I deviate from my normal “just the facts” approach to paint a dystopic near-future presidential election story that seems outrageous. This is an experiment so hang in there, as the story winds through fact, fiction and a surprise ending that will blow your mind.
Read MoreOur country is divided, and elections are close. The difference between winning and losing a Presidential election often comes down to a few thousand votes in a relatively few counties. How do we make our voting system more reliable so we can trust the outcome?
Read MoreAntifragility is a property of systems that thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. It is fundamentally different from resiliency (the ability to recover from failure) and robustness (the ability to resist failure). The concept has been applied in risk analysis, physics, molecular biology, transportation planning, engineering, Aerospace and computer science. It should be used by our government too.
Read MoreLike many Americans this past couple weeks, I watched in horror as protests and looting spread across America after the brutal police killing of a black man that was captured on video—shocking images that have come alongside a once-in-a-century pandemic and a Depression-like economic slide.
Read MoreA new age is dawning on our nation. For all of the major events of history, the engines of our economy and functions of our government have been upended by an invisible enemy. The death toll of our long lasting conflict in Vietnam has already been eclipsed, and markets are reacting with more fear than in 2008. This novel disease has had more impact on the average American than the largest stories of the last two decades, including wars in the Middle East, Sept. 11 and the real estate crash.
Read MoreIn the past 9 weeks, events driven by the global Covid-19 pandemic have changed world forever. When things move this fast at this kind of scale, its very difficult to draw conclusions from the data. It becomes unanalyzable in the early stages. Soldiers call it the “fog of war”. Leaders do their best to react to changing circumstances and the good ones change their opinion in the face of better data. Rather than opine on a subject I knew nothing about, I chose to absorb as much information as possible before weighing in. I think the fog of war is starting to lift so it’s time to weigh in.
Read MoreIn I, Pencil, Economist Leonard Read shows that none of us knows enough to plan the creative actions and decisions of others. Read traces the life of a pencil from growth of trees, to mining of graphite, to production of rubber erasers and all the manufacturing and human resources applied along the way. No human alive is smart enough to make a pencil by themselves.
Read MoreOver the past several months, Iran has violently lashed out at the United States and other western nations in response to highly effective economic sanctions imposed by the United States. These sanctions were a response to Iran’s restarting it’s nuclear weapons program, which was a response to the 2018 United States withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama Administration in 2015.
Read MoreLet’s start with stop trying to re-make the world in our own image and focus on the threat from Beijing. This means de-emphasizing the Middle East, which has become far less strategic given America’s emergence as the global energy leader.
Read MoreAmerica is mostly a "middle ground" country but our politicians seem biased to either left or right which ignores the middle. Our overly federalized system unfortunately rewards this behavior.
Read MoreDuring my career, I experienced success and failure in equal measure but always learned the most from the lessons that failure taught. I am reminded of a quote from business author Ken Blanchard: “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” Since failure is the ultimate feedback, I would re-phrase Blanchard’s quote as “Failure is the breakfast of Champions.”
Read MoreA few weeks ago, the 2019 results were published, and they are disturbing. Only 34% of eighth and 35% of fourth graders were proficient in reading, a drop from the previous 2017 study and about the same as 2009. At 34%, the math scores remained about the same from the previous study. The bottom line is that our nation’s public schools are failing in their basic mission for 60-65% of its students.
Read MoreLike alien spacecraft in Area 51, our government hides the truth from us because, as Jack Nicholson’s character said in the movie A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth.” The truth is the real government Debt to GDP ratio is several multiples higher than the “official” 105%.
Read MoreStarting in 2023, athletes at California colleges will be able to accept money from endorsements for use of their name, image and likeness. Initially, I thought this was just par for the course for “crazy California” but after I heard a segment on NPR on the topic, I decided to do a little more research.
Read MoreIn the 2018 fall midterm elections, a group of young freshman arrived in the US House of Representatives supporting an agenda of radical change for America called the Green New Deal. It focuses on re-ordering economic activity in the name of climate change. Estimates of the cost of this range from $93 trillion over 10 years to the entire GDP of our planet.
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