning, you scroll to your feed. Me and my nephews, my cousins, my friends, we dont get up in the morning and turn on CNN, ABC, or NBC.

One of those athletes is Chris Paul, who Holliday stood next to on the campaign trail in one of the few photos I could find of him.

Chris is an essential piece in connecting politics, sports, and culture, which gave us a chance to ask our own questions and tell our own stories to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, the NBA veteran says of Holliday. What makes it even cooler is the fact he looks like us, speaks our language, and dresses the way we dressJs and all.

While Holliday didnt know it at the time, his start at iHeartRadio and front row view of the process of turning artists into stars would be the prep work needed to take on his role as a surrogate during the Obama administration. Starting out as a deputy press secretary in Florida for the 2008 campaign, Holliday began learning the ins and outs of the world of politics and how he could step in and help. During that initial campaign, he started to realize the power of telling stories and being true to yourself.

You just woke up in the morning, you tried to give something, give all that you have, but also trying to interject your own piece of who you really are. Obama, the campaign, was all about telling your story, he says.

That authenticity and storytelling often came through the eyes of Hollidays athlete friends. Back in the Obama administration, Steph Curry became a vocal advocate of the president, speaking against gun violence and appearing as part of the Malaria Initiative. Curry and Obama also came together on sneakers when Under Armour created the super-limited Under Armour Curry 3 sneaker that honored Obamas back-to-back terms as president. Holliday was the connector.

We all trust Chris, Curry says. He always tells it straight with a real feel for how we can make the biggest difference while still staying true to who we are, like we did together for the Democratic National Convention. And hes got that special personality that bridges and connects with people of every background while staying true to who he is, which is really rare. Its just dope to see a brother like Chris moving in these circles, representing the culture, and just trying to do right for people.

With the Biden administration leaning heavily on the world of social media, Holliday was able to connect the campaign with culture in a way that the Obama administration didnt need to. How athletes use their voice has changed tremendously since 2008. From podcasts, to YouTube vlogs, to full-on media and production companies, athletes and celebrities alike are telling their own stories, their own way. And with the NBA relaxing rules on footwear, weve seen a ton of messages in support of all types of causes across the sneakers we see on court. For Holliday, that voice and perspective is important. He believes that everyone needs to see people that look like people they know.

While there is an audience for the larger networks to reach, Holliday believes that there is a far greater impact when seeing someone from your own neighborhood, where the most help is needed, interacting with and championing the causes that are important to those communities.

When asked about his role in past administrations and how he got there, Holliday is quick to keep it as authentic as you can get.

For me, as a young Black man, I didnt grow up saying, Hey, I want to go work at the White House, Holliday explains while laughing under his breath. I didnt grow up doing that.

Through his experience working in politics, Holliday started his own company, Swing State Strategies. In addition to advising political campaigns and presidents on being inclusive, he is also tapped by CEOs and other executives to advise on how their companies can be more diverse. As an adviser, Chris is often sharing what seems all too obvious to most of us.

I tell people: How you can be inclusive of Black people is hire Black people, he says. Put them in these rooms.

In addition to advising politicians and CEOs, part of Hollidays job is to educate. For many, the world of politics and big business seem daunting and out of reach. He looks at it a different way. As he helps change the narrative around Black men, he also uses his platform to let people know that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton arent the only roads that lead to success. He believes that intelligence goes beyond what you score on an exam and extends to how you are able to feel a room and respond accordingly so that everyone leaves happy.

The smartest executives aint the guy that got on the shoes and tie, Holliday says.

Holliday believes the smartest executives that come to him for counsel extend a hand to the younger executives that look, speak, and think differently than they themselves do. He also feels that the more inclusive your surroundings, the more inclusive the result. Its this style of thinking that has led to a more inclusive sneaker world for us all. Big brands like Adidas are partnering with designers like Jerry Lorenzo to run entire divisions; Foot Locker named Melody Ehsani to run its womens business. It is these companies that wind up succeeding, according to Chris.

Holliday has witnessed these ideas in practice from within his own family. His cousin Victor, a video game designer and executive at Universal, wears Jordans to work. He notes that this distinction separates Victor from the majority of executives in a way that makes the rooms he is in more diverse. Holliday doesnt believe that the neighborhood you come from, or how you dress, disqualifies you from being an executive.

As part of his job, Holliday fields calls from executives asking about the latest footweara sign he believes comes from a genuine place of interest to understand sneaker culture. It is this new clashing of cool and smart that is bringing a different voice to the world, and CEOs are starting to recognize the value it has in creating a more diverse and inclusive business. Evidence of this can be seen in the release of the Air Jordan 11 Jubilee that brought in over $175 million over the holiday season. Holliday became the resource for many of the executives he works with when it came to securing their pairs.

You have to create dialogue, context, and open communication to figure out how to make everybody feel inclusive in this environment, Holliday says. To him, this is important because if it isnt done, those same people will continue to make laws and policies that dont pertain to the larger audience. Not just for African-American men, but also their kids.

The unresolved issues that exist in BIPOC communities arent always a priority in the world of politics, and, yet, in the past 12 months weve again realized how important the conversation can be to making us all feel like we have a part in the direction of this country. For Holliday, this connection is more important than ever. From CEOs of venture capital firms and tech companies, to some of the best basketball players in the world, to presidents, senators, and city councilmen, Holliday is bringing together people in a way that politics hasnt been able to do for as long as we can remember, all while teaching and being authentic to himself and his community.

Introduced to me as Obamas sneaker guy, it is clear that Hollidays role is much larger and more impactful than that. He serves as a bridge. He speaks and connects the world to young Black men and lets them know they dont have to fit in a box to change the world, they can just be themselves, fresh Js and all.

See the rest here:
From Obama to Kamala, Meet the Presidential Connect to Sneakers, Athletes, and CEOs - Complex