America’s Business rings in the New Year with several timely and interesting interviews.  Agriculture Secretary and former North Dakota Governor Ed Schafer joins host Mike Hambrick to talk about renewable fuels and alternative energy and what an important role they will play in the future.

“Well, I’m excited about alternative fuels,” Secretary Schafer says. “The bio-fuels, the bio-mass –  that is very important for us and it increases economic activity in rural areas like you can’t imagine.  And again, moves us towards that energy independence and it’s better for the environment.”

Atlantic Monthly international correspondent James Fallows, a frequent guest of the program, returns to talk about his most recent article, “Be Nice to the Countries That Lend You Money.” He’s referring to China, which holds $1.4 billion dollars of the U.S. debt.  This has invariably linked these two countries financially in more ways than expected.

Despite the tough recession, many American manufacturers are finding ways to survive and prosper. One such company is Ariens Corporation. Dan Ariens, President and CEO, is on the program this week to explain how they have been able to move ahead.

In October, President Bush signed the PRO-IP bill into law, a comprehensive intellectually property rights laws.  Passage was a big victory for the NAM, which led the charge to make intellectual property rights more secure for America’s innovators.  This week one of the bill’s fathers, Rick Cotton, General Counsel at NBC, is here to explain why this bill was a success and where improvements can still be made.

In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of American Justice Partnership gives us the latest on tort reform and commentator Hank Cox recalls “The Way It Was.” And the National Association of Manufacturers President Gov. John Engler will close the program with “The Last Word.”

The best column we’ve seen in some time on China’s ability to challenge manufacturing in the United States appeared in today’s Washington Post, and it’s a sports column about the Olympics. Thomas Boswell writes, “They Made the Buses Run on Times.”

At 3 a.m. on most Olympic nights, a bus with a few reporters would return to the Beijing Tibet Hotel. A dozen security officials met us to make sure we had credentials. During the day, knee-high tape outside the hotel created lanes for entering and exiting — a reasonable way to keep things organized.

But in the middle of the night in a sleeping city, the tape was irrelevant. So, exhausted, we’d step over the tape and take the direct route to the front door. And every night the security people objected, insisting forcefully that we obey the stupid tape maze.

Finally, a Chinese solution was devised. Instead of stopping by the front door, our bus continued to the side of the hotel so, even though our walk was longer, the direct route now obeyed the tape.

Though we were the guests and they the hosts, we didn’t matter. Common sense was irrelevant. The tape — symbolic of a decision made by somebody somewhere in an unknowably complex and security-conscious control structure — was all that mattered. They had uniforms. We didn’t. That’s big everywhere. It’s huge here.

Rigidity, authoritarianism, unimaginative but must-be-obeyed rules — none of these serve the creative, innovative demands of an advanced industrial society.

But on other hand, you want to halt economic activity to clean up the air, you can just order it. The smog went away, as James Fallows reports. Granted, the weather cooperated, with good winds and timely rain.