Santa Barbara Current

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

Construction on 101: Will It Ever End?

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:31:15 GMT

Lower Village bumper to bumper.

There are certain things one comes to accept as permanent features of life in Montecito.

The Pacific Ocean. The mountains. Fine weather.

Oh, and quakes, fire—and a biblical mudslide every 20-30 years (not once a century, as realtors like to say).

And Highway 101 under construction.

It’s been going on for so long that the orange traffic cone should be California’s new state emblem.

Montecito’s First Traffic Jam

By the 1920s, planners were already worrying about traffic through Montecito.

In 1926, California highway officials reported that traffic between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara was “heavy” and “steadily increasing.”

The existing Montecito road, parts of which dated to 1909, was no longer adequate.

There were dangerous curves. There wasn’t enough capacity.

Something had to be done.

So they widened it.

Remember this. It becomes something of a theme.

That same year, the federal government introduced its numbered highway system and the great coastal road became U.S. Highway 101.

It stretched from Southern California through Santa Barbara, San Francisco and the redwoods, eventually reaching Washington State.

Through Montecito, engineers widened and straightened 1.9 miles of roadway.

The result was hailed as one of the finest sections of the Coast Highway.

Traffic problem solved.

For approximately five minutes.

More Cars, More Road

101 gradually acquired all the characteristics of an interstate: multiple lanes, controlled access, interchanges, concrete barriers—and the ability to bring enormous numbers of automobiles to a complete standstill simultaneously.

By the 1960s, officials were once again worrying about congestion through Santa Barbara and considering whether 101 should be widened from four lanes to six.

This means Santa Barbara has been discussing how to fix Highway 101 for roughly as long as the Rolling Stones have been performing.

Parts of 101 were widened. Parts weren’t.

Three lanes became two. Traffic compressed. A bottleneck was created.

101 in Motion

After many years of deliberation came 101 In Motion, the major transportation study completed in 2006.

Its finding was revolutionary: Highway 101 needed more capacity.

This discovery produced plans for transit improvements, passenger rail and, most importantly, a continuous third freeway lane in each direction between Carpinteria and Santa Barbara.

The additional lane would operate as a high-occupancy vehicle lane during peak periods.

Thus began the enormous Highway 101: Carpinteria to Santa Barbara project.

Twenty years after 101 In Motion, Highway 101 is certainly in motion.

Mostly sideways.

The Coast Village Road Parking Lot

The official project descriptions are reassuring.

The lived experience is somewhat different.

Take Coast Village Road. Please (as the old joke goes).

Almost every day now it becomes gridlocked from one end to the other—from circle to circle. For hours.

Once upon a time, savvy residents possessed secret knowledge.

When 101 backed up, we knew the escape routes.

And then, when Coast Village Road backed up, we could still find refuge in Hot Springs Road or Coast Village Circle.

Not anymore.

Now everyone else—thanks to GPS navigation—knows them too, transforming shortcuts into long-cuts converging into bottlenecks.

Then there is Hermosillo Road.

Someone decided in the midst of all this Coast Village Road desperately needed a traffic light. (To my knowledge, Coast Village Road has never had a traffic light.)

A temporary traffic light.

“Temporary” is one of government’s lovelier words.

Income tax was “temporary” too.

The light arrived in April at the western entrance to Coast Village Road and now interrupts what was once a free-flowing village street.

There are presumably traffic engineers who possess sophisticated computer models proving this makes perfect sense.

Those of us sitting motionless in our cars have developed a simpler analytical model.

It consists of one question: What are the roadway/traffic engineers smoking?

Especially when you consider the non-flowing circle…

No Way Out

The really clever part is that escaping Highway 101 does not necessarily free you from construction.

Santa Barbara appears to be conducting a citywide experiment to determine how many roads can be dug up simultaneously before the population cracks.

Roadworks. Utility works. Lane closures. Barricades. Detours. Heavy equipment.

Signs directing you away from one closed road and toward another sign directing you away from another closed road.

But There is a Plan

Beneath this apparent municipal nervous breakdown lies an actual objective.

When the cones finally disappear, Highway 101 through the corridor is supposed to have three lanes instead of two in each direction, with the new lane operating as a carpool lane during peak periods.

There will be auxiliary lanes between San Ysidro and Olive Mill, intended to separate cars entering and leaving the freeway.

New bridges are being constructed over Romero, San Ysidro and Oak creeks.

Olive Mill, Hot Springs, and San Ysidro, already have their roundabouts.

Farther north, another carpool lane extends between Hermosillo Road and Salinas Street.

The Cabrillo Boulevard interchange is being rebuilt, with new freeway bridges and redesigned ramps.

The ultimate objective is a continuous six-lane corridor through what has historically been the great Carpinteria-Santa Barbara bottleneck.

Which sounds splendid.

There is just one minor matter.

When Do We Get It ?

The work is being completed in stages.

Some Montecito sections are said to be approaching completion—though you’d never know it by what you see with your own eyes.

Santa Barbara is another story.

The Cabrillo portion began construction in April 2026.

Its currently projected completion: December 8, 2028.

The northbound and southbound Cabrillo off-ramps are expected to remain closed until summer 2028.

So we have a while.

This assumes, of course, that December 8, 2028 means December 8, 2028.

But, when the magnificent new Highway 101 is finally finished, we shall have six beautiful lanes.

Of course, with many more automobiles coming our way, it will by then be obsolete—and, yes, in need of more widening.

****

For those suffering the indignities of the continuing construction chaos in the Montecito area, Arthur von Wiesenberger has put together a little song for you, “Montecito Magic”. You can hum, whistle, tap your brake foot, or quietly sing along as you wait to get through the latest Montecito traffic jam.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

In Sickness and in Health — and on the Ballot

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 13:30:33 GMT

Sari Domingues (R) with Tulsi Gabbard at the 2024 Moms for Liberty National Summit, Washington, D.C.

Two years ago, I shook Tulsi Gabbard‘s hand in Washington, D.C., at the 2024 Moms for Liberty National Summit. Little did I know then that both of us would soon be watching the men we love fight for their lives.

This spring, my husband, Joe, was diagnosed with an incurable but treatable form of bone-marrow cancer. He was hospitalized. The illness severely damaged his kidneys. Our life got very challenging, very fast.

If you have wondered why you have not seen much of me on the campaign trail these past three months, this is why. I was home. I was keeping a promise I made a long time ago: in sickness and in health. I have been at Joe’s side, caring for him and doing everything I can to be with him and to help him heal.

When someone you love becomes seriously ill, your priorities become crystal clear. There are moments of fear and anxiety. There are also waves of hope, faith, gratitude, and of a deeper appreciation for an ordinary morning: a cup of coffee, a call from a grandchild, a drive through the town where we grew up together.

Joe is getting stronger, little by little. Soon I will be with him at Stanford for about four to five weeks, where he will undergo a bone-marrow transplant. We are hopeful this treatment will eliminate his cancer and bring him into remission.

To everyone who knew what our family was walking through and kept us in your prayers: thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Your encouragement meant more than you may know.

Tulsi Gabbard’s Challenge

Tulsi’s story touched me because I understand the tsunami of fear, uncertainty, frustration, and hope, that come with watching someone you love deeply face a life-threatening illness. When I learned that her husband, Abraham, had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, my heart went out to their family. My thoughts and prayers are with them. At the end of a video she shared, Tulsi spoke of God’s unconditional love — of God as shelter and as strength. Those words have stayed with me. They have helped sustain us through these difficult days.

Still in the Race

Joe and I met at Santa Maria High School. I was a sophomore. He was a junior. How we found each other is a love story that is still unfolding. After long careers, we came home to raise our family and enjoy our grandchildren. And to do what we could for California and our country.

Santa Maria High School sweethearts, 1973

Married 1974, 52 short years ago

Parents to three sons, grandparents to five grandchildren

I also made a promise to the people of District 37.

My name will be on the ballot on November 3, 2026, as the Republican candidate for California State Assembly. I am not stepping off this race. The same character that sits at a hospital bedside is the same character I will take to Sacramento: show up, tell the truth, and not quit when the days get hard, no matter how hard they get.

Of course, I cannot be in two places at once. For four to five weeks, I will be at Stanford with Joe. Sacramento will not pause. The election will not pause. I will need your help while I am in that hospital holding the love of my life by his hand.

Pray for Joe. Walk a precinct (as I cannot be there to walk this month). Put a sign in your yard. Take a bundle of literature to your church, your neighbors, and your street. Help with banners and mail. Host a small gathering. Chip in what you can. Recruit one person who has never voted for me before. Such action is how an underdog takes back a seat.

Joe’s fight is ours at home. Winning District 37 is our fight in public. I will not quit either one.

I will be by Joe’s side, that was my promise before God. During these trying times, I ask you to stay with me and the campaign as well.

•••

Sari Domingues, Candidate, California State Assembly, District 37, can be reached at: sari4assembly.com or directly at (805) 714-7936.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

The Kissing Cousins of the Affordability Crises

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 13:30:34 GMT

There is no denying the fact that the affordability crisis is real. Our housing costs are beyond the reach of most citizens, especially young adults, and food, fuel, electricity, and even water, are more expensive than in other states too. However, if capitalism was the cause of the affordability crises, as young people have been led to believe, then why does it cost 2-3 times more to live in CA than the rest of the country?

Things cost more in CA because government costs more here, and government costs more in CA because government has served to create artificial shortages rather than abundance. This all started in Jerry Brown’s first term when he coined the phrase “less is more.”

The cost of gasoline, for instance, is now nearly double that in other states because the Newsom government has made it nearly impossible to drill for oil and produce affordable gasoline. Additionally, of course, we went all in with solar and wind, which costs more and delivers less power per dollar spent. These higher costs for fuel and electricity increase the cost of everything else.

Housing is more expensive here because most land in Santa Barbara County – some 90% – is off limits to development. That, plus the regulations, especially CEQA and various zoning machinations developers must go through, is extremely expensive and time-consuming and these costs are passed onto home buyers and renters. For instance, the homes in the Richards Ranch project in Orcutt will cost $100,000 more per unit, or more, than originally estimated, because of Machiavellian delays in getting the project approved and contrived water shortages by way of government fiat.

Younger voters, who have never been taught economics, are nonetheless, being led to believe the affordability crises is a function of capitalism. The truth remains, however, that unhindered capitalism, due to competition, ultimately serves to drive prices down, as competing businesses compete for consumer dollars while creating abundance.

Unfortunately, I can hardly remember when our state government wasn’t burdening business owners and entrepreneurs in myriad ways. For instance, most consumers don’t know the significance of the cost of litigation against businesses in this state. That is, California has been ranked as the #1 judicial hell hole in America more times than I can count. What does that mean? Businesses in CA have targets on their backs, thanks to our legislature and their creation known as PAGA lawsuits, which set up businesses to be sued by predatory lawyers for any number of minor violations of various laws.

