Reaching the writers and the candidates about the virtual economy

Bumped into the international press pack yesterday in Peterborough, N.H. and had a chance encounter with Sen. John McCain, the most seasoned and sensible of the Republican pack.

What a media circus, or should I say shark attack? McCain was buried so deep that even a CBS news teams (with whom I was running temporarily), couldn't get a shot from the floor.

Being an old news biz expert, myself, I took the time to reach many, many TV, radio and print journalists about the cause of the rising virtual economy (sometimes called home-based) and the lack of coverage of this trend, plus its importance for the 2008 campaign. In the process, I literally bumped into Don Gonyea (NPR White House correspondent) at the Peterborough Diner; David Corn (a star writer for Mother Jones and Fox news personality) at the deli next door; Mark Hopper (a producer for CBS News) outside of Peterborough Town Hall and many others.

My message was plain: Although our former Massachusetts governor has virtues on the entrepreneurial side that I respect, his health care plan is a major sham. As a young NJ-based reporter agreed, nothing like MANDATING that people like us pay for our own health insurance!

Wow, huge advancements! And I pay almost $555 a month for the honor of getting coverage.

Of course, Mitt has disavowed this program. But he sure was taking credit at the time the legislation was passed and keeps taking some form of credit on the hustings. Now who's a flip-flopper?

Over the months to come I'm hoping that some of these journalists will start digging deeper into the trend of all work force trends -- the hidden growth of the virtual work place sector. New data from EONS.com, although sparse in terms of numbers, correlates exactly with data from Yahoo.com, NEWSWEEK, MassINC and elsewhere.

Preliminary data from the ongoing EONs.com Virtual Business and Career Survey, which ran for two days on the home page in December, shows that 77 percent of boomers plan to run a home-based virtual business in their retirement years. This is hugely significant to a multitude of sectors from technology to service providers, the home construction industry and contractors who rebuild structures, the food service industry, restaurants, book stores, and on and on . ..

We boomers may be aging, but we represent the wealthiest sector of the economy in terms of disposable income. WHY IS NO ONE PAYING ATTENTION???