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KGNU’s Claudia Cragg talks with Blair Levin about the new book he has co-authored ‘The Politics of Abundance - How Technology Can Fix the Budget, Revive the American Dream, and Establish Obama’s Legacy’

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EXCERPT - “Some will tell the President that the government should never have a growth strategy beyond being fiscally prudent and letting markets allocate capital. But a government that can land a thinking machine on Mars surely can develop an informed opinion about what sectors of the economy can grow rapidly and contribute to a high and rising standard of living for everyone. In any event, currently the knowledge and power markets cannot readily allocate capital appropriately because they are constricted by a web of law, externalities, and monopoly bottlenecks. Moreover, the government plays such a large role as a spender and regulator in these markets, that its conduct, whether or not coherently focused, enormously affects industry trends. Finally, if the United States economy does not rebuild the knowledge and power platform far faster, better, and cheaper than market forces are now doing, then Americans will suffer from inadequate educations, poor and expensive healthcare, and devastating climate change, for generations to come.

However, those who remain unconvinced of the merits of a growth strategy, and prefer single-minded focus on the debt-to-GDP ratio, should be mollified by the fact that our legislative proposals for the two platforms reduce the deficit by about $100 billion, without accounting for the additional tax revenues that will be derived from more rapid economic growth. In Chapter 4, we suggest ways to negotiate for these measures as part of avoiding the “fiscal cliff.” Taken as a whole, our proposals outline the politics of abundance.” -Reed Hundt and Blair Levin

Levin oversaw the creation of the National Broadband Plan as the executive director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative at the Federal Communications Commission in 2009 and 2010. He is now a fellow at the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the executive director of Gig.U, a coalition of research university communities working to accelerate the deployment of next-generation networks in the United States.

The book’s co-author Reed Hundt is the CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital, a non-profit. He was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997, and he was on Barack Obama’s Presidential transition team.

He sits on the boards of directors of Intel Corporation, ASSIA, a communications software firm, and Kno Inc., the education software company. He also serves on boards or as an advisor at the United Negro College Fund; the Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority of Connecticut; the Advanced Energy Economy Institute; Yale School of Management; Peek, Inc., a mobile technology company; and Mytonomy, a social network for college planning.

Hundt has written many articles and two books: In China’s Shadow: The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship (Yale University Press, 2006) and You Say You Want A Revolution: A Story of Information Age Politics (Yale University Press, 2000). He graduated from Yale College, and Yale Law School.

Surveys (this is just one) show that many today feel they are drowning in too much information, but find it’s often too much of the kind they DO NOT want and rarely approaches what they might be looking for.

With nifty Power Searching techniques, anyone can ‘drill down’ to unearth hidden facts, documents, file types in a variety of locations and languages. This a skill that is only becoming more important each day.

This information, together with the Blair Levin interview (‘The Politics of Abundance) made up a one hour programme for KGNU’s ‘It’s The Economy’ on The FCC and The Economics of The Internet and Connectivity.

Hear you will hear an excerpt (with kind permission) of a recent seminar at Newsplex Asia (at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University) in conjunction with Google, covering topics from the hot and newly-emerging field of data journalism and visualization to making the most of Google Tools to generate news stories. Speakers took part through Google+ Hangouts to share their experiences on how free online tools, such as Fusion Tables, can be used to gather and display data to readers in disasters such as the Fukushima-Daichi disaster after the Japanese quake and tsunami last year. In the full-length version, YouTube experts also convey how news organisations can make the most out of the video-sharing platform.

Sign up for Power Searching with Google course.

Dan Russell's home page and site.

YouTube video of Robin Moroney's and Anthony Baxter's (for reasons of length NOT incl. in this podcast) http://youtu.be/f4hIOsahz2A

Here KGNU’s Claudia Cragg speaks to Victor Chan about “The Wisdom of Compassion” written with His Holiness, The Dalai Lama. This book offers rare insights into the Dalai Lama's life as he interacts with remarkable people from all walks of life. In these deeply engaging behind-the-scenes stories we see not only the Dalai Lama at his most human, and most humane, but also the way he approaches the world with humour and optimism.