“Free” Stuff Will Cost Even More

Nonetheless, younger voters have been led to believe that socialism will result in a better economy, but little do they know that socialism relies on even more government control of our economy, not less. Absolute government control of an economy, despite the promises of free stuff, always makes things worse by increasing shortages everywhere it has been tried, as the demand for free stuff always outstrips the supply, while robbing producers of incentives. That, plus there is no such thing as free stuff or equal outcomes for one and all. Generations X, Y, and Z missed that lesson as they were all lining up for their participation trophies. Lost on them is P.J. O’Rourke’s observation, “If you think things are expensive now, wait till they are free.”

Even in countries that embrace a socialist-lite type approach to services, such as Canada’s universal healthcare, the wait to see a general practitioner (GP) can range from a few days, if you already have a regular family doctor, to several months or even years if you need a new one. The median wait time for Canadian patients from a general practitioner referral to a specialist is 7 months! That long of a wait is a death sentence for some patients under the guise of “universal health care.”

Of course, we already live with socialist-type policies, even though the Democratic Socialists of America area somewhat late arrivals. That is because woke Democrats and members of the DSA are kissing cousins.

For instance, for decades, progressives have sought to undermine the Constitution in any number of ways. The Nick Shirley Act, for example, will punish any member of the press who outs a politician on corruption. Freedom of the press? Not in CA. The DSA, for its part, wants to do away with the Constitution altogether as they have no patience for nibbling around the edges of our unalienable rights.

The progressives have used various greenhouse gas mandates to eliminate industry in our state, while the DSA wants to take over control of industry outright.

The latest example of California’s stupid and expensive policies has to do with car tires. California is going to eliminate 70% of the tires on the market because they don’t roll “efficiently.” The DSA, on the other hand, states, “It is time for a new revolution, a revolution against an institution that enslaves Americans — a revolution against cars. Americans have developed Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to cars and turn a blind eye to the pain and suffering they cause. It is time for Americans to mobilize against the car-centric infrastructure and institutions that our society has created”.

Unfortunately, the people complaining the loudest about capitalism will probably never avail themselves of the opportunity to have a talk with any number of people who risked everything to come to America after they escaped the brutal reality of socialism. It has long been noticed that we don’t need fences to keep people in our country, but other countries certainly do.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

Shouldn’t Have Took More than You Gave

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:30:32 GMT

I would like to start this discussion with a land acknowledgement. I am presently sitting on “stolen” land here on the Central Coast of California. Land taken from the Spanish who took it from the Chumash who took it from Oog the caveman who took it from….

There, I feel better now.

But I’m keeping my house. I worked hard and bought it fair and square… so you aren’t “taking” it from me like the sick, blighted, and pathological Democratic Socialists want to do. They are a disease that is spreading like the Fauci virus.

But we have a vaccine for that.

It’s called “VOTE.”

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

Meet The (Well-Paid) Do-Nothing Candidates

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:30:42 GMT

As we approach the mid-term election – so named because it is held midway between presidential elections – California voters get to choose whether they wish to vote for candidates who do “nothing.”

Perhaps the most legendary example is Vice President Kamala Harris’s approach to the border problem: do nothing.

Consider the group from the Sacramento-San Francisco area who did “nothing” in response to San Francisco’s “GIFT” program in 2022: the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Governor Gavin Newsom, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla, Congressman Eric Swalwell, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and his wife Mia Bonta (currently occupying her husband’s former position in the California State Assembly), and California State Senator Scott Wiener.

The current Democrat candidate for governor Xavier Becerra, as the Secretary of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had the duty and power to stop the GIFT program: but did nothing.

The GIFT Program

In June, 2018, San Franciscans elected London Breed as their mayor. Breed’s biography indicates she served an internship under Willie Brown before being elected as the first Black woman mayor of San Francisco.

In 2022, during Governor Gavin Newsom’s COVID restrictions that reduced the opportunity for many residents to earn a living, Mayor Breed guided the San Francisco City Council to enact the Guaranteed Income for Transgender People (GIFT) pilot program, designed to provide unrestricted cash payments paired with healthcare and support services to a highly specific demographic.

G.I.F.T. | Guaranteed Income for Transgender People | San Francisco

GIFT is a financial assistance program for low-income Transgender, Non-Binary, Gender Non-Conforming, and Intersex.

Core Eligibility Criteria

Applicants had to identify as transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming, or intersex (TGI).
The individual’s income could not exceed $600 per month.
Must be a resident of the City and County of San Francisco.
Must be at least 18 years old.
Open to all qualifying residents, explicitly including undocumented individuals.

Enrollment Priorities & Enrollment Cap

The pilot program was restricted to a cohort of 55 participants.
The application process prioritized individuals who were Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC). It also gave weight to those experiencing homelessness, living with chronic illness or disabilities, youth and elders, monolingual Spanish speakers, and those who were legally vulnerable (such as formerly incarcerated individuals or sex workers).

Financial Assistance

$1,200 per month in unrestricted cash.
Provided for up to 18 months (originally scheduled from January 2023 to June 2024).
Reloadable Visa debit cards issued monthly.
Participants did not have to report or justify their spending.

Wrap-Around Care Services

Program participants were granted access to gender-affirming medical and mental healthcare, holistic case management, and tailored financial coaching provided by Lyon-Martin Community Health Services and The Transgender District.

Mandatory Requirements

To remain in the program, recipients were required to complete an evaluation survey every three months to help researchers study the impact of guaranteed income.

The Law

The GIFT program not only expressly discriminated based on race, creed, national origin, gender, and sexual preference, but also created a form of discrimination among transgenders by giving preference to Black and Latino men who identified as women over other races of men and over all women who identify as men.

This was occurring in the home town of many of the Democrat office holders.

Did anyone try to stop it?

In January 2024, Judicial Watch, labeled a “right-wing watchdog,” on behalf of taxpayers Michael Phillips, Paul Wildes, and Reed Sandburg, filed the lawsuit Phillips v Breed against Mayor London Breed, Treasurer Jose Cisneros, and City Administrator Carmen Chu.

The suit argued that the program unconstitutionally distributed taxpayer funds by prioritizing participants based on race, sex, and transgender status, violating equal protection provisions under the California Constitution.

Even though all the funds had been spent by January 2024, the city did not terminate GIFT (appropriately named), which meant they retained the option of refunding it at a future time.

Judicial Watch continued its efforts to terminate the program.

After a year of fighting Judicial Watch’s attempts to shut it down, after the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump was sworn in as president and Harris and Becerra were no longer in office, the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco voted 7-3 to authorize a settlement.

The Settlement

—San Franciscan agreed to discontinue its GIFT program, to not create a new guaranteed income program with the same eligibility criteria, and to pay $3,250 attorneys’ fees and costs.

Notice San Francisco did not agree not to create similar programs with slightly different eligibility criteria.

Subsequently

San Francisco voted for a new mayor and the Democrats took care of the named defendants in the lawsuit.

—London Breed is active in Democrat speaking engagements while the FBI investigates allegations concerning a past appointment to the Board of Supervisors,

—Jose Cisneros continues as the treasurer for the City and County of San Francisco, where he serves as the city’s banker and chief investment officer,

—Carmen Chu was sworn in for her second term as City Administrator overseeing 25-27 departments and also serves as a Regent of the University of California.

The Democrats who did nothing to stop the harm thrust on citizens by the GIFT program remain in office.

That is, other than Xavier Becerra who, after being removed from office by the Trump presidency, became the Democrat nominee for governor of California.

The Future

Will San Francisco, or some other town, create another program that abuses so many of its residents?

Are there, or will there be, similar programs elsewhere in California?

The GIFT program demonstrates the importance of having a governor who will take the actions necessary to protect Californians.

Don’t give Xavier Becerra the opportunity to continue to do nothing.

Vote for Steve Hilton for Governor.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

Don’t Tread on Me

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:31:25 GMT

Courtesy of AssemblyGOP

Californians Holding on by a Tread

And the Newsom administration keeps tightening the screws while people vote with their feet.

The California Energy Commission just dusted off a 23-year-old law to restrict which replacement tires you can buy. Commissioner Nancy Skinner, a former state senator with zero energy background appointed by Governor Newsom for her loyalty, helped push it through. She is the same lawmaker who helped make theft under $950 a misdemeanor.

Now the state limits tire choices in the name of efficiency and lower fuel costs.

California already imposes some of the highest gas taxes and regulatory costs in the country. Those policies drive prices far above the national average. Officials then point to the high prices they created and use them to justify still more rules. Electric vehicles are heavy and burn through tires faster than gas cars. As the state forces more people into EVs, the same officials find new ways to raise the cost of keeping those cars on the road. It’s the arsonist-firefighter scenario: light the fire, then claim credit for fighting it. In their own bills, California politicians have celebrated high gas prices for boosting public transit ridership.

The pain is the point.

Now comes another idea from Sacramento. AB 1421 would create a system that charges drivers based on miles driven. At 6 cents per mile, someone driving 15,000 miles a year would pay $900. That hits commuters, parents taking kids to school and practice, nurses, contractors, and small business owners hardest. Working families who cannot afford to live close to their jobs would pay more just to get to work. The bill does not solve an under-taxation problem. California does not have an affordability crisis because people are not taxed enough.

At the same time, Democrats advanced AB 2108, a bill that would expand diversion programs for retail theft when it can be framed as a “crime of necessity and poverty.” Nearly every Democrat voted for the version that reached the state senate. After voters passed Proposition 36 to toughen penalties for repeat theft and drug crimes, Sacramento is already looking for ways around it. Their message is clear: if you steal and you claim poverty, the system should treat you more gently. Ordinary people who play by the rules get to watch stores lock up merchandise and raise prices to cover the losses.

Because of Sacramento and local government far-left policies, California leads the nation in net domestic migration loss. Hundreds of thousands of residents have left for states with lower costs and fewer barriers in recent years. Population numbers have stalled or dipped slightly. Business starts lag too. California is the most regulated state in America by a wide margin. We have roughly 420,000 regulations, more than 120,000 above the next highest state, New York. The average business faces far more “shall,” “must,” and “prohibited” requirements here than anywhere else. A Public Policy Institute of California report confirms the state is an extreme outlier on these constraints, especially in environment, health, and commerce. States with heavier constraint loads tend to see fewer new businesses form.

As of early 2024, California recorded the nation’s highest unemployment rate, lowest job growth, lowest income growth, and highest poverty rate. The state budget faces ballooning deficits. Chief Executive magazine ranked it the worst state in America to do business for the tenth year in a row. For a long time, California’s economy soared because the foundations of growth were solid. Those foundations have been steadily undermined by the same policies that raise costs, limit choices, and soften accountability for crime.

People are leaving, yet the Democrats “housing crisis” continues. New housing units have been added in recent years, huge condo developments and “affordable” housing are popping up everywhere you look. Did everyone take their housing with them when they moved? Who are they building all the housing for? Housing is expensive and scarce due to their regulations and sanctuary policies.

