WHY WE NEVER GOT OUR JETPACKS. BLOCKADING INVENTORS…
THE TECHNOLOGY THEFT OF SMALL INVENTORS BY BIG TECH OLIGARCHS
LARRY PAGE AND GOOGLE BASE THEIR BUSINESS MODEL ON STEALING YOUR TECHNOLOGY
– See The NY Times Article: “How Larry Page’s Obsessions Became Google’s Business”
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/technology/larry-page-google-founder-is-still-innovator-in-chief.html
– Boyfriend Elon Musk Conspires With Page
– Page Caught Skulking Around Tech Parties To Steal Ideas
SEE HOW YOUTUBE, NETFLIX, FACEBOOK, GOOGLE, AMAZON AND THE SAND HILL ROAD VC’S STEAL YOUR STUFF UNDER THE GUISE OF “TAKING A LOOK UNDER THE HOOD” – http://www.usinventor.org
– Special Interest Groups Kill The Great New Technologies
– Organized “Suppression” Counter-lobbyists and “Hit Crews” exist in each industry that makes billions off of consumers. ie: Oil spends billions killing electric cars; battery industry spends billions killing fuel cells, Comcast tries to kill Web Video, railroad industry spends tens of millions killing suppliers not in “the group”, etc…
– Many “THINK TANKS” are actually “CONTROL-THE-MARKET-TANKS” as revealed in this NY TIMES Article. IE: The EPRI “THINK TANK” controls what gets into (AND STAYS OUT OF) the Energy Industry. Free Geo-magnetic energy for all? FAH-GED-ABOUT IT!
– Many inventors killed in the media and by actual bullets and poison. Too many to be a coincidence; Chieky, Conley, etc…
– One investigation details group hit: first for video innovation, then cheap homes innovation, then energy innovation, then free internet innovation. Same attackers in each case
– Another investigation reveals the actual communications and deals between 3 Silicon Valley VC’s who planned the execution of a technology company that competed with their portfolios.
– “Technology Suppression” is an actual thing
– Silicon Valley billionaire cartel sought to shut down patent system in order to halt independent inventors
– Banks, Insider Trading Senators, VC’s & Special Interest Groups do the suppressing to monopolize profit chain
– They killed U.S. innovation and removed world-improving products from market
– Government grants and “loan programs” kill more new technologies than help them because they are rife with cronyism
– Biggest loser: Citizens. All voters encouraged to write their representative and demand “REAL SUPPORT” for small American Innovators. Demand felony charges for acts of suppression.
THIS IS A DEVELOPING TEAM STORY, Check back for updates…
BACKGROUND STORY 1 (VC THUGS)
BACKGROUND STORY 2 (Hit Teams)
BACKGROUND STORY 3 (Killing Conley)
BACKGROUND STORY 4 (Do Crazy Billionaires Really Do Insane Sh*t Like this- Read This)
BACKGROUND STORY 5 (MORE VC THUG-ACTION)
Rail industry stops technology to prevent derailments
By Robert J. Ahern
The screech of a train derailment shattered the silence in the woods near New Unionville, Ind., last October. Fourteen cars filled with coal, weighing 140 tons each, went off the rails, another victim of a failed wheel bearing. Two years earlier, failed bearings caused a much larger accident near Portland, Ore. Derailed freight cars shredded 2 ½ miles of track before smashing into two parked fuel tankers carrying ethanol, which ignited and forced a community evacuation.
Failure of wheel bearings – the round, metal rods inside a railcar’s wheel assembly that help the wheels roll smoothly – are the nation’s third-largest cause of train derailments, according to a 2012 University of Illinois study. Only broken rails and track irregularities cause more accidents each year.
Rail travel, for both freight and passengers, is safer now than it has ever been. Yet problems persist. Bearing failure is one; accidental uncoupling is another. Innovative companies have devised solutions. Unfortunately, the railroad industry has been hostile to remedies that come from beyond its closed culture. This stonewalling puts American lives and freight at risk.
Companies such as Stage 8 Locking Fasteners of San Rafael, Calif., and Columbus Castings of Columbus, Ohio, have promising technologies and are hoping the federal government can help clear the way for them. Legislation is pending in Congress that would require the Federal Railroad Administration – the government agency that oversees the rail industry – to adopt and enforce mandatory safety standards that would ensure bearing failures, decoupling and other accidents do not happen. This would permit railroads to use any technology – from inside or outside the industry — that meets the standards.
