Michelle Malkin | Barack Obama's “Social Innovation” slush fund «

Barack Obama’s “Social Innovation” slush fund
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2013

We all know now what the vengeful Obama IRS has been doing to conservative nonprofits the past four years: strangling them in the crib. But do you know how much pampering and largesse far-left welfare-state charities have received while limited-government groups suffered? You don’t know the half of it.

Before President Obama took office, I warned that Democrats planned to steer untold amounts of taxpayer dollars to his shady community-organizing pals. The Dems’ 2008 party platform proposed the creation of a “Social Investment Fund Network” to subsidize “social entrepreneurs and leading nonprofit organizations (that) are assisting schools, lifting families out of poverty, filling health care gaps and inspiring others to lead change in their own communities.”

Investigative journalist James O’Keefe’s pioneering work helped bring down the fraudsters of ACORN. But a thousand other ACORN-style knockoffs have metastasized in the shadows. Not long after Obama took office, big-government Democrats and Republicans handed him the $6 billion mandatory “volunteerism” package known as the “SERVE America Act.” The boondoggle fueled legions of new government “volunteers,” including a Clean Energy Corps, an Education Corps, a Healthy Futures Corps, a Veterans Service Corps and an expanded National Civilian Community Corps for disaster relief and energy conservation.

In addition to creating thousands of make-work jobs and boosting bloated national service bureaucracies, the legislation also carved out a left-wing slush fund known as the Social Innovation Fund. In its four-year existence, SIF has doled out $140 million to 20 handpicked grant-making organizations, which in turn have chosen 197 “promising nonprofits” for government support.

Obama promised “accountability” measures to ensure the money is spent wisely. But who has been assessing the effectiveness of the spending? As I reported at the outset, it’s interest-conflicted foxes in the social entrepreneurship community guarding the government-grant henhouse.

Among the lucky winners of these crony SIF monies: Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), which received $4.2 million and had employed Patrick Corvington, former head of the Corporation for National and Community Service; and social welfare outfit New Profit Inc., which received $5 million and had employed former SIF Executive Director Paul Carttar. New Profit’s conflicts are gobsmacking. Nonprofit Quarterly noted that SIF “owes its existence at least in part to New Profit, which in 2007 put together a coalition of nonprofit groups called America Forward to advocate for, among other things, the creation of a federal fund.”

The inspector general overseeing SIF, AmeriCorps and other SERVE Act programs agreed with critics that the Social Innovation Fund grant application process lacked transparency, lacked a policy on handling staff conflicts of interest and failed to fully document grant award decisions. Another IG audit released just last week revealed that a prominent SIF grantee, the progressive Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, “fail(ed) to remove two of its employees, who were known by CEO management to have criminal histories that made them ineligible, from working on the SIF grant.”

As Paul Light, a public policy professor at New York University who served on a review panel for the fund, told National Public Radio: “It’s not clear yet what taxpayers have gotten for the money.” The phony-baloney statistics that SIF bureaucrats tout to show how many have been “served” simply demonstrate the Nanny State “entrepreneurs’” real agenda: maximizing the number of government dependents and rewarding social welfare operatives.

The Obama administration’s politicization of charity — or the “Solyndra-ization of philanthropy,” as the Manhattan Institute’s Howard Husock calls it — has created a permanent taxpayer-backed pipeline to Democratic partisan outfits masquerading as public-interest do-gooders. There’s nothing “innovative” about underwriting the same failed dependency-inducing community organizing fronts while persecuting others based on ideology.

It’s self-SERVE-ing Chicago business as usual.

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Posted on June 14, 2013 by , Reply

Innovation vs. cheating on the battleground of golf science – Cosmic …

Suzann Pettersen, a professional golfer on the LPGA tour, uses putting to help demonstrate the physics concepts of work, energy, and power. NBC Learn has teamed up with the USGA and Chevron Corporation to release “The Science of Golf” — a 10-part video series available at http://www.nbclearn.com/golf.

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

Golf might not look like a sport for science geeks, but there’s actually a lot of physics and engineering that goes into playing the game right — and making sure it doesn’t get played wrong.

“Anything that could be detrimental to the game of golf is important for us to rule on,” Steve Quintavalla, senior research engineer at the U.S. Golf Association, told NBC News.

The USGA Research and Test Center, where Quintavalla works, focuses on “finding the best technology and tools for measuring the performance of golf equipment, and doing the best research in the interest of the game of golf,” he said. That task involves promoting innovations that improve the game — but it also involves cracking down on some technological twists.

