Infrastructure with John Oliver

Infrastructure is always left behind by the politicians because it isn’t an attractive topic, especially for voters. It is also a boring subject because It is quite technical.

There are many infrastructure facilities in the US : damns, bridges, roads, pipelines...

For example, Damns used to be very popular facilities in the US during the fifties. Unfotunately, today, America’s Damns are in a state of serious disrepair. There are 84000 damns in the US, and the average age of a damn today in the US is 52 years. And the lack of maintenance of these damns make them very dangerous.

Although this figure is very alarming, many states pay no attention to their damn problems : For example, in Texas, in 2007, there was about 7400 damns. Unfortunately, only  7 inspectors were assigned to take a deeper look on those damns. Consequently, only 239 damns were inspected during this year. More alarmingly, there was no infrastructure inspectors at all in Alabama since 2007.

Furthermore, on the international level, the US had D+ rating for infrastructure from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Other statistics from the World Economic forum  Global Competitiveness report showed that the USA ranked 16th in the quality of overall infrastructure.

And the consequences of the bad ifrastructure maintenance can be very disastrous. For instance, a pipe burst in UCLA and turned the campus into a « swimming pool » for more than 3 days.

Added to the high economic costs of bad infrastucture maintainance, there can be human costs at stake.

One of the most striking examples is Pittsburgh, the city of bridges, where the bridges situation is so poor because of the structural engineering strategy behind it (strategy from the fifties): for example, in order to minimize risks, the engineering team decided to build a bridge under a bridge :

However, Business representatives from The US chamber of commerce and labor representatives from the american federation of congress and indurstrial organizations-who rarely agree on any issue what so ever- agreed on the fact the infrastructure is an important issue today and that transportation infrastructure fundings should be increased.

Even Donald Trump made a statement about rebuilding the american infrastructure.

Despite all the urges for rebuilding the US infrastructure, the politicians seem to be deaf. Indeed, one of the biggest funds, the US highway trustfund, which is dedicated to support infrastructure maintenance projects, will be soon bankrupt ! In fact, this fund is primarely funded by the gaz tax fund. (18.4 cent/gallon gaz tax is attributed to the US Highway Trustfund), but the tax hasn’t increase to keep up with the inflation since 1993. More importantly, the gaz tax has actually gone down by 39% since 1993. This is due to the fact that raising the gaz tax is a highly impopular  in the US.

The lack of political urgency in tackling this problem is represented by speaker Boehner interventions for the last two years. He an American politician who served as the 53rd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015. He highlighted the fact that they were trying to find resources in order to rebuild the US infrastructure, but there was no concrete proposition on how to find those resources.

Today, there is an "Extra $1.44 trillion needed to rectify US infrastructure problems".  

source

Unfortunately, here are the concrete propositions from the two likely nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump about this issue :

« Hillary clinton will:

Boost federal investment by $275 billion over the next five years.

Create a $25 billion infrastructure bank to support critical infrastructure improvements.

Harness public and private capital to fix and build new roads and bridges, expand public transportation, give every American access to broadband internet, and more. »

 source

Donald trump made no official statement other than :

« I think it is crumbling and I think I can fix it. I  can do it faster and cheaper than anyone else... »

We will see how the next president will tackle this issue.

How To Learn Anything in 20 Hours - Josh Kauffma

How To Learn Anything in 20 Hours

Josh had a daughter two years ago. He thought that his life changed forever and that with his girl he will never find free-time again. This idea was so bothering for him as he was found of learning new things which needs obviously free-time. So he  decided to know more on how we learn by going to the library and he found the rule that said "It takes 10,000 hours to learn something new" everywhere.

"10,000 hours is a full time job for 5 years". How will you learn something ? You will never find 5 years of full time job. But, in fact you need 10,000 hours to reach the top of the of an ultra competitive field. A "society -wide game of telephone" have transformed it into it takes this time to become an expert at given field the to become good at something and finally to learn something.


This is the learning curve :

Source :http://www.intropsych.com/ch07_cognition/learning_curve.html

The beginning is slow and frustrating ? How much time does it take to overcome this barrier and to feel you know well something: 20 hours which can be seen as 45 minutes during a month.

It should be 20 hours of full concentration to fulfill their purpose.  

Josh give us 4 steps for learning:

1) Deconstruct the shell by deciding which abilities you want to acquire

2) Learn enough to self-correct as you practise

3) Remove all kinds f distractions which build a barrier 

4) Practise at least 20 hours 

Then Josh shows us how he learned to play Ukulele in 20 hours, he said there's only a small set of things that does really matters. Mastering only 4 or 5 chords is sufficient.

Special Districts

Special Districts (With John Oliver)

Special Districts in the US are governmental units held to provide special services to the people living within the borders of the districts. The first S.D (Special District) was built in California in 1887 and it was an irrigation district. In the second part of the 20th Century, Special Districts proliferated a lot, we can find more than 40.000 of them now and you can live on many S.D in one time.

S.D are special taxing district as they are allowed to co tax to fulfill a special purpose. They have collected more than one 100 B$ which is more than Russia military spending by 16 B$.
There are different type of S.D: Irrigation District , Fire District, Mosquito District, Lighting District..
See more on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_district
John Oliver was joking about the Mayor of West Suburban Evergreen who was recovering from a mosquito bite while he was living in the middle of four S.D dedicated to Mosquito.

S.D is a form of ghost government because it lack a lot of transparency, few people are hearing about them, and fewer are running them. John Oliver gave the example of Mosquito Control S.D run by 2 men that did all the formalities in a scrupulous way and published in a 43min video on youtube that was literally watched by no-one. Another example is Conroe in Texas where a company hoped to create a special district to issue on undeveloped land but as there was nobody living there, they brought a couple that will live there for 9 months and vote for 500 M$ worth of bond for their housing project.  So basically, they will vote for a 500 M$ project and leave the place..