In the strange case of Columbus Castings, the Ohio firm – a railroad industry outsider, despite being the nation’s largest steel foundry – created a product called the Z-Knuckle, which prevents accidental uncoupling.
The Z-Knuckle met the railroad industry’s newly created standard for such devices. But in an remarkable twist, because the Z-Knuckle was the only device that met the standard, the industry refused to authorize its use. Instead, it chose not to enforce its own standard.
Bearing failure caused 257 U.S. derailments between 2001 and 2010, with more than 1,700 cars skipping the tracks, the University of Illinois researchers found. This led to millions of dollars in lost freight, cleanup and track repair costs, not to mention the tragic loss of life. These derailments happen because the screws holding the bearing end caps — which maintain proper tension in the bearing — vibrate loose after thousands of miles of service.
The rail industry has tried for 50 years to devise a reliable screw-locking technology of its own, but to no avail. The best locking system the rail industry has been able to come up with still allows a failure rate of 23 percent, which means that nearly one out of every four wheel problems is caused by loosened screws.
In 2009, Stage 8 invented the Cap Screw Locking System designed to keep rail car wheel screws from vibrating loose. But then it ran into the rail-industry bureaucracy. All new products that companies want to market to the nation’s rail carriers must be approved by the American Association of Railroads (AAR), the freight rail industry’s powerful trade group.
The organization withheld approval for years, blocking the new product that would threaten the revenue stream of bearing-replacement suppliers.
Stage 8 continued to hack through the red tape until the AAR set up another hurdle: A field test intended to prove the device’s flaws. But after 150,000 miles of the AAR’s own testing on rail cars, the locking device showed no failures. It was a complete success.
In 2010, the railroad industry spent $223 million to repair and replace wheel sets because of screw loosening. The Stage 8 device would not only wipe out that expense, if it were installed on every freight car in the U.S. over a seven-year roll-out period, a reliable analysis shows that the rail industry would save nearly $1.1 billion.
Many companies have created groundbreaking solutions to problems that have dogged the railroad industry for years. Congress should act on their behalf – and on behalf of the railroads themselves and their many users – to help make America’s railroads safer. Passage of legislation would repair the railroad’s broken system.
Ahern is director and executive vice president of Stage 8 Locking Fasteners Inc.
Killing Mike Chieky: Silicon Valley Vc’s want total control of “Green Energy”, but only their version, so they “kill” off the outsiders!
The Verge published an article, today, by a writer who, his targets say, is “a hired character killer”. The article covers a prolific inventor who is painted as a “criminal” because he has invented “too many things”. The writer clearly set out to do a malicious hatchet job on the guy, including fake post-story blog comments by the same attackers. Let’s look at both sides of the case.
The price of being a creator is high, but the price of conflicting with the Silicon Valley VC’s is PR death.. or, in the case of Gary Connely, Real death (SEE THIS LINK)! (An investigation charges Silicon Valley VC’s with causing, or ordering, his death. The story is almost the same as Chieky except Connely ended up with a bullet in his head)
Chieky built and sold a number of things for a few decades; like Edison, Tesla, Marconi, and tens of thousands of other inventors. As with all people gifted with the use of more brain than the rest of us, he was abrupt and had poor social skills, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, featured in films as a hopeless socio-pariah. The writer had no ability to comprehend the way that Chieky communicates and paints him from an acrimonious perspective without giving Chieky any response outlet or counter-point within the story. The writer clearly didn’t want to hear feedback from Chieky, or his partners, he wanted to “kill”.
Giving the writer the benefit of the doubt: So what if Chieky was a dick in his personality style. Steve Jobs is famous for being a dick. Half of the Google execs are screwing their staff and cheating on their wives in glorious ValleyWag technicolor dick-ness. Larry Ellison is glorified for Dick-hood. Being A DICK IN SILICON VALLEY seems to be the main ingredient to success. So why destroy Chieky for using short sentences and speaking efficiently without platitude embellishment, as autistics do? There are a vast number of pictures of Steve Jobs with an equally bad haircut and eye-glass selection as Chieky. Did Jobs deserve to die for that? Does Chieky?
