Another wake up call.

Whoops. He did it again.

Obama is giving $500 million to several universities to jump start manufacturing. The initiative is the "brainchild," his word not mine, of Obama's advisors who have told him we are losing manufacturing jobs to other countries like Germany and Japan. Wow this is really news to me. His advisors noted we are losing the competition for manufacturing laptops that were invented in the USA. Losing it? We are not even in it. A list of the USA manufacturers of laptops is shorter than the list of people, less than 6' tall, who play in the NBA.

Wake up Obama. IBM sold its entire laptop computer business to a Chinese company several years ago. In other words, off shore manufacturing of laptops is old news, but I am happy that it is being acknowledged by Obama's gang. "Then what is the problem?, Mr. Webtalk, you always know all the answers?

First, universities are the worst organizations at commercializing technology. They receive billions of research dollars from the Government and commercialize a pittance. I have personally investigated university research programs. They do not call it the ivory tower for no reason. With few exceptions, university research does not provide any return on research dollars invested by the American taxpayer. The beauty of Obama's initiative is that if fits in with his program of rebottling and selling hope in a new dressed up package. He will argue that no one can expect results for 5-10 years from this initiave so do not judge him before next election day. Things will get better. Poppycock and more poppycock. Those of us who eat this argument up, believe it if you will, deserve to choke on it.

Second, the 1980 legislation by then Senator Dole and Senator Bayl, which compelled universities to establish commercialization departments was a good idea with lousy execution. It has not worked at all. Not Senator Dole's fault. It was a good start, but unfortunately it has not kept up with the times. As proof consider than a few years ago, universities received more than $26 billion in research dollars and returned less than 10 cents on the dollar to the American tax payer. If this had been a corporate research program, they would have fired the research director. Universities are not organized to commercialize research. They do not think practical. They can 't help it.

Finally Obama should have given the $500 million to a respectable Venture Capital firm and told them to invest in companies that would create jobs in the manufacturing sector. This was too simple a solution for Obama and would produce measurable results, a thought process foreign to Obama's view of equating obscurity with transparency.

My suggestion would likely produce another Google perhaps in the manufacturing sector. The $500 million provided to the universities produces great press and that is what Obama is all about. Now if he can just read the teleprompter correctly, he can get full credit for this initiative. From a top level view, keeping manufacturing jobs with $500 million is obviously less important to Obama than keeping AIG with $185 billion. Do the math to know where Obama really stands.

Put a fellow in the White house who never worked and it won't work either.

Join me in my Fire Obama campaign.