Vote for Change

Some people vote with their feet; others don’t vote at all. Speaking of CA, more than ten million people have left in the last sixteen years. Yes, you read that right. Ten million.

Why did so many people leave? The high cost of housing? Taxes? Poorly performing schools? Failing roads and infrastructure? Crime? A struggling economy? Problems associated with the homeless, despite tens of billions of dollars spent on the same? An oppressive and corrupt state government?

Yes, to all the above.

According to the Public Policy Institute of CA, “Much has been made of the California exodus to other states, and rightly so. This migration, over the decades, has the power to reshape the state. (That is an understatement, if I have ever heard one). From 2010 through 2024 almost 10 million people moved from California to other states.” Of course, many more have left since then.

Much of the replacement population is comprised of immigrants, legal and otherwise, and their children. On average, they are poorer and less educated than the people they replaced. Hence, CA, along with Louisiana, has the highest poverty rates in America.

According to various polls, another one-third of the state’s population would also like to leave.

I would offer an alternative. Vote for change. And, by that, I mean quit voting for Democrats who are, by their complete control of the state for the past 20 years, driving it into a political and economic abyss.

Here are my personal ballot recommendations:

Steve Hilton for Governor.

Gloria Romero for Lt. Governor.

Don Wagner for Secretary of State.

Michael Gates for Attorney General.

Herb Morgan for State Controller.

Jennifer Hawks for State Treasurer.

Sonja Shaw for Superintendent of Public Education.

Bob Smith Congress CD 24

Sari Domingues State Assembly 30

Shannon Kessler State Assembly 37

Maribel Aguilera for 5^th District Supervisor

A word of caution on the ballot propositions. As you would expect from a third-world banana republic, our state Attorney General distorts the meaning and intent of ballot measures with a title that is purposefully confusing to voters. In many instances, the title of the ballot measure does not accurately reflect the proposed outcome of a yes or no vote. In other words, voter beware!

Ballot Propositions:

NO on Proposition 1 Authorizes Bonds for Housing Affordability Programs.

Vote No. Why? California needs to reform land use regulations to enable more affordable housing to be built, rather than to continue borrowing us into oblivion, as borrowing actually makes housing less affordable.

NO on Proposition 2 Increases California’s Rainy Day Fund

Vote No! Why? This measure simply assures more government spending while ignoring existing budget deficits.

NO on Proposition 3 Provides Permanent Funding for Schools and Health Care by Extending Existing Tax on High Incomes.

Vote No. Why? Prop. 3 makes temporary income taxes permanent while Sacramento wastes billions on failed programs instead of enacting voters’ priorities.

NO on Proposition 4 Repeals Prohibition Against Public Funding of Election Campaigns.

Vote No. Why? Instead of fixing potholes and the like, this measure would use tax dollars on political campaigns.

NO on Proposition 5 Changes Recall Election Process for Statewide Officers.

Vote No. Why? Voters should be able to recall and choose the replacement for the office should the recall succeed. Proposition 5 limits voters’ right to select a replacement for recalled officials. Instead, when statewide elected officials are recalled, other politicians would choose a replacement.

NO on Proposition 37 Creates Loan Program for Middle-Income Buyers of Qualified New Homes.

Vote No. Why? This is a “nice try, but no cigar” proposition. It can help with the down payment but at the cost of having both a first and second mortgage from the onset! The one benefit? The monies for this program will not come from taxpayers but the private sector. The limitation? Private lenders will surely require a really high interest rate for holding the second mortgage.

NO on Proposition 38 Authorizes Bonds for Immunology Medical Research.

Vote No. Why? Again, the state wants to borrow money (over $8 billion) instead of budgeting for the same. In this case, for research. However, half of the funds automatically go to one research facility instead of letting all researchers compete for the money based upon merit, innovation, and promise.

Yes on Proposition 39 (Warning, very deceptive title!) Prohibits Citizens from Voting Unless They Present Government-Issued Identification.

Vote Yes. Why? This measure allows qualified voters to vote upon presenting a valid ID. This measure is supported by 80% of all voters across all party lines because it ensures election integrity.

NO on Proposition 40 Imposes One-Time Tax on Certain Taxpayers.

Vote No. Why? This is the so-called billionaire’s tax, which, if enacted, will eventually cause all taxes to rise. How so? Because most billionaires have already left the state, our legislators will have to raise taxes on the rest of us to make up for the lost revenue arising from this measure.

Yes on Proposition 41 (Another title meant to confuse) Prohibits New State Taxes That Exclude Revenues from State Spending Limit. Requires Audits for New State Special Taxes.

Vote Yes. Why? For example, billions of tax dollars have flowed into programs like homelessness, and nobody knows where the money went or if it accomplished anything! Prop. 41 requires the independent State Auditor to conduct public audits of programs funded by new taxes—so we get more transparency, more accountability, and better outcomes for taxpayers.

YES on Proposition 42 Prohibits New State Personal Property Taxes and Certain Retroactive State Taxes.

