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Some of the biggest jobs that Kenneth R. Feinberg has handled are best described as grim. The Washington lawyer served as the special master of the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, which distributed nearly $7 billion to more than 5,000 victims and families of victims of 9/11. Three years later, he agreed to administrate the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, set up for the benefit of victims' families in the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting. In his latest high-profile role, as the Obama-appointed executive-pay czar, Feinberg announced Oct. 21 that the Treasury Department...
...mediator, Feinberg helped resolve a string of high-profile cases, including some of the nation's biggest asbestos-damages suits, a $2.5 billion settlement for women suing over a defective contraceptive device, and a class action by 250,000 Vietnam veterans and their families against the manufacturers of Agent Orange. Though the Agent Orange case had been dragging on for more than eight years, Feinberg after just six weeks on the job was able to reach a $180 million settlement between the toxic defoliant's manufacturers and its victims. Some critics noted, however, that although veterans sometimes waited years...
...change the world, with or without pants. "I see my own pattern repeated again and again - people who want to invent the future and aren't afraid to fail," says billionaire Silicon Valley financier Vinod Khosla, an Indian immigrant who helped found Sun Microsystems and recently unveiled a $1.1 billion venture fund for investments in clean technology...
...also began enacting groundbreaking efficiency standards for buildings, appliances, pool heaters and almost anything else that needs juice. It just proposed the first standards for flat-screen TVs. As a result, per capita energy use has remained stable in California while soaring 50% nationwide, saving Californians an estimated $56 billion and avoiding the need for 24 new gas-fired power plants. On the supply side, the state has required utilities to provide one-fifth of their power from renewables by 2010, which will jump to one-third by 2020. And California's soup-to-nuts effort to slash emissions - including...
...accountability and data. As Duncan points out, one of his predecessors, Richard Riley, put ed colleges on notice a full decade ago. The difference, as Duncan never misses an opportunity to say, is that the Federal Government now has financial incentives through which to effect change - a $4.35 billion pot of competitive innovation grants and $43 million to support "residency" programs that put budding teachers in classrooms for longer periods of time under the watchful eye of a veteran teacher, in much the same way that medical residents are supervised by seasoned staff for their first few years...