Why Spend taxpayer $’s when we don’t Capitalize on what we have now?

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WTN’s recently released report [5.6MB PDF]includes these highlights:


  • Academic research and development activities in Wisconsin total about $883 million in the latest year. That includes the UW System, the Medical College of Wisconsin, other private colleges and universities, the Marshfield Clinic?s research arm and the research programs of the Veterans Administration hospitals.
  • Academic R&D is responsible for more than 31,000 jobs, directly and indirectly, in Wisconsin. That is according to an economic multiplier used by the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Association of American Universities.
  • Academic R&D represents an area where Wisconsin performs well versus other states in attracting federal dollars. Wisconsin is 15th nationally, even without the inclusion of the Marshfield Clinic and the Veterans Hospitals.
  • Academic R&D in Wisconsin has continued to grow, even as the economy retrenched in 2000-2003. In the last year alone, for example, R&D conducted in the UW System grew by $47.5 million.
  • Academic R&D in Wisconsin could be at risk unless state support for the infrastructure supporting such research is maintained. Other states are investing in their infrastructure because they believe it makes sound economic sense.

The report contains these recommendations:



  • The governor and Legislature should continue to invest in capital improvement programs such as BioStar and HealthStar, which leverage the assets of the UW-Madison and help to create spinout companies and jobs.
  • The governor and Legislature should begin, in the 2005-2007 state budget, the process of restoring state support for UW System operations. Although many states have experienced similar budget difficulties, the erosion in the UW budget has been relatively steady for years and cannot continue if the state wants to protect its investment.
  • The governor and Legislature should create a Wisconsin Innovation and Research Fund to help secure federal and corporate grants by providing small matching grants to UW System and private college faculty who collaborate with business on R&D.
  • The UW-Madison, the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Marshfield Clinic should re-examine already strong collaborative research relationships to look for more opportunities to joint attract research funding and conduct science. Incentives to conduct inter-institution and interdisciplinary research should be established. This is similar to an approach being followed in Minnesota, where the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic have recently announced joint initiatives.
  • The governor and the Legislature should establish a commission, similar to the Michigan Commission on Higher Education and Economic Growth, to explore other options and to more deliberately track ?best practices? in other states.

Judy Newman interviewed local scientists, along with other interested parties.
I continue to believe the primary issue for us is not money, rather risk taking. We’ve certainly spent a great deal of academic research, only to see WARF license the technology to firms such as California based Geron, among other non Wisconsin entities.
These licensing activities beg the usual question: why should the taxpayers continue to pay when the fruits go elsewhere, similar to the long time discussion of our brain drain (two of my four UW roommates are in Colorado and California….)?
My View: Why spend more taxpayer money when we don’t capitalize on what we have now! I can’t imagine yet another government level technology council….
UPDATE: Tom Still (Report Editor and President of the WTN) sent me a followup email:

Jim — Thank you! It’s good to get the information out and let people debate how to set priorities. I appreciate your thoughtful approach.
— Tom

Send him yours: tstill at wisconsintechnologycouncil.com

Insecure Browsing

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Andrew Chin on missed opportunities in US v Microsoft:

But freedom of contract is expressly limited by the antitrust laws. The courts therefore had authority to order Microsoft to license and distribute its software so as to offer a neutral choice of Web browser. Microsoft could easily have done so without undoing its programming innovations.
Instead, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals created a special antitrust immunity to license Windows and other “platform software” under contractual terms that destroy freedom of competition.
The security hazards that have resulted from Microsoft’s unredressed actions are serious, and already being felt. Equally serious, but perhaps less tangible, is the D.C. Circuit’s waste of judicial resources in issuing precedential opinions that fallaciously treat Microsoft’s flagship software product as consisting of lines of code rather than intellectual property rights. The courts have missed a golden opportunity to affirm the freedom to compete in the information age.

Chin is an associate professor at the UNC School of Law and a former legal extern to Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, the trial judge in U.S. v. Microsoft.
Related Article on Microsoft’s now dormant and flawed Internet Explorer browser. (use firefox)

Ed Haggar Died

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Virginia Postrel:

Ed Haggar, who coined the term “slacks,” has died. From the Dallas Morning News obit: Mr. Haggar teamed with legendary Dallas advertising pioneer Morris Hite to coin the term “slacks,” his son said. Pants were largely known as trousers until then.
“During the war years, people tried to get more casual during the weekends, during slack time or down time,” [his son] Eddie Haggar said. “Dad and Morris Hite…came up with the name slacks.”

Background: Clusty Google Teoma Yahoo

Shanghai American School Turns over N. Korean Refugees to the Chinese

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Rebecca MacKinnon:

The human rights activist website Chosun Journal has information about eight North Korean refugees who entered the Shanghai American School on Monday, Sept. 27, and were subsequently handed over to the Chinese police.
The original account is here. Full text is also continued below.
Will the U.S. media report this incident? Did the school do the right thing? Could they have done otherwise and not gotten in trouble with the Chinese authorities? Will Americans be outraged? What would you do if North Korean refugees sought asylum in your school which was clearly not on embassy grounds?
There ought to be a public discussion about what Americans living abroad who care about human rights should do in such situations, and what U.S. consulates will or won?t do to help them.

Dean on Local Politics

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Howard Dean:

You need to run for office yourself,” he said. “Somebody has to take responsibility for being on the school board, on the city council ? all these offices that sometimes lead to higher things and sometimes don’t. Democracy withers unless people think ? unless people understand that they’re responsible, not their neighbor.”