For example, when it comes to golf clubs, if your driver has a head that’s too springy, it could be on the ”non-conforming list” and thus disallowed for USGA-sanctioned games. The same goes for golf balls: The USGA tests 20,000 balls a year to make sure they conform to the standards for bounciness.

The balance between what’s innovative and what’s cheating comes through loud and clear in ”Science of Golf,” a 10-part video series presented by NBC Learn, the USGA and Chevron. It’s the latest in a string of science-themed educational packages that also provide lesson plans for science teachers. In each video, a USGA scientist delves into principles such as displacement, buoyancy, kinematics, acceleration and velocity. Golfers explain how they put those principles into practice. And slow-motion video shows you how it all works on the links.

NBC Learn

USGA senior research engineer Steve Quintavalla lets a golf ball roll at the association’s Research and Test Center in Far Hills, N.J. Quintavalla is one of the experts appearing in the “Science of Golf” video series.

The USGA’s standards extend to how the game is played as well as what the game is played with. For example, back in the ’60s, a between-the-legs style of putting started coming into vogue. The USGA put the kibosh on that kind of golf-course croquet. “We realized that that would make the putting stroke significantly easier, so we said, ‘Hey, that’s not golf,’” Quintavalla recalled.

More recently, the USGA stirred up a fuss with a ruling that will ban a practice called anchored putting in 2016. This involves the use of a super-long putter that a golfer can anchor against his or her body and swing like a pendulum. The USGA determined that the practice made it too easy for the golfer to control the club’s trajectory.

USGA rules apply to tournaments such as the U.S. Open, which begins next week — but it’s not yet clear how this latest ruling will apply to the PGA Tour. The PGA of America already has voiced its displeasure with the anchored-putting ban and will consider the matter further at a board meeting this month. Can this be settled scientifically? In sports, as in politics, the answer doesn’t always come down to the scientific data. (For more on the debate, check out this analysis of science vs. tradition in golf from the American Science blog.)

Looking beyond the rules of the game, Quintavalla said one of the sport’s most promising scientific frontiers has to do with how golfers optimize their performance.

“One advantage has been the use of launch monitors,” he said. These are high-tech devices that measure the way the ball comes off the face of the club, using high-speed video cameras or radar. “It’s a training aid for coaches to allow them to better instruct players on how to approach the ball differently,” Quintavalla explained.

Golf is probably one of the least violent sports out there, and that also extends to the way the USGA enforces its will.

“Players generally police each other,” Quintavalla said. “What the USGA does not have is a SWAT team and black helicopters. We don’t come to your house in the middle of the night and take your clubs away. The marketplace is governed voluntarily, and that’s a good thing. … What we find is, by and large, golfers don’t want to be seen as cheaters.”

Past “Science of…” packages have touched on chemistry, innovation and our changing planet as well as hockey, football and the Olympic Games.

The science of golf rates a double-birdie, because Chevron is also featuring the subject on its STEM Zone website — where STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math. Both the videos and the STEM Zone’s interactive presentations help you figure out how an intuitive understanding of F=ma helps golfers maximize their performance.

“The new video series showcases the STEM principles that play a key role in a variety of USGA functions, including equipment testing, environmental research and scoring,” Sarah Hirshland, the USGA’s senior managing director of business affairs, said in a news release.

More about the science of golf:

The U.S. Open will be broadcast on television from June 13 to 16 on NBC and ESPN, and live-streamed via the U.S. Open website. Check in with the Golf Channel for daily coverage.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com’s science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by “liking” the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com’s stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out “The Case for Pluto,” my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

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Innovation vs. cheating on the battleground of golf science – Cosmic …

Posted on June 8, 2013 by , Reply

Innovation happening outside of the Valley | VentureBeat

This sponsored post is produced by Techweek.

Want to meet the next generation of innovators? Then don’t miss Techweek, the largest tech-fest in the Midwest, taking place in Chicago’s historic Merchandise Mart from June 27-29.

Expect to hear candid insights from some of the most interesting minds in tech, including notorious file-sharing revolutionary Kim Dotcom. Beyond exclusive speaker presentations, the three-day conference immerses attendees in all things tech, and it hosts a startup competition, hiring fair, and over 10 after-hours parties. Innovation takes center stage at each of Techweek’s various events, and you can plan on getting insider access to new products from one of the 150 companies on the expo floor or a forecast of the future of the flipped classroom model from Sal Khan, founder of the Khan academy.