Chieky is autistic, according to his ex employees. Should Ben Popper be destroying the lives of war veterans that have no legs? Should Ben Popper be destroying the life of Mark Zuckerberg because he has Aspergers Syndrome? Do only those in the Frat boy club get a pass on not treating their disability as a sin? What publisher let’s his staff write and deliver stories that tell disabled American’s that they will never be looked at as actually enabled in special ways?
Chieky spent his life creating and building things to improve the lives of American’s, and people around the world, and this is how we pay him back? All of his inventions are for the greater good. One article like this ruins one’s life forever. Did Chieky actually deserve it? Where is the counterpoint. If Chieky actually is “evil” as the article says, then let’s string him up. But if the author is evil, then re-size the noose. Where is the counterpoint from Chieky and his representatives to the charges in the article?
Chieky seems to have made the mistake of crossing the path of these “GREEN ENERGY VC guys (SEE THIS LINK)! and accidentally competing with these particular VC’s grand schemes for controlling “clean energy resources”. Do Draper, Khosla, Perkins, Doerr and the rest, get to destroy those that are not in “the frat boy club” with impunity?
Chieky is terrifying to the Silicon Valley VC’s because he has 1.) a proven history of inventing things that obsolete their older investments, 2.) a proven history of getting funded and 3.) a proven history of launching products. The three skills that no Stanford frat boy VC can stand… because they can’t do it. The VC’s are little money automatons and not “creators”. The VC’s can only grub up cash from pension funds and banking groups as they follow each other like sheep.
So the article uses these classic takedown “hit” techniques (HERE)
Alas, The Verge published the article in all countries and thus gives Chieky the right to file defamation lawsuits overseas, where there are no SLAPP laws protecting tabloids. Cyber bully laws can now be enforced in a large number of states and countries. Writer Popper may have also violated ADA laws. Let’s see how the story evolves…
Chieky is either a crook or a targeted victim but let’s have a trial, with ALL of the evidence, before we lynch him.
Shell- HUFFPO
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HOW THEY KILLED THE ELECTRIC CARS
By AW
“Summary –
These people really, actually, killed the electric cars (AKA: “The Dirty 7”):
– Senators with Insider Trading Deals
– Campaign Financiers with Investments in Competing Areas
– Venture Capitalists with Competing Investments
– The Steel Industry (because electric cars avoid using steel)
– The Unions (Because they have certain deals with the “old” car companies)
– The Oil Cartel
– The Detroit Auto Cartel
- The steel industry has a kick-back scheme with Detroit and a large number of Senators
- The oil industry has a kick-back scheme with Detroit and a large number of Senators
- The auto unions have a kick-back scheme with Detroit and a large number of Senators and Party Officials
- Chrysler, Ford & GM have kick-back schemes between a large number of Senators, The oil industry and the steel industry
- None of them make any money with electric cars so they don’t want any electric cars
- GM, Ford & Chrysler manipulate funding, marketing, laws and politicians to hold off the electric car market on behalf of themselves and their steel and petro-chemical cartel partners.
- Electric cars don’t use much, if any, steel so the steel industry feels it can keep billions of dollars for itself if it stops electric cars. The steel industry gets billions of dollars of contracts from Detroit which it pays back to some Detroit boards in repercussive stock and supplier arrangements.
- Electric cars don’t use petroleum products so the petroleum industry feels it can keep hundreds of billions of dollars, for itself, if it stops electric cars. The petroleum industry gets hundreds of billions of dollars of contracts from Detroit which it pays back to some Detroit boards in covert ways.
- Using a complex series of tactics deployed by hundreds of hired operatives, “consultants” and shills and costing Detroit over $16 million per year, this ongoing strategic interdiction plan has been very effective; until the internet came along.
- Here is their playbook. Here are the details about how they do it. If you think it is how your world should work then you do not need to do anything, If you think it is wrong then you need to use all of the same techniques that they use to end it. If you think this is over-the-top or not credible then you need to think about what you think people might do to control trillions of dollars of profit and political power. Since you probably cannot even imagine that world, yet you know it exists, then you might want to help fix it:
THE DIRTY 7′S PLAYBOOK:
Targeted Blockade Efforts – All of the groups at the top of this report get together, via their lobbyists, and undertake coordination of all of the efforts listed below…
Department of Energy Manipulations – Documents have been uncovered which show that the Detroit Big 3 co-authored and lobbied the laws and decision process for DOE funding. The Big 3 represent that they are “competitors” but they conspire to direct all money to only themselves in auto funding efforts with tax dollars. Rahm Emanual, while working as head of the White House, is said to have given Steven Chu a “do Not Fund” list prepared by Detroit and Campaign Backers.