Border towns in Nevada already joke about opening shops that sell the tires, lawn equipment, and light bulbs California makes harder or illegal to buy. The pattern is the same: more rules, higher costs on driving, fewer new businesses, softer treatment of property crime, and a steady outflow of people who can afford to leave.

Why do legislators and the governor keep adding layers of control and new ways to charge drivers when the results are so plain? Who benefits when everyday goods and the ability to drive become more expensive? If the goal is affordability and opportunity, why does every major policy choice point the other direction? And if hundreds of thousands of residents can leave without taking the housing stock with them, what does that say about the real drivers of the shortage?

California’s leaders act as if the state’s problems are the result of mysterious forces beyond their control. The record shows otherwise. The constraints, the costs, the mileage schemes, and the crime policies are choices. People are responding to those choices by leaving, their family trees uprooted and planted in other states, their businesses enriching other communities.

California is left to those who are dependent on government subsidies and/or government employment.

That is not a recipe for future success.

Elections matter.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

Montecito Tar Baby

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:31:10 GMT

Trouble in Paradise

Lately, stepping onto Butterfly Beach means returning home with something resembling roofing compound attached to the soles of your feet, sandals, or running shoes.

Tar has always been a minor irritant.

This summer, tar is a major one.

Not merely bits of tar here and there after a stroll on the sand along the surf.

At various points along the coast from Carpinteria to Santa Barbara, beach-goers are experiencing saturated globs of thick black oil. You can even see patches of fresh-looking crude washing ashore (it usually hides beneath the sand). And smell petroleum odors.

Some of it is natural.

Some, man-made, albeit from a century ago.

Long before anyone drilled for fossil fuel beneath Santa Barbara County, the Santa Barbara Channel was leaking it all by itself.

Off Coal Oil Point, near UC Santa Barbara, oil and natural gas escape continuously through cracks in the ocean floor. The seep field there is among the most prolific known marine petroleum seep areas in the world.

The Chumash knew about the tar long before Europeans arrived. They called the naturally occurring substance woqo and put it to practical use, including sealing their plank canoes.

Then the European-Americans arrived and thought: We should drill this.

In the 1890s, oil was discovered around Summerland, an enclave just east of Montecito settled originally as a spiritualist community. They must have been channeling dinosaurs.

Much of the fossil fuel was just offshore.

Oilmen built piers and put oil derricks on them.

By the turn of the century, the Summerland shoreline had become an extraordinary industrial forest: wooden piers shot into the Pacific, each crowded with derricks reaching down into the oil-bearing formations beneath the seabed.

In fact, Summerland is credited (or blamed) with pioneering offshore oil production in the United States.

Eventually the wells stopped producing.

The derricks disappeared. The beaches became beaches again.

But underneath the water: old wells.

Many were abandoned according to standards that would not impress a modern petroleum engineer. Some have subsequently leaked, and California has spent decades locating and sealing remnants of the first offshore-oil age.

When unusually large amounts of oily material began appearing this summer, authorities investigated.

The Coast Guard and California Department of Fish and Wildlife got involved.

The conclusion: natural seepage rather than a known industrial spill.

Add to the mix Santa Barbara Channel’s own delivery system.

Oil rises naturally from the seabed. Sun, waves and microorganisms weather it. The lighter components evaporate. What remains becomes increasingly thick and sticky.

Currents take over. And wind. Tides participate.

Eventually black packages arrive on the beach, some barely concealed beneath sand, others (this summer) blatantly visible.

A change in currents, swell, wind or tides can concentrate material and deposit it along a specific section of coastline, explaining why one particular week can seem dramatically worse than another.

Butterfly Beach appears to have drawn the short straw this season.

The Great Equalizer

Tar does not recognize room rates at the Miramar. It has zero interest in ZIP codes.

It waits for everyone.

There are remedies.

Oil dissolves oil, which is why baby oil, mineral oil, olive oil, and similar substances work better than attacking it with soap and water.

Even better, a solution from my favorite acupuncturist…

WIPE OUT!

Tourists, caught unprepared, have been seen ferociously wiping their feet or footwear on cement surfaces, leaving a trail of dried tar in their wake between the beach and Coast Village Road.

Montecitans have quietly avoided the beach this summer.

Local realtors whisper, “Tell no one.”

I’m telling all—along with this silver-lining:

Day-trippers filling this town with traffic and noise pollution, visiting the beach and getting their feet covered in tar, well, with any luck… they won’t return.

(As TC Boyle wrote so eloquently in The New Yorker after the 2018 debris flow—a favored euphemism for mudslide— “I want my village back.”)

Drill, Baby, Drill?

There is one final twist to this tale.

The Trump administration is pushing to revive and expand offshore oil production along the California coast. One proposal would hydraulically fracture sixteen existing wells from Platform Gilda in the Santa Barbara Channel.

For those scraping tar from their feet this summer, the obvious question is:

Will more drilling mean more tar?

More offshore production unquestionably opens the possibility of wells failing, pipelines leaking. Santa Barbara requires no history lesson about what happens when large quantities of crude oil escape into the Channel.

But beneath these waters, something rather peculiar has already been observed: natural hydrocarbon seepage declined dramatically in an area where oil was extracted.

Why?

Drilling relieves pressure.

Think of a petroleum reservoir beneath the seabed as a pressurized container riddled with tiny escape routes. Left alone, oil and gas find cracks and faults and push their way upward into the ocean. But when you place a producing well into that reservoir and remove hydrocarbons, pressure subsides and natural leaks diminish.

That’s the good news.

The bad news: If something goes catastrophically wrong with offshore drilling, spills would lead to vastly more oil on the beach.

Which leaves us with a wonderfully Californian paradox:

Drilling for oil will likely reduce the amount of oil washing ashore.

Unless, of course, Murphy’s Law cuts in… and something goes terribly wrong.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

Coastal Commission Stewardship Has Devolved into Strangulation

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 13:31:57 GMT

California Coastal Management Program Needs Adjustment

We all have been witnessing how the California Coastal Commission has moved dangerously far from the noble purpose for which it was created in 1972.

Protecting our magnificent coastline is important. But protection should not mean obstruction. Regulation should not mean paralysis. And environmental stewardship should not become a justification for endless bureaucracy, litigation, and delay.

For many Californians, the Coastal Commission has become an agency perceived as lacking common sense, hostile to reasonable development, and increasingly disconnected from the people and communities affected by its decisions.

We saw the consequences of this regulatory culture after the devastating Palisades fire. Families who lost everything need government agencies focused on helping them rebuild their homes and their lives—not creating another maze of permits, studies, and delays, while allowing expensive projects of questionable practical value.

Santa Barbara Provides Another Example
Environmental organizations, including the Environmental Defense Center in Santa Barbara, have every right to advocate for their beliefs. But the public should also be willing to ask a difficult question: does a system built around continuing litigation and fundraising create incentives to actually resolve environmental problems—or to perpetuate the conflicts that sustain those organizations?

The Sable Offshore situation deserves particular federal scrutiny. And in evaluating that situation, we should acknowledge an important environmental fact about the Santa Barbara Channel: oil has been entering this marine environment naturally for centuries.

NOAA itself reports that the natural seeps around Coal Oil Point are among the most active in the world, releasing approximately 6,500 to 7,000 gallons of oil every day. That translates to approximately 2.4 to 2.6 million gallons every year through a natural geological process.

Put those numbers in perspective. In the 2015 Refugio oil spill, a pipeline owned and operated by Plains All American Pipeline ruptured, releasing more than 21,000 gallons of crude oil to the ocean. It was a serious accident that caused real environmental damage and required a major cleanup response.

But at the estimated natural seepage rate around Coal Oil Point, approximately 123,000 gallons naturally enters the marine environment in only about 18 to 19 days. Over the course of a year, the volume of natural seepage is roughly 20 times that 123,000-gallon quantity.

That comparison does not suggest that a sudden pipeline spill and gradual natural seepage have identical environmental consequences. They clearly do not. A concentrated accidental release can have much more immediate effects on wildlife and can overwhelm an ecosystem.

But the comparison provides important context. Natural seepage is a major and longstanding feature of the Santa Barbara marine environment, and the presence of oil or tar along our beaches cannot automatically be attributed to industrial activity. In fact, NOAA has acknowledged that distinguishing oil from the 2015 pipeline spill from oil produced by the area’s ongoing natural seeps was itself a challenge during the response.

The more important question today should be: what has been done to prevent another pipeline accident?

The Case of Sable Offshore
It is important to remember that Sable Offshore did not own or operate this pipeline when the 2015 Refugio spill occurred. The responsible party was Plains All American Pipeline. Sable acquired the Santa Ynez assets years later. Sable did not cause the 2015 problem—it inherited the pipeline and undertook the work required to fix it.

The pipeline involved in the 2015 accident did not simply reopen unchanged.
Sable reports that it completed the required anomaly-repair program on Pipeline Segments 324 and 325 under the federal Consent Decree. It then successfully completed hydrostatic testing of all segments of the Santa Ynez Pipeline System, satisfying the final operational condition under that Consent Decree for resuming petroleum transportation through those segments.

That distinction matters.

Sable is being asked to address the consequences of an accident it did not cause, and it has invested substantial resources repairing, testing and upgrading infrastructure it inherited.

That is precisely what responsible environmental regulation should accomplish: identify a problem, require it to be corrected, establish rigorous safety standards, verify compliance, and then provide a clear path forward.

Instead, after extensive repairs, testing, federal and state oversight, and years of regulatory review, the project has remained the subject of continuing litigation and regulatory conflict.

At some point, we have to ask whether the regulatory process is still principally about ensuring safety—or whether preventing operation itself has become the objective.
The goal cannot simply be to prevent something from operating indefinitely.

We need to acknowledge reality.

NOAA Needs To Be More Flexible

The world remains dependent upon oil. Commercial airplanes cannot presently operate on batteries. Bridges, medical equipment, computers, transportation systems and countless everyday products depend upon petroleum and petrochemicals.
California cannot demand these products while pretending the infrastructure necessary to produce energy should exist somewhere else.

And today’s global political environment makes reliable domestic energy infrastructure a matter not only of economics, but also of national security and stability.

Environmental protection and energy production do not have to be mutually exclusive.

We should demand rigorous standards. We should demand modern technology. We should demand monitoring, inspections and accountability. But when companies meet those requirements, there must also be a reasonable and predictable path to operation.

We need regulators who solve problems instead of creating permanent obstacles.
I respectfully ask NOAA to examine whether California’s coastal management program still fulfills the purposes of the Coastal Zone Management Act—or whether bureaucracy, litigation, and obstruction have overtaken those purposes.