Estimated to bring together more than 8,000 tech enthusiasts, the conference is all about fostering the innovation ecosystem by bringing together the sharpest minds, ideas, and businesses in the industry. Speaker sessions are split across eight content summits, which span all relevant topics in tech such as development, international expansion, and the education sphere. Techweek also facilitates connections between entrepreneurs, developers, and business executives at the 80-plus company Hiring Fair and a Grand Tour series of Chicago’s most inspiring offices spaces, including Groupon and kCura.

It’s not all about established industry leaders, though. Techweek’s LAUNCH competition gives 70 prequalified startups the chance to win $100,000 in cash and prizes. A judges’ panel of select venture capitalists and entrepreneurs will determine five finalists from the pool of 70, and those finalists will then demo their product on the Techweek Summit Stage. Along with the $100,000 in cash and prizes, the winning startup receives the exposure needed to catapult their company to the stratosphere.

VentureBeat readers receive 15 percent off Conference and Expo Badges at Techweek here.

Sponsored posts are content that has been produced by a company, which is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. The content of news stories produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.

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Posted on June 7, 2013 by , Reply

Taking on Patent Trolls to Protect American Innovation | The White …

Our patent system — as enshrined in our Constitution — is meant to encourage innovation and invention. It was designed to reward Americans for their hard work, risk-taking and genius. It has spurred progress that has driven economic growth and transformed the way we live, work, communicate, and stay healthy. But in recent years, there has been an explosion of abusive patent litigation designed not to reward innovation and enforce intellectual property, but to threaten companies in order to extract settlements based on questionable claims.

There are a growing number of companies, commonly called “patent trolls,” who employ these litigation tactics as a business model — costing the economy billions of dollars and undermining American innovation. In the last two years, the number of lawsuits brought by patent trolls has nearly tripled, and account for 62% of all patent lawsuits in America. All told, the victims of patent trolls paid $29 billion in 2011, a 400% increase from 2005 — not to mention tens of billions dollars more in lost shareholder value.

Today we are releasing a study on the issue that documents the significant toll this issue is taking on our economy and on innovation, and we are excited to announceboth Executive actions the Obama Administration is taking, and the legislative measures that we are calling on Congress to pass to protect American innovators.

Last February during his Fireside Hangout, the President explained that patent trolls (known more formally as Patent Assertion Entities, or PAEs) “don’t actually produce anything themselves. They’re just trying to essentially leverage and hijack somebody else’s idea and see if they can extort some money out of them.” This type of abusive patent litigation is a major problem.

It’s also important to know what we’re not talking about here. We aren’t trying to make it harder to pursue legitimate intellectual property rights, or vigorously defend valid patents. Indeed, the United States has the best intellectual property protections in the world, and our system rightly ensures that these innovators are compensated for their creativity. The problem is when rogue companies make a business model out of exploiting and abusing the system, using it not to protect invention but to bring frivolous lawsuits to extract settlements from companies trying to serve American consumers. Bad patents in the system (such as those issued with broad or vague language) only compound the problem, and the issue extends far beyond any one industry.

This is a problem we’re hearing a lot about, from multinational corporations and venture capitalists to garage innovators and small-town café owners. Businesses of any size are vulnerable to these tactics, whether you’re a software giant designing complex applications or a mom-and-pop store using a technology product you purchased over the counter.

How big of a problem are patent trolls? Consider this: last year we estimate that patent trolls sent out over 100,000 demand letters, threatening everyone from Fortune 500 companies to corner coffee shops and even regular consumers to pay a settlement or face a day in court. The number of these suits has exploded in recent years. 

The Rise of Patent Trolls: Total Number of Patent Cases Commenced, 2006-2012

But this is about more than just the company bottom-line: when businesses need to constantly worry about abusive patent litigation they are able to put less of their efforts into creating new products and serving customers. Today, some of the largest innovators in high-tech spend more money on patent litigation and acquisition than they do on research and development for new products. Smaller companies are getting hit just as hard, and 40% of technology startups targeted by patent trolls reported a significant impact on their business operations due the suit or threat thereof.

It’s clear that the abuse of the patent system is stifling innovation and putting a drag on our economy. The trolling has gotten out of control, and it’s time to act. 

We are excited to announce these steps to give innovators a fair fight in the legal battle against patent trolls, bring clarity to the high-tech patent space, and protect the everyday citizen against their abusive tactics. We look forward to, with your support and the input of everyone affected by this issue, helping make America an even better place to innovate.

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Taking on Patent Trolls to Protect American Innovation | The White …

Posted on June 4, 2013 by , Reply

Innovation director of CMS is moving on – Jennifer Haberkorn …

The innovation center charged by the health reform law with finding solutions to the toughest questions in health care — how to reduce costs and change the way health care is delivered — is losing its first leader.

