Michigan is pothole heaven

Michigan roads second worst in country | detnews.com | The Detroit News: "Michigan has the second worst roads in the nation, according to a 'Highway Report Card' released today by Overdrive Magazine, a publication for truckers and trucking company owners. Michigan placed third on the report card in 2009. Pennsylvania topped out this year's list with the worst roads, and New York and California tied for third place. Michigan drivers won't see much relief from crumbling roads in the next five years after the Michigan State Transportation Commission in January slashed 243 road and bridge projects from the Michigan Department of Transportation's 2010-14 road program."

Comment -- California has the third worst roads in the nation? Wow, that's not what I saw when we were in the Bay Area in February. They seemed pretty darn smooth.

Message to politicians: how about instead of raising road taxes, you figure out a cheaper way to build and repair roads? Like maybe more cost effective labor?

Go State Go! Victory for MSU!

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Incredible Izzo Again Defies Odds: "Michigan State has played in 13 tournaments under Izzo. They've reached the Final Four six times: thrice as a 1-seed, once as a 2-seed, and twice -- including this year -- as a 5-seed. They've also failed to make the Final Four as a 4-seed, a 5-seed, a 6-seed, a 9-seed, a 10-seed, and twice as a 7-seed.

What are the odds of a team with these seedings advancing to the Final Four six times? Very, very low. We can do a good job of modeling a team's probability of making the Final Four by using a logistic regression model based on the square root of its seeding:"

Comment -- This Web site makes a statistical case that Izzo taking six teams to the Final Four -- only three of which were #1 seeds -- is an extraordinary accomplishment.

I had an extraordinarily good Sunday with my loved ones at our house to help cheer the Spartans on to victory. Thanks, everyone, for coming. Go Green!

Wild project involving a GPS and the DHL shipping company

BIGGEST DRAWING IN THE WORLD

Click through to read in detail how this artist sent his briefcase and GPS around the world, in a precise pattern, to generate this drawing. Cool!

A quick summary of what's wrong with the new health care reform law

Well, the President just signed the bill. It's not going to be repealed as long as Obama is in office, so the only reasonable step is to seek changes that will make it less damaging than it already is.

I think the Wall Street Journal put it well today when they said that if the objective was to cover the uninsured, it could have been done with a small federal program that provided a basic low cost insurance policy. Instead, we have this monster of a law that does next to nothing to bring costs under control but still raises taxes and sucks money out of the private productive economy.

Here's some more specific analysis regarding small businesses:

* Small business health premiums will continue to increase sharply, as even the Congressional Budget Office has determined.
* The legislation does nothing to encourage cost-conscious consumer behavior, aside from the unnecessarily blunt “Cadillac tax,” which will not begin to have an effect until at least 2018, and which is insufficiently transparent and imposes unintended administrative burdens on small businesses.
* The delivery system reforms are positive, but are too back-loaded, giving powerful vested interests years to water them down or remove them entirely. Even if implemented, they are not likely to have a significant effect on costs for a decade or more. Malpractice reform, absent from the current legislation, would make these reforms much more effective.
* Though currently excluding most small companies, the large increases in “free-rider fees” are troubling. If there was once a distinction between an employer mandate and a free-rider provision, it seems to have been lost.
* The very large tax increases on both earned and unearned income could have a significant effect on many small business owners and their ability to reinvest in their companies’ growth. These increases are in addition to the administration’s current budget proposal which calls for significant income tax increases on the same individuals. Together, these taxes will create a steep increase in marginal tax rates on the very entrepreneurs we need to be investing and creating jobs.

I'm sure more sordid details will come to light in coming months as we find out about the sweetheart deals that were cut for individual Congressmen to get their votes.

Crowd in a California parking lot

Back to my running travel commentary on our trip last month to California!

We're in the parking lot of the little park that overlooks San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate bridge. On a nice day it has the prettiest scenery imaginable.

But as you can see from this picture, we were there when the fog was rolling in -- which is still neat to see, just not real scenic.

SBAM op ed opposing sales tax-on-services published in today’s Detroit Free Press

I helped my boss, SBAM President and CEO Rob Fowler, write an an op-ed that appeared in today’s Detroit Free Press. The text of the op-ed:

First of all, let me say that I agree that the state of Michigan, and in particular our schools, need revenue. We have differences of opinion over priorities and precise levels of funding, but in the end we must have some amount of revenue every year to fund vital services like educating our children.

The question is how to generate that revenue. I disagree with the proposal that the best way to meet the revenue needs of state government and public education is by imposing a sales tax on services. That’s a tax hike, plain and simple, and it increases the overall tax burden on struggling Michigan citizens.

We need to get away from the tired old prescription of addressing revenue shortfalls by automatically seeking additional taxes. Part of the solution involves structural reform of state spending that makes state government operate more efficiently and live within its means. That makes perfect sense to small business owners. These entrepreneurs across Michigan have worked ceaselessly, and made tremendous sacrifices, to find ways to live within their means. They expect state government to do no less and are very impatient with the business-as-usual attitude they perceive in Lansing.

But you may be surprised to hear me suggest that another important part of the solution is growing government revenues, but growing them the right way – not by expanding the tax burden but by fostering a vigorous and prosperous state economy, an economy that provides an appropriate level of tax revenue that meets the needs of public services and schools without levying an undue tax burden on the private sector.

