Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Steven Fulop: Wall Street trumps Hudson County politics

A shock to all who know Hudson County Machine Politics, outlier Steven Fulop was elected mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey.  As THE WALL STREET JOURNAL reports, he beat out incumbent old-style politico Jerramiah Healy.

Fulop had been a former Wall Street analyst. In recent years more financial firms have been locating in Jersey City.  As a result this blue-collar ethnic urban area has been undergoing rapid gentrification.  Prices of apartments have skyrocketed. Living there has become cool for Millennials.

Those of us who grew up there and never returned after college share the surprise that anything could really change in Jersey City, especially the politics. Fulop could transform it into an elite small city that can pull us Baby Boomers back. 

Angelina Jolie: Breast-cancer awareness takes giant step beyond pink

Public relations case studies will be written about how Angelina Jolie's preventative double mastectomy singlehandedly moved forward breast-cancer awareness.  It takes a celebrity.

Scrap the pink campaign.  Stick with Jolie's branding of the mission to save women's lives. 

My sister Camille Genova Klinga died of breast cancer in 2001.  In 2012, I had two biopsies for breast cancer.

Being Snooped On: The new symbol of power

The nose knows.  It smells power and the rest is the material for some of the most audacious scandals which have hit since Watergate. 

Bloomberg News has been caught snooping on masters of the universe as well as the crowd at the Federal Reserve.  POLITICO chronicles the snooping by the IRS on conservative groups and that of the Department of Justice on reporters. 

Not being snooped on can be perceived as a negative, transmitting the message that we aren't powerful enough to bother with.  Not since I was deposed about a trial I covered in 2005 through 2006 have I been snooped on.  That was heady stuff, with lawyers representing both sides flying into New Haven, Connecticut to grill me. That included questioning me about what I had posted on my blogs.

Likely I am not alone in craving the attention of being watched.

 

Everything Changes: Hillary Clinton no sure thing for '16

The Democrats, so recently riding high, are now under the kind of attack which could keep them out of the White House in 2016.  Hillary Clinton as the first U.S. President is no longer a sure thing.  Be ready to read plenty in the media about conservatives who are being groomed and funded for campaigns for 2016. 

Scandal is one of the most effective tools for cutting the legs off a political party.  It could be driven out in the wilderness for several election cycles. Since Clinton is associated with one of the them - Benghazi - Democratic party leaders may already be searching for other suitable candidates for the next presidential races.  Other scandals, as POLITICO reports, include the IRS' targeting conservatives and the Justice Department's snooping into members of the media's phone records.

Shell-shocked Democrats might decide to start studying zen, the philosophy which teaches that everything changes and provides tools, including meditation, to stay centered amidst the flux. 

Forward.Us - Facebook doesn't understand power

Is power an old man's game?  Maybe.  Facebook's Millennials have shown they know how to make money.  But their attempt to leverage power to influence public opinion has blown up.

As TECH CRUNCH reports, the Facebook lobbying vehicle Forward.us has become a sort of public nuisance rather than a public-opinion game-changer.  Its mission is to create a conversation about the controversial Keystone Pipeline Initiative.  However it has been doing that in state politics like California in a hardball manner that has been triggering a backlash.  Hardball is the game played in Washington D.C.

In the world of business, companies are not only evaluated on their earnings but also on their power.  The Facebook brand is taking a major hit.  Its founder Mark Zuckerberg looks foolish.

Anthony Weiner: Not all in the family

It's as if the powerful Clintons have split their ticket.  Although they still have a close professional relationship with Huma Abedin, they are not supporting her husband Anthony Weiner for mayor of New York City. 

According to "Page Six" in the NEW York POST, Abedin, who worked for Hillary when she was U.S. Secretary of State, is still on the a Clinton payroll.  Likely she was always be part of Hillary's circle.  But her husband who posted sexually ridiculous photos of himself on Twitter is out in the cold. 

This freezing-out could hurt his attempt to come back from the scandal.

Bloomberg Brand: Competitors are licking their chops, politicos can get edge

Bloomberg competitors, ranging from Thomas Reuters on the terminal side to News Corp on the media side, probably can't believe their good luck.  That huge and respected Bloomberg brand just took a major hit.  Could it be fatal? Time will tell.  Meanwhile, the politicos could get an edge by zeroing in investigating what has just been disclosed.

