The Congressional Budget Office is in the crosshairs for its prediction that the republican health care bills will cause 22 million people to lose health insurance. Eight of the organization’s former leaders wrote a letter to defend it. Who’s right, the CBO’s critics or its defenders? Congress created the CBO in 1974 as an independent,…
The New York Times published a far-ranging and, in places, incomprehensible Oval Office interview with Donald Trump. It’s rambling and strange. As a result, there can be no definitive interpretation — like a Rorschach test, you see in President Trump’s words whatever you want to see. Here’s one interpretation — what I think I heard….
John McCain has an aggressive form of brain cancer. After 31 years of high-visibility leadership in the Senate, he’s due a lot of sympathy. The sincere and personal notes that his colleagues have written impressed me. The prognosis for McCain’s cancer is poor. Like many Americans, I’ve admired him for years. His heroism as a…
When it comes to your passion for the NBA, Nike knows it’s the uniforms that really excite you. They’ve given 110% in their superlative- and jargon-packed press release. My critique feels like a slam dunk; let me know if you think it’s an airball. Here’s yesterday’s Nike release. I’ve put the superlatives and other weasel…
Since thought leaders love the classic two-by-two matrix chart, it’s only fair to place them on one, based on the spreadability and provability of their ideas. I’ve defined thought leader this way: A thought leader is a person who has created a coherent body of ideas and is effective at communicating and spreading those ideas…
After 25 years of calling out corporate business jargon, Lucy Kellaway, columnist for the UK’s Financial Times, has posted eight rules that generate bullshit. The motivations that drive those rule reveal the fundamental theorem of corporate bullshit — all bullshit comes from either people hiding problems, or attempting to make what they are doing seem new…
Thought leaders are more likely to be wrong than other kinds of thinkers. The Darwinian marketplace of ideas ensures it. You should be skeptical about everything they say. Yesterday, I defined thought leaders this way: A thought leader is a person who has created a coherent body of ideas and is effective at communicating and…
It seems as if everyone I interact with is, or wants to be, a “thought leader.” But what does thought leadership actually mean? And why do so many self-styled thought leaders actually just seem like self-promoters? Technology analysts — the industry I worked in for 20 years — treat thought leadership as a sort of “king…
We can now see the email that publicist Rob Goldstone sent to Donald Trump Jr. on June 3 of last year, promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. It follows my email principles; it’s short, direct, fact-based, and relevant to the recipient. And sure enough, it got the meeting. Let’s deconstruct it, as well as Trump, Jr.’s…