The participation rate for special district election is as low as 1.8% as election are held every 10.9 business day on average with no one taking place on Election Day
See what is Election Day on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_Day_(United_States)
So, the number of S.D is growing steadily and many of old S.D continue to exits only because when they were created, no dissolving process was made.

The Trump hurricane

The Trump hurricane

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign feels whimsical, like a practical joke or publicity tour gone awry. But it turns out the Donald is running a long way. A new report in Politico suggests Trump has been plotting this election for years, and he knew exactly what he had to do to succeed.
Trump knew all that his celebrity and media power were sufficient to support his campaign. Although they didn’t believe him, Trump told the Republicans in that room in 2013 that he would dominate the race without spending much on paid advertising.

His ability to control the narrative, to dominate the coverage, is all it takes. Trump’s amorality coupled with his gift for self-promotion has turned the Republican presidential race on its head. He’s made the race about him, and anytime he isn’t the main story, he lurches back into the headlines with an outrageous comment about women or Muslims or Mexicans or disabled people – anything to win the news cycle.

Here is a summary (ironically, delivered by Hillary Clinton) on Trump’s most outrageous comments :

Hillary Clinton Video 

The biggest takeaway here is that Trump is indeed a professional showman. And whatever else he is, he’s not stupid. He doesn’t believe half the absurdities he utters on the campaign trail either. Everything  he’s done and said was designed to dupe the media into funding his marketing strategy.

Trump’s a TV man; he understands the landscape. He knows interesting is preferable to informed or reasonable or lucid. Trump’s free-wheeling approach means he could say literally anything at any moment, and that’s the kind of thing people want to watch. The pitch about Mexicans being criminals and rapists, for example, was entirely improvised during Trump’s announcement speech, and while it was an egregious thing to say, the sheer craziness of the remarks won him a week’s worth of headlines and catapulted his campaign.

Trump’s strategy is nearly perfect. On the one hand, he’s tapped into a vein of resentment in the country, and in a way no serious politician could. And on the other hand, he’s free to say whatever he wants, no matter how controversial, because doing so breathes more oxygen into his campaign. Even more advantageous, he’s entered the race at an ideal time. The public — for good reasons — no longer trusts Washington. Trump maybe is « a man who can’t fix anything » (quoting Bernie Sanders), « like Kim Jong Un, a buffoon and a danger » (quoting Arianna Huffington, co-founder and Editor in Chief of the Huffington Post Arianna Huffington Intervention ) or even « a man with tiny fingers » (quoting John Oliver, star host of Last week Tonight with John Oliver  John Oliver on Donald Trump ) (yeah, Donald Trump has a problem with his fingers , which CNN called TRUMP’s Achilles Heel : CNN Video ),but people make bad decisions when they’re anxious or angry, and Trump is offering them an alternative to the status quo. This is what demagogues do, and it usually works.

As a candidate, Trump appears uncontainable. His risk tolerance is unmatched, and that gives him a freedom no other candidate enjoys. He can offend anyone, promise anything, and circumnavigate the entire process without ever having to apologize. It also forces the other candidates to play his game, to react to the tone he sets and the issues he raises.

Everything Trump does has to be seen in the broader context of his media-centric strategy. No one should ask if Trump believes what he says; it’s impossible to know. If he does believe something he says, it’s a happy coincidence, because his campaign is an experiment in modern marketing, not an expression of his political worldview.

If you want to know more about the american election, I really advise you to check those references :

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html

The Guardian - US Elections for dummies 

* See you on 19th, for the NY primary.

Hillary Clinton: pro's and con's

"In another up-and-down, anything-can-happen primary season, Hillary Clinton has shown herself to be a strong candidate—and a much happier one. Will she finally, at long last, make history?" 

The 2016 presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton has served as secretary of state, senator from New York, first lady of the United States, first lady of Arkansas, a practicing lawyer and law professor, activist, and volunteer. As first lady, Hillary tenaciously led the fight to reform the American health care systems and avidly spoke for women’s rights. Shortly after winning the U.S. presidential election, Obama nominated Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. She accepted the nomination and was officially approved as the 67th U.S. secretary of state by the Senate on January 21, 2009. Also a best-selling author, Clinton’s memoir Hard Choices where Clinton shares the difficult decision made during her reign as secretary of state.

Today, she is the front runner as the democratic candidate with 1446 delegates and 502 superdelegates, followed by her major opponent, Bernie Sanders, with only 1200 delegates.

Hillary Clinton, pro's and con's of a future (potential) president:

The Pro's:

- She knows how Washington DC works because she has served as Secretary of State in the Obama administration,

- She would be the first woman president (I am not a real fan of the argument but many American citizens seem excited about the perspective of having the first American woman president after the first American black president)

- great knowledge and experience

- served as first lady in the USA during her husband's presidency

- she has a lot of endorsements (U2, Beyonce, Barack Obama )Hillary Clinton's list of endorsements

The Con's:

- Age: If Mrs. Clinton wins the polls, she will be the eldest woman head of state

- Unsolved scandals such as the email scandals (Clinton Email Scandal ) and the specter of other scandals (such as her financing packages, her Wall Street banks endorsements (Goldman Sachs paid her $220K for a speech lately))

- she has trust issues within the democratic party ( seen as too sharp, too fake)

- inconsistent in many political areas

- seen as "too liberal"

If you want to have more details about how to nail a marketing ad, have a look at: Hillary Clinton campaign ad