Very interesting analysis by Nate Cohn in last week's New York Times that showed why Democrats are unlikely to win a majority in the House of Representatives while winning statewide majorities for Democrats.
Democratic voters are clustered in cities giving huge margins of victory to Democrats while leaving many more slim Republican majorities in more rural districts. Look at the voting pattern of a few states to see the situation:
So while Pennsylvania and Ohio will vote Democratic as a state, handing their electoral votes to the Presidential candidate and putting Democrats in the Senate, they will send more Republicans to the House than Democrats. Same goes for many other states, enough to hand the House to Republicans for many years to come.
Great op-ed by Russell Shorto in today's Times showing that the secret to New York's success lay in the roots of the Dutch 17th century tolerance for others. Here is the full essay but I'd like to pull some excerpts here:
In founding New Amsterdam in the 1620s, the Dutch planted the seeds for the city’s remarkable flowering. Specifically, the Dutch brought two concepts that became part of New York’s foundation: tolerance of religious differences and an entrepreneurial, free-trading culture.
In the 17th century, when it was universally held elsewhere in Europe that a strong society required intolerance as official policy, the Dutch Republic was a melting pot. The Dutch codified the concept of tolerance of religious differences, built a vast commercial empire and spawned a golden age of science and art in part by turning the “problem” of their mixed society into an advantage. Dutch tolerance was transplanted to Manhattan: They were so welcoming that a reported 18 languages were spoken in New Amsterdam at a time when its population was only about 500.
While many economies elsewhere in Europe were still feudal, the Dutch pioneered an economic system based on individual ownership of real estate. That came about because the Dutch provinces occupied a vast river delta, in which land was at or below sea level and therefore constantly under threat. People in those communities banded together to build dams and dikes and reclaim land. The new land was not owned by a king or a church. Instead, the people who had created it divided it and began buying and selling parcels. That incentivized a whole society, fueled the growth of an empire, turned the Dutch into entrepreneurs and made them the envy of other Europeans.
You've got to admire a person who can create a business out of nothing. Barton Steiner saw a potential in selling stuff that the Yankees had used to fans who want them. According to this article, he has talked the Yankees, and a lot of other sports teams, to sell him their used products, from bases to rakes to dirt, so that he can sell them to fans who are willing to pay well for this memorabilia.
So now Yankees groundskeepers change the bases several times a game so Barton can sell them to fans for hundreds of dollars. Very clever!
"Lotteries are a tax on the stupid." We've heard this before but this simplistic statement ignores the entertainment value a poor person gets from dreaming about getting rich by purchasing a ticket. Being down and out is a tough situation and the thought that a $1 ticket can bring you riches is worth the purchase price.
My statistics professor once told me: 'The odds of winning the lottery are tiny, but by buying one ticket, you have improved those odds infinitely from zero to this number. Buying two tickets only doubles these odds so stick with one ticket." I use that philosophy when the mega millions gets above a quarter billion.
But I'm not poor and I already save about 20% of my income. How can we encourage the poor to save while still giving them the hope a lottery provides? A long time ago I dreamed of machines located next to the lottery machines at the convenience stores that people could load their money into a retirement account and see the balance and predicted amount at retirement every time they used the machine. Then they would have a choice between instant gratification and long term savings.
But I like a system even better as reported on in today's NY Times article. Here several credit unions offer 'Prize-linked savings accounts.' A small percentage of the interest rate is dedicated to monthly prizes which are randomly given to people who deposit money into their accounts that month. Not only do you have published winners, everyone else wins because they all save money for their futures.
An attendee at one of my Risk Management Presentations, Paul Juska, shared with me the term paper he put together showing the likely Risk Management activities Christopher Columbus went through to get financing for his trip to the Indies. It was well done and entertaining so I asked if I could publish it on my blog. Paul graciously agreed so I have posted it here for you to enjoy.
He wrote many books about leadership and spent his lifetime educating and mentoring some of the world's great leaders. If you get a chance, read one of his books:
For more on hhis life, read his NY Times obituary.
Bertha before drilling began in July 2013. CreditTed S. Warren/Associated Press
It's been 18 months since I first blogged about Seattle's big dig project: the tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way viaduct. This was a huge project including the world's largest drill bit with a 57.5 feet diameter. I remember reading a few months ago about the bit hitting an unknown object that caused it to stall. What's going on now?
A hole dug by Bertha, the tunnel-boring machine that went dormant last December.CreditDavid Ryder for The New York Times
In a recent NY Times article, we learn that the pipe it hit back in December caused damage that has stalled the drill until next March. Rescuing the bit required the drilling of a shaft to reach the damaged area, shoring up the tunnel it already dug to prevent it from collapsing, replacing huge parts then making further repairs.
A crane hoisting a tunnel-boring tool at a construction site where a large shaft is being dug to get to Bertha. CreditDavid Ryder for The New York Times
One of the biggest problems is the size of everything involved. When everything is scaled up, the cost and time to repair problems scales up exponentially. The eighteen month delay and hundreds of millions in budget overruns all stem from an eight inch diameter steel pipe that nobody involved in the project knew was in the way of Bertha. I'd love to see the official risk management of this project.
