Brilliant.

Two of the state’s largest departments spent more than $5.5 million on new cars and trucks this year only to leave them idle and gathering dust for months.

One department still has pickup and larger trucks parked in its yard that it bought during 2006, 2007 and 2008, a Bee investigation found. The vehicles are awaiting final assembly and are undeployed.

The departments bought more vehicles as lawmakers slashed state spending, cut state worker pay and eliminated key public services after tax revenue plunged and they needed to balance the budget.

The Department of General Services spent $1.2 million on 50 new hybrid Toyota Prius sedans in February, with state agencies committed to buying only 13 of them, state purchasing records show.

» Read the Entire Story

Senate Leader Harry Reid, in the fight of his life for re-election in Nevada and hated by the far left wing, has promised to bring their pet project, a $1 trillion government-run health insurance program, to the floor of the Senate in the health care bill. Now they love him, and the White House has been painted into a major corner on this one.

The problem is that the only senators supporting this massive new entitlement program are either (a) Democrats scared to death of what the acidic left (e.g. MoveOn.org, DailyKos) will do to them if they don’t give in to their demands, and (b) diehard left-wingers who are members of the former (e.g. Chuck Schumer, Barbara Boxer).

These supporters of government insurance are running around with these arguments:

• This new government insurance program is just like Medicare, and that works great. Well, Medicare is broke. So it doesn’t really work all that great. But it’s true that it works in that it provides low cost insurance to the highest cost patients. But doesn’t that strike you as a little strange? A big reason is that the health care system shifts the cost of those patients to the rest of us who buy regular health insurance. Get rid of the rest of us, and there is no one to shift the cost to. That’s when this whole thing ceases to “work”.
• But we’ll just take all of the profits from the health insurance companies and that will take care of those costs. If you took every dollar of profit out of those rapacious, greedy health insurance companies, that would pay for four days of American health care. Four days. And if you think health insurance premiums are bad now (and they are), just wait until there is ZERO competition.
• But polls show everyone loves government insurance. That’s what happens when you collude with drug companies and offer to exempt them from the effects of your program if they’ll run millions of dollars in ads to help pass it. Plus, I’m all for representative democracy, but we elect our leaders to look around corners and think about the effects of our initiatives, not just blindly do whatever we tell our pollsters sounds sorta good at the moment.
• We can’t afford not to do this. We need to be a civilized country and have great health care. Actually, we already have a world class health care system that few complain about. But we have a horrible way of paying for it, pricing it and incentivizing innovation and efficiency. Health care is the only consumer staple where pricing is opaque and secretive, and where we use insurance to pay for routine, predictable expenses. Go read about that Atlantic piece by David Goldhill, a lifelong Democrat — his article will make you think twice about the sustainability of either our current course, or the proposed reforms.

The bottom line on health care: every single Democrat and Republican of a moderate or conservative point of view understands that we can’t possibly afford a new $1 trillion dollar entitlement program. Our government is flat broke, and we are talking about putting a massive new burden on the job creators in this economy. Are we crazy?

I was annoyed with President Bush for his lack of discipline when it came to federal spending. The national debt increased tremendously in his eight years. But on the other hand, President Obama has been in office for 10 months, and has already increased the national debt by 9% — $1.325 trillion dollars. At this rate, if government insurance were to pass, President Obama would nearly double it with $9.3 trillion in new debt in his four year term.

This spending spree has got to stop. This isn’t about opposing a Democratic president. It’s about opposing unsustainable practices for our country.

I think we need health insurance reform in a big way. I’m working on a post with some of the best ideas I’ve heard about fixing our system. I’m by no means a health care expert, but I’ll be the first to say that we need to do SOMETHING.

Now, here’s something new.

I know from the Google stats and from some of you e-mailing me that we have a lot of “silent readers” of this blog, and I think you all have a lot more to contribute to the conversation than you have so far. So we’re going to hold a little contest to try to draw a few of you out of your shells.

Answer the following question with a comment here on the blog, and you’ll be entered in a contest for a copy of Who Killed Health Care: America’s $2 Trillion Medical Problem by Professor Regina Herzlinger (paper or Kindle edition, your choice). This book is sitting on my Kindle in the to-read pile. I’m quite sure I don’t agree with every one of her recommendations, but it looks like an excellent read.

So, here’s the question…

What is the best idea you’ve heard for fixing the health care system? If it’s something I’ve disagreed with here, go ahead and make your case for it — but I’m also hoping to hear about other ideas that are sustainable, affordable and will produce real results — bending the cost curve while making insurance affordable and accessible for more Americans.

I really dislike voice mail. So much so that my outbound voice mail message suggests you send me an e-mail if it’s urgent to reach me.

For those who still leave me voice messages, I’ve recently replaced my standard-issue cell phone company voice mail, first with YouMail, and then with Google Voice. As a result, my voice messages now come to me as e-mail (or SMS text) messages with an imperfect, but good enough, transcription of the message.

First, YouMail. It’s a great service. It will cost you about $6 per month to get basic transcription service, which only covers the first 15 seconds of the first 50 messages you get every month. It’s a nice service and I’d use it again.

