Higher taxes got the smackdown from California voters last night. To the tune of 66% no, 34% yes. The message could not be less muddled and more clear: Fix the budget. Live within your means. Align spending with revenue.

We’ve done this at Sierra College for the last five years. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s really hard. Because it means we have to be very focused to put our resources where we can best achieve our mission. We don’t have the money to spread money everywhere.

So we’ve actually developed a process to go through and review all of our programs, and allocate resources on the basis of strategic priorities rather than the “everyone gets a little bit more this year” approach. We’ve taken resources away from some programs. We’ve added resources to other programs. And we’ve put in systems so that we can measure the results.

It has been difficult for Sierra College to rethink everything we do, and become more efficient about doing it. But you know what? The hardworking taxpayers, who have entrusted us with their money to achieve our educational mission, deserve nothing less.

The State of California is going to have to do the same thing. There are things the state did in the last fiscal year that it will not be able to do in the next fiscal year. There are one-size-fits-all rules that they had the staff to enforce last year that they will need to stop enforcing. Where they had 10 people on a team, they’ll need to get by with 8…and just stop doing the 20% of the things that are least important.

These are the things that the private sector does all of the time in economic pullbacks. Do fewer things, and at times, we even have to do more things with less money (always challenging and not always possible).

This isn’t intended as a knock on any other candidate for Governor, but if I was Arnold Schwarzenegger, I’d be calling Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner right now.

This is a guy who built a billion-dollar business and knows how to review organizations and align expense with revenue. And after he became Insurance Commissioner, he did a top-to-bottom review of his department, modernized systems, cut 8% of his staff through attrition, and delivered a corresponding cut in fees back to insurance ratepayers. First time that has happened in the history of government during good economic times.

These are bad times, and the State has no choice now but to figure out how to become more efficient. If he wasn’t a candidate for Governor, Poizner would be the perfect guy to do a top-to-bottom review and take the costs out of state government. Governor Schwarzenegger ought to figure out how to tap his experience for the task ahead. If they keep punting, Poizner may get the opportunity anyway in 2011.

Scandal-ridden-Wall Street-analyst-turned-blogger Henry Blodget has written this morning that Wolfram Alpha launched with “big dreams and no chance,” comparing it to Google and making the point that Google would simply catch up.

If you haven’t seen Wolfram Alpha in action, you might write such a column. But take a quick look at this webcast (h/t Russ Steele), and you’ll see what I mean: Wolfram Alpha is no Google competitor.

In fact, Wolfram Alpha is really not a search engine at all. It’s a user-friendly version of Wolfram’s Mathematica software, with the simple user interface of a single typed command.

That concept is melded with large numbers of smart databases: stock markets, economies, populations, places and geography, chemistry and physics. The result is a “computational engine” that melds that data together in useful ways.

Blodget is missing it if he thinks this is about taking on Google. This is exactly the kind of thing Google would like to do, but they don’t do it right now, and probably don’t have the ability to get it right for years if they started trying. (Not trying to knock Google, but they don’t have the Mathematica platform to build on.)

UPDATE: I thought I’d try some “local data” in a search, and typed in “students at Sierra College” — I haven’t verified the accuracy of this 2007 data, but it’s in the ballpark.

Jack and Suzy Welch document a bad week for American competitiveness, and our ability to grow our way out of this recession.

The unions, which had a hand in killing Chrysler, now own half its equity, and GM looks to be going in the same direction. As one of us (Jack) put it on Twitter: “Even France wouldn’t do this.”

Look, we don’t know how the Washington-Detroit negotiations played out. But the ease with which the large bank lenders appeared to cave to a pennies-on-the-dollar deal might suggest that TARP was involved; the government was wielding a big stick, and it wielded it in favor of the unions over the conventions of bankruptcy law. Is such a radical upending of the economic system good for business confidence and capital formation? It’s hard to imagine how.

And so, we are beginning to feel afraid — very afraid. We believe America needs to be more competitive than ever to get out of this recession.

» Read the Entire Article

My little boy is growing up. I posted about going to Ikea to get his big boy bed, and now he shows it off in his new video blog, along with some of the new things he is saying.

We do these every once in a while for family and friends, and I thought I’d share it here. It’s been way too long since we did the last one!

(E-mail readers, click through to the post for the video.)

News reports are saying there is a move afoot to have the federal government guarantee California’s debt, and enable the state to just keep borrowing and spending money that it doesn’t have.