Vote Yes. Why? California’s Constitution currently allows the Legislature to tax your savings, including for retirement and regular savings—even though you already paid taxes on that money when you earned it! Prop. 42 protects Californians from this double taxation.

YES on Proposition 43 (Very deceptive title!) Limits Voters’ Ability to Raise Revenues for Local Government Services.

Vote Yes. Why? This measure preserves Prop. 13! Prop. 43 protects taxpayers by restoring Proposition 13’s two-thirds vote requirement to pass local special taxes, including sales taxes, real estate taxes, and utility taxes.

NO on Proposition 44 Requires Community Health Clinics Spend 90% Of Revenue on Program Services.

Vote No. Why? Prop. 44 is a dangerous measure by a greedy union that will shut down hundreds of community health clinics and eliminate vital patient services for millions of Californians. The goal of the measure is to create leverage over employers in labor negotiations.

YES on Proposition 45 Modifies Environmental Review for Certain Projects.

Vote Yes. Why? FINALLY, a proposition that amends the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to expedite environmental review for certain projects (including most housing, transportation, water, and health projects) by setting deadlines to complete environmental review and resolve lawsuits challenging project approvals. Amending CEQA is the ONLY way to lower project costs and increase affordability in our state.

Leave a comment

Share Santa Barbara Current

Subscribe now

Community Calendar

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

Santa Barbara County supervisors did their part to make fuel more expensive when they passed an ordinance to ban new onshore oil and gas drilling in the county. You can say that the supes didn’t miss the elephant in the room – the foreign oil tanker – when they took this action.

As California has been shutting down the oil industry in our state, the only thing that has been accomplished is making us more dependent on foreign oil. That is, we didn’t eradicate our use of oil, only the local source of the same. And the countries from which we are now getting our oil are considered “gross polluters,” because they lack the pollution control measures we have in CA. So, the action by the board will increase the world’s ghg’s and genuine pollution, a fine example of virtue signaling, I might add.

The volume of imports we are discussing? California now imports 289 million barrels of oil every year. Ignorance of this dramatic shift to foreign sources, including the Middle East, is not bliss for consumers, especially when it comes to gasoline prices, as our pain at the pump is a result of these types of policy choices in our state. Per the CA Energy Commission:

Not only that, but now we are also importing gasoline, 126 million barrels of refined gasoline, much of which comes from half-way around the world, including Asia, India, South Korea, and Taiwan, which account for two-thirds of California’s gasoline imports.

From the American Petroleum Institute:

So, instead of reducing greenhouse gases, we increased them by having all these ships bringing oil to our state. However, here a distinction needs to be made. One of the biggest lies involving the climate change jihad is that CO2 emissions constitute “pollution.” The opposite is true. CO2 emissions green the planet. Without these “emissions” the planet would die. You would think the greenies wouldn’t lie about something as obvious as that. Yet, what comes out of the smokestack of a tanker bringing oil and gas to CA is real air pollution. Hence, this action by the board of supes will serve to negatively affect air quality.

Another huge omission from this discussion about banning oil and gas production is that nearly half of every barrel of oil isn’t used to produce fuel. It is used to make asphalt, tires, plastic, and thousands of other products, including the natural gas used to heat your home and cook your food. Even if we did manage to switch entirely to so-called renewable energy sources, we would still need oil and gas derivatives and byproducts to provide society with these valuable products we can’t live without. The lefties never want to discuss this point.

Finally, at this hearing, there was a moment when the obvious was pointed out to the oblivious. Supervisor Joan Hartmann was on a rant claiming that every fire in our region, along with the related deadly Montecito debris flow, was a result of climate change, which she blamed on the oil industry. When a fellow supervisor pointed out that many of the fires in our region were started by storm-driven events involving electrical lines, she didn’t miss a beat despite that “mic drop” moment. And after she finished, Supervisor Laura Capps continued the diatribe as oblivious as ever.

Relatedly, it is completely hypocritical that county supervisors are suing a utility for damages associated with the fire that set up Montecito for the debris flow, while publicly blaming the oil industry. Now, please consider their blatant failures pertaining to these two industries. The supes have done absolutely nothing to help the utilities clear cut around their power lines which is standard practice in other states, and which would alleviate many fire dangers. Moreover, these same supervisors have continually raised legal objections in court about the continued operations of pipeline operations having to do with Sable, claiming the pipeline is unsafe, all the while making every effort to block repairs, upgrades, and replacements of the pipeline.

That is not public service; that is diabolical intransigence.

Leave a comment

Share Santa Barbara Current

Subscribe now

Community Calendar

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

I asked the County Board of Supervisors a simple question. Why would you rezone 16,000 acres of ag land for solar panels, when CA has an excess of the same, but you won’t rezone the same amount of land for housing, considering the dearth of the same? The only answer I got was a grimace from Supervisor Laura Capps.

While the left, including Democratic socialists, want to blame the high price of everything on capitalism, the fact is, they don’t know much of anything about the law of supply and demand, and neither will they admit that some things are in short supply on purpose.