*****

Lena Levanov moved from Toronto to California in 2011. She is a Santa Barbara resident and a proud mother and grandmother.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

You Can Vote in California but You Can’t Fish Without an ID

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 13:30:41 GMT

When your vote-by-mail ballot arrives in less than two months, you are going to have the chance to vote for Proposition 39: Voter ID. I am hoping you will be prepared to encourage everyone you know to vote for this proposition to ensure election integrity.

Prop 39 requires first-time registrants to present a form of ID that is less onerous than that which the government currently requires to get on a plane or go into a federal building. In California, this ID is called Real ID. During the online REAL ID application process, residents are required to present documents that prove identity (e.g., valid passport or birth certificate) and residency (e.g., utility bill, bank statement).

Prop 39 requires nothing more than a valid CA ID for in-person voting. That would include a CA driver’s license or a (free) voter ID card available to any voter who requests one. Under Prop 39, no voter will be required to show a birth certificate, marriage license, etc. to vote. The citizenship verification is all done by the government using existing government data systems.

Citizens wishing to vote by mail can continue to do so and would simply be required to enter the last four digits of their SSN or REAL ID on the ballot envelope to further protect them from the fraud associated with strangers submitting ballots in their name without their permission.

Regardless of this common sense, no-hassle approach, and considering the fact that upwards of 80 percent of all citizens favor voter ID, nevertheless, Democrats and Socialists are opposed.

Why?

The only logical explanation is that they want people to be able to vote without our ability to determine whether it is legal or not for them to do so. That is plain to see because the Prop 39 requirements to vote are not at all arduous compared to other activities that also require an ID.

Making It More Difficult to Cheat

Most Americans want to make it easy to vote but hard to cheat.

Let me repeat that. What we want in our elections is to make it easy to vote but hard to cheat.

Easy to vote means you submit your CA ID when you go to vote. Prop 39 is all about making it hard to cheat by requiring newly registered voters to prove their identity as a citizen the first time they register to vote. The left argues that this will disenfranchise minorities and women.

That is not true.

Consider all the other things in life that require an ID. Presenting a driver’s license is required for renting a car, opening a bank account, purchasing a car, getting a job, and in some states, you must present your driver’s license to donate blood. Women have been able to get a new ID once they get married quite easily. Nobody has claimed that minorities and women can’t fly or go on cruise ships; getting a valid ID and/or passport is required for these activities as well, so why the double standard compared to imposing these same or lesser requirements for voting?

Finally, to get something as mundane as a fishing license in CA you must present a DMV ID, passport, green card, or military ID. These requirements are much more onerous than what we currently require to preserve the sanctity of the right to vote.

That is, today it is easier to vote than fish in CA!

AG Bonta’s Sleazy Replacement Language

Of course, because we live in the banana republic of CA, it wouldn’t be election season without our state Attorney General Rob Bonta trying to manipulate and dupe voters by assigning a ballot title to Prop 39 to confuse and dissuade voters as to the true intentions and goals of the proposition.

How so?

Bonta knows that some people will only read the title of the proposition to determine how they will vote.

As reported by Katy Grimes of the California Globe: The original FAIR Prop 39 title, on September 19, 2025, was as follows:

Establishes Additional Voter Identification and citizenship Verification Requirements.

Initiative Constitutional Amendment. This measure would amend the California Constitution to further require that voters present government-issued identification at the polls or the last four digits of a government-issued identification number when voting by mail; the State provide voter identification cards on request; and elections officials annually report percentage of each county’s voters whose citizenship they have verified.

Attorney General Rob Bonta replaced that language with this:

Revised dishonest Prop 39 Title as of July 21, 2026:

Prohibits Citizens from Voting Unless They Present Government-issued Identification.

Initiative Constitutional Amendment. Invalidates mail ballots that do not have last four digits of designated government-issued identification number written on envelope. Prohibits in-person voting without presenting government-issued identification.

Vote YES on Prop 39

As Katy Grimes notes, “Attorney General Rob Bonta is corruptly trying to rig the election against Prop 39 by falsely claiming it prohibits citizens from voting.”

So please tell everyone you know that Proposition 39 is going to be on the ballot this fall and ask them to please vote YES.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

How do you Spell Mississippi?

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 13:31:30 GMT

Mississippi Bests California in Reading and Math. By a Lot.

When I was a kid back in 1970s California, I learned to spell complicated words like Mississippi. Mrs. Robbins said it slowly. M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I. The second the “double-P” landed, our third-grade class lost it.

“Pee-pee!”

Giggles everywhere. Mrs. Robbins sighed. Unprompted, we spelled it – again and again – to more giggles and laughter on many a bus ride home.

That chant was not just pure phonics. It used rhythm, repetition, and chunking as well. It made a long and an otherwise difficult word stick. In short, it followed the science of learning.

Memory works better with a beat and a pattern.

I guess you can say that back in the day Mississippi taught California children how to spell its name. Maybe there is something even more important it can teach us now?

The Mississippi education system was once – like California today – in a hole. In 2013, Mississippi ranked 49th in fourth-grade reading skills on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It ranked last in math. Yet, by 2024 it had climbed to ninth in reading. Its average score now sits above the national mark.

When researchers adjust for poverty and demographics, Mississippi ranks first in the country in both fourth-grade reading and math.

First.

In both Reading and Math.

Black students and low-income students in Mississippi outperform their peers in most other states, including California. This happens in one of the poorest states in America.

In contrast, since 2013, California educational outcomes have remained stuck like a stick in the mud. Our state spent those same years raising taxes, not scores.

Proposition 30 and Proposition 55 were sold as temporary fixes for schools. Those taxes brought in more than $120 billion and were largely spent on an ineffective bureaucracy. Reading and math scores flatlined; proficiency stayed low. Enrollment fell by half a million students.

Voters and parents should realize that education results aren’t just about the amount of money spent.

Mississippi spends about $12,300 per student. California spends more than $20,000, 80% more. Mississippi spends far less and gets better early results – and once one accounts for students’ demographics and family income, they shine.

Q. What did Mississippi do that could account for such impressive educational gains?

A. It passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act.

And stuck with it.

Every child in the early grades is screened several times a year. Kids who fall behind get intensive help right away. Teachers receive coaching in the science of reading. The five core skills—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension—are taught systematically.

Students who cannot read at grade level by the end of third grade are held back. They are not pushed along in the name of equity. They get daily science-based instruction, not busywork. Schools receive clear A-to-F grades. Growth for the lowest-performing students counts heavily.

No miracle. Just clear goals, early detection, learning based incentives and real consequences. Reading became a skill which had to be mastered before they advanced, not blindly marched through the grades without achieving competency.

Mississippi later extended the same approach into middle school.

Mississippi’s reforms stuck because of the incentives of the adults entrusted to their care.

Too Much Power in Teachers’ Union Hands

The California Teachers Association ranks as the second-strongest teacher union in the country. It claims roughly 300,000 members. It enjoys full collective-bargaining rights, negotiates binding contracts on pay, hours, class size, and evaluations, and has the legal right to strike.

CTA’s political spending and electoral influence are enormous, with a hand in every school board race, and by extension, everything from curriculum to superintendent hires, across the state.

Mississippi’s main teacher group – the Mississippi Association of Educators – has about 8,000 members and ranks near the bottom in strength—47th.

Mississippi is a right-to-work state. Traditional collective bargaining is limited for most teachers. Strikes are illegal. Political influence and resources stay low. Unions are not sitting on both sides of the bargaining table dealing to themselves. In short, teachers’ unions in Mississippi had far less ability to block changes that put student results first.

California has tried pieces of the Mississippi model. It has not adopted the full package or the union-lite incentive structure that ensures that educators focus on outcomes rather than just feathering their nests. Coaching is uneven. Accountability stays soft.

Incidentally, California’s Proposition 3 in this November election would make the higher California tax rates permanent. It asks for more money for schools without requiring better results. Fourteen years of elevated revenue already failed to lift proficiency. Making it a permanent stream will not change that. It will only enlarge the system that has already failed. California needs to stop looking down on Mississippi and start looking at what that state has done right.

Large Gains, Limited Financial Resources

We are not educating kids. We are just pissing away money and, more importantly, pissing away the futures of our children.

Why do so many California educators refuse to follow what works? Mississippi has the highest share of Black residents of any state. Is that the real problem? Could the leadership of the California Teachers Association be so locked into its own financial incentives and power that it rejects proven results from a poorer, Blacker state? Maybe the CTA’s own notorious wokeness is blinded by their paychecks and power?

That old bus chant was never about geography or politics. It was about mastery. A hard word became easy because adults insisted children learn and they gave us methods that worked.

Over the last decade and a half, Mississippi recovered that expectation of competency. California still treats competency as a barrier that is somehow impossible to overcome.

Mississippi showed large gains are possible even under tight budgets and high poverty. California does not need any more taxes. It needs the will to put student learning ahead of the adult’s insatiable financial and political interests. Like the Mississippi Teachers Union, the CTA can have a seat on the bus. But it should not be allowed to drive the school bus over a cliff.

Those children, like myself, who once giggled at “pee-pee” decades ago benefited from an effective California education system in which the outcomes were prized and the bureaucracy constrained.

School kids sitting in California classrooms today deserve the same.

*** Mathew Martin, a Bakersfield native and longtime California resident, is a retired portfolio manager who co-founded and ran Broadreach Growth Fund for 25 years after earlier roles in institutional research and investment management.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

France’s Earliest Grape Harvest in Half a Millenium Begins

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 13:31:55 GMT

This week, in wine-growing France, from Bordeaux to Burgundy and beyond, grape pickers are out in force, swarming vineyards like ants to bring in the earliest harvest in 500 years. Here in Meursault, where I now live, the vendanges began on Monday, the 17th of August. Last year, they began at the end of August.

To say there has been much anguish in France over this summer’s heat and how it’s affecting vacationers and wine harvests is not an exaggeration. The French treasure their vacations (les Juillettistes in July, the aoûtiens in August) as much as they do their wine. Given the fires in Bordeaux and Dijon and the excessive drought, vignerons and vacanciers have had many a sleepless night.

But all is well here in Meursault, a tiny village of 80 winemakers in a population of 1400. Although quantity will be down as much as 50 percent in some cases, the quality of the grapes may produce a superior vintage. In Bordeaux, the situation is different, as the ashes from the fires that settled on the vineyards has affected both quantity and quality.

One vineyard owner in Burgundy was quoted by a local news site as saying they were “very surprised” at the quality of the grapes, which she had expected to be too dry due to the drought, but were in fact “beautiful bunches.” She displayed a glass of newly-pressed nectar – a dark, creamy yellow, nearly orange – to illustrate the exceptional alcohol content of over 15 percent. Normally, a Chardonnay has between 13 to 13.5 percent alcohol content.

