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One Billion Dollar Prize

A great piece in the Wall Street Journal today calling for a $1 billion prize for innovation:

If they really want to have an impact on society—beyond the societal wealth already created by Google and Facebook—offer a billion-dollar BrinZuck prize to prevent or stop Alzheimer’s, or to regenerate spinal cords and organs, or to cure obesity. Instead of small-ball academic researchers vying for grants from the National Institutes of Health, you’d get entrepreneurs coming out of the woodwork trying innovative approaches to win a $1 billion jackpot. Or maybe the challenge could be to create personal jet packs. Or neuron downloads.

Great story. Read the whole piece.

Where is the Growth?

The Manhattan Institute’s Joel Kotkin wrote a fascinating report about American economic growth in 2012. The takeaway point? It is happening, but not in New England:

To be sure, New York, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chicago will remain the country’s leading metropolitan agglomerations for the foreseeable future. But an important urban story of the coming decades will be the emergence of interior metropolitan areas such as Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, Tampa, Oklahoma City, and Omaha. On a smaller scale, fast-growing Lafayette (Louisiana), Baton Rouge, Midland (Texas), Sioux Falls (South Dakota), Fargo, and a host of other smaller cities will continue to expand. We may also witness the resurgence of New Orleans as a leading cultural and business center for the south and the Gulf Coast.

This ascendancy of the growth corridors follows one of the great principles of American history. The “most important effect of the frontier,” as Frederick Jackson Turner noted, was how it promoted democracy by spreading opportunity. [1] The expanding frontier-then rural, now metropolitan-reinforces the fundamental individualism at the core of American culture.

Equally important, the corridors reveal the most immediate way to propel a broad growth trajectory for the entire United States. By restoring a strong growth path, as well as the optimism that accompanies it, the corridors could help bring about a resurgence whose benefits will extend far beyond their boundaries to touch the entire nation.

The full report is well worth a read.

Asteroid to Barely Miss the Earth

1. It’s awesome that Bill Nye the Science Guy has a new gig hunting asteroids.

2. If it actually hit the earth, it would be bad.

3. The asteroid is going to miss us by about 15 minutes. I hope Bill’s math is right:

It’s Ok to Mock People . . .

christie
. . . when you disagree with them. Or is it?

For my piece this week, I examine the question after NJ Gov. Chris Christie’s interview with Dave Letterman this week.

Check out the piece at CT News Junkie.

Same Lesson from Wisconsin to New York

It turns out that people prefer to make their own choices, whether they are voters in Wisconsin or soda drinkers in New York City. Politicians forget this lesson all the time. I wrote about it for my CT News Junkie op-ed this week:

There is an allure to power. It allows you to do things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do, like take money from people even if they don’t want to give it to you. You can both tell someone to live their life a certain way but also make them do it, too. But in the end, it always turns out that people prefer to make their own choices.

Read the full piece at CT News Junkie.

No Easy Answers on Death Penalty

My CT News Junkie op-ed for the week is on the repeal of Connecticut’s death penalty, which passed this week after a contentious vote in the General Assembly. There are no easy answers whatever your view on the subject.

From the piece:

Dr. William Petit, the lone survivor of the murderous attacks in Cheshire that killed his wife and two daughters, lobbied consistently against abolishing the death penalty — the sentence imposed on the two men convicted of killing his family. After a repeal bill passed the House in 2011, only Dr. Petit’s intervention prevented its passage in the Senate last year. This year, senators were kept away from him until after the votes were cast. 

Petit’s story remains hauntingly vivid in the public eye. The morning after the governor signed the repeal bill, a disc jockey at a Hartford-area rock radio station who rarely strays into anything remotely political commented, saying “they should have forced the governor to sit with Dr. Petit and look him in the eye while he signed it. That will make your hand shake.”

