George Rebane

*** Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus and philanthropist, is an adviser to Obama on matters of technology.
*** The county’s Fire Safe Plan (aka part of the Safety Element of the county’s General Plan) is a tough document to digest …
*** Some facts matter, some don’t.
*** Obama, the messiah of hope and change, promised us a new future …

Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus and philanthropist, is an adviser to Obama on matters of technology.  He is now advocating that the government should have a Chief Technical Officer, similar to corporate CTOs, to coordinate the creation of technology in the land.  Some people are concerned that this will be another layer of bureaucracy that will only do well what bureaucracies do.  Until we hear more about this CTO position, to me it seems like another rich guy from the business world who doesn’t think there will be any problems in scaling processes and procedures from the corporate world to the government.  There is a lot of central control in companies, and it seems to work; why don’t we just scale it up and make the whole country tow the line?  People like Buffett, Rubin, and, now, Gates agree.

The county’s Fire Safe Plan (aka part of the Safety Element of the county’s General Plan) is a tough document to digest for those who don’t work with it regularly.  When it finishes the road to adoption, it will serve as the basis for regulations that tell us living in the unincorporated areas how we must prepare our properties for when wildfires come.  Few people really understand how the plan will affect them, therefore I suggested some time ago a simple summary of its mandates and recommendations.  If we know what’s in there, then we can tell our electeds what we like and don’t like, and we won’t waste time in meetings disagreeing on what’s really in there.  Well, one Supe thought this wasn’t really a hot idea and that things were good enough as is – after all, the county has gone through the pro forma period of public comment, etc.  A couple of other Supes are more receptive to the idea of clarifying the plan.  And Ted Owens, the current BoS chair, said that he would look into the matter with Steve DeCamp, our county’s able CDA director who is in charge of the final document, and who told me that he agrees that my one-pager idea would make it more understandable.  Here is my short statement to the BoS last Tuesday.  Download FireSafePlan080826.pdf

Some facts matter, some don’t.  The economy has not “tanked” by any of the long-adopted measures, and the globe has been cooling for the last ten years.  What’s a one-world collectivist to do with such news?  Easy, lie.

Obama, the messiah of hope and change, promised us a new future that leaves the business-as-usual Washington behind.  To make sure we all understand what he really meant by this, he picks Joe Biden as his VP.  Nuff said.