My little guy has been dealing with a double ear infection and a viral bug for the last few days. He’s feeling a little better now, but still catching up on sleep, obviously.

My sweetie just found him like this and caught it with her iPhone a few minutes ago…

How do I know?

My wife absolutely loved it. It is pretty funny and brilliantly executed.

(E-mail readers, you’ll need to click through to the post to see the video.)

Sorry for the dearth of posts so far this week. I was gone for a weekend away with my sweetheart (learning how to be “the perfect husband”), and since getting back Sunday night, have been dealing with my two favorite people being quite sick with a pretty bad bug. So no time for writing.

But that being said, here’s one I had saved from last week…

Special thanks to my buddy Derek, who sent this my way. We all dream of being able to pull this off…

(Feed and e-mail readers, you’ll have to click through to the post to see the video.)

My friend, Barbara Alby (pictured above with her husband, Dennis), is running to succeed her boss as our representative on the country’s only elected tax commission, the California Board of Equalization.

Barbara is a bulldog when it comes to fighting for what’s right. Read her bio below, and you’ll see what I mean: a former welfare mom and domestic violence victim decided not to live her life on government handouts, and instead turned herself into the state legislator who authored Megan’s law and has been a staunch protector of the taxpayers.

From welfare mom and domestic violence victim to successful businesswoman, legislator and leader, Barbara Alby’s life is truly an American success story. Barbara marks two occasions as significant turning points in her life. The first occurred when the newly elected California Governor, Ronald Reagan, cut her welfare benefits while she was a single mother, living in poverty. The second was when she met and married Dennis Alby and they started their life together building a new family and later working side-by-side to build their own business.

That same tenacity and inner strength that helped her at critical moments in her early life served her well in 1993 when she was elected to the State Assembly, representing the Sacramento area. Foremost among Barbara’s legislative accomplishments are laws to protect women and children from sexual predators. She authored legislation that established the Child Molester Hotline as well as “Megan’s Law.” Barbara fought to protect our children from criminals on school campuses after a young woman was murdered on a high school campus in her district. That legislation is known as the “Michelle Montoya” law. She defended patient’s rights in healthcare when she ended the practice of HMO’s writing gag orders in their contracts with providers that would keep doctors from discussing all treatment options with their patients.

Knowing first hand the day to day operation of a small business, she was a champion for small businesses in California. The National Tax Limitation Committee named her “Taxfighter of the Year” every year for her efforts on behalf of California’s working families.

Today Barbara serves as Chief Deputy to Board of Equalization Member Bill Leonard.

She is mother of five, grandmother of ten and spouse of one.

I’m proud to be supporting her, and I hope you will too.

Some of my friends and colleagues at Sierra College roll their eyes when I talk about the tax burden on our families, entrepreneurs and businesses in California. I know…I sound like a broken record at times.

But if you didn’t believe me before, perhaps you will now.

The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, representing the sector of the economy that produces over 80% of job creation in this country, has just released the 2009 Business Tax Index, which I provide for download here.

The highlights:

• California has the HIGHEST income tax burden in the nation by several orders of magnitude. 9 states have no income tax, but the next lowest is Illinois with a score of 3.00. California’s score is 10.55.
• We have the HIGHEST individual capital gains taxes in the nation, again with a similar order of magnitude. Another 9 states have no state capital gains tax, New Mexico is the next lowest with 2.45, and California is again at 10.55. Remember, these are the taxes that people pay when they take money they’ve already paid income taxes on, and invest it to create new jobs.
• We are 42nd out of 50 states + DC on corporate income taxes, with a score of 8.84 (again, 5 states have no corporate income tax, but the next lowest is Ohio at 1.90).
• We are 43rd out of 51 when it comes to corporate capital gains taxes. And these are the taxes that companies pay when they take money that they’ve already paid income taxes on, and invest it to create new jobs.
• We definitely do better when it comes to property taxes, ranking 14th out of 51, but contrary to popular opinion, we don’t have incredibly low property taxes when compared with the rest of the pack. The lowest score is 1.34, the highest is 5.34, and we sit at 2.58. Prop 13 has saved the homes of millions of people, and kept this part of the tax burden bearable.
• When it comes to sales, gross receipt and excise taxes, we rank 26th out of 51. However, if you were to break out sales taxes alone — one of the most regressive methods of taxation that there is — California would rank much worse.
• We actually have the lowest unemployment taxes of any state. This actually surprised me. I hope the legislature doesn’t find out.
• Gasoline and diesel taxes, you’ll find us at 49th out of 51, or tied for 46th out of 51, respectively.

Two points.

First, our overall score is 47th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia. Proposition 13 and its limits on property taxes is the only reason we aren’t dead last.

Second, the biggest problem with all of this is Nevada. Just across the border lies a state without the pleasant climate or natural beauty of California, but the second best tax burden in the nation. Their total score is 11.877, and our total score is 49.685. They have zero personal or corporate income taxes, zero personal or corporate capital gains taxes, and roughly the same property tax burden as ours.

Is it any wonder that we’re losing jobs, businesses and innovation across the border?

Does it make more sense why I don’t think we can solve our state’s budgetary woes by raising taxes and watching even more economic growth enter the one-way NASCAR race out of our state?

» Read the Full Study

I’m sure this is not true of all printed publications, but I had a thought.

I am a subscriber to Business Week, Fortune and Inc. They are all great publications with a different take on different pieces of our economy.

I am way behind on reading them. This backlog started when I became a dad, and I literally have a stack of unread issues piling up in my office. I do a lot of reading online, but I never seem to have the paper version when I have a moment to read it (other than takeoff and landing on airplanes, which I’ve planned ahead for).

There’s two things I’ve noticed, though.

