Free Republic

One of the signature themes of the Obama administration is that the American dream is under attack due to "income disparity." The words divide the country into haves and have-nots, suggesting a national condition that needs to be corrected—presumably by "progressive" taxation as a mechanism for income redistribution. The American dream has traditionally been one of individual success that is rewarded and admired. But we are now urged to become zero-sum society in which those achieving the American dream are envied and even resented. The American dream is not politically affiliated. The last time it was alive and well was...

Why are the Pharisees of Accounting in the U.S. trying so hard to destroy American business? Having crippled high tech entrepreneurship and made it nearly impossible for any U.S. company to ‘go public’, the people who set the rules of financial disclosure are now making corporate financials so obscure that investors literally have no way of knowing the financial condition of their companies.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — T. J. Rodgers is surrounded by a sea of silicon wafers on the roof of his company's headquarters in a Silicon Valley industrial park. No, not the ones that Mr. Rodgers, who founded Cypress Semiconductor in 1982, used to make high-speed computer memories or the newer specialized chips that go into iPods and high-end Mercedes-Benzes. These wafers are soaking up the sun's rays and turning them into electricity. On the roof, he fusses over the occasional weed that has grown up in the cracks between the panels and speculates about using robots to keep the glass...

<p>That's T.J. Rodgers, founder of Cypress Semiconductor. As CEO of a Silicon Valley enterprise, Mr. Rodgers has spent his career thinking about how to attract the best people of whatever background and get them to be their best. Now he is hoping to bring that expertise to a place he believes is sorely in need of a lesson: academe.</p>