Lobbyists – It costs $50,000.00 to $150,000.00 to buy any politician in Washington. There are only 32 people, at a time, you need to buy in Washington to change policy and laws that affect hundreds of millions of citizens. Buying is accomplished with cash, sex, tickets, plane trips, meals, after-Washington (“private sector”) kick-back jobs , lawyers, access, mortgages and other secret trades.
Tucker-izing – The Tucker incident was a grand example of a car company “take-down”. See the Francis Ford Coppola Movie: “A Man and His Dream” for a set of classic playbook tactics
Fake “White Papers” – Lobbyists write white-papers or hire McKinsey Consulting to write white-papers that are made to look academic but are really a series of shill documents skewed to try to trick politicians into voting for kickback schemes to campaign backers and Detroit
Staged Venture Capitalists – Silicon Valley and NY VC groups organize to agree to not fund any but a few select companies that they control. They still take pitches from all of the other players so they can steal ideas and technology
Shill Pundits – Lobbyists who pretend to be subject experts and appear on TV and radio to say the same sales pitch/mantra over and over to embed falsehoods in the mind of the public
Shill Bloggers – Lobbyists who pretend to be subject experts and appear on blogs to say the same sales pitch/mantra over and over to embed falsehoods in the mind of the public
Corporate Saboteurs, Moles, Honey Traps & Spies – Over 500 Corporate Saboteurs, Honey Traps & Spies work in Silicon Valley alone. They are actually escorts, private eyes and undercover lobbyists. They are hired to infiltrate a competing company and cause a staff ruckus, prep a hostile take-over or get the CEO in a lawsuit. They try anything to slow-down or sabotage the new technology that is competing with the “Dirty 7” above.
Controlling the Battery Industry – VC’s bought control of the battery industry and ore supplies in order to create their own cartel
Goldman Sachs – False front organizations which appear to be one thing are actually manipulating funding, public policy and media coverage, ie: McKinsey, EPRI, Goldman Sachs, Lobby Groups, Banking Groups, Venture Capital Groups
Shill “Reporters” – The key tactic is to make the public think that the EV market is crashing or is not being accepted by the public. This is accomplished by making sure every car is too expensive or too hard to fuel so that the public will not want one, under the current synthetically generated limits.
Trade Industry Blockades – (SEE THIS STORY)
Penalty & Discouragement Laws created by Detroit Lobbyists – Making laws that only Detroit Cartel members can meet.
Green-Washing – A thing that is very deadly, explosive, toxic, impossible to dump safely, etc. (ie: Lithium ion) is branded and PR-hyped as a “green”-thing or “Cleantech”. Ie: Detroit said they needed more money because nobody was buying their cars so they told DOE to say they would give them free tax money to make “green cars” they never intended to market.
Building “See-It-doesn’t work” anti-EV’s – Car companies, who really don’t want to build electric cars, will build a few and either price them out of market interest or create a failure point so that they can say: “oh well, we tried, see it doesn’t work, back to gasoline then!”
Manipulating the stock market – By having the same investors in the Dirty 7 also be the same investors in the media companies and internet companies who control public information, the 7 can delete any negative news and push only positive news about their cartel products (ie: Tesla/Google)
White House “Consultants” – Steve Rattner (Indicted), Steven Chu (Under Investigation) or certain “Expert Executives” that are part of a cartel get “appointed” as “advisers” so they can manipulate the taxpayer money from within the system
Controlling the Unions and their Votes – Senior Washington Executive Staff go to the unions and say” If we give your associated companies, that hire your members, a bunch of money will you make all of your members vote for our party/candidate/bill?”
