Government – Page 53 – artdiamondblog.com

Higher Taxes Would Slow Creation of Entrepreneur Bronfein’s Time-Saving Medical Robotic Systems

(p. A11) . . . in Baltimore, . . . a local entrepreneur, following the logic of need, invested seven years and $30 million developing a robotic system for packaging prescription drugs for long-term patients in nursing homes and hospitals.
In a conversation last year, inventor Michael Bronfein told me if he’d known what it would cost him in time and money, he might never have started. How many entrepreneurs say the same? Probably all of them. But Mr. Bronfein saw a need and the power of technology to meet it, and the result was the Paxit automated medication dispensing system.
He saw workers spending hours under the old system sticking pills in monthly blister packs known as “bingo cards,” a process expensive and error-prone. He saw nurses on the receiving end then spending time to pluck the pills out of blister packs and into paper cups, to create the proper daily drug regimen for each patient.
. . .
He followed the economic logic that indicated that all the people involved in the old system were becoming too valuable to have their time wasted by the old system. Backed by his company, Remedi SeniorCare, Paxit–in which a robot packages, labels and dispatches a daily round of medicines for each patient–is spreading across the mid-Atlantic and Midwest and winning plaudits from medical-care providers.
. . .
We need to preserve the incentive for investors to bring us the robots that will make the future bearable, rather than burying entrepreneurs in taxes in a vain attempt to seize the returns of investments before those investments are made.

For the full commentary, see:
Jenkins, HOLMAN W., JR. “BUSINESS WORLD; Robots to the Rescue? The flip side of an entitlements crisis is a labor shortage.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., January 9, 2013): A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 8, 2013.)

IKEA Says Government Bureaucracy Slows Job Creation

“The economy ‘will remain challenging for a long time,’ says IKEA Chief Executive Mikael Ohlsson.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B3) MALMO, Sweden–IKEA is poised to embark on a global spending spree, but its departing chief executive says red tape is slowing how fast the home-furnishings retailer can open its pocket book.

With the company set to report record sales on Wednesday, CEO Mikael Ohlsson said the amount of time it takes to open a store has roughly doubled in recent years.
“What some years ago took two to three years, now takes four to six years. And we also see that there’s a lot of hidden obstacles in different markets and also within the [European Union] that’s holding us back,” he said in an interview recently at an IKEA store on Sweden’s western coast.
. . .
IKEA plans to invest €2 billion in stores, factories and renewable energy this year. But the company fell €1 billion short of its goal of investing €3 billion in new projects last year, largely because of bureaucratic obstacles, he said. For 10 years IKEA has tried unsuccessfully to relocate a store in France, for example. The company also is challenging German policy dictating what can be sold and where, saying the rules are out of sync with EU legislation.
“It’s a pity, because it can help create jobs and investments at a time when unemployment is high in many countries,” Mr. Ohlsson said. A new IKEA store creates construction and store jobs for about 1,000 workers, he said.
. . .
The company’s highest-profile headaches have come in India, an untapped market where IKEA wants to open a first store in at least five years and roll out an additional three soon thereafter.

For the full story, see:
ANNA MOLIN. “IKEA Chief Takes Aim at Red Tape.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., January 23, 2013): B3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date January 22, 2013.)

Behavioral Economists and Psychologists Pledged to Keep Silent on Their Advice to Re-Elect Obama

(p. D1) Late last year Matthew Barzun, an official with the Obama campaign, called Craig Fox, a psychologist in Los Angeles, and invited him to a political planning meeting in Chicago, according to two people who attended the session.
“He said, ‘Bring the whole group; let’s hear what you have to say,’ ” recalled Dr. Fox, a behavioral economist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
So began an effort by a team of social scientists to help their favored candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Some members of the team had consulted with the Obama campaign in the 2008 cycle, but the meeting in January signaled a different direction.
“The culture of the campaign had changed,” Dr. Fox said. “Before then I felt like we had to sell ourselves; this time there was a real hunger for our ideas.”
. . .
(p. D6) When asked about the outside psychologists, the Obama campaign would neither confirm nor deny a relationship with them.
. . .
For their part, consortium members said they did nothing more than pass on research-based ideas, in e-mails and conference calls. They said they could talk only in general terms about the research, because they had signed nondisclosure agreements with the campaign.
In addition to Dr. Fox, the consortium included Susan T. Fiske of Princeton University; Samuel L. Popkin of the University of California, San Diego; Robert Cialdini, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University; Richard H. Thaler, a professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago’s business school; and Michael Morris, a psychologist at Columbia.
“A kind of dream team, in my opinion,” Dr. Fox said.

For the full story, see:
BENEDICT CAREY. “Academic ‘Dream Team’ Helped Obama’s Effort.” The New York Times (Tues., November 13, 2012): D1 & D6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 12, 2012.)

