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Time for the Guv to morph into Chris Christie (6/28/2011)

Time for Gov. Walker to talk more about the cake (3/4/2011)

Today, reality hits home (3/1/2011)

FoxPolitics News going on hiatus (1/28/2011)

Brown County Executive candidate forum Feb. 8 (1/28/2011)

Education done right (1/27/2011)

To Obama, the ‘We’ is Government (1/27/2011)

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…. President Obama called for some relatively modest investments in clean energy, education and infrastructure. He asked only the wealthiest taxpayers, along with the oil companies, to make financial sacrifices, and he called for corporate tax reform. He proposed a freeze on most discretionary spending and acknowledged the need for long-term rethinking of Social Security and other entitlement programs to cut the deficit.

What really distinguished Mr. Obama from the three Republican leaders on display in a single night was not the specifics in the speech. It was the cheerful assertion that if the United States is to regain its footing in the world, it will be government that stands it upright. In surprisingly sunny terms considering the struggle about to begin, he said it was government that had unleashed the engineering of the Space Age and the Internet era. It will be government, he said, that prepares good teachers, makes college affordable, and provides incentives for businesses to hire. [Emphases are mine.]

"We do big things," President Obama declared in a State of the Union address filled with star-spangled bon mots and sounding at times like a patriotic pep-talk.

"We need to outinnovate, outeducate and outbuild the rest of the world," Obama said, spurring his first standing ovation of the night.

Amid the jingoism, the pro-business language, and the repeated call to "win the future," a question went unanswered: Who is this "we"?

Do we wish to accept a cradle-to-grave welfare state, in which more Americans depend on the government than on themselves, or do we want to promote an opportunity society that promotes human flourishing, connecting effort with reward?

IBM - aka, "International Business Machines:"

Although IBM was incorporated in the state of New York on June 16, 1911 as the Computing- Tabulating- Recording Company (C-T-R), its origins can be traced back to developments at the close of the 19th century. For example, the first dial recorder was invented by Dr. Alexander Dey in 1888, and Dey's business became one of the building blocks of C-T-R. Similarly, the Bundy Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1889 as the first time recording company in the world, and it, too, later became a key component of C-T-R.

Not a whole lot of "military computing power" back around WW-1

Google:

Google began in March 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Ph.D. students at Stanford working on the Stanford Digital Library Project (SDLP).

Last time I checked Stanford was a private college.

Walmart:

The history of Wal-Mart can be traced back to the 1940s when Sam Walton began his career in retailing at J.C. Penny. In 1943 Walton met the Butler Brothers who owned the retail chain Ben Franklin Stores. On May 9, 1950, Walton purchased a store from Luther E. Harrison in Bentonville, Arkansas, and opened Walton's 5 & 10. Thus, the Ozark Mountain town of 2,900 residents would become the headquarters for the world's largest retailer.(/i>

Not many interstate highways back in 1940.

The Lone Ranger:

The first of 2,956 radio episodes of The Lone Ranger premiered January 30, 1933, on WXYZ Detroit, Michigan; next on the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network; and finally on NBC's Blue Network, which became ABC. The last new episode was broadcast September 3, 1954.

And then there's the Interstate Highway System that seems to put an end to the Lone Ranger:

The Interstate Highway System was authorized by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 – popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 – on June 29.

Hmmm..., looks like the Interstate Highway System put an end to the Lone Ranger - at least if I adopt the liberal thinking we've just seen here from Dave.

Like all liberals, Dave, you have it exactly backwards. The government doesn't exist to create inovation, it exists to facilitate the inovation of the people of America.

By leaving the funds to inovate in the hands of people who stand to benefit from their inovation we've spent the past two centuries bypassing the rest of the world. Why the heck do some people insist we have to go backwards so we can be like the people we've just blown on by?





Duke (Thu Jan 27 09:05:50 2011)

Obama did not call them sour,and bitter, the New York Tims did. What's wrong with being uplifting? Should our president stand in front of the people with a long face and admit defeat, throw his hands in his face and quit. Not in my book. The president is an athletic gamer. Speaking to us like a basketball coach. Coaches always speak in terms of we, and ours and us. Knowing full well that the private sector needs to lead the way and also knowing full well that he needs to let the privte sector know that he stands alongside "us" to help get "us" out of a mess that has been created by "republicans and democrats" and the "private sector". "Everybody" Again I say quit pigeon holing people and understand that our problems are not going to be solved because republicans or democrats are in power. It is the people themselves in those places of power that will make the difference not their political party. That is what I believe the president was hammering home to all of"us". If we did not get that we missed out on the meat of the team speach and will go back out on the basketball floor and repeat the same mistakes prior to the time out being called. Pay attention to the coach when he calls you to the sidelines. Timeouts are limited to just a few per game.

Mike (Thu Jan 27 09:06:27 2011)

>>> "How about the American Revolution?"

Get real, CR. How about the next one? If we continue to allow our nation to be looted by the Fat Cats it will occur in the next decade or two. At 73 I may be gone but I worry about my kids and grandkids.