The GM EV1 – Ahead of it’s time, consumer raves, killed off because it was too successful
Fake science papers – Lobbyists write papers or hire McKinsey Consulting to write white-papers that are made to look academic but are really a series of shill documents skewed to try to trick news editors into creating articles and news stories which skew to support kickback schemes to campaign backers and Detroit
Anti-Advertising – An example of this is the Chevy Volt ad showing the Volt being driven into a gas station for the owner to use the bathroom and then the owner getting abused and harassed by the other customers. For millions of dollars of ad buys and video production, the main subliminal message is that you will get harassed if you buy the car and you associate it with bathroom urges. Chevy and Madison Avenue knew EXACTLY what they were doing. You don’t spend millions on “focus group ad response research”, as shown in the UI/UX research budget for this ad, without knowing it will have a negative effect ahead of time.
Manipulation Front Organizations – False front organizations which appear to be one thing are actually manipulating funding, public policy and media coverage, ie: McKinsey, EPRI, Goldman Sachs, “Plug-in America”, Lobby Groups, Banking Groups, Venture Capital Groups”
Companies run by Andrew Cuomo’s biggest donors have won millions in state grants: records
EXCLUSIVE: At least seven companies that received a total of $15.25 million in grants from state Regional Economic Development Councils are linked to $1.25 million in donations to Cuomo’s campaign treasury since 2010, the records show.
ALBANY — Several companies run by big-time donors to Gov. Cuomo have won millions of dollars in state economic development grants since he took office, state records show.
At least seven companies that received a total of $15.25 million in grants from state Regional Economic Development Councils are linked to $1.25 million in donations to Cuomo’s campaign treasury since 2010, the records show.
One of those companies, Taylor Biomass LLC in Orange County, was awarded $1 million in 2013 to build a waste-to-energy facility.
Its president, James Taylor, gave Cuomo’s campaign more than $100,000 since 2010, including $34,000 this year, campaign finance records show. And the company and its affiliates gave Cuomo another $50,000, including $12,500 this year.
In another case, BFC Partners, of Brooklyn, won $3.5 million in 2013 to construct Empire Outlets, a planned development on Staten Island featuring 100 designer outlets and a posh hotel just steps from the ferry terminal.
BFC donated $25,000 to Cuomo’s campaign in 2014, the year following the grant. And three of the company’s partners, Donald Capoccia, Joseph Ferrara, and Brandon Baron, have ponied up a combined $81,500 since 2010.
Cuomo aides said the grants cited by the Daily News represent a fraction of the more than 2,600 projects awarded $2.2 billion in funding since2011 under the Regional Economic Development Council program.
The aides also said the governor’s office has no formal role in selecting who receives the awards. The projects, they pointed out, are recommended by the 10 regional councils, under a system Cuomo established in 2011 to create competition for the hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding distributed each year.
The Cuomo-controlled Empire State Development Corp. scores the recommendations and picks the winners, which Cuomo typically announces in a public ceremony.
Cuomo aides said the process is far better than the old “member item” system in which state legislators picked projects in their districts to fund, without much vetting. The aides also argued that some donors to the governor applied for project funding but did not receive grant money.
“To suggest any conflict or connection here is absurd as the recommendations for all of these projects are made by local community representatives,” said Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa.
Cuomo aides said several of the companies cited by The News, including Taylor Biomass, received state and federal funding for other projects in the past. Some of the grants, they said, funded projects that already were under way before Cuomo even became governor.
In one case cited by The News, a $2 million grant for the Dover Knolls Development, a plan to renovate an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Dutchess County, was withdrawn when the developer sold the project.
The company, its parent, Benjamin Millennium Group, and assorted affiliates contributed a combined $271,700 to Cuomo, and the company’s president at the time, Alvin Benjamin, gave $25,000 in 2011.
Bill Mahoney, of the New York Public Interest Research Group, said the awarding of grants tied to donors raises questions. “Businesses rarely contribute to candidates for purely altruistic reasons – in most cases, they’re hoping to help their bottom lines,” Mahoney said.
“If Gov. Cuomo had fulfilled his promises to overhaul the campaign finance system, perhaps there wouldn’t be concerns over decisions like these.”
ALL OF THE “WINNERS” OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY FUNDING UNDER OBAMA’S STEVEN CHU WERE THE BIGGEST OBAMA CAMPAIGN DONORS AND FRIENDS OF CHU. ALL OF THEIR BUSINESS COMPETITORS WERE KICKED OUT OF THE PROGRAM.