The War on Drugs Likely “Increased the Rate of Addiction”

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ commentary quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs” in 1971. The expectation then was that drug trafficking in the United States could be greatly reduced in a short time through federal policing–and yet the war on drugs continues to this day. The cost has been large in terms of lives, money and the well-being of many Americans, especially the poor and less educated. By most accounts, the gains from the war have been modest at best.

The direct monetary cost to American taxpayers of the war on drugs includes spending on police, the court personnel used to try drug users and traffickers, and the guards and other resources spent on imprisoning and punishing those convicted of drug offenses. Total current spending is estimated at over $40 billion a year.
These costs don’t include many other harmful effects of the war on drugs that are difficult to quantify. For example, over the past 40 years the fraction of students who have dropped out of American high schools has remained large, at about 25%. Dropout rates are not high for middle-class white children, but they are very high for black and Hispanic children living in poor neighborhoods. Many factors explain the high dropout rates, especially bad schools and weak family support. But another important factor in inner-city neighborhoods is the temptation to drop out of school in order to profit from the drug trade.
The total number of persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the U.S. has grown from 330,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million today. Much of the increase in this population is directly due to the war on drugs and the severe punishment for persons convicted of drug trafficking. About 50% of the inmates in federal prisons and 20% of those in state prisons have been convicted of either selling or using drugs. The many minor drug traffickers and drug users who spend time in jail find fewer opportunities for legal employment after they get out of prison, and they develop better skills at criminal activities.
. . .
(p. C2) It is generally harder to break an addiction to illegal goods, like drugs. Drug addicts may be leery of going to clinics or to nonprofit “drugs anonymous” groups for help. They fear they will be reported for consuming illegal substances. Since the consumption of illegal drugs must be hidden to avoid arrest and conviction, many drug consumers must alter their lives in order to avoid detection.
Usually overlooked in discussions of the effects of the war on drugs is that the illegality of drugs stunts the development of ways to help drug addicts, such as the drug equivalent of nicotine patches. Thus, though the war on drugs may well have induced lower drug use through higher prices, it has likely also increased the rate of addiction. The illegality of drugs makes it harder for addicts to get help in breaking their addictions. It leads them to associate more with other addicts and less with people who might help them quit.
. . .
The decriminalization of both drug use and the drug market won’t be attained easily, as there is powerful opposition to each of them. The disastrous effects of the American war on drugs are becoming more apparent, however, not only in the U.S. but beyond its borders. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon has suggested “market solutions” as one alternative to the problem. Perhaps the combined efforts of leaders in different countries can succeed in making a big enough push toward finally ending this long, enormously destructive policy experiment.

For the full commentary, see:
GARY S. BECKER and KEVIN M. MURPHY. “Have We Lost the War on Drugs? After more than four decades of a failed experiment, the human cost has become too high. It is time to consider the decriminalization of drug use and the drug market.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., January 5, 2013): C1 & C2.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 4, 2013.)

David Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research

“Dr. Robert Langer’s research lab is at the forefront of moving academic discoveries into the marketplace.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 1) HOW do you take particles in a test tube, or components in a tiny chip, and turn them into a $100 million company?

Dr. Robert Langer, 64, knows how. Since the 1980s, his Langer Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has spun out companies whose products treat cancer, diabetes, heart disease and schizophrenia, among other diseases, and even thicken hair.
The Langer Lab is on the front lines of turning discoveries made in the lab into a range of drugs and drug delivery systems. Without this kind of technology transfer, the thinking goes, scientific discoveries might well sit on the shelf, stifling innovation.
A chemical engineer by training, Dr. Langer has helped start 25 companies and has 811 patents, issued or pending, to his name. More than 250 companies have licensed or sublicensed Langer Lab patents.
Polaris Venture Partners, a Boston venture capital firm, has invested $220 million in 18 Langer Lab-inspired businesses. Combined, these businesses have improved the health of many millions of people, says Terry McGuire, co-founder of Polaris.
. . .
(p. 7) Operating from the sixth floor of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research on the M.I.T. campus in Cambridge, Mass., Dr. Langer’s lab has a research budget of more than $10 million for 2012, coming mostly from federal sources.
. . .
David H. Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries, the conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., wrote in an e-mail that “innovation and education have long fueled the world’s most powerful economies, so I can’t think of a better or more natural synergy than the one between academia and industry.” Mr. Koch endowed Dr. Langer’s professorship at M.I.T. and is a graduate of the university.

For the full story, see:
HANNAH SELIGSON. “Hatching Ideas, and Companies, by the Dozens at M.I.T.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., November 25, 2012): 1 & 7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 24, 2012.)