California’s cash crunch appears ready to land on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

In coming weeks, Congress is expected to debate whether to take the unprecedented step of guaranteeing the state’s emergency borrowing on a short-term basis.

This is equivalent to giving a 16-year-old boy a bottle of tequila and the keys to a Jaguar and saying “have a fun time.”

» Read the Entire Story

H/T to Jon Freeman. E-mail readers, click through to the post for the amazing video.

Nevada County resident Doug Keachie and I have been engaged in a discussion about jobs, opportunity, investment, class warfare, and the like.

I don’t think I would be mischaracterizing Doug’s opinions to say that he really dislikes those who are very successful and would like to see the federal government tax them and spread the wealth. (Doug, if there’s a better short sentence that you want me to replace that with, let me know.)

We have an interesting conversation going on. Here was my last comment…

It is certainly the responsibility of those who are successful and have been given much to give back.

But herein lies the point: if we are always against those who are successful by the work of their own hands, and try and penalize their success because “it’s not fair” — we disincentivize success.

And success, whether it’s by the 1%, or the 10%, or the 20%, or the 80%, is a rising tide that lifts all boats. Because it generates investment, new innovation, job creation and opportunity.

The key is to make the investments to ensure that the bottom 50% of society have a level playing field and the opportunity, through their own hard work, to be successful.

And that’s why I spend so much of my time as a community college trustee. Because it’s an investment in the shared prosperity of my country across class, across race, and across socioeconomic background.

And I want to be clear here: a level playing field is not about denying the success of the successful.

A level playing field is about ensuring that everyone has the tools they need to harness their own talents and achieve the upper limits of their own abilities — if they are willing to work hard for it.

That’s why I like to say that community colleges are one of the few parts of government that give people a hand up, rather than a hand out.

Hope you enjoy it.

5/12 UPDATE: Methinks The Union newspaper doesn’t like the redistricting proposal, because their story this morning does a good job covering all of the negative points, but didn’t mention any of the pros I raised. I am pretty well decided on voting no, though.

My board colleague, Bill Martin, has apparently been sending lots of e-mails today promoting his proposal on redistricting. I can only guess he’s running for re-election in 2010, and I can’t blame him for preferring an electorate a little bit smaller than 260,000 voters.

All seven trustees on the Sierra College board are currently elected district wide, but have to live within a particular trustee area in order to run. This is a constitutional and appropriate way to ensure “one man, one vote” in elections, yet still promote diversity of perspective among the trustees. Yet there are pluses to making a change, too.

I’m in the process of making a firm decision on how to vote, and I left the following comment on Jeff Pelline’s blog this morning:

There are a lot of pluses and minuses to the redistricting issue. I share Bill’s thoughts that it should be easier to run. It was a heck of a job to run and beat an incumbent in 2004. I guess I’m living proof that it’s possible, but it was a hard fought campaign.

On the minus side, any initiative to eliminate our “elected at large” system requires the districts to be redrawn to population lines. That would instantly transfer one of our Nevada County / rural area seats down to Roseville.

One major advantage of our board’s current configuration is that we have less regionalism. We have 7 trustees who each bring a perspective from their home trustee area, but they have to equally represent the entire district. That advantage would go away if we went with Bill’s plan.

I’m in the process of making a decision on this issue, but the good news is that I don’t think this is an issue of self-interest for me. I carried Nevada County and Placer County, including much of Tahoe, by healthy margins, so if I support or oppose this proposal, neither choice will be because of re-election in 2012.

(Besides the fact that I’m in no way leaning towards running again in 2012. Eight years will have been a pretty good run. We’ll see.)

Should be a great board meeting. Hope you can make it and share your thoughts. If you can’t, I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment on this or the @Work post, or send me an e-mail at aklein@sierracollege.edu.

   

Cacey and I are so thankful for our moms today…and Spencer loves his Grammie and Nana!

(These are photos from his arrival home from South Korea back in 2007…first grandchild on my side, first grandson on Cacey’s side.)

That bastion of conservative journalism, the LA Times, is reporting that the President of the United States, in between fulfilling his roles as Commander-in-Chief, CEO of Chrysler and head of the compensation committee at Bank of America, has decided to assume the role of Governor of California.

The Obama administration is threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part of the budget.

Surreal.

» Read the Entire Article

(H/T to George Rebane, whose blog I read this on first…)