Enhanced by the Dalai Lama's seven decades of practice and illuminated through captivating anecdotes, The Wisdom of Compassion gives insight in to how to lead more fulfilling lives. The Dalai Lama also shows how "when we open our hearts and minds to others, we are on the surest path to true happiness." 

Chan has travelled extensively through his work, including numerous treks to Tibet. He wrote the 1,100-page Tibet Handbook: A Pilgrimage Guide, published by Moon Travel Handbooks in 1994. The book is recognized as the most comprehensive guide on the culture, art, sacred sites, and pilgrimage routes of Tibet.

Victor Chan has known the Dalai Lama for over 30 years and co-authored with him The Wisdom of Forgiveness: Intimate Conversations and Journeys. The book was shortlisted for the Best Spiritual Book of 2005 (Nautilus Prize, New York) and translated into 14 languages. In 2005, Chan and the Dalai Lama co-founded the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education in Vancouver, Canada.

Chan was Chair of the Organizing Committee responsible for the visit of the Dalai Lama to Vancouver in 2004. He and Professor Pitman Potter, Director of the Institute of Asian Research, UBC convened the symposium on "How to Balance Educating the Mind with Educating the Heart" which featured the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Shirin Ebadi, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Professor Jo-Ann Archibald. With Potter, Chan was instrumental in establishing a Contemporary Tibetan Studies Program at UBC and was the first Executive Director of that program.

In response to Chan’s invitation, the Dalai Lama returned to Vancouver in September 2006 to attend the Vancouver Dialogues dedicated to promoting the Center’s key themes of compassion, peace and education. In September 2009, the Dalai Lama Center and Chan hosted the Vancouver Peace Summit, featuring five Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and many other visionaries from around the world.

TOBIAS ORLANDO Cragg recorded a follow-up conversation with Victor Chan at the 2013 Irawaddy Literary Festival in Yangon.

You may listen to this at this link

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KGNU’s Claudia Cragg speaks here with Jack Myers about his new book, 'Hooked Up: A New Generation’s Surprising Take on Sex, Politics and Saving the World'. Myers shares insights into the first generation to grow up with the Internet and what he considers to be the positive impact they are likely to have on business, culture and society.

Jack is a media ecologist and chairman of Media Advisory Group, which provides economic counsel to more than 250 media, advertising, marketing, entertainment and financial services companies who subscribe to the weekly Jack Myers Media Business Report.

He is an award-winning documentary film producer, author of four books and founder of the Women in Media Mentoring Initiative and Syracuse University Newhouse Network. Jack is the recipient of the George Foster Peabody Award, won the Crystal Heart Award from the Heartland Film Festival, and has been nominated for both an Academy and Emmy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream. His most recent production is the Focus Forward documentary series with Morgan Spurlock’sCinelan Group.

Jack’s career includes sales and management positions at CBS Television, ABC Radio and Metromedia Outdoor. While in college, he co-founded the Syracuse New Times. Jack is a Board Member Emeritus of the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University. He served on the Advisory Board for the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University where he studied Media Ecology with Dr. Neil Postman.

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Gina Keating speaks here with KGNU’s Claudia Cragg about her new book, Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America’s Eyeballs(Portfolio, 2012). Accoring to Keating, the tale of Netflix is “a long struggle for greatness marked by multiple disasters, lucky breaks, personal betrayal, and broken hearts. It has more drama than most of the movies Netflix rents”

In 1997, two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Marc Ran­dolph and Reed Hastings, decided to start an online DVD store before most people owned a DVD player. They were surprised and elated when launch-day traffic in April 1998 crashed their server and resulted in 150 sales. Today, Netflix has more than 25 million subscribers and annual revenues above $3 billion. Future success—or even survival—is still far from guaranteed.