Rick Gilfillan, who has led the Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation since it was established in 2010, plans to leave at the end of June, according to an internal memo obtained by POLITICO.

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“During this time, CMMI has grown from a startup center to an organization of over 230 people, and we believe that these new care models will make a difference in patients’ lives and improve the efficiency of our health system,” Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, wrote on Friday.

Tavenner has asked CMS Chief Medical Officer Patrick Conway to serve as acting director of CMMI. He’ll maintain his other post as well as his role as director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality.

CMMI was created by the health reform law to come up with short- and long-term fixes to the biggest problem facing health care: how to reduce costs.

Under Gilfillan’s watch, CMMI has started the development of accountable care organizations — new models of care that are supposed to improve quality and reduce costs by coordinating care for Medicare patients across providers. CMMI is also responsible for restructuring how Medicare payments are made and overseeing hundreds of demonstration projects to test new ideas in health care.

Gilfillan, who has experience as a family doctor, will pursue “new opportunities,” Tavenner wrote in the memo. Before joining the Obama administration, he was president and CEO of Geisinger Health Plan, where he helped design a bundled payment system.

Geisinger is known as one of the most innovative health systems in the country — part of the reason Gilfillan was tasked with the CMMI job.

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Innovation director of CMS is moving on – Jennifer Haberkorn …

Posted on June 3, 2013 by , Reply

Good News on Innovation and Health Care | The White House

Ed. note: This is cross-posted from the HealthCare blog at HealthCare.gov. Read more about data-powered health care here.

A recent New York Times column, Obamacare’s Other Surprise, by Thomas L. Friedman echoes what we’ve been hearing from health care providers and innovators: Data that support medical decision-making and collaboration, dovetailing with new tools in the Affordable Care Act, are spurring the innovation necessary to deliver improved health care for more people at affordable prices.

Today, we are focused on driving a smarter health care system focused on the quality – not quantity – of care. The health care law includes many tools to increase transparency, avoid costly mistakes and hospital readmissions, keep patients healthy, and encourage new payment and care delivery models, like Accountable Care Organizations. Health information technology is a critical underpinning to this larger strategy.    

Policies like these are already driving improvements. Prior to the law, nearly one in five Medicare patients discharged from a hospital was readmitted within 30 days, at a cost of over $26 billion every year. After implementing policies to incentivize better care coordination after a hospital discharge, the 30-day, all-cause readmission rate is estimated to have dropped during 2012 to a low of 18 percent in October, after averaging 19 percent for the previous five years. This downward trend translates to about 70,000 fewer admissions in 2012.

Insurance companies are also now required to publicly justify their actions if they want to raise rates by 10% or more. Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the proportion of requests for double-digit rate increases fell from 75 percent in 2010 to 14 percent so far in 2013.

Reforms like these have helped slow Medicare and Medicaid spending per beneficiary to historically low rates of growth.

Mobilizing Use of Health Information Technology

Last week, we reached an important milestone in the adoption of health information technology. More than half of all doctors and other eligible providers and nearly 80 percent of hospitals are using electronic health records (EHRs) to improve care, an increase of at least 200 percent since 2008.

Friedman wrote of Dr. Jennifer Brull, a small-town Kansas family doctor, as an example of how health IT is making a difference in real patients. One of our “physician champions,” Dr. Brull installed alerts in her EHRs to improve the rate of colon cancer screenings for her patients. She found colon cancer early in three patients as a result – so early that they did not need chemotherapy or radiation.

Friedman also cited several companies, like Lumeris of St. Louis, that are using health IT and “mountains” of  HHS data now in electronic form to improve health outcomes. Mike Long, the CEO of Lumeris, says his company is analyzing hospital, insurance and HHS data and getting the information to physicians in real time. “ [W]e wind up delivering better care. …And it’s lower cost,” Long said.

Government Data as Fuel for Innovation

Since the early days of the Administration, we have provided the public with high quality health data. Making our data more accurate, available and secure brings transparency to a traditionally opaque health care market and allows innovators and entrepreneurs to use it for discovering innovative applications, products, and services to benefit the public.

Earlier this month, the Administration released unprecedented data about what hospitals across the country charge for the 100 most common Medicare inpatient stays, which can vary widely. For example, average inpatient charges for hospital services in connection with a joint replacement range from $5,300 at a hospital in Ada, Okla., to $223,000 at a hospital in Monterey Park, Calif.

In May, we announced a $1 billion challenge to help jump start innovative projects that test creative ways to deliver high quality medical care and lower costs to people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid.

