Ajit Pai is tired of all the hearings. He prefers to receive complaints and concerns via suggestion box.
FCC CHAIRMAN INTRODUCES TWO NEW PROPOSALS TO MODERNIZE FCC PROCESSES
WASHINGTON, July 22, 2019—Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai today announced that he has presented his colleagues with two new proposals to modernize and streamline the agency’s processes. Under the first, the FCC would continue the agency’s move toward electronic filing and correspondence by fully transitioning the Universal Licensing System—the agency’s largest licensing system—from paper to electronic format. The second proposal would expedite the Commission’s hearing processes by expanding the use of written hearings (i.e. hearings conducted without live testimony).
“As the communications
marketplace is being transformed by the digital revolution, we must continue to
modernize our own operations.” said Chairman Pai. “That’s why I’m introducing two new proposals
to update and streamline our processes for the digital age. By transitioning more records and
communications from paper to electronic format, we can save money and increase our
efficiency. And by streamlining our
hearing rules, we can resolve disputes more quickly, which will benefit the
private sector as well as the Commission.
I hope that my colleagues will join me in supporting these
good-government initiatives.”
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Address your concerns directly to: Will Wiquist, (202) 418-0509 or email correspondence to will.wiquist@fcc.gov
Media Relations: (202) 418-0500 / ASL: (844) 432-2275 / TTY: (888) 835-5322 / Twitter: @FCC / www.fcc.gov This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action.
Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes official action. See MCI v. FCC, 515 F.2d 385 (D.C. Cir. 1974).
Change Yourself, Change the World by Visionary Speaker and Author, Whitney Vosburgh.
In response to a growing call, visionary author and business leader Whitney Vosburgh will be leading two fun, highly interactive weekend workshops in Berkeley, California in August 10-11th and 17-18th.
These workshops will guide you, together with a select number of participants, through the process of awakening to your unique gifts, identifying your “North Star” for a sense of purpose and creating a personalized action-focused pathway that enables you to head into 2020 with enhanced vision and enthusiasm at work and in life.
Each of these two “Change Yourself, Change the World” weekend workshops will take the principles and framework featured in Vosburgh’s two books and provide an immersive experience designed to transform the lives of participants. These inspiring and insightful new books co-authored with Dr. Charlie Grantham — “WORK THE FUTURE! TODAY:Finding your path to purpose, passion and profit” and the accompanying workbook, “WORK THE FUTURE! TODAY 2019 POCKET PAL: A faster path to purpose, passion and profit”— have received praise from a wide spectrum of leaders and readers in the pursuit of regenerative business growth that also provides purpose and meaning.
Sign up soon places are going fast! Your $300 dollars for this workshop is an investment in your personal growth as well as your career. You will leave with a deeper understanding how to achieve your own preferred work/life balance.
Whitney Vosburgh, Change Yourself, Change the World Host
Whitney Vosburgh is co-founder of WORK THE FUTURE! TODAY, a social venture that offers vision, leadership and solutions for maximizing personal, organizational and societal potential, and co-founder of Brand New Purpose, a brand transformation consultancy that creates purpose-built, value-driven opportunities. He is also a consulting Chief Marketing Officer and change agent for Fortune 20 companies and Silicon Valley startups, guiding over $20+ billion worth of M&A, IPOs, sales, pivots and launches. Whitney graduated with an M.A. in Religious Leadership for Social Change from Graduate Theological Union, and with a B.F.A. from Parsons School of Design in New York City. His expertise on the Future of Work has been featured in four books, including a bestseller by Dan Pink, and in “Conscious Company” magazine. When Whitney is not focusing on business consulting, speaking and writing, he can be found making art, which has been exhibited throughout the world. His Tweets can be found at: @brandguru
Marcus Druen, Change Yourself, Change the World Workshop Leader.
Marcus Druen is an expert on individual and business transformation, and has led hundreds of workshops focusing on empowerment and transformation in over 20 countries. His consulting firm, Audacify, is based in the UK. He shares Whitney Vosburgh’s commitment to restore the sense of “shared humanity” to the workplace, at this time when the move to de-personalized “digitization” is proceeding with alarming speed. He also shares the belief that all change begins within each individual. Marcus is a graduate of Cologne Business School.
For more information about these workshops, visit: https://bit.ly/2Yn4YKn
and https://bit.ly/2XkMVbd,
and to learn more about
Whitney Vosburgh’s “Work The Future! Today” books, visit: http://www.workthefuture.today
San Francisco culture of mutual support helped create great opportunities for entrepreneurs to achieve their dreams.