First it engaged in a grueling war against video-store behemoth Blockbuster, transforming movie rental forever. Then it jumped into an even bigger battle for online video streaming against Google, Hulu, Amazon, and the big cable companies. Netflix ushered in such innovations as DVD rental by mail, a patented online queue of upcom­ing rentals, and a recommendation algorithm called Cinematch that proved crucial in its struggle against bigger rivals. Netflix also faces disgruntled customers after price increases and other stumbles that could tarnish the brand forever.

Keating is a freelance writer who has covered media, law and government as a staff writer for Reuters and United Press International in Los Angeles.

The Greater Los Angeles Press Club named her its Print Journalist of the Year in 2001. The same year, she won the Press Club’s award for investigative reporting and the California Teachers Association’s John Swett Award for excellence in education-related journalism for stories she wrote for the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

Prior to moving to Los Angeles, she covered the Texas Legislature, business and culture as a freelance writer for the Associated Press, UPI, the Austin American-Statesman, and Texas Monthly, Food and Wine, Southern Living and Forbes magazines. Her freelance work also has appeared in Daily Variety.

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Claudia Cragg talks here with Luigi Zingales, author  just last week of an important FT article about the need in the US - and indeed in all financial markets - for the return of Glass-Steagall act (1933, repealed 1999). Historically, this has separated commercial and investment banking activities. Born in Italy, University of Chicago economist Zingales witnessed firsthand the consequences of high inflation and unemployment—paired, he says, with rampant nepotism and cronyism—on a country’s economy. This experience profoundly shaped his professional interests, and in 1988 he arrived in the United States, armed with a political passion and the belief that economists should not merely interpret the world, but should change it for the better.

In A Capitalism for the People, Zingales makes a forceful, philosophical, and at times personal argument that the roots of American capitalism are dying, and that the result is a drift toward the more corrupt systems found throughout Europe and much of the rest of the world. American capitalism, according to Zingales, grew in a unique incubator that provided it with a distinct flavor of competitiveness, a meritocratic nature that fostered trust in markets and a faith in mobility. Lately, however, that trust has been eroded by a betrayal of our pro-business elites, whose lobbying has come to dictate the market rather than be subject to it, and this betrayal has taken place with the complicity of our intellectual class.

Because of this trend, much of the country is questioning—often with great anger—whether the system that has for so long buoyed their hopes has now betrayed them once and for all. What we are left with is either anti-market pitchfork populism or pro-business technocratic insularity. Neither of these options presents a way to preserve what the author calls “the lighthouse” of American capitalism. Zingales argues that the way forward is pro-market populism, a fostering of truly free and open competition for the good of the people—not for the good of big business.

Drawing on the historical record of American populism at the turn of the twentieth century, Zingales illustrates how our current circumstances aren’t all that different. People in the middle and at the bottom are getting squeezed, while people at the top are only growing richer. The solutions now, as then, are reforms to economic policy that level the playing field. Reforms that may be anti-business (specifically anti-big business), but are squarely pro-market. The question is whether we can once again muster the courage to confront the powers that be."

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KGNU's Claudia Cragg talks here with Professor Edward D. Hess who spent more than 30 years in the business world. His latest book is 'The Physics of Business Growth'. He began his career at Atlantic Richfield Corporation and was a senior executive at Warburg Paribas Becker, Boettcher & Company, the Robert M. Bass Group and Arthur Andersen. He is the author of ten books, over 60 practitioner articles, and over 60 Darden cases, etc. dealing with growth systems, managing growth and growth strategies. His books include Hess and Liedtka, The Physics of Business Growth: Mindsets, System and Processes (Stanford University Press, 2012); Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Entrepreneurial Businesses (Stanford University Press, 2012);Growing an Entrepreneurial Business: Concepts & Cases (Stanford University Press, February, 2011);Smart Growth: Building Enduring Businesses by Managing the Risks of Growth (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2010);  Hess and Goetz, So You Want to Start A Business (FT Press, 2008);  The Road To Organic Growth (McGraw-Hill, 2007); Hess and Cameron, eds., Leading with Values: Virtue, Positivity & High Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2006); Hess and Kazanjian, eds., The Search for Organic Growth (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Smart Growth was named a Top 25 2010 business book for business owners by Inc. Magazine and was awarded the Wachovia Award for Research Excellence.