The system is rigged against the little guy. A true technical innovation company, who has not signed onto the bribe programs, will never have a chance.
That is why you always see the “same old crap” from the same old-boys clubs getting the grants, and “never any new technology that would actually make a difference”, Said Arnold Wester of The Inventors Alliance
The FIX IS EASY! WRITE YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS, HERE (AT THIS LINK) and DEMAND a law in EVERY STATE that makes it illegal for any group who has a connection to campaign funding to receive a state or federal grant! Easy!, DONE!
Recognizing the problem
The problem is easy to recognize.
Step one: Does your City, State or Federal group offer a grant program, application-based funding program or other program which gives tax dollars to outside entities?
Step two: Have you had this, or a similar program, in operation for more than a year?
Step three: When you line up a list (LIST A) of the past “winners” alongside a list (LIST B) of their campaign contributions, lobbying expenditures, gifts and incentives; are the curves of each of those lists “strangely” the same?
If the answer is Yes: THEN YOU HAVE THE PROBLEM!
The General Process Issues
Over 30 “green”, “cleantech” companies were put out of business by the DOE ATVM/LGP program.
Many more companies, in each state, were terminated by the “efforts” of the officials of those states. Some were intentional terminations because they competed with contributor’s business interests and some were terminations caused by mismanagement of the grant process.
::
Most grant programs ostensibly seek innovation and better solutions.
BUT: Most “winning applicants” end up being big old companies who supply the same old thing who generally usually “win” the “contests”.
::
True innovators are scientists, chemists, physicists and engineers. They do not know about, have the skills for or have the aptitude for generating political documents.
BUT: Big old campaign contributor companies have rooms full of grant writers and spin doctors who can conveyor-belt out, political grant document-after-grant document, with all of the checklist items in carefully mnemonically metricized catch-phrases, but they offer no innovation.
::
Big campaign contributor “winners” have big teams of people that go around and “work the system” (promise or imply incentives). These teams are smiley, golden-ratio faced, out-going personality-type PR people.
BUT: True innovator scientists, chemists, physicists and engineers are, more often than not, socially awkward and uncomfortable with that sort of PR pretension and they avoid working the system.
::
If one wants to pay off campaign contributors then these “contests”/”grant programs” they actually are a great way to provide “kickbacks in plain sight”.
BUT: In the age of the Everybody-Can-See-Everything internet, the public is now pretty much aware that this is what is going on, ie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHiicN0Kg10
Reality:
If a City, State, Federal or NGO group wants true innovation solutions to public problems and issues, then they need to recognize that their grant programs, award programs and public funding programs are, in most cases, set-up to accomplish exactly the opposite!
One Perspective- From Tesla’s Former Marketing Head
“Siry Slams DOE Loan Program For “Stifling Innovation”
By Edward Niedermeyer in “THE TRUTH ABOUT CARS”
Former Tesla PR honcho Daryl Siry lays into the Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan program (ATVML) at Wired’s Autopia blog, taking the $25b program to task for “stifling innovation.” At its core, his argument is a simple one:
Startup companies that enjoy DOE support, most notably Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive, have an extraordinary advantage over potential competitors since they have secured access to capital on very cheap terms. The magnitude of this advantage puts the DOE in the role of kingmaker with the power to vault a small startup with no product on the market -– as is the case with Fisker — into a potential global player on the back of government financial support.
As a result, the vibrant and competitive market for ideas chasing venture capital that has been the engine of innovation for decades in the United States is being subordinated to the judgments and political inclinations of a government bureaucracy that has never before wielded such market power.
All of which sounds very TTAC… in fact, our lengthy Bailout Watch series began with a similar analysis of the ATVML program (albeit with a Detroit-focused twist). Unfortunately, Siry’s intentions in this case are questionable… as are his conclusions.
At the very bottom of his editorial, Siry reveals himself to be a “special advisor to Coda Automotive,” the EV startup born from the ashes of Miles Electric Vehicles. That Coda has not sought an ATVML handout (because all its manufacturing is done in China) is presumed to give Siry a free pass on conflict-of-interest questions, but Siry’s critique relates directly to the private capital market as well. Siry writes:
The proposition is so irresistible that any reasonable person would prefer to back a company that has received a DOE loan or grant than a company that has not. It is this distortion of the market for private capital that will have a stifling effect on innovation, as private capital chases fewer deals and companies that do not have government backing have a harder time attracting private capital. This doesn’t mean deals won’t get done outside of the energy department’s umbrella, but it means fewer deals will be done and at worse terms.