Since before the formation of this country by great men like Benjamin Franklin one of the best parts of living on this continent is that everyone has a chance to create the life they want to have. Benjamin Franklin is a great example of someone who grew up in a modest home, ventured out on his own to become a very wealthy world leader. Self-educated Abe Lincoln is another example of a young half orphan who made his own way in the world, reaching great achievements as a lawyer and US president. Andrew Carnegie was born into a Scottish weaver’s family that shared a one room house with their neighbors. Yet, later in the US he became synonymous with the Gilded Age. John D. Rockefeller who as the son of a con man and a very religious mother started out as a bookkeeper built one of the greatest wealth an American family ever enjoyed. He is quoted as saying: “The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest”. Even though he was a very tough and sometimes ruthless competitor he ended up donating more than $500 million to various philanthropic causes. Back in his days this was quite a lot of money.
In recent history we have Steve Jobs, the son of a Syrian refugee, was adopted and started his career in the warehouse. Ray Kroc started as an ambulance driver at 15 years old and later started McDonald’s corporation, considered one of the fastest growing companies. Sarah Breedlove, later known by one of her married names Madam C. J. Walker’s parents and siblings were slaves, yet she became the first known African American female Millionaire. Andy Grove spent part of his childhood in a Nazi concentration camp and came to the US penniless when he had to flee Hungary from Soviet Oppression at age 20. Later he became associated with the success of Intel, a company he led to international success as its CEO. Arthur Rock’s dad had a candy store and Arthur’s education was possible thanks to the G.I. bill. Arthur Rock founded one of the first investment firms in Silicon Valley, called Davis & Rock. He is considered one of the founders of Silicon Valley. Eric Hippeau received a wonderful education in France and chose to come to the US to achieve his fame and fortune. He came to the US as an ad sales manager for IDG, before becoming publisher of PC Magazine, CEO of Ziff-Davis, Softbank, and now runs a very successful venture firm, Lerer Hippeau.
In the US if you work hard and smart you can succeed. Yes, it is quite clear that in most cases being well educated or rather being able to educate yourself and re-educate yourself is a prerequisite for success. And yes, it possible to reach amazing success in the United States, regardless of background and family ties.
Is it easier to achieve success when you have a loving and supportive family that can afford to pay for a great education and make wonderful introductions? Of course, it is. Is it harder for children who have to overcome the long-term physiological and psychological challenges of ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences)? Yes, it is harder. However, it is possible. This is what is unique about the USA. Many businesses in the US are merit based, especially in California.
When communities, business leaders, and educational institutions come together to focus on helping kids become successful adults, entire cities and villages thrive. Providing education that provides students with the life-long ability to learn may be one of the top gifts we can give our local communities. Most thriving towns have benevolent leaders who care about all its inhabitants. Why not bring the leaders in your community together to facilitate a local plan to create a thriving and high-quality place to live and grow up in. Amazing success will be up to the individual, luck, hard work, lots of studying, and the willingness to put in the necessary effort. There are no shortcuts to wealth, short of inheriting it. And as every successful business leader knows making the first money is easier than to hold on to the money and growing the business. This takes management skills, knowledge, competitiveness and most importantly content and satisfied customers.
It is best if we remind ourselves and future generations that only because someone else inherited their wealth, doesn’t make them the only ones who can thrive. With a strong desire to succeed, great networking skills, and the willingness to learn, the road to success is open to everyone in the USA. For self-made people there are no short cuts to success. It takes work and diligence, and the willingness to try over and over until the necessary skills are perfected.
In China during the Han Dynasty in the 6th century BC, when Confucius has a strong impact on culture the society was merit-based. Education became the key for social mobility back then in China. Europe opened its mind to become a merit-based society in the 17th Century and is still waffling about it. The US is the only country that was founded on the principles of being merit based. The West Coast naturally has embraced being merit-based since it was founded by people from all walks of life who were seeking fame and fortune in the 19th century during the gold rush era. Life in the Wild West required that towns people were there for each other and pool resources. This spirit of collaboration has survived in California. This is the reason why living is pleasant and easy. There is a “live and let live” attitude, and openness to new and different ways of looking at things, and the willingness to create teams, tribes, mutually beneficial groups, and everyone who is a good fit and is willing to contribute to the overall good is welcome.
Towns who are willing to support their neighbors’ kids thrive more than towns who live in brutally hierarchical ways without caring about each other. Businesses that receive help from financiers are able to afford an educated workforce. These businesses thrive easier. Invest in educating all kids, invest in your towns future. The investment in lifting the overall level of education of a town pays off within 10 to 15 years. It cannot be accomplished within a quarter. However, if you don’t invest in your city, you wil lend up with a ghost town suffering from unhappy, often drugged and depressed workforce who doesn’t work effectively, nor purchase anything. Every town has a chance to adopt these logical and simple principles if leaders choose to come together for the benefit of the entire population. Check out Oakland, CA it is now safer than Kansas City!