How Chavez Punished Those Who Opposed Him

(p. 196) In 2004, the Hugo Chávez regime in Venezuela distributed the list of several million voters who had attempted to remove him from office throughout the government bureaucracy, allegedly to identify and punish these voters. We match the list of petition signers distributed by the government to household survey respondents to measure the economic effects of being identified as a Chávez political opponent. We find that voters who were identified as Chávez opponents experienced a 5 percent drop in earnings and a 1.3 percentage point drop in employment rates after the voter list was released.

Source:
Hsieh, Chang-Tai, Edward Miguel, Daniel Ortega, and Francisco Rodriguez. “The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela’s Maisanta.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3, no. 2 (2011): 196-214.

“The Arpanet Was Not an Internet”

“Xerox PARC headquarters.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A11) A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: “The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet.”
. . .
Robert Taylor, who ran the ARPA program in the 1960s, sent an email to fellow technologists in 2004 setting the record straight: “The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war. The Arpanet was not an Internet. An Internet is a connection between two or more computer networks.”
If the government didn’t invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet’s backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks.
But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.
According to a book about Xerox PARC, “Dealers of Lightning” (by Michael Hiltzik), its top researchers realized they couldn’t wait for the government to connect different networks, so would have to do it themselves. “We have a more immediate problem than they do,” Robert Metcalfe told his colleague John Shoch in 1973. “We have more networks than they do.” Mr. Shoch later recalled that ARPA staffers “were working under government funding and university contracts. They had contract administrators . . . and all that slow, lugubrious behavior to contend with.”

For the full commentary, see:
Gordon Crovitz. “INFORMATION AGE; Who Really Invented the Internet?” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., July 23, 2012): A11.
(Note: ellipsis between paragraphs was added; ellipsis internal to last paragraph was in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 22, 2012.)

I read the Hiltzik book several years ago, and my memory of it is not sharp, but I remember thinking that it was a useful book:
Hiltzik, Michael A. Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age. New York: HarperBusiness, 1999.

Chávez Supporters Feared Losing Government Jobs

“A Chávez supporter. The president runs a well-oiled patronage system, a Tammany Hall-like operation but on a national scale. Government workers are frequently required to attend pro-Chávez rallies, and they come under pressure to vote for him.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

After the story quoted below was published, Chávez (alas) was re-elected.

(p. A1) Many Venezuelans who are eager to send Mr. Chávez packing, fed up with the country’s lackluster economy and rampant crime, are nonetheless anxious that voting against the president could mean being fired from a government job, losing a government-built home or being cut off from social welfare benefits.

“I work for the government, and it scares me,” said Luisa Arismendi, 33, a schoolteacher who cheered on a recent morning as Mr. Chávez’s challenger, Henrique Capriles Radonski, drove by in this northeastern city, waving from the back of a pickup truck. Until this year, she always voted for Mr. Chávez, and she hesitated before giving her name, worried about what would happen if her supervisors found out she was switching sides. “If Chávez wins,” she said, “I could be fired.”
. . .
(p. A6) The fear has deep roots. Venezuelans bitterly recall how the names of millions of voters were made public after they signed a petition for an unsuccessful 2004 recall referendum to force Mr. Chávez out of office. Many government workers whose names were on the list lost their jobs.
Mr. Chávez runs a well-oiled patronage system, a Tammany Hall-like operation but on a national scale. Government workers are frequently required to attend pro-Chávez rallies, and they come under other pressures.
“They tell me that I have to vote for Chávez,” said Diodimar Salazar, 37, who works at a government-run day care center in a rural area southeast of Cumaná. “They always threaten you that you will get fired.”
Ms. Salazar said that her pro-Chávez co-workers insisted that the government would know how she voted. But experience has taught her otherwise. She simply casts her vote for the opposition and then tells her co-workers that she voted for Mr. Chávez.
“I’m not going to take the risk,” said Fabiana Osteicoechea, 22, a law student in Caracas who said she would vote for Mr. Chávez even though she was an enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Capriles. She said she was certain that Mr. Chávez would win and was afraid that the government career she hoped to have as a prosecutor could be blocked if she voted the wrong way.
“After the election, he’s going to have more power than now, lots more, and I think he will have a way of knowing who voted for whom,” she said. “I want to get a job with the government so, obviously I have to vote for Chávez.”

For the full story, see:
WILLIAM NEUMAN. “Fear of Losing Benefits Affects Venezuela Vote.” The New York Times (Sat., October 6, 2012): A1 & A6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date October 5, 2012, and has the title “Fears Persist Among Venezuelan Voters Ahead of Election.”)

Students Protest (and Toss) Federally Mandated “Healthy” (“Gross”) Food

“Lunch hour at Middle School 104 in Manhattan, where, on Friday, several seventh graders pronounced vegetables “gross.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Outside Pittsburgh, they are proclaiming a strike, taking to Twitter and Facebook to spread the word. In a village near Milwaukee, hundreds staged a boycott. In a small farming and ranching community in western Kansas, they have produced a parody video. And in Parsippany, N.J., the protest is six days old and counting.