Translation: Coda can’t raise funds without DOE backing, a reality the company petulantly hinted at in the most recent post on its corporate blog. There, the company lashed out at analyst suggestions that DOE loans would be best spent on established automakers, and now Siry is bashing the DOE’s “kingmaking” of “small startups with no product on the market.” So which is it? The answer can be found in Siry’s conclusion:
A potential solution to this problem may seem counter-intuitive. The best way to avoid market distortion would be for the DOE to cast the net more broadly and provide loans and grants to a larger number of companies — which ironically means being less selective. Subject to the existing equity matching requirement, this would allow the private markets to function more effectively in funding a broader range of companies and driving more innovation. Several innovative companies with great potential have been in the DOE pipeline for many months. Perhaps it is time for the DOE to stop playing favorites and start spreading the love.
Give out money to more firms, less selectively. What a plan. But if Siry is suggesting that Coda Automotive represents the kind of “innovation” being “stifled” by the ATVML program, he’s able to see far more innovation in selling an electrified Chinese Hafei sedan with 100 miles of range for $45k than we do (he doesn’t explicitly, preferring Aptera as a poster child for stifled innovation). The reality is that the EV sector is crammed with as many hucksters and wannabes as legitimate innovators, and “spreading the love” is more likely to result in wasted investments. In theory we agree that DOE “kingmaking” distorts the market, and elevated some questionable firms to near-player status… but interpreting those results as a reason for the DOE to be “less selective” with its lending makes even less sense. Unless, of course, you work for a firm that might benefit from lowered loan standards.
As a lesson in the ATVML’s unintended consequences, Siry’s editorial is dead-on. As a roadmap for future DOE policy, however, it comes up way short.
Posted in Electric Vehicles, Government, Green, News Blog
Tagged as ATVML, Coda, DOE, electric car, EV, Fisker, Tesla “
The Solutions- Part 1
- Go to greater lengths to find the small innovators and let them know about the program. Sending a general email out to “the usual suspects” doesn’t cut it.
- Provide a dedicated small innovator advocate, in each funding program who is missioned to assist the small innovator companies. Make them call, and email, each one personally.
- Fire that advocate if more than 3 small business groups prove that they are compromised.
- For any applicant with less than 10 staff, YOU, verbally interview them and fill out the forms for them. They do not have the staff to do it. You place them in a “no win” situation by even offering these grant opportunities, they all know it by now and so almost none of them apply any more unless they just formed their company. After the first burn, when they realize the cards are stacked against them, they won’t waste their time again.
- Make the application as simple as possible. One of the richest people in the world: Bill Gates, and his wife Melinda, decided to give away quite a lot of money in grants. They had the resources to test, validate and prove what the best kind of grant application is. What did they figure out for the Grand Challenge: That they just needed a TWO PAGE APPLICATION. They have used this for years, it works great and has funded some of the greatest innovations in the world.
- Announce who your reviewers are, by name and affiliation. Just like the law now requires for financial writers. State ANY positions your reviewers have in any companies related to the industry involved in the grant.
- Post the reviewer results online. Allow the transparency to have their assumptions, or comments challenged to prove the game isn’t rigged.
- Does the world seem to be in disarray? Does every news cycle seem like there are more and more problems and more and more people complaining? IT ISN’T TRUE! The same amount of disarray and problems exist today as have existed over the last few centuries. BUT NOW EVERY VOTER CAN SEE EVERYTHING. While the internet has brought us awful things like cyber-bullying child suicides and the hacking of everything, it has created a transparency that will never go away. The toothpaste is out of the tube. Organizations need to accept the fact that corruption only works in darkness and the internet has lit up everything. If old systems of reward exist to pay back donors, it can now be found out by a bored soccer mom or an out of work construction worker with a notebook computer, and there are millions of them. Change up any systems that could be rigged because we live in an age where those sorts of things can come back and bite you during your current career cycle. The FBI is much tougher on these sorts of things these days.