His current research focuses on the Darden Growth/Innovation Model, the challenges of managing private company growth, growth systems and behaviors. Hess has taught in Executive Education programs for Harris Corporation, Cigna, Timken, United Technologies, Genworth Financial, Pitney Bowes, Unilever Russia, Westinghouse Nuclear, Alpha Natural Resources, Alegco-Scotsman,  FTI Consulting as well as IESE (Barcelona) and the Indian School of Business.

From Monday 16 July 2012, author Sadie Jones' newest work, 'The Uninvited Guests' is serialized in 5 parts on BBC Radio 4 Extra's Book at Beachtime at 2:30 pm BST (1:30 pm GMT).  

Sadie Jones, who lives in London, is the author of the novels The Outcast, winner of the Costa First Novel Award in the United Kingdom and a finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. She also wrote Small Wars, a tale of love, war, and honour, which was published to critical praise on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Jones was born in London, the daughter of the Jamaican-born writer, Evan Jones, and Joanna Jones, a London-born actress. After leaving school, she travelled and taught English as a Foreign Language in Paris, before returning to London where she worked as a runner for a production company, as a temporary secretary and as a waitress, all the while for the next 15 years pursuing a professional career as a screenwriter.

Here in conversation with KGNU's Claudia Cragg, Jones discusses her latest novel, her third, The Uninvited Guests. A grand old manor house deep in the English countryside opens its doors to reveal the story of an unexpectedly dramatic day in the life of one eccentric, rather dysfunctional, and entirely unforgettable family. Set in the early years of the twentieth century, award-winning author Sadie Jones’s The Uninvited Guests is, according to Jacqueline Winspear, the New York Times bestselling author “a sinister tragi-comedy of errors, in which the dark underbelly of human nature is revealed in true Shakespearean fashion.”

From Harper Colllins, the publishers: “One late spring evening in 1912, in the kitchens at Sterne, preparations begin for an elegant supper party in honour of Emerald Torrington’s 20^th birthday. But only a few miles away, a dreadful accident propels a crowd of mysterious and not altogether savoury survivors to seek shelter at the ramshackle manor and the household is thrown into confusion and mischief.”

“In The Uninvited Guests, this prize-winning author triumphs in a frightening yet delicious drama of dark surprises where social codes are uprooted and desire daringly trumps propriety and all is alight with Edwardian wit and opulence.”

For World Holocaust Memorial Day, Claudia Cragg speaks with pianist and author Caroline Stoessinger about her new book on the life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the world’s oldest living Holocaust Survivor. At 108 years old, the pianist Herz-Sommer is an eyewitness to the entire last century and the first decade of this one. She has seen it all, surviving the Theresienstadt concentration camp, attending the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, and along the way coming into contact with some of the most fascinating historical figures of our time. As a child in Prague, she spent weekends and holidays in the company of Franz Kafka (whom she knew as “Uncle Franz”), and Gustav Mahler, Sigmund Freud, and Rainer Maria Rilke were friendly with her mother. When Alice moved to Israel after the war, Golda Meir attended her house concerts, as did Arthur Rubinstein, Leonard Bernstein, and Isaac Stern. Today Alice lives in London, where she still practices piano for hours every day.  
 
Despite her imprisonment in Theresienstadt and the murders of her mother, husband, and friends by the Nazis, and much later the premature death of her son, Alice has been victorious in her ability to live a life without bitterness. She credits music as the key to her survival, as well as her ability to acknowledge the humanity in each person, even her enemies. A Century of Wisdom is the remarkable and inspiring story of one woman’s lifelong determination—in the face of some of the worst evils known to man—to find goodness in life. It is a testament to the bonds of friendship, the power of music, and the importance of leading a life of material simplicity, intellectual curiosity, and never-ending optimism.