I’d like to announce that I’ve solved the state budget crisis, once and for all.

If you didn’t hear yesterday’s news, California’s budget deficit has ballooned. Again.

Governor Brown has proposed a budget with some partial spending cuts, and the State Legislature has already announced that they are refusing to enact the Governor’s cuts.

My first instinct was to laugh at their stubborn insistence on spending money that doesn’t exist. But then it hit me.

Why don’t we just print a new currency? We’ll call it the California Dollar.

The State Legislature can order the printing of however many California Dollars they feel are sufficient to properly fund the budget. They can fund all of our state programs with a mix of US Dollars and California dollars.

And then, all of our programs will be “fully funded.”

The only sticking point will be…some of the state’s vendors or suppliers may balk at accepting the California dollar as payment for their services. Some people just aren’t enlightened enough to understand the brilliance of this plan.

But much of our state’s budget is flowing to our public union employees. So if the union bosses all get together and decide to accept these new California dollars for worker salaries, this plan is good to go.

In exchange for their support, I’d propose we immediately double the size of the state workforce. We won’t have any US dollars to pay the new employees with, but I’m sure they’d accept 100% California dollars.

I mean, come on…if you’re already in the business of “creating money,” you might as well “create some jobs” too.

Mission accomplished. You’re welcome.

This Riskalyze thing is sorta cool.

A few days ago, I tweeted this about Yahoo’s CEO.

Yahoo’s CEO is toast.

— Aaron Klein (@AaronKlein) May 4, 2012

We live in a world where three of the most successful people we know of — Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg — are all college dropouts who don’t have degrees.

Don’t get me wrong. I deeply value college education, and I’ve learned a great deal from almost every college course that I’ve taken.

The point is…you clearly don’t need a college degree in computer science (or any other discipline) to have the chance to lead a great technology company. You can earn that with your intelligence, your instincts and your hard work.

So there was no reason for Yahoo’s Scott Thompson to lie.

I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, until I read this story. There are times that people have ascribed accomplishments to me that I have yet to earn. I’ve always made a point to gently correct the record when it happens. His on-air agreement to a falsehood speaks volumes.

Honesty is a fundamental requirement of leadership. You don’t have the moral authority to demand high standards from your people if you can’t uphold those high standards yourself.

Yahoo may or may not fire Scott Thompson, but he’s toast either way. He’s lost the ability to lead.

Board Meeting Details:

• May 8, 2012 at 2:00PM
• Sierra College Rocklin Campus, Room LR-133
• Board workshop begins at 2:00PM, open session begins at 4:00PM, public comment for items not on the agenda at 5:45PM or earlier
• Meeting Agenda
• Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
• Warrants

Our May board meeting will begin with a two hour board workshop on shared governance issues. This is an open session, so if you’re interested in learning more about how state law, accreditation and our Constitution work together to drive community college governance, you may find this session interesting.

The business portion of the meeting will commence at 4:00PM. We’ll be holding a public hearing to discuss our redistricting efforts. The board directed the formation of a committee to develop a proposal to retain our “elected at large” approach but to bring trustee areas into closer alignment with population balance. We have several maps that we’ll review.

If you’re in the 530/916 area, I hope you’ll join us to share your perspective. Or you can comment here and I’ll do my best to carry your input into the meeting.

The iPhone is one of the most revolutionary products ever introduced. A lot of the ideas behind it were in other products before 2007, or have popped up in other products since, but it was the first time that someone shipped it all in one beautiful, elegant and easy-to-use package.

Yet four weeks into being back on the iPhone, I have a sense that the magical world still awaits.

Why doesn’t my phone understand that I live in Sparrow Mail, HootSuite, Evernote and Google Voice, and let just those apps quietly sync with the cloud in the background?

I know that battery life and performance is a concern, but why not allow background activity when I’ve got the phone plugged in or the battery is above 50%?

Why doesn’t my phone figure out that there are about 150 contacts in my address book who I interact with more than the other 2000, and prioritize those calls, texts and emails?

Why doesn’t my phone sense when I’m asleep and block the phone from beeping or vibrating unless it’s my wife who is calling?

And why can’t my phone intercept a call when I’m asleep, tell an important contact that I’m in a different time zone than they are, and tell them to push 1 if it’s an emergency and they want my phone to ring anyway?

We live in an amazing world. I just can’t wait for it to get even more amazing.

If you don’t buy your ticket and come to this Saturday’s Sierra College Taste of Excellence 2012, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Beyond the incredible food and amazing wine, you’ll be supporting the economic growth and prosperity that Sierra College is bringing to our region through education.

Seriously, don’t delay. This is the hottest ticket in town. Get yours now before it’s sold out!

Another great piece from the Loomis News about the college’s efforts to work with our local high schools to develop a steady stream of skilled workers for our local businesses.

College and high school career technical education instructors spent Saturday together at Del Oro High School learning from each other.

Instructors learned how their classes might use the free Google SketchUp 3D modeling program combined with the sketchyphysics plug in that animates designs. The Sierra STEM Collaborative at Sierra College, dedicated to promoting science, technology, engineering and math careers, organized the event.