>>> "What's wrong with being uplifting?"

Some of that is fine, Mike, but our people are not engaged enough to be realistic about how to deal with our politicians and their corruption.

Jack Lohman (Thu Jan 27 09:52:45 2011)

Great things that happened without government:

Light bulb, telephone, television, and as I recall, the transistor. How about the Great Northern RR, which used private funds to build track parallel to the heavily subsidized Union Pacific. Differences were the GN was better engineered, built more quickly, ran on time, charged lower rates, broke down less often than the subsidized lines. In fact the GN under JJ Hill was so successful that it eventually bought up competing, subsidized railroads. GN merged with the Burlington line, which was the most successful railroad in the country for decades, despite having to compete with heavily subsidized barge traffic up and down the Mississippi River. Now Burlington Northern has purchased/ merged with the Sante Fe, and is known as BNSF. The Sante Fe was the southern subsidized RR.

Oh, the airplane. The Wright Bros. did not get a penny from the government until they started building military aircraft.
Sorry about that. I forgot you only wanted one.


Ken Van Doren (Thu Jan 27 10:03:45 2011)

Duke, you said;
>>>Like all liberals, Dave, you have it exactly backwards.The government doesn't exist to create inovation<<<<
And then you follow that with something that liberals would agree with;
>>> , it exists to facilitate the inovation of the people of America.<<<
So at least in this regard, I as a liberal, agree with you. You just assume that we oppose each other.




Dean Weichmann (Thu Jan 27 10:10:31 2011)

Ken, we already have a country like that, it's called Somalia. I don't think we are ready to return to the Wild West.

Jack Lohman (Thu Jan 27 10:16:37 2011)

Duke,
your point is what? that because IBM existed before the war that it succeeded without government leading the way?
Smart entrepreneurs and companies are in fact not big risk takers. They exploit opportunities where someone else has taken the big risks. Do you thing Google would have started up in a country that didn't have an internet and attempt to build one? Would they have started in a country where the net was controlled by one company? Did Walton start out saying he was going to locate his stores away from any highway? Successful countries have mixed economies , period. That's a fact. You can believe all that Ayn Rand crap (yes, I read her stuff) but if you do you're no less foolish than believing in pure communism.

dave allen (Thu Jan 27 10:33:16 2011)

Ken,
Thanks for making my point. I haven't researched GN railroad like you did but who took the risk to build the transcontinental RR? The American people through their government. And when it was built, proven, workable then others saw what the benefits were and didn't have to take the risk that they would not have taken, could not have afforded to build in the original line. They exploited the gaps. So you think that the invention of the light bulb, airplane and transistor occurred in some kind of vacuum without government influence? What entrepreneur set the rules to be sure than massive amounts of people could use electricity, use roads etc so that there was a market for the inventions that others made. BTW I'll bet you don't even know that most fundamental research that feeds the drug manufacturing industry is done in government labs or in university labs supported by government funded research then released to the manufacturers who try to see if they can manufacture a drug from it. Did you know that the only reason why Intel survived was because the US government got together with a bunch of manufacturers to create Semetech to pool resources http://www.sematech.org/corporate/history.htm. We wouldn't have a semi conductor industry if it wasn't for GOVERNMENT involvement.

dave allen (Thu Jan 27 11:06:55 2011)

Good points Dave, and especially on drug research. Though do you remember Vioxx, which was pulled from the market? Nine of the 12 doctors sitting on the FDA panel that originally approved it were on the parent company's payroll. Nice.

In my mind ALL drug research should be by government panels, though private industry should be involved. And incidentally, 80% of all new drugs are "me too" drugs... slight modifications to old drugs and they might be better but could also be worse. That because they are not compared to the old drug but a new patient set.

Jack Lohman (Thu Jan 27 11:17:52 2011)

Oh, Mike, Mike, you made me dizzy! The thought of Obama "throwing his hands in front of his face and quitting"! That'd be an answer to my prayers!

emily matthews (Thu Jan 27 11:51:18 2011)

Jack, You are spot on about "new drugs". In fact Obama just proposed a renewed federal effort to push for new discoveries because drug companies are really at the end of the line on new discoveries. Many of the hoped for breakthroughs (gene therapy, stem cells) just haven't resulted in major advances probably because the basic research still doesn't understand the wondrous complexity of how we're built. So, drug companies devote more money to marketing, me too drugs, and lobbying for extended patent protection so as to create profits rather than the more difficult /risky path of creating breakthroughs. I don't blame the companies but I don't think for a minute that their mission is to help people at the risk of their shareholders.

dave allen (Thu Jan 27 12:22:51 2011)

To Obama, the ‘We’ is Government
Well, after all it is government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Robert Reich;
>>>Government exists to protect and advance the interests of average working families. Without it, Americans have to rely mainly on big and increasingly global corporations, whose only interest is making money wherever it can be made.<<<


Dean Weichmann (Thu Jan 27 17:14:56 2011)

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