We believe in the American philosophy that free markets help each person rise to the best possible economic achievement for themselves. We are all in favor of a thriving economy.
The economy is thriving particularly well for the top 25% of the American population. Around the world poverty is at a 100-year low. According to Politifacts.com who compared World Bank statistics and other studies: “By World Bank figures, Smith actually understated the reduction. We’ve cut extreme poverty by 58 percent using the 2008 definition of extreme poverty, and 74.1 percent by the 2015 definition.”
Many business leaders plan to stay with a company only for a few years and therefore the long term stability of their companies is less important than the managers ability to cash out. If the economy shrinks, employees are upset, the companies are vulnerable to foreign or even domestic competition, it does not affect the manager personally as quickly, as it affects the rest of the economy.
Why might we encourage business leaders to watch the American, European, and Japanese middle-class standards of living? After all ever more people from the upper middle class are thriving. There are 7.1 million households in this country that have investable assets of $1 million or more. So why be concerned about the middle and lower-income brackets of the middle class?
What does income inequality even mean?
A recent study by the Fed reported in the Wall Street Journal stated that 25% of working individuals say they have no retirement savings at all, and 44% worried that their saving isn’t on track. Among younger workers, aged 18 to 29, 42% have nothing set aside, and only 26% believe they are adequately prepared for retirement. Even more disturbing 40% of Americans said they don’t have enough cash on hand to cover an unexpected $400 expense and 17% reported they did not have sufficient funds to meet their current obligations. This indicates that 57% lived either beyond their means or they did not earn enough. With the unemployment rate solidly below 4% it is most likely the later.
San Francisco has the highest median income in the country. It is reportedly at $110,816. This sounds great until you realize that how many people are not participating in driving the median income up to these wonderful levels, however they still have to pay the same for housing. The average cost for a 1-bed room apartment is $3,391.12 per month and naturally the rent or mortage for a dwelling fit for a family is even more. This spells trouble for employees who are not in managerial positions, particularly since Numbeo suggests that it takes $4,106.34 for living expenses for a family with 4 members before the rent. Add some student loan payments, the need to save money to take care of their kids the dream of maybe buying a house and it starts to look dismal for those who earn their living as teachers, truck drivers or service personal. This is when reality shows that a shrinking middle and lower-part of the middle class indeed will not foster the consumerism that Westerners have enjoyed for the past 70 years.
When the US economy is turned and/or allowed to be turned into a “third world economy,” the US will become a third world country.
7.1 Millions of extremely wealthy end up living in a country surrounded by 315.9 Million people, some of whom can’t afford to save $400 for their next emergency. Currently more than 50% of the US population earns less than $50,000. In many cases much less 20.3% of US households or every 5th household earned less than $25K per per year. For millennials the outlook explains why they prefer experiences instead of accumulating products. 58% of 35-yr-olds earn less than $50,000 per year and 81% of 25-yr-olds earn less than $50,000 per year. They barely can afford rent. Yes, many move to places that have more affordable homes, however their salaries may drop drop relative to the price of housing.
Yes, there are a few “Unicorns,” companies that make more money than ever. Apple is slated to become the first $1 Trillion dollar company. However the US economy is reliant on small businesses. There are 28,000,000 small businesses in the US and only 18,500 large companies. One half of the US economy is based on and relies on small business. Small businesses are the first to suffer when the middle class erodes. In the 70s 1 out of 5 small businesses folded in the first year. Today 50% of small businesses fail often due to lack of earnings. When the expendable income for so many Americans gets eroded due to the lack of “living wages” the US will turn into a third-world country. Currently in San Francisco and Marin County 1 in 5 is in need of food assistance, and 1 in 4 is at risk of going hungry, according to the San Francisco Foodbank. California is the tenth most affluent State in the US with the nearly 900,000 millionnaires.
Deloitte just releases their 2019 report is based on the views of 13,416 millennials questioned across 42 countries and 3,009 Gen Zs from 10 countries. While this does not provide a statistically correct sample for each country, it does give us a bit of an idea that could be considered a possible trend. The news is somewhat positive. 60% of the Millennials surveyed were confident that they could reach their own goals if they applied themselves. This could mean they are optimistic, or it could mean that they blame themselves for not being as successful as they wished they were.
Board of Directors may do well to start thinking a bit longer term. If a company doesn’t have a long range vision like most Chinese and European companies do, the US economy may be structurally damaged in ways that will affect its investors and business leaders.
Fortunately there are great examples of how communities can come together to make sure all the boats are lifted. Check out the articles about how Oakland, a city that was beleaguered by inequality problems, pulled together to lift the city out of poverty. It takes vision and it takes the will of those who have the power to effect change.