• The subscription price is plummeting. Fortune just offered me three years for $18. I took them up on that offer. Similarly lower prices on BW and Inc.
• You’d think I’d cancel my subscription, but I look at it this way: if I get one great idea from reading these magazines, it pays for all three of them, even if I’m paying $20/year for each (and as you can see, I’m not). So I keep them around.

But the thought struck me: the dirty little secret of magazine publishing right now is that they have to have the circulation numbers up so they can justify the ad rates they charge to make their business model work.

So since I’m a “highly qualified” subscriber in their demographic, I’m getting these offers that compel me to keep paper issues coming. But I’m simply not reading them nearly as much as I was before, and therefore, not seeing the ads as much either.

If there was a way for the print advertisers to measure how many times people were actually opening the magazine, I have a feeling the magazine folks would be in as big of trouble as the newspaper folks are right now (not that they are far off in any case).

I don’t know exactly what the new media business model looks like, but the days of the Madison Avenue ad sales exec with the fat expense account are numbered.

I’m confident these people will find many new ways to be prosperous and successful — but the cycle of “destructive innovation” is not going to stop at the edge of media (if anybody still wondered).

Interested in Jeff Pelline’s take on this in particular…he’s launching a pretty cool new idea to reverse publish blog content in print and take advantage of the fact that advertisers are still spending on high quality print publications.

I wrote several weeks ago that Sierra College ought to use Twitter to send free emergency notifications to student cell phones. When I raised this issue with staff, they had already begun exploring the idea, and it’s now a reality: you can follow the Sierra College Police feed at @sccdpolice.

Our new police chief, Greg Murphy, sent this memo out to students today, and it was copied to all staff so they can take advantage as well.

A big hat tip to the entire team at Sierra College for the incredible work they did keeping students and staff safe in the face of the bomb threat several days ago. And congratulations on taking this important step to increase our emergency communications capability.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that non-Twitter users may not understand how cool this really is. A few people popped back with “what about text messaging?”

There are two ways to get text messages to students. We can do exactly that through Twitter, or we can buy an enterprise text messaging system.

Buying an enterprise text messaging system has a lot of problems. First, it’s really expensive. Not only to buy the system, but to pay the monthly maintenance and usage fees. Second, we’d have to gather student cell phone numbers, which can change throughout a semester, so we also have to try and keep them updated.

Instead, by using Twitter, students get to have control. All they have to do is sign up for a free Twitter account, follow @sccdpolice and any emergency notifications will be sent to their phone as a text message. If they change their phone number, they can update it on Twitter, and the alerts will keep coming to their new phone.

This is far better than an enterprise text messaging system that can quickly get out of date. Students get more control and better communication, and we can focus our police services budget less on technology and more on protecting student and staff safety. Win-win for all.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has redefined their educational mission to two key areas that they (and I) hope will have a huge impact on community colleges: first, ensuring that a high school education should result in college readiness, and second, that postsecondary education should result in a degree or certificate with genuine economic value.

The attached paper, “Postsecondary Success”, documents how a high school diploma used to be a ticket to middle class success, but that more than half of new jobs created through 2014 will require some level of postsecondary education.

The Gates Foundation is operating under four principles:

• Postsecondary education is the critical pathway to leading individuals and their families out of poverty
• Doubling the numbers will require innovation and performance improvements within the current system
• Effective innovations and improvements will put young people at the center, driving towards a system designed to ensure that students succeed
• Business partnerships are critical to success

» Read the Entire Paper

Special thanks to a very good friend and Sierra College faculty member who sent this to me! You know who you are.

Some very dear friends of ours lost their brother last night in a tragic car accident. He had flown into Sacramento and was just 20 minutes away from home in Bakersfield when he fell asleep at the wheel. He was only 19 years old.

I knew Landon less well than many others in our circle of friends, but he had a funny sense of humor, and we greatly enjoyed spending a little time with him in Sacramento this past March at a wedding of one of those friends.

It’s so hard to understand something like this. We stand but a few inches from a canvas, and from our vantage point, this part doesn’t look so good. Yet God is painting a huge masterpiece and eventually, we’ll be able to see the entire picture.

Landon will be missed, and tonight, our hearts and prayers are with the Brownells.

UPDATE: In the several times I met and spent time with Landon, I’d never heard about one of his many accomplishments: winning chess tournaments. His tragic death is the top story right now at the US Chess Federation web site, among numerous other blogs devoted to the game. All remember him as “the great sportsman who would shake your hand after a match, win or lose.”  What a great legacy.

I don’t think the media gets the “tea parties” held on April 15. I think their impression is that 99% of the attendance was “a bunch of right-wingers upset about Obama getting elected.” I’m quite sure there were plenty of people there who could fit that description.

That being said, from the perspective of folks I know who were there — and I unfortunately had no time with my work schedule to attend one — the vast majority of the folks involved in these events are neither partisan Republicans or Democrats.

Rather, they are ordinary, hard-working Americans fed up with runaway government spending by BOTH political parties (and both Presidents). So they certainly weren’t pro-Obama, but I haven’t heard about many that enamored with President Bush’s spending record either.

Here’s a group of high schoolers who were there that day, learning civics hands-on. Left to right, you’re looking at Pierce, Chris, Dawson and Kate. One of the signs behind them resonates with me in particular: “Stop Punishing Success. Stop Rewarding Failure.”

Our federal and state governments are spending more of our money than ever before. Because of out-of-control spending, our federal and state governments are more broke than ever before. And we, the people, are getting less for it than ever before!

All of this may lead us back to a simpler time and a more responsible society. More on that later…and our thanks go to Pierce, Chris, Dawson and Kate for choosing to get involved.