- News Media now have databases equal to those of the NSA. New online media outlets have been starting up in great quantities, lately, using “big data” story research engines. They can track every connection of every applicant, executive and associate and other party in a very short period of time. Just read the detail they have gone into about CGI Federal, the company that screwed up Obamacare, and their staff, ownerships, personal relations, etc. Plan on transparency in the new world. It has arrived.
- To repeat, however efficiently you think your application is written: YOUR APPLICATION PAPERWORK IS TOO LONG. The DOE spent more money and resources on due diligence and had more application paperwork for their ATVM/LG and other loan programs THAN ANY COUNTRY HAD DEVOTED IN HUMAN HISTORY! Yet we had the stunning failures of Abound, A123, Fisker, Solyndra, etc.. etc…
- Hold three online web conference for 1.) Under 10 person companies 2.) Under 20 person companies 3.) The big guys. Give each segment a chance to comment, ask questions and get informed within their peer group.
- Publicly identify revolving door staff.
- Allow for a challenge process for any member of the media or applicant groups to challenge a decision and correct, or comment on, erroneous data.
- Don’t rig the stock market or investor market by setting up financing that makes your organization cause outside investors to wait until they see your term sheet like DOE did.
- Provide a CrowdFunding support resource in all new funding from now, forward. The SEC has made CrowdFunding fully legal now. Allow Crowdfunded offsets and co-promote them using your agency PR resources.
- Don’t use the “delayed review” tactic to try to put contributors competitors out of business by stringing them along until they run out of cash. The media has covered this tactic in great detail and new laws allow those who got strung out to sue you and win if they catch you.. and it is easier to catch people these days.
- More Solutions coming…
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Silicon Valley lobbyists trying to get out of paying inventors! Tries to create law to make intellectual property theft OK! Technology Suppression by Billionaire Cartel.
Proposed Bill Is Anti-Innovation and Serves Only Billionaire Special Interest Groups
http://www.aminn.org
New York, N.Y. − American Innovators for Patent Reform (AIPR), an industry group representing small patent owners − start-ups, R&D companies, universities and independent inventors − as well as patent practitioners, is opposed to the “Trade Protection Not Troll Protection” bill introduced last month by Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX).
“This is yet another misguided ‘anti-troll’ legislative proposal that misses the point entirely, and shows a fundamental lack of understanding by Rep. Farenthold of what a patent really is,” says Alexander Poltorak, founder and President of American Innovators for Patent Reform. “Non-practicing entities − what Rep. Farenthold calls ‘patent trolls’ − are no different from any other patent holder because practicing a patented technology has no relevance in patent law. A patent is a quid-pro-quo for invention disclosure, not for practice of the patent,” explains Dr. Poltorak.
“Our Founding Fathers were very clear when they included the ‘patent and copyright’ clause in the U.S. Constitution,” adds Alec Schibanoff, Executive Director of AIPR. “Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 establishes the purpose of patents and copyrights to be to ‘…promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts…’ There is no reference in the Constitution to inventors practicing their inventions or song-writers singing their songs.”
The sharp rise in the use of the International Trade Commission (ITC) for patent disputes is not a sign of litigation abuse, but a direct consequence of the eBay Supreme Court Decision, which muddled the definition of a patent as the ‘right to exclude’ and made it practically impossible for an NPE to obtain an injunction against an infringer of the patent-at-suit. The ITC has the mandate to issue an exclusion order, which is not available to non-practicing entities in a Federal Court. Hence, the ITC has become the battleground of choice for patent litigation,” elaborates Dr. Poltorak.
American Innovators for Patent Reform calls on every engineer, researcher, inventor and entrepreneur − and every U.S. citizen who values American innovation − to write to Rep Farenthold and urge him to withdraw this misconceived bill!
About American Innovators for Patent Reform
Headquartered in New York City, American Innovators for Patent Reform (AIPR) represents a broad constituency of American innovators and innovation stakeholders, including inventors, engineers, researchers, entrepreneurs, patent owners, small businesses, universities, investors, and intellectual property professionals such as patent attorneys, patent agents, tech transfer managers and licensing executives.
AIPR opposes any patent legislation that makes it more difficult to enforce patents because such legislation ultimately weakens the U.S. Patent system and decreases the value of patents. AIPR advocates patent reform that creates a multi-tier patent system, strengthens U.S. patents, and provides full funding for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
For more information about AIPR, please visit www.aminn.org