They are high school students, and their complaint is about lunch — healthier, smaller and more expensive than ever.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which required public schools to follow new nutritional guidelines this academic year to receive extra federal lunch aid, has created a nationwide version of the age-old parental challenge: persuading children to eat what is good for them.
Because the lunches must now include fruits and vegetables, those who clamor for more cheese-laden nachos may find string beans and a peach cup instead. Because of limits on fat and sodium, some of those who crave French fries get baked sweet-potato wedges. Because of calorie restrictions, meat and carbohydrate portions are smaller. Gone is 2-percent chocolate milk, replaced by skim.
“Before, there was no taste and no flavor,” said Malik Barrows, a senior at Automotive High School in Brooklyn, who likes fruit but said his classmates threw away their mandatory helpings on the cafeteria floor. “Now there’s no taste, no flavor and it’s healthy, which makes it taste even worse.”
Students organized lunch strikes in a suburb of Pittsburgh, where in late August the hashtag “brownbagginit” was trending on Twitter, and outside Milwaukee, where the Mukwonago High School principal, Shawn McNulty, said participation in the lunch program had fallen 70 percent.
. . .
(p. A3) In Sharon Springs, Kan., lunch protesters at Wallace County High School posted a video on YouTube, “We Are Hungry”; in it, students faint in the hallways and during physical education class, acting as if they had been done in by meager helpings of potato puff casserole and chicken nuggets. To the tune of the song “We Are Young” by Fun, one student on the video sings, “My friends are at the corner store, getting junk so they don’t waste away.”
Since it was uploaded three weeks ago, “We Are Hungry” has had nearly 900,000 views.
Callahan Grund, a junior who stars in the video, said, “My opinion as a young farmer and rancher is that we produced this protein and it’s not being used to its full advantage.” He wakes up early every morning to do chores, stays after school for two hours of football practice and returns home for another round of chores. If it were not for the lunches his mother now packs him, he said, he would be hungry again just two hours after lunch.
In New York City, where school officials introduced whole-wheat breads, low-fat milk and other changes several years ago, the most noticeable change this year is the fruit and vegetable requirement, which has resulted in some waste, according to Eric Goldstein, the Education Department official who oversees food services. It is not hard to see why. At Middle School 104 in Gramercy Park on Friday, several seventh graders pronounced vegetables “gross.”
“I just throw them out,” said Danielson Gutierrez, 12, carrying a slice of pizza, which he had liberally sprinkled with seasonings, and a pear. He also offered his opinion on fruit: “I throw them out, too. I only like apples.”

For the full story, see:
VIVIAN YEE. “No Appetite for Good-for-You School Lunches.” The New York Times (Sat., October 6, 2012): A1 & A3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date October 5, 2012.)

“Dissatisfied with healthier school lunches, some Kansas students made a video parody.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Williams Made Providence a Sanctuary for the Persecuted

Source of book image: http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320716933l/11797348.jpg

I have not yet read Barry’s book on Roger Williams, but I did enjoy and learn from his earlier The Great Influenza book.

(p. 12) Williams struck overland, through snow and bitter cold, “wch I feele yet,” he reminisced later in life. He survived because he had help. “The ravens fed me in the wilderness,” he said, comparing himself to the scriptural prophets sustained by bird-borne morsels, though his “ravens” were Indians. With their assistance, he reached the upper bend of a bay that would be named for its inhabitants, the Narragansett. There, Williams bought land from its native proprietors and established a settlement he called Providence, to honor the divine assistance given to him and other Christians on their flights from persecution.
. . .
Next, Williams refused to take an oath of fidelity to Massachusetts, on the grounds that anything sworn in God’s name for worldly purposes was corrupt.
The authorities in Massachusetts were so outraged that having failed to arrest Williams, they tried to obliterate his new settlement. He went back to England to get a charter to protect his colony on his own terms: with a “hedge or wall of Separation between the Garden of the Church and the Wildernes of the world.” In several publications, he argued that the individual conscience should not — could not — be governed, let alone persecuted. If God was the ultimate punisher of sin, it was impious for humans to assume his authority. And it was “directly contrary to the nature of Christ Jesus . . . that throats of men should be torne out for his sake.”
Barry shows how controversial these beliefs were at the time, and in this way reinforces the standard image of Williams as an early proponent of liberty of conscience.

For the full review, see:
JOYCE E. CHAPLIN. “Errand in the Wilderness.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., May 26, 2012): 12.
(Note: ellipsis between paragraphs was added; ellipsis internal to quotation was in original.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 25, 2012 and has the title “Roger Williams: The Great Separationist.”)

The book being reviewed, is:
Barry, John M. Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty. New York: Viking Adult, 2012.