Instructors from Sierra College, Placer, Woodcreek and Del Oro high schools also shared best practices and toured Del Oro’s tech essentials, welding and wood labs to see equipment and student projects.

According to participants, sharing ideas with other career technical education teachers is one of the best forms of professional development. Participants said what they learned was relevant, they could see their classes importing sketches and CAD drawings into SketchUp and that sharing concepts, projects and teaching tools was very valuable.

Tom Stargaard, Del Oro tech essentials teacher, demonstrated SketchUp, explained how he integrated it into the Tech Essentials class required for freshmen and then helped participants try it themselves. Teachers then discussed assignments using the career cruising program supplied to the schools through the Sierra STEM Collaborative to help students identify careers and the education path to get there.

Sierra College’s goal is to attract students to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and careers explained Carol-Pepper-Kittredge, Sierra College CACT director, who administers the Sierra STEM Collaborative. “College and high school instructors told us that they want to see labs, share projects and find out about other teaching tools,” said Pepper-Kittredge. “When college and high school instructors collaborate, many students benefit and it contributes to a smoother transition to college.”

The California Community College Chancellor’s Office awarded grants to Sierra College to create a pipeline of students prepared to fill the need for skilled technical employees. For information, go to sierraschoolworks.com, or contact Carol Pepper-Kittredge, at cpepper-kittredge@sierracollege.edu or 916-660-7517.

Bravo Carol and the rest of the Sierra College CTE team!

The team at Wieden+Kennedy produced this amazing Olympic spot for Proctor & Gamble. It’s great enough to make any parent smile.

(If you don’t see the video above, click through to play it.)

This ad has been in the works for months, but based on recent events, the only thing that appears to be missing is “I’m Mitt Romney, and I approve this message.”

I’m in Washington DC today, representing Sierra College on behalf of its foundation, on the annual Cap-to-Cap program sponsored by the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Every year, our region sends a variety of leaders from business, non-profit and government, to visit with elected and agency officials in Washington, and update them on efforts to create jobs, improve education and drive prosperity back at home.

Yet I’ve been struck by two things so far on this trip.

First, much of the “policy agenda” being discussed here is about making sure that the federal government doesn’t send back even less than the 71 cents on the dollar that California gets in return for its federal taxes.

I understand the pragmatic reasons behind it, but it seems a little ridiculous that we have to mail all of our money to Washington and then stage an elaborate effort such as this to try to beg for a few pennies of it back.

Second, we had an incredible speaker at our luncheon today in David Walker, the former United States Comptroller appointed by President Clinton, who has left the federal government with a common sense message of alarm about the coming debt crisis for the United States.

It took our federal government until 1995 to run up $5 trillion in debt. 13 years later in 2008, the debt hit $9.6 trillion. And just four years later in 2012, the debt is $15.6 trillion. Mr. Walker was talking about this well before Greece happened, by the way.

I’m not sure who designed the program and the policy agenda, but it struck me as somewhat ironic that we spent our lunch hearing about a fiscal tsunami of deficits and debt, and then many of these folks left for more afternoon meetings to try and convince Congress to make said tsunami worse.

(Yes, I’ve indeed heard more than a few folks suggest that the federal government should increase its spending several times this week.)

Here’s the thing.

If someone there didn’t believe the simple math that Walker laid out for us at lunch, they should have gone to the podium and explained why. I would have been interested to hear.

But if we all believe that the United States won’t be able to defy the laws of fiscal gravity, perhaps we ought to consider focusing Cap-to-Cap 2013 solely on asking our leaders to kill existing laws and return money back to citizens, and their state and local governments.

We’re all going to have to make sacrifices to avoid a fiscal calamity of incredible proportions. It’s time to align this kind of advocacy for our region with reality.

Kirk Gibson is one of my heroes, not just because he played for my Los Angeles Dodgers, but because of how he approached the game.

He joined the Dodgers at the beginning of the 1988 season, and despite injuries that kept him out of most of the World Series that year, led the team to a storybook championship. I was 10 years old.

Other players have since reported that he was very funny and a supportive teammate. But when it came to winning, there was no one more competitive than “Gibby.” He would dress down players who showed up unprepared or unfocused. He always did his homework, and he was always the best prepared player on that field.

Little did he know that his preparation would pay off in creating the greatest moment ever in sports history.

The injured Gibson volunteered to hit when his team was down by one run, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. After two quick strikes, he drew three balls and fouled off several pitches.

He had read a scouting report that the pitcher often threw outside sliders on a full count. And when that pitch came, he was ready – and he drove it over the right field wall for a two-run homer to win the game.

The Dodgers never looked back and defeated the most powerful team in baseball in just five games.

Are you prepared for that critical moment that will decide whether your team wins or loses?

I spend every day making sure that I am.

(You can watch the entire at-bat above. There’s just nothing like it. Especially the legendary Vin Scully: “in a season that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!”)