Pre-meeting documents:

• Meeting Agenda
• Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
• Warrants

As you might remember, our last meeting had to be moved to the Rocklin campus due to weather. It looks like the weather is good for next week, so we’re back in Tahoe-Truckee for this next meeting on Tuesday, November 10 at 2:00PM.

On the agenda: the finalization of the 2008-09 budget, a discussion about our academic enrichment program for young students, a discussion about dealing with e-mail communication between the public and the board as a group (we want to ensure compliance with the Brown Act at all times), and ratifying the agreements to establish a partnership with Rocklin Police Department for an armed law enforcement presence at the Rocklin campus.

Question of the Month: Are you a Sierra College student or alumni? If so, what did you like best about your experience, and what is the most important thing we need to improve?

I see several messages in the election tonight.

• The fact that President Obama was a far better choice than John McCain for most voters in 2008 did not constitute the endorsement of the rabid left’s policy agenda that they think it was.
• The fact that voters in New Jersey and Virginia elected Republican governors is not the endorsement of the Republican Party itself that some think it is. (Hint: it’s more about the philosophy of the candidates who won, not their party.)
• Freedom is alive and well in America, and we’re still a center-right country.
• Smart, pragmatic, solutions-oriented conservatives can win elections deep in blue state territory when they stand up for common sense policies that promote freedom and prosperity.

What was your take on election night 2009? What does it mean for the President’s legislative agenda in general and the health insurance bill in particular?

Photo Credit: AP

My full name is Daniel Aaron Bell Klein on my birth certificate, yet I’ve been Aaron Klein my entire life. The Bell is after my maternal grandfather, an Air Force pilot and one of my heroes, who had no male heirs. My dad’s name is Daniel, another hero, and while he did have male heirs (obviously), the Daniel was affixed to the beginning. My parents decided to call me by my middle name because after all, no “Little Danny” should be taller than “Big Danny.”

With all due thanks to them, I have six legal aliases at the Department of Motor Vehicles as a result.

I get mail to “D KLEIN”, “DAARON KLEIN”, “D A KLEIN”, “AARON B KLEIN” and “YO KLEIN DUDE ON THE SIERRA BOARD” (although the latter are usually students upset they didn’t get the class they wanted at Sierra College).

Like an idiot, I chose “D AARON KLEIN” for my driver’s license and passport. With all due respect to my wonderful father, do you know how stupid that was? Try explaining to someone that you have a space in your first name, and do not have a middle initial. The world is not set up for first initial names. “My first name is D space AARON,” I say. “I’m sorry,” comes the reply, “the computer won’t let me put a space in. It just assumes your name is a spelling error.”

Now, the Transportation Security Administration of the US Department of Homeland Security has officially begun discriminating against those of us afflicted with CNS (”confusing name syndrome”) with their new Secure Flight program. Now they actually want your name on your ID to match the name on your ticket.

This is especially bad for those who have tickets purchased for them. I’ve had clients or corporate travel departments book me as “ARRON KLEIN”, “ARRON CLINE”, “AARON KLINE” and every other combination known to man.

In addition, many airline systems won’t take apostrophes or hyphens, which leaves a whole new category of people out in the cold (and left on the tarmac). My friend Derek D’Amour should go see his business partner in Florida, because he’ll never fly again. Anyone who is Irish should learn to enjoy train travel. Anthony Maki-Gill will not be let on an airplane (although it was questionable whether he would be in the first place).

Even those with long names are in trouble. Apparently a “Christopher” had his first name translated into French and it came out “Christophe”, and God help Fernando Enriquez de Salamanca y Celada.

Here’s from the New York Times article:

Mr. Lichtenstein is one of many people in the corporate world now working hard to ensure that come next year, when a new Transportation Security Administration program called Secure Flight is fully in effect, travelers won’t get delayed at airports because of variations in the way their names appear on boarding passes and their IDs.

Actually, as he pointed out, the program is pretty much in effect now. Most airlines and online booking sites already require that travelers fully comply with provisions of Secure Flight. Reservations must reflect the exact name as the ID to be used (John J. Smith, for instance, can’t appear on a boarding pass when the ID says John James Smith.)

…Apostrophes are another issue. “My Irish birth certificate shows that I was born Patrick O’Hare and my passport shows an identical name,” Patrick O’Hare wrote. “However, when trying to purchase an airline ticket online, the apostrophe is always rejected,” he added. A security screener — at O’Hare airport, no less — “pointed this out to me and suggested that I could be denied boarding, but he offered no solution. So what should we Irish, afflicted with apostrophes in our names, do to avoid this problem?” he asked.

I’m doomed.

Who do you know that won’t ever be allowed to set foot in an airplane? Perhaps those of us with confusing name syndrome should band together and form some kind of union. We could go on strike and refuse to fly until…well, we’ll think something.

Illustration Credit: NYT

A verse from the Bible that is shaping and defining our lives is Isaiah 1:17 — to “seek justice, encourage the oppressed, and defend the cause of the fatherless.”  As most of you know, this has become deeply personal for Cacey and me, but we want to do more to make it a widespread mission.

Next Sunday is a very special day for us. On the one hand, it’s the first-ever Orphan Sunday, established by a diverse group of organizations supporting adoption and orphan care, including Cry of the Orphan Campaign, Show Hope, Christian Alliance for Orphans, Focus on the Family and Family Life Today.

Steven Curtis Chapman will perform a live concert, anchored by presentations from several leaders in the adoption and orphan care movement, among them Jedd Medefind, who prior to his leadership of Christian Alliance for Orphans worked in the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and before that as Chief of Staff to my State Senator, Tim Leslie.

The other reason that Sunday is a special day for us is that two years ago, we were in Seoul, South Korea. We had just met our little boy for the first time, and we were preparing to get on a plane and bring him home to his forever family (then consisting of four grandparents, sixteen siblings and inlaws and three cousins).

So this Sunday, we’re going to be celebrating two years of Spencer coming home, while working on ways to start raising awareness about the dramatic need that exists among the world’s children. Over 143 million of them have lost a parent; some 87 million have lost both parents. Most of them live in poverty and have very few chances to succeed in life.

Whether it’s supporting foster care, domestic adoption, international adoption or supporting overseas orphanages and shelters, there is much that we can do as the richest country on earth to support these 143 million children who need help.

The Orphan Sunday live webcast starts at 2:00PM Pacific Time this Sunday, November 8 — and while you’re at it, follow @OrphanAlliance and @ShowHopeNow on Twitter!

Are you engaged in orphan care and adoption? If so, please share how in the comments and let’s make this everyone’s cause.

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

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