For example, Alaska state representative Carl Gatto called to roll back the federal government’s “entire socialistic experiment in federal hegemony.” Yet he also celebrated that “for every $1 we give them in taxes for highways, they give us back $5.76.”  Jay Ramras, another state rep, embodied the dichotomy in a single quote: “If you want to feed us federal money like it’s a narcotic and make the state into a junkie of the U.S. Treasury, O.K.,” he allows. “But we would like to be an Emersonian Alaska and just get control of our resources.”

Of course, Alaska is not alone in this irony. There is a strong correlation between conservative states talking a big game about “government out of our business” while sucking aggressively at the federal teat. This map shows how red states take more than they give, and this chart shows traditionally republican states leading the way in receiving more federal dollars than they pay in taxes. And here is a brand new map from the NY Times based on census data.

So how do we explain this paradox? I suppose it could simply be the essential greed of humanity, people feeling that they are justified in taking as much as they can while giving as little as possible. Or it could be a canny political move, trying to drain the coffers of the government in order to force it to shrink, sort of a “starve the beast” movement at the grass roots level. But I don’t think either of those explanations fly. I think, instead, that the average voter doesn’t even make the connection between small government and services provided, between taxes paid and resources received. When voters say “don’t tax me” while taking a bridge paid by other citizen’s taxes, they don’t see the irony because they don’t even realize that taxes are what pay for bridges. See this piece by James Kwak on how the whole tax & service thing works, and this piece by David Sirota on how American voters seem to lack the ability to remember what policies worked or didn’t work in the past.

The politicians, on the other hand, who vote for these policies, like Carl Gatto and Jay Ramras from the NY Times article, or Ted Stevens, a major obtainer of federal dollars for the state, should actually understand how taxes and services are related. I mean, they are professional legislators, and this is a basic part of government budgeting. They are not ignorant, like the voters; they’re just hypocritical, saying and doing whatever they must to get reelected. They recognize the irony in calling for lower taxes while trumpeting the bacon they bring home from Washington…they just don’t care. They use that irony to cynically take advantage of the electorate’s lack of understanding, and it gets them elected year after year.

I just returned from a week in Alaska, where I saw this phenomenon in action multiple times. There will be follow-on posts on this topic.

Now, lo and behold, a former Gartner analyst comes out with an article about how Silicon Valley is too focused on consumer internet, on “the glitz and the superficial,” rather than on solving big problems, like medical and environmental ones. He notes that the new innovators in those areas are big companies, who are focusing their R&D budgets on these big problems with big markets, rather than entrepreneurs, who are focusing their energies on figuring out the best way to get you to “check in” at your local bar.

TechCrunch states that this movement is enabled by the rise of the “lean startup,” in which companies use new technologies to reduce their costs:

“But the last several years have seen the rise of the cheap startup. Internet startups can use open source software and new scripting languages to ship products fast and cheap.”

That’s true, but only for a certain segment of technology companies. Sure, consumer internet companies can leverage these new technologies and launch without gobs of capital, but much of the technology world doesn’t have that luxury. Any company that produces hardware is in a different situation. Chips, devices, networking appliances – these guys all need just as much capital as they ever did. And even folks working on software for the enterprise are still somewhat tied to the old ways of building products.

TechCrunch tends to see Silicon Valley as consisting solely of web startups fueled by former Googlers, but there are still entrepreneurs out there working on traditional products. So before you start writing the obituary for venture capital, remember that consumer internet may be fun and sexy, but there are plenty of technology companies that still need the sorts of resources only large funds can provide.

There are a jillion companies offering these applications now, each with annoying names reminiscent of the dot com boom of a decade ago: Loopt, Whrrl, Gowalla, Foursquare (now with Snoop Dogg on the service!) and Check.in to aggregate them all. Plus big players are expected to enter the business: Yelp already has, Google is circling, and Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla everyone fears, with rumors that they are buying Hot Potato.

The question is whether any of these services will be more than just another fad briefly embraced by fedora-wearing technorati hipsters in SF, NY and Austin. Being “mayor” of the local pub only goes so far. Knowing where your friends are is nice, but email and text can do that. For checking in to have legs, it needs to add actual value beyond its current novelty. Getting discounts from the bars and restaurants where you check in frequently – now that is valuable. Assistance in meeting members of the opposite sex (or same sex…however you roll) is valuable.

Clear and tangible benefits need to be provided, and in a way that can’t be gamed; bars won’t participate if they are getting scammed for free drinks. All the check in players are working on this – they aren’t stupid – but nobody has hit on a winning formula yet. In the meantime, when you read the breathless press about this amazing new capability, remember that it’s not a business yet. Or, appreciate the savagery of Time magazine, which called Foursquare “just another tool tapping into a generation of narcissism.”

So of course I was heartened to see Michael Kinsley at The Atlantic take up the cause.  Enjoy his mockery here.

“Oil and coal? Of course, it’s a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know, the molecules, where it’s going and where it’s not. … So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it’s Americans that get stuck to holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here.”

I’m sorry, but regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, that makes no sense. Take Newt Gingrich: he is deeply conservative and I deeply disagree with him, but that guy could talk for a week straight and he would never say anything as idiotic as the Palin quote above. I want to be generous and assume that Palin isn’t stupid; that she just uses folksy idioms and is slightly misinformed. But I read what she says, I hear about the “refudiates”  and that generosity is hard to find. Can someone help me solve this conundrum?

Interesting fact: as part of counterinsurgency training, US Marines from Camp Pendleton are embedding with Los Angeles cops to see anti-gang policing in action.

Extra shout out: for the headline Straight Outta Kandahar.

I recently posted about the risk that Google’s culture poses to its future success, and Malik makes the same point, noting that Google simply doesn’t have social media in its DNA. He says that algorithms can’t factor in empathy, which is another way of saying that hiring only engineers doesn’t guarantee future success.