This morning on my early morning walk, to escape the heat, the vineyards were crawling with saisonniers (workers who come to France from Italy, Portugal, Eastern Europe, the U.K. and America, to pick grapes for a minimum wage of 12 euros per hour, room, board, and to experience a French harvest). The harvest used to last two weeks. This year because of the unusual conditions – smaller grape clusters, and fewer leaves, making the clusters easier to pick – the harvest could be over in just one week, at least for the smaller domaines.

A Thousand Years of Growing Grapes

Little has changed since the inhabitants of Meursault’s wine appellation began growing vines nearly a thousand years ago (in 1093); the gentle slopes range from 199 to 458 meters above sea level providing (in the past) the region with a warm temperate oceanic climate. What has changed is the climate. Another change – for walkers such as I – are the cabottes. Cabottes, located in the vineyards, are charming, small structures, made from flat rocks and are square, rectangular, or round. They were used as shelters for wine pickers and to store tools. Now they are used by picnickers from afar. These intruders seem out of place in the vineyards, as do the cyclists, who jam up the small place in the town’s center.

One advantage of the drought has been the lack of mildew associated with wet conditions, making the grapes very healthy. The absence of any significant hailstorms in Meursault this summer has also benefited the harvest. I remember my son-in-law, just a few years ago, having to go into the vineyards at 3 am to set up shockwave generators or burn a mixture of acetone and silver iodide three to four hours before a storm was due to hit the vineyards, to break up the cloud-carrying hail.

The grape yields that have been affected are from younger vines that can’t withstand excessive heat. The vines’ flowers were also burned by the sun earlier in the season, which meant the grapes were smaller with less fruit.

Meursault wine appellation only produces white wine. The terroir and the climate of Meursault make the cultivation of the white grape varieties more favorable than red. The grape varieties grown are Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, and Sauvignon Blanc. These varieties make up about 95 percent of the local vineyards. The remaining five percent is Pinot Noir, produced in a cluster of vineyards close to the neighboring village of Volnay, and bottled as Volnay Santenots.

Meursault is named after the Latin Mûris Saltus, translated as “Mouse Leap,” a river across the town, named by Roman soldiers. Like every commune in Côté-d’Or, the history of Meursault’s wine appellation is closely linked with the church. The new Cistercian abbey at Citeaux was formed by the ascetic Robert de Molesmes in 1098 on land gifted by Duke Odo of Burgundy. More donations and locals followed the church over the next couple of centuries making Meursault the heart of the famed Hospices de Beaune’s white wine holding

A Delicious Time to be Alive and in France

When my late husband, Richard, and I started to come to Meursault twenty years ago to visit our daughter and husband, who began working for prestigious local vineyards, the vendanges started in mid-October. It was a glorious time of the year; cool temperatures prevailed during the day for wonderful walks surrounded by beautiful foliage, leading to pleasant evenings sitting out on the terrace for pleasant aperitifs, followed by typically leisurely dinners that our children embraced as they became more French.

With the arrival of grandchildren, our annual October visits became a welcome part of the vendange, taking care of two small children while their parents worked, often from 7 am to 7 pm. It was a delicious time for Richard and me.

Since I moved here three years ago, temperatures have been getting warmer, and the vendange had been creeping into September, and now into August. Climate change is rewriting the calendar for families in Meursault and the rest of wine-producing France. For this past week, I’ve been the mami-taxi (granny-taxi), transporting my two grandchildren (10 and 13) to public pools as they await (willingly) the opening of school on September 1.

Their parents have decided to put a swimming pool into their grounds so next summer… Well, I can’t wait!

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

The New California Current

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:31:03 GMT

We at Santa Barbara Current celebrated the launch of the first edition of California Current on, appropriately, July 4^th, and we plan to publish once or twice a week, most likely on Friday and Saturday.

Regular subscribers to Santa Barbara Current may not be aware of this, and neither perhaps are many Jim’s Journal readers.

We want to change that.

California Current was launched to fill the same void statewide that Santa Barbara Current fills in its limited area. There is no established Santa Barbara-based or California-based opinion site that speaks exclusively to common-sense voters of a conservative bent.

Right now we’re deep into the November ballot. California Current will publish in-depth analyses of all 14 California propositions from our unique perspective. Four are already live.

Since Democrat politicians in this state have taken the position that debate between candidates is neither warranted nor desired, we’ll have interviews with many of the Republican candidates for statewide office that you’d otherwise never hear from.

You can subscribe for free, but of course we would rather you commit a small yearly sum and become a paid subscriber to California Current. We’ll need your contributions to continue the effort. We have plans for paid-members-only events before and after the November election, so be sure to be a paid-up California Current subscriber!

Welcome aboard!

If you do not wish to receive California Current, you can cancel anytime.

Until the state of California gets out from under the power and influence of the veto-proof super majority of Democrats in the state legislature, our efforts in tiny Santa Barbara will be for naught.

The Props So Far

In case you missed the first few issues of California Current, you should know that James Fenkner is in the middle of analyzing and opining on each of the 14 Proposals that will be on your ballot, come November 3^rd.

Here in capsule format are his observations so far:

Prop 1: Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act

It’s a con job.

Don’t fall for it.

Democrat legislators named Prop 1 the “Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026” to make it sound noble; it’s anything but.

Prop 1 proposes borrowing $11.25 billion from taxpayers “for our veterans.”

I would say “Hah,” but this is no laughing matter.

And, just so you know who’s behind this charade, Santa Barbara’s own California Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, along with her partner in crime, Democrat Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, and the usual Democrat leadership put it there.

Veterans get the name on the bond. Taxpayers get the bill, with interest.

The housing industrial complex, filled with non-profits and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) whose leadership lives off their quarter-million-dollar-plus salaries, get the money.

Central Valley Republican Senator Shannon Grove, an Army veteran herself, called the packaging “shameful.” She says it’s “a homeless bond with a veterans’ garnish.”

Proposition 1 leaves the rules and costs that created the housing shortage untouched. It piles on more debt. And it uses the prestige of people who have actually served to paper over a system that keeps failing.

The troops deserve better than to be marketing fodder for yet another worthless progressive bond.

Veterans put the country first. It’s time voters returned the favor.

Vote NO on Proposition 1.

Proposition 2 Doubles California’s Already Bloated Slush Fund

The coalition of big spenders advancing Proposition 2 includes Governor Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, Senate President pro Tem Monique Limón and Assembly member Jesse Gabriel.

Under Prop 2, every time a “rainy day” occurs, California taxpayers will get soaked. If this constitutional amendment passes, don’t be surprised to find an increase in California’s “Rainy Days.” The process for accessing these funds is easy: the governor simply cries out “emergency” and a simple majority of votes in the legislature releases the money into the general fund.

Proposition 2 doesn’t fix the plumbing or repair California’s leaky financial roof. It simply pours more billions of unaccountable dollars into the hands of the same spend-happy politicians who’ve squandered it before.

Vote NO on Proposition 2.

Now Comes Proposition 3

It’s billed as the California Children’s Education and Health Care Protection Act. Prop 3 is the final act in a long confidence game, a tax that began life as “temporary,” was later extended, and now seeks permanence under the soft lighting of “children’s education and health care.”

Those responsible for much of the electorate’s education asked that electorate to extend the “temporary” income-tax rates through 2030. A mere 12 more years of the income tax increases “so that school children would not suffer.” Its purpose is simple: remove the expiration date on Prop 30 and make the income tax increase permanent.

The numbers are enormous. Since 2012 the higher rates have generated more than $120 billion, according to the California State Controller’s office. That is twenty times the original shortfall Brown cited.

This is one of the largest, if not the largest, temporary-to-permanent tax in California history. Should voters naively approve Prop 3, enhanced tax receipts on the order of $5 to $10 billion a year will only grow with inflation and will continue forever.

The dominant beneficiaries of billions in tax revenue have been administrators. Their ranks and pay expanded even as enrollment shrank. Principal and district-level yearly salaries commonly reach $250,000 in most California districts to well over $500,000 in others.

Yet poor outcomes have not prevented district administrators from becoming richly compensated. Superintendent David Miyashiro who has presided over the entire academic decline since 2013 took home $592,416 in total compensation in 2024.

If the goal were higher reading and math scores, the last fourteen years of elevated revenue would have produced visible results.

They have not.

If the goal were simply to keep the lights on for a shrinking student body, the scale of the haul would still look excessive.

The permanent tax increase of Prop 3 will be wrapped in a soothing floral package of “protecting the vulnerable.” The record of deception is clearly visible in poor test scores, decreasing enrollment figures, and administrative salary increases.

Vote NO on Prop 3

Proposition 4 Wants You to Pay for Politicians’ Campaigns

For over five decades California has banned using public money to bankroll candidates. Voters put that rule in place for a very good reason: Nobody should be forced to fund the campaigns of the people who tax them.

Prop 4 would erase that ban.

Supporters say this levels the playing field. It doesn’t. It does, however, coerce you into picking up the tab for what may well be your least favorite politician.

Incumbents still get the money. Challengers still need to qualify. And every taxpayer—left, right, or checked out—ends up bankrolling attack ads and mailers for candidates they may actively despise. You don’t get to opt out. That’s not democracy.

Look at the coalition pushing this thing. Common Cause. League of Women Voters. ACLU. The usual suspects who treat government expansion like a moral duty.

Every statist organization loves Prop 4. It lowers the cost of electing people who promise more programs, more rules, and more spending.

Prop 4 sells itself as “reform.”

It is anything but.

It takes a clear line—that taxpayers should not be required to fund political campaigns—and replaces it with a permanent invitation for politicians to help themselves to the public trough.

Vote NO on Prop 4.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

“Rules For Radicals” Alive and Well in Santa Barbara

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:30:35 GMT

A funny thing happened after I wrote about political dehumanization: a local journalist responded by personally attacking me.

Fan Mail

I recently wrote The Guillotine Arrives in Santa Barbara after guillotine imagery appeared during Santa Barbara’s rent-control debate.

I wrote:

“This blade of retribution didn’t appear because of a war, a presidential election, or the Constitution. It appeared over rent control.

“When I saw the photograph, I expected the news coverage to focus on the protester who chose to display a guillotine – a symbol historically associated with political executions – and ask why that symbol was used.”

My argument was simple. For years, many Democrat leaders and commentators have described President Trump and Republicans using terms such as “dictator,” “fascist,” “Nazi,” “threat to democracy,” “enemy of freedom,” and “existential threat to the republic.”

We aren’t talking about some tiny fringe. More than 77 million Americans voted for Trump in 2024.

We have also watched elected officials compare federal law enforcement enforcing our nation’s laws to the Gestapo; we have seen our own D.A. denounce federal officers enforcing federal warrants.

Democrats controlled the White House, House, and Senate under Joe Biden, yet did not repeal or replace the major immigration laws signed by Bill Clinton. Laws federal immigration officers enforced under Clinton, Obama, and today.

I also wrote, we have watched assassination attempts against public officials, threats against federal judges, violence against law enforcement and private businesses, riots, and political violence in the streets.

