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Fermilab's New Commercial Research Center
PolygamousRanchKid writes "When completed in 2013, the new research center will wrap around the Collider Detector at Fermilab and provide a state-of-the-art facility for research, development and industrialization of particle accelerator technology. Whereas particle accelerators like Fermilab's now-defunct Tevatron were once the realm of the scientist doing basic research on the nature of the universe, accelerators now have a broader mandate for commercial applications, said Fermilab Director Pier Oddone. The goal for the facility is to develop relationships between scientists and private businesses to develop accelerator technology that can be used in medicine, industry and national security. Though most people think of accelerators on the scale of Fermilab's Tevatron or the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, more than 30,000 smaller particle accelerators exist around the world and can be used for applications other than basic science research. 'The innovation now implemented in many areas often came about as the by-product of our pushing the technological envelope of our own accelerators...needed for advancing particle physics,' said Oddone."
As a rough heuristic, any state wealth-redistribution program that doesn't have packs of lobbyists and AEI economists shrieking about socialism, communism, and class warfare is very likely converting your tax dollars into somebody's shareholder value more or less by design.
Wealth-redistribution plans that do have such a pack are somewhat less clear. They are less likely to be an overt screwjob; but their efficiency or efficacy may still be miserable.