On the other hand, it is appropriate that Dr. Petit and other family members of victims are prominent in this debate because, as Colin McEnroe noted last year, “That’s what abolishing the death penalty means. It means that people we regard as monsters will not be executed.” It is true: people who were sentenced to the worst possible punishment for truly abhorrent crimes will not receive it.

Read the full piece at CT News Junkie.

UConn Tuition Hikes Reveal Disconnect

The structure of the American economy is changing. The industrial-manufacturing base that defined Post-World War II America is steadily giving way to an information-technology economy that is more dynamic than any other in the history of mankind. The defining principle of this shift is the substitution of labor with capital and its hallmarks are the speed, smarts, and embrace of change that it requires.

The University of Connecticut’s recent tuition hikes, though, will make it more difficult for thousands of students to rise to meet this challenge.

Read the full story at CT News Junkie

How Long Until CL&P Gets a New Name?

With the freak October snowstorm finally behind us in Connecticut, the focus is now on Connecticut Light & Power’s restoration efforts – or lack thereof. In my CT News Junkie op-ed for the week, I examine how it might be time for CL&P to get a new name.

CL&P will soon be subjected to investigations, legal proceedings, and legislative inquiries over their staffing levels and preparation for catastrophic events like Winter Storm Alfred. There will be plenty of time and much attention paid to the possible policy changes. But with their brand irreparably tarnished, a more practical question to consider is this: how long will it be before CL&P gets a new name?

Read the full piece at CT News Junkie.

The Beginning or End for Lieberman?

Sen Joe Lieberman speaks to Republican National ConventionAmid the celebration in the moments after President Barack Obama signed the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010 this week, Mr. Obama shook the hands of issue’s most prominent supporters. U.S. Senator Susan Collins from Maine was there for a Presidential hug, as was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Connecticut’s own Senator Joe Lieberman. A review of the footage from the event reveals a slight but noticeable change in the President’s countenance as he embraced Mr. Lieberman, reflecting perhaps the mixed emotions that the two men shared.

During the 2008 election cycle, Mr. Lieberman memorably chose to play Porthos in Republican Presidential nominee John McCain’s merry band of Senatorial musketeers instead of toeing the line for his fellow Democrat, Mr. Obama. But in the wake of those elections it was Obama who rescued Lieberman from the political retribution sought by many Democrats in Washington.

Since then, the relationship between Lieberman and Obama has appeared to be more tenuous. His evolving positions on health care reform threatened to torpedo the President’s signature agenda item on more than one occasion and Lieberman’s advocacy on foreign policy issues in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel has been a recurring thorn for Obama.

But it was Lieberman above all who emerged as a champion first and then shepherd of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell legislation, coaxing support from his colleagues over the objection of, among others, Senator John McCain, who has emerged as the Senate’s crustiest curmudgeon in the wake of his 2010 primary challenge. Lieberman was liberated by his primary while McCain seems confined by his experience.

Ultimately Lieberman delivered DADT safely to the President’s desk and himself into that emotional moment with the President.

What it all means for Mr. Lieberman’s future remains to be seen. The reviews from Washington were uniformly glowing while the Connecticut-based evaluations were far less enthusiastic, with many liberal commentators holding fast to their “No How, No Way” view on the long-serving Lieberman.

A Democratic coterie is already lining up to challenge him in 2012. US Reps. Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy are both publicly considering bids, while former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz and perhaps others are said to be mulling their options.

For Republicans, a fractured Democratic Party has always been a recipe for Republican success in Connecticut. 2010 Senate nominee Linda McMahon’s continued interest in the Senate may well seek to capitalize on such a division to propel her to victory in 2012.

But Lieberman has already survived one spurning and has to be less fearful of a second. Plus, with a feather like DADT in his cap, the liberal daggers may be less sharp than some people would prefer. The biggest question yet to answer may be whether Lieberman’s leadership on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is a kickoff for 2012 or a capstone on a remarkable Senate career. Lieberman’s fundraising numbers over the next few months will tell the tale of what is in store.