But I explicitly added:

“I’m not suggesting rhetoric alone caused those events.”

That distinction matters. I never named individuals because my point concerned a larger problem: What happens when political disagreement becomes dehumanization? If rhetoric has consequences, shouldn’t we examine rhetoric from all sides?

Then Jerry Roberts responded.

And, remarkably, Jerry helped make my point.

Nothing Personal, Brian

Jerry wrote that it is a “damn shame” local public officials are “bullied, menaced, and subjected to performative intimidation.”

I agree.

He also wrote:

“It’s the job of the local press to hold elected officials accountable for their words and actions.”

Excellent.

Does that include Democrat politicians who call Republicans threats to democracy, compare an elected president to Hitler, or characterize federal law enforcement as the Gestapo?

Apparently not.

If words matter, surely the standard applies regardless of who says them.

Yet Jerry called me – a private citizen – out by name, describing me as a “serial failed political candidate,” accusing me of “Covid-era amnesia,” “willful blindness,” and sarcastically referring to Trump as my “Dear Leader.”

Just like an armchair quarterback who never steps up.

One small problem: I have never described myself as pro-Trump, much less called Trump my “Dear Leader.”

Jerry, I vote on issues and track record not party lines unlike some others reading this.

When I ran for office, Jerry seemed confused by his own assumptions about me. I had a humanitarian plan to help the homeless, help local businesses, help students, and do it without simply taking more from taxpayers.

Apparently, disagreeing with Santa Barbara’s political establishment comes with bullying and ridicule. Evil hates the light of truth.

That is exactly what we have watched happen locally and nationally. Too often, disagreement is met not with discussion, but with labels, ridicule, and personal attacks.

Instead of debating the argument, attack the person making it.

Nancy Pelosi once described the political tactic as the “wrap-up smear.” Demonize someone, smear them with falsehoods, get the accusation reported, then point to that reporting as validation.

Thank you, Jerry, for demonstrating precisely the political discourse my article warned about.

Somehow It Was Still Trump

Jerry objected to my questioning his attempt to connect our local City Hall controversy directly to President Trump. He quoted me:

“Trump wasn’t at the meeting. He has no authority over Santa Barbara’s rent stabilization ordinance.”

Correct.

This was a local rent-control dispute. Trump didn’t bring the guillotine imagery. Trump doesn’t determine Santa Barbara rent policy.

Yet Jerry wrote that “Trump’s coarsening of the national discourse has made its way to Santa Barbara.”

That was exactly what I questioned. Look at who called voters a “threat to democracy.”

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

If political rhetoric can intimidate, inflame, and destroy civility, why examine the rhetoric of only one side?

We forget we are all neighbors.

Ironically, Jerry demonstrated that one-sidedness perfectly. While condemning political intimidation, he responded to an opposing viewpoint with labels, ridicule, and personal attacks of his own on a private citizen.

I – like numerous voters – am asking for one standard, not “rules for thee, not for me.” Thank you, Pelosi and Newsom, for demonstrating how you are above the laws and lockdowns. And thank you Jerry for perfectly applying Pelosi’s smear campaign.

The School Board Detour

Jerry then traveled back to Santa Barbara school-board meetings, claiming I joined “disruptive public commenters” who “routinely targeted trustees, administrators, and teachers, with insults and disrespect.”

I certainly attended school-board meetings and challenged district policies, which Jerry never attended. I also ran for school board because, as a parent, I believed academics, curriculum, and parental oversight deserved attention.

One controversy involved sexually explicit material available to students.

Gender Queer: A Memoir was in the Santa Barbara High School library. That fact is documented in local reporting. Its pages contain sexually explicit language and illustrations, including depictions, images, and instructions, of gay oral sex; the Independent reported that the book contained panels depicting two young people engaged in oral sex. But Jerry failed to acknowledge this fact.

Journalism at its best.

At a school-board meeting, I attempted to read from the book and display what students could access. The board would not allow the sexually explicit material to be read or displayed publicly.

Think about that.

Material considered too sexually explicit to read or display at a public meeting attended by adults was nevertheless available to children in a public-school library.

Apparently, questioning that contradiction makes someone “disruptive.”

I call it being a parent.

Jerry and Biden’s FBI labels us terrorists.

(The drawings used are too graphic for a family publication such as this.)

Neighbors, Remember?

My original article asked:

“What if civil wars don’t begin with gunfire?

“What if they begin when neighbors stop believing they belong to the same community, when disagreement is no longer enough and political opponents become enemies?”

That was the point.

I didn’t name Jerry Roberts. I questioned a political culture increasingly willing to turn opponents into caricatures.

Jerry responded in lockstep with the radical communist agenda of attacking anyone with a different point of view, anyone who actually cares about our children and our community.

Proving that in Santa Barbara, those who disagree with the political party in charge are seen as bitter enemies, not neighbors with a differing view.

And there it is.

Thank you, Jerry, for demonstrating the very political discourse my article was warning about.

At least you didn’t call me a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier.”

Rather than answer personal attacks with more personal attacks, however, I’ll pray for Jerry and for all of us who sometimes forget that political opponents are still our neighbors.

Father, give us wisdom to seek truth before accusation, humility to listen before judging, and courage to disagree without hatred.

Guard our tongues from false witness and our hearts from bitterness.

Help us remember that those who disagree with us are not our enemies, but our neighbors.

As Jesus taught:

“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44, KJV)

Perhaps that is the standard we need most: not victory over our political opponents, but the grace to love our neighbors even when we disagree.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

Solving the Double Standard

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:30:59 GMT

Ordinary Citizens Face Felony Risk While Government Fraud Goes Unpunished

Young investigators like Nick Shirley uncover hundreds of millions in government assisted fraud with a cell phone and laptop. Elon Musk used AI and discovered DC is a veritable circus of fraud.

Every year, ordinary Americans must account for every penny of income, deduction, and transaction on their tax returns. We sign forms under penalty of perjury. The IRS demands detailed records, receipts, and explanations. False statements can lead to felony charges, fines, and even prison. American citizens live under constant scrutiny of their private finances. The federal government faces no equivalent constraint. Bureaucrats and program heads operate with near-immunity. When waste, improper payments, or outright fraud surfaces—as it repeatedly does—there are almost never personal consequences. No forced quarterly audits under felony penalty. No routine removal of those responsible. The government system has insulated itself from scrutiny.

Taxpayers submit Forms 1040 and supporting schedules knowing a single material error or omission risks audits and more. The government, by contrast, has accumulated roughly $3 trillion in estimated improper payments since fiscal year 2003. In FY 2025 alone, agencies reported about $186 billion in improper payments across a limited set of programs—mostly overpayments.

Obscure the Message; Blame the Messenger

A broader GAO analysis estimated annual federal losses due to fraud between $233 billion and $521 billion (roughly 3–7 percent of obligations in the studied period). These figures dwarf many individual agency budgets, yet they capture only documented or modeled losses. The true total of waste, abuse, and undetected fraud is higher. The Pentagon has failed consecutive financial audits for years—eight in a row by recent counts—unable to fully account for trillions in assets. Systemic accounting weaknesses persist with little personal accountability for the officials overseeing them.

When the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and related efforts in 2025–2026 shone light on waste and improper payments, the institutional response was defensive. Claims of savings were contested, data quality questioned, and the effort itself attacked by all of DC and Congress itself. Meanwhile, documented problems—invalid taxpayer identification numbers on payments, inadequate controls, and long-standing high-risk programs—continued with minimal criminal consequences for career officials.

Prosecutions for fraud still occur through the Department of Justice and inspectors general, but the culture of the permanent bureaucracy rarely produces the kind of personal risk ordinary taxpayers face.

The same pattern appears abroad. The United States has spent billions annually on “democracy assistance” and related foreign programs. Critics have long argued that some of this spending functions as political interference under the banner of election support. Whether the precise dollar figures reach the “hundreds of billions” scale in any given year is debatable, but the absence of rigorous public accounting and personal accountability for outcomes is not. These fraudulent payments have vast international consequences. For instance now that USAID has been cut to the many nations in South America, suddenly the elections south of the border have produced six new conservative presidents. The fraud there was used to prop up socialist and communist candidates and tyrants. Funny how government fraud never props up conservative victories.

Election Integrity Barriers in California

Nowhere is the double standard clearer than in election administration. California law requires voters to be U.S. citizens and to attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury on the registration affidavit. That self-attestation is treated as sufficient evidence for voting purposes. Documentary proof of citizenship is not routinely required, and election officials are not authorized to conduct independent verification as a matter of course.

Federal attempts to obtain full statewide voter registration data for citizenship and list-maintenance checks have been blocked in court on privacy and other grounds. Jury source lists (which draw from voter rolls and DMV records) have likewise been treated as largely off-limits for broader public or investigative cross-checks aimed at identifying non-citizens. The practical effect is that systematic inquiry into whether the rolls contain only eligible citizens is heavily restricted. Ordinary citizens who raise concerns are often dismissed; the system protects itself from the very audits it demands of private taxpayers. (Note: Cole is planning a local federal suit asking for voter records to match signed ballot sleeves to known citizens.)

The Reaction to Exposure

When Elon Musk and DOGE teams began publicly identifying waste and improper payments, the response from many in Congress, media, and activist circles, was not for institutional reform; the response was personal and corporate attacks. Tesla dealerships and vehicles were vandalized, set on fire, and targeted in coordinated protests. Stockholders and the company itself absorbed the blowback. The message was unmistakable: go after government fraud and the system—and its political allies—and they’ll punish the messenger rather than the problem.

Three Concrete Proposals

The current arrangement is unsustainable. The following reforms would help restore balance:

Proposal 1. Automatically reduce federal tax collections (or the corresponding appropriation authority) by the dollar amount of verified government fraud and improper payments each year. If agencies cannot control waste and fraud measured in the hundreds of billions, they should operate with less revenue.

Proposal 2. Require the head of every major federal program—and corresponding officials at state and local levels receiving federal funds—to submit quarterly audit reports, from the operational level up to the cabinet or equivalent. False or materially incomplete reporting would carry felony penalties identical to those applied to private taxpayers who falsify returns.

Proposal 3. Mandate that every chief election official submit to an independent annual voter-roll audit and sign a sworn affidavit affirming that the rolls under their supervision contain no known ineligible voters (including non-citizens) and that no systemic fraud occurred in elections they oversee. False affidavits would again carry felony consequences. California’s current barriers to citizenship verification and list transparency would have to yield to this basic requirement of affirmed legitimacy.

Closing

Government has surrounded itself with protections—procedural, judicial, and cultural—that ordinary citizens do not enjoy. A change in presidential administration can remove a handful of political appointees but the permanent apparatus remains largely untouched. The judiciary has too often treated bureaucratic opacity as a feature rather than a defect.