A thriving economy begins with entrepreneurial business growth that energizes job creation and boosts incomes. That in turn generates revenue for government. But a sales tax on services hurts consumers and hurts small businesses by taking dollars out of their pockets, and away from business growth in the private economy, and transferring an even higher percentage of private resources to the public sector. That’s exactly the wrong formula for solving our economic woes.

We’re at a tipping point in Michigan’s economy. We can either add more taxes, in the form of a sales tax on services that further burdens our struggling consumers, or we can take down barriers to business and income growth. Meeting Michigan’s revenue needs begins with expanding Michigan’s economy, continues with real structural spending reforms and concludes with a higher level of prosperity that benefits everyone in our state.

See the op-ed online at the Detroit Free Press Web site.

Skepticism over Prius pandemonium

Toyota struggles to find Prius fix | detnews.com | The Detroit News: "On Monday, a California Highway Patrol officer helped a motorist on Interstate 8 slow a Prius from more than 90 mph to a stop, after the accelerator pedal got stuck. 'I was laying on the brakes but it wasn't slowing down,' said motorist James Sikes, who told reporters his accelerator pedal got stuck as he was going 94 mph in his 2008 Prius."

Comment -- Actually, I think the real news story is that the driver got his pokey Prius all the way up to 90 mph! Heh heh...

It was interesting that the Wall Street Journal quotes a cop as saying that he pulled up next to Sikes' car and told him over the loudspeaker that he should try to shift into neutral and/or shut off the ignition. The story says that Sikes "shook his head to indicate that neither action worked."

So, the car accelerates out of control, the brakes don't work, and Sikes can't shift into neutral or turn off the ignition? Really, what are the odds of that happening all at the same time? I would think that such a catastrophic array of software/electronic/mechanical problems would probably lead to the car not running at all -- rather than it accelerating out of control.

I could be wrong, but this story doesn't pass the smell test. Prius pandemonium indeed!

Taking a bite out of Jennifer

Jennifer was poking around this toothy fellow at the California Academy of Sciences library. From the looks of those teeth, he flossed well.

These hills are actually on the roof of the Academy building. It's one of the "greenest" buildings on Earth.

Eventful weekend

The MSU basketball home season concluded Sunday afternoon at Breslin. We stomped (again) the hapless Wolverines. After the game, Izzo saluted the three MSU seniors. He then invited the crowd to come down to the floor of the arena. Jennifer shot this photo of me standing in front of one of the baskets. Now I have more fodder for my dream fantasy of running out of the stands to play hoops for MSU!











Friday night we attended Ignite Lansing 3.0. It was held on the first floor of the old Knapp’s department store building. The highlighted part of the Lansing State Journal photo shows Jennifer and I sitting in the audience, watching one the dancers who was brought in to fire up the crowd. In fact, the crowd was so fired up by the dancers, laser light show, beverages and loud music that they never settled down and paid much attention to the presenters.

Animals, alive and dead

This eel slithered out of the coral at the California Academy of Science aquarium and bared its teeth at me during our visit. I grinned back and told him that I’d eaten his cousin raw on a piece of sushi in Half Moon Bay.

This 87-foot skeleton of a blue whale hung from the ceiling of the Academy. I did not see any posters that explained where the skeleton came from. But a guy at our astronomy club meeting last night said that when he lived in the Bay Area about 15 years ago, a huge whale carcass washed ashore near Golden Gate Bridge. He said the carcass was buried for a decade, then dug up and rendered into the skeleton, which now hangs around in the Academy.

However the company that restored the skeleton says the bones are actually 55 years old. And this news release says the Academy has owned the skeleton for 95 years! The truth is out there...

Lots of butterflies

A highight of the California Academy of Science's rain forest was the dozens of butterflies (of various varieties.) This photo shows people taking...photos of the butterflies.

There were many signs that asked visitors to please check their hair and clothing to make sure no butterflies hitchhiked out of the rain forest into the main museum.

Vanessa's company closer to IPO?

As predicted, Silver Spring preps for IPO | VentureBeat: At the start of the year, when everyone was throwing out predictions for the rapidly growing cleantech sector, Tesla Motors and Smart Grid networking provider Silver Spring Networks were pegged as the companies most likely to go public in 2010. Less than a month later, Tesla filed for a $100 million public sale. Now, unsurprisingly, Silver Spring has tapped bankers for its own IPO.

The Redwood City, Calif. company has retained Morgan Stanley and Jeffries & Co. to underwrite a public sale, according to Dow Jones Clean Technology Insight (subscription). So far, it’s unclear what amount it will be looking for, though it has raised nearly $300 million in capital, and may be valued as highly as $3 billion (again, according to Dow Jones).

Silver Spring Networks provides a vital segment of the emerging Smart Grid: the equipment that creates wireless networks to transmit energy consumption between meters, consumers and utilities.

Comment -- Vanessa is a Senior Project Manager for Silver Spring Networks. The sentence above is a pretty good explanation of what her company does. I'm going to tattoo it on my wrist so I'll have a ready explanation next time someone asks me what Vanessa does!

Just hangin' around

This sticky-footed lizard clings to a glass wall at the California Academy of Sciences. Part of the rain forest exhibit.