That said, Google Voice is also great, and it’s free. They just added transcription, and while the transcription quality is nowhere near as good as YouMail, it’s probably good enough for most.

Here’s the thing about Google Voice: they intend you to change your phone number, and have people calling your Google number to then ring into your mobile or office phones. That’s great if it works for you, but I simply wasn’t in the position to change my number.

So instead, I forwarded my cell phone voice mail to my Google Voice mailbox. Here’s how you can do it with your carrier (replace 5305551212 with your Google Voice number in the instructions):

• AT&T: *004*15305551212#
• Verizon: *715305551212
• Sprint/Nextel: Call customer service and request they change your forwarding
• T-Mobile: *004*15305551212#

If you decide to change your mind and go back to your regular voice mail, here’s how you do that as well (replace 5305551111 with your cell phone number):

• AT&T: ##004#, then *004*15305551111#
• Verizon: *73 or *710
• Sprint/Nextel: Call customer service and request they change your forwarding
• T-Mobile: ##004#, then *004*18056377243#

Enjoy (almost) no voice mail!

I’ve been on the Sierra College board for five years now. Our budget is driven by the state. I’ve been here in years with very little adjustment. I’ve been here in years with big increases from the state. And now, of course, we’re dealing with reductions the likes of which the community college system has never seen.

The one thing that has been very consistent, whether in times of want or plenty, has been the complaint by all that community colleges are underfunded. It is true that between all four of our state’s educational systems (including K-12, CSU and UC), the community college system has the lowest level of funding of the four — somewhat ridiculous if you think about the effect we have on the economy.

But all that being said, let’s be realistic. The State of California is like a bankrupt and unemployed guy who has been living off his credit cards and home equity for years and is now shuffling along the sidewalk homeless in a bathrobe.

Translation: our funding levels aren’t going to improve any time soon.

But here’s the thing: I don’t think we can afford to sit around and complain about the lack of funding. Now is the time that our country needs its community colleges the most. Here’s a clip from a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article that reinforced my thinking on this…

The challenges facing college leaders were also brought home by the head of a major educational foundation, Jamie P. Merisotis, president and chief executive of the Lumina Foundation for Education.

With the Obama administration now poised to pump $12-billion into community colleges over the next 10 years, as part of the American Graduation Initiative, the colleges are in the spotlight. “Ready or not, it’s your time,” he told the attendees.

Mr. Merisotis, whose foundation has spearheaded efforts to raise the nation’s college-going and college-graduation rates, said it was important that trustees, presidents, and other college officials ensure that their efforts in the years to come focus on serving students, particularly those who have historically not succeeded in college, and not just on building prestige.

Leaders need to ask themselves, he said, Is that new program designed to actually serve students better, or just “boost enrollment”? Will you improve developmental mathematics classes for students who come to college with inadequate preparation, “or just add another physics course”?

Mr. Merisotis, whose foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have just awarded the association and two others a $1-million grant to develop a new system of accountabililty for community colleges, also reminded his audience that the goals of getting more students into and through college won’t mean much unless the courses and the experience have depth. “Quality is vital,” he said.

I think we need to spend the next few months dealing with our budget cuts as quickly as we can, and pivot to figuring out what this new future looks like — and figuring out how to shift our resources to invest in a different-looking future of focused access and leading edge educational delivery that lowers costs, empowers faculty and staff to think creatively, and improves student success.

We can’t afford to just complain. We’ve got to innovate.

One of the local newspapers once covered me (some nine years ago) referring to “radical environmentalism” and after that they assumed in their coverage that I must be opposed to anything that would involve being a good steward of this planet we’ve been entrusted with.

The New York Times has a great piece about the difference between real and radical environmentalism.

[Texas] has nonetheless emerged as the nation’s top producer of a commodity prized by environmentalists: wind power. Eager developers are covering its desolate western mesas with giant turbines. The world’s largest wind farm began operations in Texas this month, and the state now has close to three times as much wind capacity as Iowa, the second-ranked state.

This achievement puts Mr. Perry’s state in odd company. The race for clean-energy leadership is on — and big red Texas is going head-to-head with the gung-ho greens of California. That state has thrown itself into solar power and now leads the nation by a huge margin; it has also aggressively pursued energy efficiency.

…Texas’s secret, besides strong winds and lots of land, is its lack of regulation. Wind developers rave about the fact that, in essence, they need few state permits to build a turbine farm. They deal mainly with local officials, who are generally permissive (energy, after all, is a well-loved commodity in Texas).

California, by contrast, has all but stifled wind developers. The state built several big wind farms in the 1980s — but has added very few since, because of the cost and delays of complying with stringent state environmental regulations. The early turbines killed thousands of birds, for instance, and that memory lingers.

Here locally, one government agency has spent thousands upon thousands of dollars registering their level of carbon emissions with a think tank who charges agencies to do so. All of that spending has done precisely zip, zero, zilch to create cleaner air or water for our community. It’s an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars.