Citizens who must document every financial move under threat of felony prosecution have every right to demand the same rigor from the institutions that take their money and administer their elections. The three proposals above are modest first steps. Without them—or something equally forceful—the double standard will continue, public trust will erode further, and the distance between the governed and those who govern will continue to widen.

These illustrations capture the asymmetry and the path forward. The reforms are straightforward. Implementation requires only the political will to treat government the way government already treats the people who fund it.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

Tears in the Darkness: The Battling Bastards of Bataan

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:31:33 GMT

American prisoners carrying comrades on the Bataan Death March. Source: Alamy

After the Japanese navy bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which drew the United States into battle at the beginning of World War II, the Japanese military set its sights on the Philippines because of its strategic location.

The Battle of Bataan began on January 6, 1942, and almost immediately the defenders were on half rations along with few weapons and meds, because of poor planning by General Douglas MacArthur. That is, before the Bataan death march began, after having resisted the Japanese forces for some three months, the troops were already very ill, having been stricken with malaria, dengue fever, and many other diseases. Ultimately, the U.S. surrendered and that action represented the largest single defeat in American military history.

The Bataan Death March was a forced march of some 66 miles that began with 76,000 prisoners of war: 66,000 Filipinos, 10,000 Americans.

During the march, the captives were brutalized and dehumanized, shot, bayoneted, and, in many cases, beheaded; many of those who made it to the first camp in the Philippines later died of starvation and disease.

The book “Tears in the Darkness” by Michael and Elizabeth Norman is a remarkably accurate account of the march and its aftermath. The New York Times reviewer stated that “if you are not weeping openly by the book’s final scenes, then you have a hard crust of salt around your soul.”

After the march, the troops were loaded into box cars and transferred onto what became known as hell ships. During the march and the subsequent hell ship transport, they were given no water and no food and, in some cases, little to no air to breathe.

Most of the Americans taken prisoner on Bataan died before war’s end. Most of those who survived the war experience died before the age of 50 due to the effects of disease, stress, and starvation. Some deaths were attributed to biological experiments on the troops. The death rate for American POWs from the march was over 60%, whereas for those in Nazi POW camps it was less than 2%.

No Man Left Behind?

The Bataan death march survivors believed they were left behind to die, and they were right. That too, took a huge toll. Back in Washington, American and British leaders decided upon a “Europe first” war policy, as it was determined that Germany must be the first of the Axis powers (Germany, Japan, and Italy) to be defeated, because they were the most formidable.

So, what about the men and women left behind in the Philippines? The answer to that question attributed to Secretary of War Henry Stimson was “there are times when men must die,” as reported in the book, “When Men Must ~~DIE~~ Live” (another excellent read), by Bataan death march survivor James T. Murphy and his son, Kenneth Murphy, who I had the honor to meet and interview.

Listen to These Words:

We’re the Battling Bastards of Bataan,

No Mama, No Papa, No Uncle Sam,

No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,

No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces,

And nobody gives a damn!

My father was on the death march and it was about this time 81 years ago that the severely emaciated POWSs began to be rescued and released, but, unfortunately, the majority of those who made it home died before their 50^th birthday due to the horrors, torture, starvation, and deprivations ,they were forced to endure. My father died at age 47. I will always be grateful for his and his fellows’ sacrifices, and I am extremely grateful that Mr. Murphy located my father’s POW records for me.

Finally, as Mr. Murphy writes, “As we approached the USS RESCUE, we all looked up and shouted in unison “There’s Old Glory”! As we focused our eyes on the first American flag that we had seen in the last forty-one months, we survivors of the Hanawa prison camp wept unashamedly at the spectacle waving in the breeze at us. To a person, we felt as if those stars and stripes were saying, “Welcome back. You are safe now.”

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

The New Communist Candidate Swarm

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:30:45 GMT

I’m trying to make sense of this communist uprising infecting American politics.

Mark Twain has been noted as saying, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than open it and remove all doubt.”

This socialist movement is promising the world and saying things that are completely irrational. They’re not removing doubt they’re fools; they’re confirming it.

The timing of this wave of commies is also convenient. America celebrating 250 years of the Constitution that got us here to a movement that wants to tear it all down.

And replace it with what?

The nonsense about abolishing the Senate, the Presidency and so forth is idiocy and they know that will never happen.

One of the big pushes by these crazies is the defunding of police and the abolishment of prisons.

Democrats and liberals have already made committing crimes mere annoyances by removing bail and “feeling sorry” for a pedophile or murderer because he/she had a rough childhood. Do you personally think you have what it takes to take the life of another human being? Whether planned or spontaneous, our creator didn’t design humans to kill each other. So, when someone does, wires got crossed. Would it then make sense to allow someone who is brain damaged to have free rein to continue killing? Raping? Or dealing drugs to kill your kids?

There’s no way this breed of wannabe policymakers has thought any of this through. This bizarre Utopian lawless thinking is a brainless thing to even consider. And yet, the young minds who only hear free stuff don’t think past that.

Democrats and Republicans are in real trouble if they don’t change how they do business. These young voters don’t watch CNN or Fox. Or read anything if it isn’t on Instagram or TikTok. And it’s almost a free way to campaign for these loons. It’s a new world and the political geezers better get with the new program. These people have a big jump on how to do it.

Foreign countries have funneled hundreds of billions of dollars into our universities to indoctrinate. We’ve heard the stories and yet we’ve allowed it to continue. We’re witnessing in real time this new batch of kids coming out of these schools hating America, supporting terrorists, and now embracing communism. Their brains, along with the professors, are warped with a different perspective of America and life in general.

Their Secret Is Out

Do you think Mamdani, AOC, El-Sayed and all the others even know they’ve been groomed to destroy the country that allows them to say stupid things? Or do they really think what they’re preaching will make America better? I guess the answer is, they don’t want to make America better. They want to get rid of America.

What’s scary is this used to be secret, now they admit to it.

Let’s picture a quick summary if some of their ideas were to befall us.

Once the border was reopened, it would make Biden’s four years look tame in comparison. It would be impossible to stop the human mass migration. There wouldn’t be enough money to pay for 20, 50,100 million more mouths to feed, clothe, educate, and supply medical services to, even after taxing billionaires. America would run out of places for bodies to live. And with free rent, landlords would have no choice but to walk away. Apartment complexes and condos would become slum havens overnight.

With no one keeping up maintenance, water and power would cease. All these millions upon millions would need to eat but would be unable to pay for basic needs of survival. Without prisons and the police being defunded there’s nothing to stop national theft akin to an apocalyptic novel.

Homeowners would have to resort to violence to protect their properties, and the shooting would begin on both sides. And there’s be no one to stop it. Hospitals couldn’t keep up and eventually would fold under lack of income and burnout from doctors and nurses who would no longer be paid.

All the free stuff wouldn’t matter anymore because there wouldn’t be any free stuff left.

There’s a reason we have Stop signs, traffic lights, speed limits.

Even though Mexico is a mess with cartels and their own share of lawlessness, they’re still a functioning country. In a blink, not only the Mexican cartels, but the Chinese, Iranian, and every terrorist across the globe would reinforce their buddies already here. Then watch the real shooting begin.

Those with the wherewithal would flee to places around the world and leave Rome burning behind them.

The socialists will have buried themselves in a hell of their making. They didn’t think about asking themselves to be careful what they wished for.

Hyperbole?

It’s already happening. Look no further than the “Summer of Love,” when everyone was supposed to stay indoors, wear masks, and die quietly. Liberals supported the rampages and burning of cities. The ensuing defunding of police took only a few years, even for liberals, to realize it was an irresponsible action. They too saw the rise in crime was a direct result of ridiculous decisions.

It’s still going on in places like Seattle.

How do we put the brakes on this nonsense?

I wish I knew other than the voting booth. And despite 80% of voters wanting voter ID, Democrats still fight it.

If we can’t be at least, let’s say, 80% certain our election process isn’t corrupted then what are we really doing?

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

It’s a Woman’s World. Unless….

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:30:29 GMT

I am a survivor of college in the late ‘60s. Remember the Berkeley Free Speech movement with Mario Savio? The burning of the Isla Vista bank at UCSB? The “Summer of Love” in Haight-Ashbury? Yea, those late ‘60s… filled with protests and turbulence and free love and communal spirits,…

…And women’s rights. Feminism. The “fem” in the “ism” stands for women.

Yup…. That was a biggy. You had pioneer feminists like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, all simply asking to be treated fairly in what was then considered a “man’s world” … to paraphrase the great James Brown. But the “godfather of soul” went on to say: “… but it wouldn’t be nothin….nothin… without a woman or a girl.”

He was, and is… right.

So we had the beginning of parity among the sexes. Men. And Women.

You do the same job. You get the same compensation.

You qualify for the same job. You’re not discriminated against based on your sex.

You want to run for office. Go for it.

And so on….

The Battle of the Sexes

I don’t know if many of you remember this, but in the early ‘70s, as the women’s movement matured, we had an interesting little event. It was called “The Battle of the Sexes.”

This was a tennis match in 1973 between a man, and a woman. The man was a 55-year-old semi-retired professional player named Bobby Riggs who was a champion in 1940s. The woman was the then-current grand slam champion, 29-year-old Billy Jean King. It was held at the Houston Astrodome and somewhere around 100 million people world-wide watched it.

King beat the old guy in straight sets.

Good for her.

But what people may not remember, is that only a few months earlier, Riggs played in a similar match against another one of the all-time greats, 30-year-old Margaret Court, who completed the grand slam only a few years earlier.

Twenty-five years her senior, Riggs beat Court soundly.

This all happened as a result of the ruling then known Title IX. And the original intent of that ruling was to prevent sex discrimination in all venues. Employment. Education. Political office.

Everything.

Including sports.

And that’s where things become sticky now.

Variations on a Theme

And it becomes sticky, because we are currently having this incredibly weird debate over what the definition of “sex” is in humans. Is “sex” something that is clearly defined by the scientific standard based on chromosomes? You know, that pesky XX or XY thing? We were told that we’re supposed to believe in science, right? Biology? Pretty straight forward. Kind of like math. 2 plus 2 equals….hmm, let’s see. 4?

Would you like it to equal something else? If you said 2 plus 2 equals 73 because you have decided that’s what you want it to be…. Does it make it so?

If you said that you wanted to be a tree, would it make it so?

Q. If you are a man with the XY thing, but you’ve decided you want to be a woman, would it make it so?

A: NO.

You can hold your breath until you turn blue, and it will still never make it so.

Now that doesn’t negate the beautiful freedom of personal choice. You can choose to be anything that you “feel” is your “authentic self,” to use the currently accepted term. Your choice. And most reasonable people will accept that and then move on.

Do your thing.

But you can’t force people to blindly believe that your “authentic self” is reality just because you want it to be.

Like XY men playing in XX women’s sports. Unless the women don’t care.

But we know they do.

