Fred Alger: A Call for Energy Independence

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This New York Investment Firm sent this letter to President Bush, advocating a change in US energy policy and taxes. Alger’s proposal makes sense:

“Beginning in 2008, any car or SUV that cannot meet a fuel efficiency standard of 30 miles per gallon will have to pay a tax of $1,000 per year.” And the tax could generate “as much as $200 billion in revenue” in its first year, and “may increase in subsequent years,” the letter says. The money management firm says that one of the biggest issues for Americans is the soaring price of gasoline and that the prospects for lower gas prices are not likely due to increasing demand from U.S. consumers, as well as soaring demand from nations such as China and soon from India. Alger asked President Bush to set a national goal of cutting gasoline consumption in half over the next 10 years. This, they say, needs to be adopted quickly in order to reduce America’s dependency on Middle Eastern oil, which “allows U.S. motives to be questioned, fairly or not. Reducing gasoline consumption and increasing our energy independence will enhance not only our economic and military security but also ensure that the legitimacy of our foreign policy is not undermined by our energy needs.”

Read the enter document [278K PDF]

Virginia Postrel on Life in a Declining Industry

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She writes:

This long American Journalism Review article on troubles at the LA Times made me think about the question media critics consistently dodge: What strategies are realistically available when you’re caught in a declining industry, which the metropolitan daily newspaper most assuredly is? How do you sell localism–local news, local advertising, locally produced articles on national subjects–in a market saturated with cheap substitutes whose quality has been tested in national competition? What niche can you fill?

Frank Ahrens has more on the recent circulation scandals.

Entrepreneur: What not to do

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Mark Henricks interviews John Osher who discusses the 17 most common mistakes startups make, along with 5 must dos to win:

Mistake 1: Failing to spend enough time researching the business idea to see if it’s viable. “This is really the most important mistake of all. They say 9 [out] of 10 entrepreneurs fail because they’re undercapitalized or have the wrong people. I say 9 [out] of 10 people fail because their original concept is not viable. They want to be in business so much that they often don’t do the work they need to do ahead of time, so everything they do is doomed. They can be very talented, do everything else right, and fail because they have ideas that are flawed.”

FCC Chairman Michael Powell on Broadband Politics

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Larry Lessig interviews FCC Chairman Michael Powell on our nation’s poor broadband penetration:

Lessig: The latest statistics say that we?re number thirteen. So what?s happened in the last four years that this place where the internet really started and took off seems to be falling behind so quickly?
Powell: I think this situation should be unacceptable to us. Fortunately, I think we?re beginning to have some success in making our national leadership understand that this is something they should care about. This is something that will impact and control the economic prosperity of our society in the Information Age. It should be debated in the halls of Congress. It’s that critical.

More on Microjets

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Sara Kehaulani Goo on Microjets or Very Light Jets (VLJ’s) and the emerging air taxi system ($6/mile):

The fledgling industry is “going to be looked upon like the Wright brothers in 1903,” said Ken Hespe, a spokesman for the National Consortium for Aviation Mobility, a nonprofit group that has been studying and developing new uses for the nation’s tiniest airports and for small jets with NASA, which estimates a market for 8,300 microjets by 2010. “It’s going to be a revolution in the transportation industry,” Hespe said.
Analysts say microjets will appeal to a cross-section of customers including corporations, which might add planes to their fleets, and wealthy travelers who are looking for a less-expensive alternative to owning a jet. Since 2001, companies such as NetJets have grown by providing access to planes around the world for members who pay for fractional ownership of aircraft. Aviation experts say air taxis with all-microjet fleets could serve as an even more affordable version of the fractional ownership aircraft model.

VC Don Valentine Looks Ahead

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Alorie Gilbert interviews “legendary” venture capitalist Don Valentine (Founder of Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital):

I really think it’s sort of embarrassing for South Korea to have an intrinsically greater disposition in broadband than California……..
I got to Silicon Valley in 1959. Nothing is revolutionary; it’s evolutionary. Look the sequence of Intel microprocessors. It’s all predictable. The nature of silicon and software and storage go hand in hand. In the case of software, you just have to be more clever about the nature of the application. So all these things kind of tick along, feeding off each other