by Gary Meltz | Mar 4, 2024 | Uncategorized
YOU’RE INVITED TO THE COLUMNS HOTEL ON MARCH 13! Greetings. We want to make you aware of two exciting events in New Orleans, on Wednesday, March 13th, to celebrate Paul Alexander’s new book that honors the life and legacy of jazz artist Billie Holiday. Paul and I have been friends since 2001, when Paul hosted the Alexander and Batchelor radio show on WABC in New York, and I served as Rep. Eliot Engel’s press secretary, where the Congressman was a regular guest. The first event is at The Garden District Book Shop, at 6pm. Paul will be interviewed by Grammy Award winning producer, Scott Billington. For more information about that event, click here. Immediately after, there will be a cocktail party at The Columns Hotel, located at 3811 St. Charles Avenue, from 7:30-9:30 pm. Hosted by Meltz Communications, this will be a great chance to speak to the author about his book, get a drink, and enjoy some hors d’oeuvres. We hope you can make it! About the Book: In the first biography of Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander–author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger–gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America’s most eminent jazz singer. He shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life–with relevant flashbacks to provide context–to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday’s artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law. During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely...
by Gary Meltz | Dec 5, 2023 | Uncategorized
The Virginia-Pilot Letters for Oct. 31: Thank you Centura College and Sentara Health for the medical assistant scholarshipprogram Letter writers express thanks to Centura College and Sentara Health for addressing themedical assistant shortage, recognize state Sen. Monty Mason for his vote for electric customers, and argue the Republican Party needs to purge non-statesmen. Way to go Recently, my organization sent mailers applauding state Sen. Monty Mason of Williamsburg forsupporting common sense legislation that will save Virginia residential electric customers $7-$14 on their monthly power bills while strengthening regulatory oversight of electric companies. Specifically, the law will save Dominion Energy customers $350 million by eliminating several “riders” —or additional project fees on a customer’s electric bill — and simplify the billing process. The legislation also prevents state regulators from having to add costs to electric bills to account forunanticipated cost overruns, like the recent increase in cost of steel and solar panels. This fix will help ensure people are paying for the electricity they use today — not getting hit with fees for something that happened in the past. This bipartisan legislation also allows for much needed investments in a secure and safe energy grid.Affordable and reliable energy will improve lives and create a stable business environment to spur jobgrowth. The mailers were sent to voters in the districts of Virginia lawmakers — a Democrat and a Republican — who showed leadership to pass this important legislation. With all Virginians coping with higher living costs, we should be grateful to lawmakers like Mason, who backed legislation to lower electric bills in the commonwealth....
by Gary Meltz | Dec 5, 2023 | Uncategorized
Globe Opinion Link: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/12/05/opinion/letters-to-the-editor-mass-electricity-market/ (Paywall) Claims of green benefits may be exaggerated Re “Giving consumers a choice when buying their electricity” (Opinion, Nov. 29): Columnist Scot Lehigh cannot be blamed for being somewhat swayed by paid advocates for the retail electric supply industry, who make a compelling case for letting customers pick where to get their electricity. After gobbling up half a billion dollars more from Bay State residents than they would otherwise have paid from 2015 to 2021, the retail supply industry may well have the best spin doctors money can buy. Lehigh asserts that calls to ban the industry in Massachusetts are an overreaction and that the state’s residential retail market should be fixed, not eliminated. After all, retail suppliers offer clean power from renewable sources to customers who are willing to pay more for electricity. Except, that’s not exactly true. Customers are only paying a retail supplier a fee to purchase clean energy credits. Recently, the Boston-based National Consumer Law Center was a signatory to a letter that consumer organizations sent to the Federal Trade Commission about “greenwashing.” Selling energy with exaggerated claims of environmental benefits only hinders efforts to address climate change through electrification. Finally, in support of legislation to protect residential electric customers in Massachusetts, NCLC staff attorney Jenifer Bosco testified in 2020 that the industry uses deceptive marketing practices to target “low-income consumers, older adults, and those with limited English language proficiency.” Gary Meltz Executive director Power for Tomorrow Washington, D.C. Power for Tomorrow is a national trade association that advocates for regulation of electric...
by Gary Meltz | Aug 15, 2023 | Uncategorized
PRESS RELEASE Washington DC, At the end of July, 2023, Gary Meltz became the Public Affairs at Real Clear Politics. This is in addition to his continued management of Meltz Communications and being the Executive Director of Power for Tomorrow. “Real Clear Politics is a trusted name in the news business, and I am looking for ways to leverage my connections to help broaden the publication’s reach into the public affairs space,” said Meltz. “Specifically, Real Clear wants to run more content that examines the policy debates currently happening in Washington, and across the nation in state capitals and local communities. This could include op-eds, thought-leader interviews and other tools that public affairs professionals use to communicate with decision makers.” ...
by Gary Meltz | Jul 7, 2023 | Uncategorized
Welcome to the Age of the Cage Match These days, powerful men want to beat one another. Literally. The “man in the arena” is no longer just a political cliché.Credit…Gregory Payan/Associated Press By Joseph Bernstein July 6, 2023 Call it the melee of the middle-aged men. We already know the main event. That would be Elon Musk versus Mark Zuckerberg in Las Vegas, or maybe the Colosseum in Rome. The rival tech billionaires are inching toward a cage match, brokered by Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. And for an undercard, how about a sitting U.S. senator versus a union boss? Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican, last week challenged Sean O’Brien, the general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to a mixed martial arts fight after Mr. O’Brien called him a “clown” and a “fraud” on Twitter. In case that’s not enough testosterone, perhaps some feats of strength are in order. Robert Kennedy Jr. might be interested. The Democratic presidential candidate recently took his shirt off in Venice Beach to perform push-ups and incline bench presses — revealing an uncommonly defined upper body for anyone, let alone a 69-year-old. (He has a full decade on Jeff Bezos, who is also musclebound.) So too might Jamaal Bowman. On Thursday, the Democratic representative of New York posted to Twitter a video of himself bench-pressing 405 pounds. For some powerful men, this is a season for peacocking. No longer content to embody the masculine ideals of financial, professional and political achievement — or simply to optimize their fitness, as tech chief executives have long done — suddenly these honchos want us to see the achievements of their bodies....
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