I’m A One-Person Communications Team- HELP!

Many companies higher master of none but know enough about everything communications professionals to get the job done. But for these poor souls the question then becomes: how do you manage all those responsibilities? There is no easy answer, but hopefully these tips will help.

Why Introverts Should Have A Strong Social Media Brand

Here I am, having grown several social media accounts for various businesses and personalities, but never post much myself because frankly, by nature I’m an introvert and don’t feel as if anyone would care that I saw the Rockefeller Christmas Tree, where I went on vacation, how I did on my last Peloton ride, among many other things that I see my friends share all the time.

Six Business Lessons I Learned From Tennis

For tennis players in New York City August doesn’t mean summer is coming to an end, instead we’re excited that the U.S. Open is just around the corner.

As someone who has played unprofessionally (unless you count high school) all his life, it’s fair to say many of the lessons gained from learning how to play tennis have been just as, if not more important, when it comes to business. Read more…

Internet Regulation Is Being Regulated

This past week, two important developments in the way the internet will be maintained and regulated occurred. The first was when the FCC announced it will not conduct a study on how news organizations, well, cover the news. The second was the FCC’s decision to create new rules ensuring that no matter who your internet provider is, it will not affect the service they are supposed to provide. While both decisions have different implications, both will have a great effect on the way people around the country are able to watch their favorite shows/movies and receive information. Read More…

Take Pre-K To The Bank

When Elizabeth Hartline’s op-ed on why she believed  universal pre-k was doomed to fail (with or without a tax increase) was published on WNYC, Twitter immediately erupted on why the entire plan should be dropped. Read More…

Six Reasons Why Paul Ryan is a Bad Choice for Mitt Romney

The rule of thumb for choosing a Vice President is to do no harm. He or she is not supposed to be controversial, divisive, or someone you would fear having in the White House. Mitt Romney’s pick of Congressman Paul Ryan for his vice presidential nominees is all those things rolled into one. Read More…

Three Reasons Why Internet Regulation Is Necessary

Despite the successful advertisement campaigns run by Facebook and Google, ensuring that they are cool and hip, the fact remains they are working to protect their brand just like any other company. Read More…

Please, Not Another Fight That’s Debt

Just after President Obama asked Congress to raise the debt ceiling, S&P lowered the credit rating of several European nations, proving more stimulus was needed for the American economy. Read More…

Teaching Disabilities

While most of the public debate focuses on No Child Left Behind and whether the new standards implemented by states can effectively assess teacher’s performance, many students in schools across the country are still years behind and have trouble grasping the basic concepts in math and English. Read More…

Playing Politics Won’t Create Jobs

It is a fact that Americans do not like to pay taxes, never have and never will, which makes it easy for a politician to say that they are going to or actually did lower taxes in an election year. You speak to to the poor, middle, and rich in the country and no one thinks twice about it because it is what everyone wants to hear. I have argued in the past about why rich people should pay more taxes, but with President Obama and Mitt Romney (who I believe will be the GOP’s nominee for President) coming out with job plans, it is worth taking a look to see if further reductions in taxes would actually help create jobs. Read More…

Opening Up Secrets: Lobbying and Social Media

I really liked this article in Politico about how lobbyists in Washington are finding it hard to contact staffers on the Hill since the they mainly use gchat, Facebook, and Twitter to communicate. It points out this is much different than the way things used to be done with snail mail and telephone and has been somewhat hard for lobbyists to adjust. But beneath the surface there is another reason why K Street doesn’t like social media: it could easily open them up to public humiliation. Read More…

Driving to Reelection?

With Michigan becoming a political battleground in the 2012 election, President Obama gave a speech at an auto plant, and brought South Korea’s President with him to the Wolverine State. The free trade agreement Congress passed opens up business with our neighbors to the east and both president’s gave a speech at the plant explaining how the new trade deal will benefit both countries. But wait, I thought American manufacturers were hesitant about free trade agreements because they don’t want to lose their jobs? It turns out American’s are much more sensible than that. Read More…

Harry Reid Busted the Filibuster

On Thursday night Majority Leader Harry Reid showed how big his bolas are, by using a rare parliamentary move that stopped Republicans from filibustering a bill that hopes to force China to raise its currency. Republicans were threatening to filibuster the final vote, even though a bipartisan group of Senators already voted to have the final vote. This action should be used to start a process that gets rid of the filibuster altogether. Read More…

Rick Perry’s Culture Program

This weekend, The Washington Post published a story about a ranch presidential candidate Rick Perry and his family owns in west Texas. Stories like these are usually about how much the land is worth, how much it costs to buy, or bloggers arguing the candidate is not like most Americans they want to represent. But this time it was about what the ranch used to be called: “Niggerhead.” Read More…

Don’t Politicize The Fed

If all you were focusing on was Congress’ reaction to the Federal Reserve’s actions since the financial crisis, you might ask yourself “why is everyone worried about partisanship?” Heavy players on the left and right have wanted the Fed to be more transparent, open up its books, and do more to fix the economy. While Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul has advocated for getting rid of the agency altogether, Congressman Barney Frank, ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, recently introduced legislation that would make the agency succumb to political friction. Read More…

Wangari Maathai

While working at the United Nations, my first job as a reporter, I was eager to please. As I was working on a story about African governments selling land to private investors, Nobel Laureate Wangaari Maathai was coming to the U.N. to talk about her efforts on how she has helped women restore the forest without private investment in her home country of Kenya, and across the world. The Green Belt Movement she started help revolutionize the way economists think about developing nations prosper, and she was at the forefront of showing other leaders how to accomplish this. Read More…

Why Isn’t Obama Doing Anything About Mortgages?