At least 99.9 percent of them do. Because they fought for that. Women wanted to be treated equally so that they could be honored and benefit from…. Being a woman.

So we have women’s sports like the WNBA. (Note to self: The “W” stands for women.) Otherwise, what’s the point?

The point is… when pretend women steal the trophies and scholarships and prestige of competing against other actual women, the “pretend women” steal much more. They steal what it means to be a woman.

So it’s a woman’s world… unless. You don’t want it to be.

•••

As a post script, I entered the 55-word essay contest held annually by a regional “entertainment” publication that will remain nameless here. And, no surprise, my contribution wasn’t selected. I knew it wouldn’t be… because it succinctly describes the perils of who gets to play in women’s sports… beyond women.)

Story Title (7-word maximum):

“And why not? Why not, indeed!”

My 55-word (or less) story:

LeBron was ready to retire from the NBA. Age was setting in. He was having trouble competing. But then he had a thought. “I will become LeShawnda!”

The WNBA never stood a chance.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

Summer of Love

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:30:30 GMT

Remembering San Francisco’s “Summer of Love”

For one extraordinary summer in 1967, a few square blocks in San Francisco became the unofficial capital of an international revolution.

A revolution of hair. Of music. Of clothing.

Of consciousness.

Most of all, of peace and love.

And an audacious notion that love might accomplish what governments never could.

My own memento from the ‘sixties, purchased in 1968 from a “head shop” in Westwood, LA

In the mid-1960s, Haight-Ashbury was one of San Francisco’s cheapest neighborhoods. The once-grand Victorian houses had grown shabby. Rents were low. Students, artists, poets, musicians, and runaways, moved in because they could afford to.

The movement that followed was a chemical reaction.

The Beat Generation had already prepared the ground. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti had challenged post-war conformity from nearby North Beach.

The hippies added color

And LSD.

Quite a lot of LSD.

Much of it came courtesy of Owsley Stanley—sound engineer to the Grateful Dead and perhaps the most celebrated underground chemist in American history. His laboratory became as influential as any recording studio.

If Oppenheimer split the atom, it was Owsley who expanded the mind.

No band became more closely identified with Haight-Ashbury than the Grateful Dead, who lived communally at 710 Ashbury Street.

Jerry Garcia answered the door.

One afternoon you might encounter Janis Joplin.

Another day, Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe McDonald, or members of Big Brother and the Holding Company.

The sidewalks became the guest list.

Music drifted from open windows.

Someone was always strumming a guitar. Someone else was beading necklaces.

Someone invariably claimed to have discovered the meaning of life approximately 20 minutes earlier.

The soundtrack expanded weekly.

Jimi Hendrix.

The Doors.

Pink Floyd.

The Who.

Cream.

Even The Beatles did not escape Haight-Ashbury’s gravitational pull.

George Harrison wandered its streets.

The Summer of Love influenced Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

“All You Need Is Love” became its unofficial anthem.

Celebrities arrived simply to witness whatever this strange social experiment had become.

Actors. Writers. Photographers. Journalists.

Everyone wanted to report from the center of this cultural earthquake—even if they weren’t entirely sure what was shaking.

That defining public moment came on 14 January 1967 with the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park.

Around 25,000 people gathered beneath the winter sky.

Allen Ginsberg chanted.

Timothy Leary offered that decade’s most famous (if misunderstood) instruction…

Richard Alpert—soon to become New Ager Ram Dass—was there.

So were the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.

The Summer of Love hadn’t officially begun.

But everyone could already hear it approaching.

Then came the avalanche.

By June, 100,000 young people had descended upon Haight-Ashbury.

July 7, 1967

They came carrying backpacks, sleeping bags, flowers, guitars—and idealism.

Most carried very little money. Few carried a plan.

The neighborhood simply wasn’t built for them.

Food became scarce. Drugs became plentiful.

Sanitation became theoretical.

Crime arrived.

So did opportunists.

Paradise, it turned out, required someone to collect the rubbish.

In October, many of the original hippies staged what may be the movement’s most self-aware performance piece.

They held a funeral.

Not for a person. For The Hippie.

A mock coffin was carried through the Haight bearing a sign announcing the “Death of the Hippie.”

Their message: The media had transformed their counterculture into a tourist attraction.

The dream had become a costume.

The revolution had acquired souvenir shops.

And that’s exactly what you’ll find today.

Teo, in on the act

Walk Haight Street, as I discovered last week, and you’ll still find psychedelic murals, Victorian houses, tie-dye boutiques, vintage clothing stores, anarchist bookshops, smoke shops—and cafés serving artisan coffee at prices that would have horrified the original inhabitants.

The Grateful Dead house still stands.

So does the famous corner.

Visitors carry shopping bags.

History has an impeccable sense of irony.

The hippies rejected consumerism. Their neighborhood eventually became one of San Francisco’s most successful retail districts.

Yet dismissing Haight-Ashbury as merely a tourist destination misses the point.

There was much more to this neighborhood than tie-dye fashion.

It accelerated environmentalism. Alternative medicine. Organic food.

Meditation. Yoga. Eastern philosophy.

Even Silicon Valley inherited something of its ethos: challenge authority, ignore convention, imagine a different future.

Cities occasionally produce sites where history is made.

In San Francisco, Levi Strauss clothed miners during the Gold Rush—and created a garment with universal appeal.

Domenico Ghirardelli sweetened it with chocolate.

A century later, Haight-Ashbury attempted something considerably more ambitious.

It tried to reinvent the human race.

And for one glorious, chaotic, aromatic summer, quite a few people believed it had.

Community Calendar:

Got a Santa Barbara event for our community calendar? Fenkner@sbcurrent.com

S.B. NIMBYs Love Oil Products: Why Not Local Oil?

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:31:08 GMT

The Santa Barbara Conundrum

Mother Nature was drilling offshore long before anyone incorporated an oil company. We scrape tar off our kids’ feet after a day at the beach.

The Santa Barbara Channel is one of the largest natural offshore oil seeps on Earth, releasing an estimated 240 barrels of oil a day, roughly 88,000 barrels a year, all on its own. Peer-reviewed research has even found that producing oil from nearby reservoirs can reduce natural seepage by relieving underground pressure.

Apparently, Mother Nature never got the memo that offshore oil was supposed to stop, and she doesn’t check whose backyard she’s in, either.

Producing oil somewhere else doesn’t eliminate our need for it, and it doesn’t shrink its footprint. It just moves both to a country with weaker oversight and less accountability; and hands the atmosphere the bill regardless. Pollution doesn’t become friendly the moment it crosses an ocean. It’s the energy equivalent of shipping your problem child to a foreign boarding school and calling it solved because you don’t have to parent anymore.

Know someone who insists they’re anti-petroleum? Invite them to ditch the iPhone, the laptop, the eyeglasses, the sneakers, the medications, the car, the plane ticket, the asphalt road under their feet. Invite them to live entirely off grid.

Tell them to put their money where their mouth is.

If that sounds unreasonable, maybe the issue was never petroleum. Maybe it’s the contradiction of condemning the product that makes modern life possible while enjoying its benefits every single day and calling it saved, so long as it happened somewhere else.

Out of sight.

Out of mind.

Same planet.

A Lesson In Irony

Near the entrance to a local grocery store, a group of young people stood behind a folding table collecting signatures to stop the Sable Offshore Energy Project.

“Protect our coastline.”

“Stop offshore oil.”

“Oil is destroying the environment.”

Curious, I asked what they meant. The conversation quickly turned to drilling, gasoline, carbon footprints, and climate change. As one person explained why oil production needed to end, another was posting photos to social media from an iPhone. Then came the clipboard and pen. Around us sat plastic shopping carts, EVs and gasoline-powered cars on rubber tires, all parked on a sea of asphalt.

The irony was hard to miss.

Oil is not merely the gasoline in your tank. It’s the iPhone organizing the protest. The laptop writing the petition. The clipboard, the pen, the synthetic shirt, the sneakers, the eyeglasses, the bike helmet, the tires, the “reusable” shopping bags, the credit cards, the food packaging, the prescription medications, the asphalt underfoot.

Petroleum has become the only product in modern society we’re expected to keep using while pretending it doesn’t need to be produced.

We condemn the drilling. We celebrate the products.

We oppose the refinery. We embrace everything it makes.

We object to producing petroleum here while consuming it everywhere.

Which brings us to the ultimate expression of modern environmentalism:

Not In My Backyard. But feel free to drill in yours.

I finally asked one of the organizers, “If petroleum is so terrible, why are you enjoying so much of it?”

Blank Stares.

I suggested that if petroleum truly had no place in modern society, maybe start by giving up the products used to protest it.

More blank stares.

Petroleum Makes the World Go ‘Round

Apparently, the problem isn’t using petroleum. The problem is admitting petroleum makes the modern world possible. Or worse, producing it where they might have to see it. Better to import it and pretend it doesn’t exist.

That’s the NIMBY philosophy in full bloom: Drill somewhere else. Refine it somewhere else. Mine it somewhere else. Take the jobs, the pollution, the economic boost, the national security benefit, and ship them somewhere else.

Then import the oil, import the finished products, import the emissions, and congratulate yourselves because California looks clean while someone else does the dirty work.

Here’s the part the protest signs never mention: the atmosphere doesn’t check passports. A ton of carbon released in China warms the planet exactly as much as a ton released in Santa Barbara. Oil pumped in a country with a fraction of our environmental oversight doesn’t just move the drilling; it moves it to a jurisdiction more likely to spill it, flare it, and dump it.

Congratulating ourselves for “protecting our coastline” while outsourcing the extraction to a coastline with no such protections isn’t environmentalism.

It’s outsourcing the guilt along with the crude.

Climate change is not a local ordinance. It’s not something you solve by relocating the smokestack out of your sightline. It is, by definition, a global problem; which means the oil we refuse to produce here doesn’t vanish. It just gets produced by someone else, shipped across an ocean burning bunker fuel the whole way, and sold back to us with a clean conscience attached.

Economics Didn’t Get the Memo

For years America made domestic energy prohibitive and expensive, then expressed genuine confusion about why manufacturing moved overseas. Steel mills, chemical plants, semiconductor fabs, fertilizer plants; they all run on energy, and it turns out energy-hungry businesses pay attention to energy policy.

Who knew?

The factories left. The jobs left. And the same towns that lost them kept buying products stamped “Made in China,” wondering what happened to the plant down the road.

Apparently replacing manufacturing with paper pushing and government regulations was considered an economic development strategy. Meanwhile our industrial capacity shrank while our competitors picked up the factories, the jobs, and the supply chains we handed them.

National Security Suddenly Matters

It took a crisis to remember that national security is more than aircraft carriers. Gas lines in the ‘70s. Empty shelves and scarce N95s during COVID. Diesel shortages that reminded us fuel isn’t guaranteed. Suddenly domestic manufacturing was fashionable again.

Funny how national security matters the moment the trucks stop moving.