It only makes sense that the home of MIT and Harvard should host the world's smartest bus service. A new company, Bridj, is rolling out a bus service that takes millions of bits of information from people's smart phones to figure out where they are and where they want to go. Then it runs routes accordingly.
The user's smart phones will give them up-to-date information on when the buses will arrive. But the smart element is that the routes will evolve as more users provide more information. The buses stop when needed, not on a standard schedule resulting in faster commutes in one of America's toughest traffic cities.
The pharmaceutical industry gets a bad rap for charging so much for its drugs. A recent Op-ed criticized the $300,000 cost for a cytic fibrosis drug. But reading further in the article we see that this drug, while a miracle at combatting this disease, only works for a population of 2,000 people.
I can do the math and see that Vertex can, at most, gross $600,000,000 for this drug if everyone in this group buys it at full price. Given that a typical drug costs between $1-$2 billion to bring to market, this is still a loss leader. The drug is currently in Phase III clinical trials which mean the company has already spent about half the money.
The FDA and other worldwide regulatory agencies have forced thousands of regulations on pharmaceutical companies to ensure that drugs that reach patients are safe and effective. The work involved in meeting these regulations require thousands of people working full-time to bring new drugs to the market. That costs money. Who else is going to pay for it if not the final customers of the product.
Not every drug is suited for millions of patients so the cost of these specialty drugs must be borne by the small population of patients who need it.
As for pharmaceutical companies raking in incredible profits, do what I do and buy their stock. I haven't noticed any great increases in my stock values.
For the last 50 years Edouard Plummer has run an academic boot camp for promising black and latino school-children and got more than 500 of them into the swanky prep-schools that assure their future. Throughout this time he reminds his charges that they are achievers, not charity cases.
His one year boot camp prepares the scholars for academics and includes etiquette, trips to the theater and other events. Read more in this article.
"You are as good as anyone else, or better," he told his first group. "There will be people who don't want you there. But you have to go. You are the Jackie Robinsons of education. If you do what he did, you can open the doors to those who follow behind you."
Sergeant Kyle White received a well-deserved Medal of Honor today for heroics in Afghanistan.
Here's what he had to say about his team:
"I wear this medal for my team. Battles are not won by men. If that were true, the Taliban would have won on that trail in Afghanistan, because they had every tactical advantage including the numbers. Battles are won by spirit, and spirit is present in the relationships built from the trust and sacrifice we share with one another in times of hardship, and by that definition cannot be possessed by one person."
It appears you can be a corrupt, racist slumlord but if you give $45,000 to the NAACP over 7 years from your illegal profits you can receive a lifetime achievement award from the organization.
I wasn't particularly shocked to hear the racist statements leave the mouth of NBA owner Sterling. These billionaire sports team owners are rarely pillars of society. And the fact that his team is made up mostly of African-Americans is unlikely to change his ways. He has made his fortune taking bribes as a judge and keeping minorities out of his real estate.
The NAACP awarding him a lifetime achievemant award is embarrassing. Just goes to show what donating tens of thousands will do for you.
But what sort of a punishment does he deserve? For his crooked real-estate dealings, he is breaking the law and deserves jail time. It is illegal to discriminate against races in housing. He gets away with this by bribing the system and using lawyers to stall proceedings. I'd love to see the justice department come down hard on him.
But making racist comments in a private conversation is not illegal. As Evelyn Beatrice Hall said of Voltaire: "I may disapprove of what you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it."
So rather than fining or kicking him out of the league, let's have him join more of his own peers by making him marry Marge Schott.
Charles M. Blowis The New York Times's visual Op-Ed columnist.
What a great op-ed by Charles Blow about Cliven Bundy, the racist western rancher! I'll reprint it here in its entirety for reference later. Here is the original link to the NY Times article.
It appears that Cliven Bundy, the 68-year-old rancher and freeloader, doesn’t reject only the federal government; he rejects history.
Bundy decided this week to tell us all what he knows “about the Negro.”
“They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
In an attempt to clarify his comments, Bundy was on “The Peter Schiff Show,” and he made matters worse: “I’m wondering: Are they happier now under this government subsidy system than they were when they were slaves, when they was able to have their family structure together, and the chickens and a garden, and the people had something to do?”
The Mount Kilimanjaro-size amounts of ignorance and offense packed into those two statements boggles the mind.
Photo
Soon after Bundy’s views on slavery and “the Negro” came to light, the conservative supporters he had accrued began to scurry and others pounced.
But I refuse to let Bundy’s fantasies about slavery and projections about “Negroes” be given over to predictable political squabbling. The legacy of slavery must be liberated from political commentary.
Casual, careless and incorrect references to slavery, much like blithe references to Nazi Germany, do violence to the memory of those who endured it, or were lost to it, and to their descendants.
There is no modern-day comparison in this country to the horrors of slavery. None! Leave it alone. Remember, honor and respect. That’s all.
How could slaves have been “happier,” when more than 12 million were put in shackles, loaded like logs into the bowels of ships and sailed toward shores unknown, away from their world and into their hell?