There is much work yet to be done to change the habits of the health care system. But by encouraging transparency and market-based innovation around health data, we are playing to America's greatest strength to solve our most pressing problems.

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Kathleen Sebelius is the Secretary of Health and Human Services

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Good News on Innovation and Health Care | The White House

Posted on May 28, 2013 by , Reply

EPO – Helping European businesses keep their competitive edge in …

28 May 2013

EPO President Battistelli

EPO President Benoît Battistelli today highlighted the creativity of Europe’s inventors, and the role of the patent system in helping to translate this innovation potential into economic growth and social development.

Speaking at a joint press conference in Amsterdam with European Internal Market and Services Commissioner Michel Barnier on the occasion of the European Inventor Award 2013, Mr Battistelli said: "The inventors honoured today provide us with some striking examples of Europe’s inventive spirit. Even if our world is increasingly driven by technology, without ingenious and dedicated women and men there can be no progress."

Mr Battistelli also paid tribute to the European Patent Convention, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, for having laid the foundations for what is today the largest and most successful regional patent system in the world, covering a market of some 600 million people. "The Convention was a key factor in turning Europe into an innovation stronghold, " he said. "For four decades now the European patent system has provided inventors with a solid and trustworthy structure on which to base their patenting decisions."

EU Commissioner Michel Barnier

Looking to the future the EPO President welcomed the agreement reached late last year by EU member states to introduce a unitary patent and a unified patent court. "This will render access to patent protection more attractive and affordable for European businesses, especially SMEs and research institutions," he said, "helping them to keep their competitive edge in innovation and to come up with ingenious inventions that result in commercially successful products, create jobs and generate wealth."

Commissioner Barnier said that the unitary patent is one instrument in the Commission’s toolbox of measures aimed at creating the best environment for innovation. "European companies and research institutes need a European patent that is competitively priced."

Other measures include trademark protection, funding for innovation and combating counterfeiting. He stressed that 200 000 jobs are lost in Europe every year due to counterfeiting.

"To remain competitive we need to encourage investment in the key sectors of technology. Otherwise Europe risks becoming a sub-contractor and consumer of technology," Mr Barnier said.


Further information

European Inventor Award 2013

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EPO – Helping European businesses keep their competitive edge in …

Posted on May 27, 2013 by , Reply

Submissions are open for the MobileBeat 2013 Innovation …

Mobile startups: This is your chance to showcase your company, product or solution to 700 mobile executives, leaders, IT decision makers, venture capitalists, and press.

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Submissions are open for the MobileBeat 2013 Innovation …

Posted on May 23, 2013 by , Reply

Head of innovation takes up new challenge after Jisc : JISC

After much deliberation, Sarah Porter head of innovation has chosen to leave Jisc in order to pursue her research innovation interests in higher education and work with higher education institutions on developing their digital strategies.

Sarah has brought tremendous commitment and passion to Jisc over the last twelve years. She initially joined from the University of Oxford where she led a team of e-learning developers and directed Jisc’s work on managed learning environments.

It was 2004 when Sarah was appointed to lead the Jisc innovation group. The group’s agenda focused upon identifying opportunities for the UK to maximise the potential of technology to support better learning, teaching and research. Sarah has encouraged experimentation and new and innovative approaches to technological development, including most recently the Summer of Innovation project, which is inviting students to submit innovative ideas on how the student experience can be improved through technology.

Under Sarah’s leadership, and with support from Jisc’s funders, the UK and countries from overseas have benefited from programmes in:

• E-learning
• Leading work in digital libraries
• The creation of many millions of digital content assets
• The creation of new virtual research environments
• National services to support research management.

Some of her key successes have been the Sustaining Digital Resources series carried out jointly with Ithaka; work on supporting technical standards with CETIS and UKOLN; taking forward the UK’s engagement with open educations resources (OERs); promotion of the service oriented architecture and the e-framework with Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Canada.

Professor Martyn Harrow, chief executive of Jisc said: “We will all greatly miss Sarah’s leadership and vision. Jisc has made tremendous progress through its innovation programmes that has put the UK in a leading position with its use of technology in education and research. We will build on this precious legacy as we move to Jisc’s new future.”

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Head of innovation takes up new challenge after Jisc : JISC

Posted on May 23, 2013 by , Reply

Have Faith in Innovation, Fed Chairman Tells Graduates – AllThingsD

Humanity's capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history."

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Have Faith in Innovation, Fed Chairman Tells Graduates – AllThingsD

Posted on May 20, 2013 by , Reply
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