THE NEW YORK POST, owned by News Corp, broke the story that the 2,400 Bloomberg News reporters had access to the activities of Wall Street subscribers on the 315,000 Bloomberg terminals.  Now, THE NEW YORK TIMES has made that story legitimate.  Here you can read the detailed coverage of a scandal which can make the high-risk trading at JP Morgan Chase and the allegedly non-client-centric folks at Goldman Sachs seem like petty stuff.

In a nutshell, Bloomberg News reporters could log into the accounts of terminal subscribers and track a lot.  That could provide the reporter with unique insight about what the traders could be planning to do.  For example, if they kept checking X category, reporters could parachute in and start nosing around that area, gather information, and try connecting the dots. 

This could spread beyond Wall Street.  As THE NEW YORK TIMES reports:

"Banking regulators at the Federal Reserve are examining whether their own employees were subject to tracking by Bloomberg reporters, according to people briefed on the matter." 

The scope of the possible mischief is the stuff new brandnames are made of and current brandnames can be given a major boost.  Could Bloomberg terminals and Bloomberg News go out of business?  That will depend on how aggressively competitors and politicos pursue this matter.  Meanwhile ethics experts can opine on how our society has to re-think the extent it will go to in order to get an edge. That edge could turn on the edge-holder, delivering a deadly wound.

Benghazi: Leaning-in Hillary Clinton gets leaned-against by more confident GOP

Benghazi could be the GOP tipping point, where conservatives parachute out of failure and self-doubt into political confidence. 

As POLITICO chronicles, they are leaning against former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the investigation of what could have prevented the death of ambassador Chris Stevens. No longer protected by an official government identity, Clinton can be as much a target as any other ambitious political figure.  The interrogation is getting plenty of media attention.

Should Clinton blink, the GOP can build on that high-profile vulnerability.  Her leadership style is being tested as it never has been previously.

Roger Ailes Won't Be Trifled With: Fox mole brought low

There are some political personalities which are relatively invulnerable.  One had been Ronald Reagan.  Another, despite the fall of the GOP, is conservative television magician Roger Ailes.  He knows and takes the right moves whenever there is a threat, even from a practical nobody.

As some who follow media closely will remember, an employee at Fox News Joe Muto decided to have fun as a double agent.  He released video footage and petty details about life at Fox to gossip tabloid Gawker.  For that he was paid $5,000.

Had Muto not be outed, by Ailes' investigators, he might have had a new career path as a blogger at some gossip rag.  But outed he was.  He did get a book deal and that book is being released in a few weeks.  Whether it will sell, after his recent humilation, is doubtful.

TV NEWSER reports:

"Fox News mole Joe Muto entered a Manhattan courtroom in handcuffs this afternoon, pleading guilty to two misdemeanor charges."

Muto is paying a $1,000 fine. The $5,000 he earned from Gawker is going to a good cause.  He has to serve 10 days of community service and 100 hours of service at a nonprofit.

Ailes has sent an unambiguous message that he will not be trifled with.  No matter what is happening with the American conservative movement and its former leaders such as Karl Rove and George W. Bush, he's in charge at Fox News.  Don't touch any of his toys in that sandbox. 

Chris Christie Jersey Boy: But what exactly does that negative mean?

Chris Christie's unique branding embodies being a totally Jersey Boy. 

And, contends Jonathan Chait in NEW YORK Magazine, that's a negative so big and bad that it could block him from getting to the White House.  After all, Hillary Clinton is a nice girl from the midwest.

Nationally, explains Chait, Americans associate New Jersey with the likes of Tony Soprano.  But, since Chicago is associated with the likes of Al Capone, I don't agree.  What turns people off on those of us born and bred in the Garden State and don't manage to "overcome" that early programming is more complex. 

What's wrong with us from NJ is that we have all the supposed faults of those from New York but without the status.  Among them are the distinct accent, along with the blunt use of language.  It made news when Christie announced, before a hurricane, for everyone "to get the hell off the beach." Another deficit is what others view as intrusive and we just consider our right to know.  For example, our neighbor is home during normal work hours, so we think nothing of asking him if he got fired.  A third is high aggressiveness.  Like all who feel innately inferior we become grabbers.  Incidentally, because of that a lot of us do make it big. 

Depending on how politically ambitious Christie is, he may or may not try to re-brand himself as less NJ.  What could emerge would be a White Bread politico.