How could they have been “happier” to be greased up and sold off, mother from child, with no one registering their anguish?
Sojourner Truth, in her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, delivered in 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, lamented: “I have borne 13 children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me!”
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History estimates that nearly two-thirds of slaves lived in nuclear households. However, those families could be broken up on a whim, and many slaves were bred like animals, were raped at will and could marry only if allowed.
How could they have been “happier” to meet the lash, to feel the flaying of flesh, to have it heal in dreadful scars only to be ripped open again until one had, as Sethe, the main character in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” put it, a tree on one’s back?
It was not only the lash but also the noose and being chased down and ripped apart by dogs, and all manner of terrors. When the human imagination sets itself on cruelty there are no limits to its designs.
Robert E. Lee wrote in 1856: “The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things.”
Others used religion as a justification, quoting verses and patting themselves on the back for saving the souls of the so-called savage.
But as Frederick Douglass pointed out, “The slave auctioneer’s bell and the churchgoing bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heartbroken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master.”
Religion didn’t elevate enslavers; trying to justify slavery reduced religion.
“Happier”? How, Mr. Bundy, could you even utter such absurdity?
The very soil of this country cries out for us to never forget what happened here, for the irreducible record of the horrors of slavery to never be reduced.
Romantic revisionism of this most ghastly enterprise cannot stand. It must be met, vigilantly and unequivocally, with the strongest rebuttal. Slaves dishonored in life must not have their memories disfigured by revisionist history.
America committed this great sin, its original sin, and there will be no absolution by alteration. America must live with the memory of what its forefathers — even its founding fathers — did. It must sit with this history, the unvarnished truth of it, until it has reconciled with it.
The Times graphic department did another great job, showing a lot of data in a clever way. How have American's incomes increased (or decreased) over thirty years by percentile compared with other countries. I'll let the graphic speak for itself:
Pretty cool, huh. If you want to read the article, click here.
While nautical leadership doesn't have to mean going down with your ship, at a minimum, it means ensuring that your passengers and crew are safe before you leave a sinking ship.
Captain Lee Jun-seok ordered hundreds of passengers to remain in their seats while the ferry sunk, meanwhile slinking off himself along with his crew. Here is is, third from the right, making it safely onto a coast guard vessel while hundreds of teenaged passengers are drowning behind him.
We can put him in the same boat, (pun intended) with Concordia captain Francesco Schettino, who slammed his ship into the rocks, drowning 32 passengers while he fled to safety.
Who did the right thing most recently? How about Sully, who made two trips through his sinking plane to ensure there were no passengers aboard before getting out onto the wing? This was after making an unprecedented no-engine landing on the Hudson River. That's the kind of leadership we need in captains.
What's the common link here? We can't say Navy guys stink and Air Force guys don't though there are plenty who would fight over that statement. Nationalities don't matter. Maybe it's the fact that the two ship captains knew they messed up and tried to escape while Sully was still in rescue mode.
I love simple ideas with a big impact. Here's one that strives to reduce debilitating injuries in hockey caused by people slamming or being slammed into the boards without warning. Tom Smith invented a simple warning line that paints the last 40 inches of a hockey rink bright orange to give a player warning that a solid object is close.
Having suffered two severe spinal injuries himself, he now walks with crutches but wants to prevent future children from the paralysis and injuries that are all too common in this sport.
His 'Look-Up Line' costs $550 to install in a rink, 1000 times less than his own medical bills for six months.
June 6th, USA Hockey will vote on a measure to require this in all rinks. Let's hope it passes.
When Deb Hughes saw her neighbors beating a man to death for accidentally running over a boy with his pickup, she reacted with bravery. She pushed past the crowd and covered the man with her body, threatening to shoot the next person to kick the victim.
Read this article to see how Steve Utash, after accidentally hitting the boy and stopping to help was pounced on by a group of young black men who punched and kicked him into a coma. Deb Hughes saw no color that day, just a man being killed and her nursing instincts drove her to protect him.
I'm happy about her display of leadership but I'm wondering where the outrage of Al Shapton and Jesse Jackson is. If a group of white men had been beating a black man to death, you can be assured they would have been protesting that day.
Sometimes the real heroes are the unknown ones like Deb Hughes.
There are not a lot of role models anymore in the NBA. But here is a notable exception:
Chris Paul puts his family first, married his high school sweetheart and planned his high school's 10th year reunion. Joining the player's union as a rookie, he is now the president and is dedicated to improving life for those who follow.
How did he develop his leadership style? Look at how he his parents raised him:
No earrings, tattoos or names shaved in his hair
No video games until weekends
Maintain a 3.0 GPA
Know your black history
Visit historical sites on vacation
The day after he signed with Wake Forest, his 61 year-old grandfather and best friend was mugged and killed for his wallet. The next day, he scored 61 points, intentionally missing his last free throw so that his point score would be a tribute to his grandfather's years. Then he sat on the bench and broke down.
He is building a basketball court in Winston-Salem and naming it after his grandfather.
This is the kind of man I want my sons to look up to.