The last time whitehouse.gov posted anything about home mortgages was on August 3rd of this year. President Obama also did not even touch the housing issues that continue to plague the economy in the jobs plan he gave to Congress. As the employment rate continues to hover around 9 percent, it has forced many banks to foreclose on homes to families they lent money too. At the same time banks are not lending any money out so new homes can’t be built, or for businesses for them to hire. But then again, there aren’t a lot of people asking for money either. But that is no excuse for Obama not to take on the housing problem. In fact, it would be good for him politically as well. Read More…

How Does Google Affect You?

Congress allowed other online companies to complain about Google’s dominance in the world of “search” at a this week. The online industry makes its money off advertizing, particularly from companies that sell things. But Google owns some of those companies, and the others, have been accusing the Palo Alto giant of helping to highlight the companies they own over the ones they do not. So, why should we care about all this? Read More…

Obama Goes Big On Taxes

These are proposals that will help get the economy going again, but have no chance of passing Congress. Read More…

Don’t Panic On Manufacturing Jobs

Suzy Khimm had a nice post about the troubling manufacturing industry. According to her research “Manufacturing output rose just 0.5 percent in August — a 3.8 percent increase over the previous August, but a sign of weakness overall. The output of consumer goods was even weaker, at 0.2 percent, partly helped by a 1.7 percent increase in output from the auto industry.” This comes on top of the news today that China is playing a bigger role in digging up rare materials that are needed for the new compact fluorescent light bulbs, and the batteries we want to put into cars. While this makes for a good story, and we do need to make sure we do have a manufacturing base in the U.S., it is certainly not time to hit the panic button just yet. Read More…

Last Night At The David Weprin “Party”

By now I’m sure you’ve heard Republican Bob Turner beat Democrat David Weprin last night to represent New York’s Ninth Congressional District. It is a horrible loss for DCCC who spent half a million dollars, on top of the almost a quarter million dollars Weprin spent, trying to keep the seat vacated by Anthony Weiner. While there wasn’t much to celebrate, for the Weprin camp, they still could have picked a better venue for his party. Read More…

No Serious Policy In Politics

So far, we have three Republican candidates for President (Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, and Jon Huntsman) who have come out with plans on how to “create jobs in America” and fix the economy. On top of that, President Obama sent his plan to Congress last night and has been touting it across the country. Obviously it is good that policy proposals are being put on the table, but they don’t seem to be doing much good. Read More…

Ten Years After 9/11

It is almost hard to believe that it has only been ten years since the events that took place on September 11th 2001. Everyone can still remember the events like it was yesterday. Where they were, what they were doing, who they called, and particularly how horrified they were. But as Americans tried to keep pushing on with their lives so many other events took place that either reminded them of 9/11, or our leaders did not act responsibly to effectively gage the conscious of the country. Read More…

The GOP Want To Raise Taxes?

You have to give David Weigel a lot of credit for writing this story on how the Republican nominees for President are telling middle and working class families they should be paying more taxes. Trust me, when everyone is on vacation, and staffers aren’t sending out press releases, (between; I probably shouldn’t be saying this) it gets pretty hard to find something to write about. So props for Weigel’s creativeness, but unfortunately I don’t believe his argument will hold much water. Read More…

Remember Jobs?

It’s been two weeks since Congress extended the countries debt ceiling, and out of the 435 members in the House, there have only been six bills introduced that have something to do with creating jobs. Three of which have been introduced by New York Democrat Representative Paul Tonko. It would be really easy for me to go through each bill and say why they are good or bad. But apparently the President is going to put out his own job plan in early September, and at the end of the day that’s what will be the base for future job creation policies.Read More…

Why Rich People Should Pay Taxes

This argument usually comes from a moral point of view, running on the lines of “the wealthy owe the country because it has served them so well” or as Warren Buffet reminded us today that it’s about “shared sacrifice.” Liberals who make this argument are right but there are fundamentals involved that can help them explain why. Taxes are a bad word because nobody, no matter how much money you earn, likes to pay them. But for those who earn a lot of money it’s important to remind them what they give the government will help them earn more money in the future. Read More…

Obama on the Political Fence

I always get yelled at for being an Obama apologist, and after writing this article it’s not going to be any different. CNN came out with a poll that was conducted over the weekend that had President Obama’s approval rating at 44% with 54% disapproving of his job performance. But seeing who is disapproving of the President is telling, and shows us the type of voters Obama need to reach in order to win reelection in 2012. Read More…

Jobs and Taxes; Helping to Pay for the Future

It’s not a news alert that American’s have never liked to pay taxes. We started a war over them, and have never voted for a politician who says he/she will raise them. But in light of the recent debt debate and angst to lower the national debt, it’s important to remember raising taxes on millionaires and corporations could help protect social programs, and create jobs. Read More…

Winning on the Debt Ceiling?

As the debt ceiling debacle continued in Washington, it didn’t seem like it was about the American people as much as it was about the coming election. Both Democrats, Republicans, and members of the Tea Party, were fighting tooth and nail to protect their priorities. Since they hear how hard it is to find a job from their constituents they were doing everything they could to protect theirs. That meant no compromise, no reform on entitlements, and no new taxes. In the meantime, the economy continued to spiral and American’s felt they were left without a government. Read More…