I have little use for environmentalism for the sake of environmentalism. Being good stewards of this planet is important. But if you’re going to spend my money on cleaner air, cleaner water and ending reliance on foreign oil, I want real spending for real results.

» Read the Entire Article

Photo Credit: NYT

Spencer is a prolific songwriter, and we consider this a brilliant performance.

(If you can’t see the video, click through to the post.)

So the AP takes a photo of then-Senator Obama. A fellow by the name of Shepard Fairey uses the photo to create a poster that quickly becomes a famous icon of the presidential campaign.

Then the AP’s lawyers got a little jealous of all of the t-shirt revenue that Fairey was raking in and decided to get their fair share. Fairey got greedy and started lying and destroying evidence.

Mr. Fairey told the agency — and his own lawyers — that he had used a photograph from an April 27, 2006, event about Darfur at the National Press Club in Washington where Mr. Obama was seated next to the actor George Clooney. Instead, the photograph he used was from the same event, but was a solo image of Mr. Obama’s head, tilted in intense concentration.

Mr. Fairey admitted that in the initial months after the suit and countersuit were filed, he destroyed evidence and created false documents to cover up the real source. He said he had initially believed that The A.P was wrong about which photo he used, but later realized the agency was right.

“In an attempt to conceal my mistake, I submitted false images and deleted other images,” Mr. Fairey said in a statement, released on his Web site. “I sincerely apologize for my lapse in judgment, and I take full responsibility for my actions, which were mine alone.”

I’m not sure this is quite the typical way a “symbol of hope” comes about…

» Read the Entire Article

For the last two months, life has been incredibly hectic and crazy. Lots of travel, lots of deadlines. I just counted them up, and I’ve been in the process of managing no fewer than 30 simultaneous product upgrades that will finally be complete on or about October 22.

We’ve been “waiting” to take a breather from all of this until we leave for Ethiopia to bring Emma home. (We’ll be in Rome for a couple of days on the way there…added that on for $39!) But with that trip delayed until at least December, Cacey and I looked at each other and said “we need a break!”

I’m learning my own patterns: I tend to get into the zone, focus, put my head down and work until I’m burned out and exhausted, which isn’t a good feeling. Now I’m starting to realize that I can do the 14 hour days for a while if I have a defined end to the “tunnel” and schedule some time to go recharge with my family. (Then of course, it’s on to climbing the next mountain!)

So, that’s what we’re going to do in about a week. This crazy set of projects wraps up on October 22. On the 23rd, after a meeting at Sierra College in the early afternoon, we’ll take off for Southern California to take Spencer to Disneyland for the very first time! (My birthday is the 24th, so we get one day free that way.)

By the way, I booked that trip with the world’s best hotel rewards program, Hilton HHonors. We’re saving points to use in Rome, but we booked one free night near Disneyland. The thing I love about HHonors is they don’t do blackout dates or try to make points unusable with deadlines and such – they’ve earned my loyalty with very customer-friendly policies.

So the moral of this story (primarily for myself) is that it’s okay to take on big things for a while, but make sure they have an identified end – and then make time to go charge up with your family before the next big thing. Time passes quickly, my little boy is growing up, and I’m looking forward to watching him enjoy meeting “Mickey and Donald” as he keeps saying.

I’m just downright speechless about the response you all have given to the post about “A Soldier in Need” that originally appeared here on the blog nine days ago on October 5.

When we last updated you on our progress on October 9, we had raised $430 and set a goal of $750 by the time the fundraiser arrived on October 17.

Well, thanks to each and every one of you, you certainly blew that away!

We’ve now raised an amazing total of $1,780 to help Jimmy Katches with his medical expenses, along with the offer of some free medical treatment as well. That’s incredible!

There are three days left until the fundraiser for Jimmy. If anyone else wants to join this incredible gift to a family who is so thankful for the support from their community — there’s still a few days to do so.

Just use PayPal to send your donation to ak@aaronklein.com — and every penny will go to this family for their medical expenses.

I know that none of these folks have donated for the purpose of recognition, but they deserve our thanks, and here they are:

• Cindy Burtt
• Samuel Carstenson
• Mark Chesner
• Christine Grabyan
• Dave and Aimee Rohrer
• Rebecca Sadler
• Dr. Jared Thomas (free medical care)
• Meredith Turney
• 2 Anonymous Donors (I know who you are, and thank you again!)

Again, we’ll be updating the blog with our thanks to the donors all the way through the fundraiser next week. Whether it’s sending a few dollars yourself, or retweeting this post on to your own friends on Twitter or Facebook, I know this “soldier in need” and his family is very grateful for your help.

So keep spreading the word: only 3 days left before the fundraiser!

Tomorrow’s Sierra College board meeting was supposed to be held in Truckee. We rotate our meetings between our Rocklin, Nevada County and Tahoe-Truckee campuses.

Due to the strong chance for snow over Donner summit, the President’s Office just announced they are moving tomorrow’s board meeting to the Rocklin campus, after consultations with legal counsel. Open session will still begin at 2:00PM as planned.

If you have any questions, please contact the President’s Office at 916-660-7000.