Thirty-five years ago, I came across a quote that motivated me to pursue a career as a watchdog in Santa Barbara County. The quote is especially relevant because it came from a county planning and development director whose job it was to stall development in the county!

Here is the quote: “The cost of preserving the high quality of life in Santa Barbara County includes limiting opportunities for others, it limits economic mobility, but that is a legitimate political choice.” That statement, of course, is not capitalistic in nature, it is entirely elitist.

Building Homes for County Employees

Years later, when the county suggested that affordable housing be built in the Santa Ynez Valley, I was also told by a valley resident that “The Santa Ynez Valley is for those who can afford it and we want to keep it that way.” That was the buzzsaw that planners ran into when the county tried to zone the valley for its “fair share” of affordable housing.

I can honestly understand the sentiment to a point. People who live on the South Coast or in the SY Valley believe they live in paradise and they want to make sure nobody and nothing is going to spoil it.

However, Laura Capps’ phony solution to the housing crisis, to prove she has bleeding-heart bonafides, is to build housing on county land for government workers. That is, take care of the “county family,” a term that refers to county staff. What about the rest of the community, us serfs, what are we supposed to do?

As I mentioned last week, the county is sabotaging the efforts of several cities to expand their boundaries to meet state mandates for housing. They do this in two ways. First, by helping to block approval of city limits expansions via the Local Agency Formation Commission, LAFCO, and second, by removing the financial wherewithal for cities to annex by way of a concept known as revenue neutrality.

Revenue Neutrality

Revenue neutrality is a somewhat optional condition the county can impose on cities, by way of negotiations, who take land out of the county jurisdiction. Supposedly, it will make the county whole for lost property tax, sales tax, and bed tax revenues because of the jurisdictional boundary adjustment. Goleta is a prime example of a community that got assaulted by the county when it went through the process of becoming a city.

However, the concept is entirely bogus when a city is annexing undeveloped land because the county isn’t going to lose much of anything in, or by, the process. Nevertheless, even if the land in question is undeveloped, the county insists on gaining future “lost” revenues. That is happening right now as it affects the Richard’s Ranch development in the Santa Maria Valley.

None of this negates the fact that what we need is more land dedicated to housing, lest we all end up living in an urban jungle by the sea!

A Six-Point Plan That Could Work

The best solution – based upon my lived experience having lived on the Central Coast for 58 years – is to do what San Luis Obispo does. Nobody can claim SLO resembles the San Fernando Valley or Orange County in any way, shape, or form. Allow low density development and clustered development throughout the county and by way of city annexations, on non-prime ag lands. This allows ranchers to stay in business because low density development can easily coincide with cattle operations.

The same holds for allowing such things as vineyard estates. Or the dreaded “McMansions” on the Gaviota Coast. I, for one, would rather see some beautiful homes pop up here and there rather than thousands of acres of grotesque solar farms. Finally, bring back the ag cluster development ordinance, which was strangled in its crib by county supervisors. This policy would have allowed, for instance, a 3,000-acre ranch to build 30 homes (one home per 100 acres) on 2-acre plots, thereby leaving the bulk of the land in its natural state.

By maintaining rigid zoning and procedural barriers, Santa Barbara County undermines the entire county’s ability to meet state housing goals, worsens the affordability crisis, and signals that renewable energy expansion is a higher priority than expanding the housing supply. Without a recalibration of land-use policy, the county risks deepening both its housing shortage and its credibility gap.

Here is What County Supervisors Should Be Doing:

1) Conduct a comprehensive review of agricultural land designations to identify parcels unsuitable for farming and rezone them for mixed-use or residential development.

2) Reform the LAFCO process to allow cities to annex land more efficiently when meeting state housing mandates, with clear timelines and reduced bureaucratic hurdles while making every attempt to avoid prime ag lands.

3) Establish policies that weigh renewable energy expansion against housing needs, ensuring that large-scale energy projects do not displace opportunities for residential growth.

4) Offer tax breaks, density bonuses, or expedited permitting for developers who build housing on marginal agricultural land or other underused parcels.

5) Develop a countywide plan that aligns renewable energy targets with housing production requirements, avoiding zero-sum trade-offs between environmental and housing priorities.

6) Forego the temptation to be greedy when it comes to negotiating revenue neutrality agreements for the good of the entire county, especially vacant land.

Leave a comment

Share Santa Barbara Current

Subscribe now

Community Calendar

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

If you had to pick one issue in California that best represents the affordability crisis, it would have to be the cost of housing. Housing everywhere is, of course, affected by the law of supply and demand, but in CA, this “law” is completely distorted by government regulations, red tape, and other priorities.

Take the following situation, for example: Santa Barbara County officials will allow 16,000 acres of farm and ranch lands to be converted to solar farms and battery energy systems while helping to sabotage the efforts of several cities to expand their boundaries to meet state mandates for housing. These mandates require virtually every county in the state to add tens of thousands of new homes in the aggregate, and that is just for starters.

The problem with fulfilling these mandates in Santa Barbara County, which has no shortage of land available for housing, has to do with government impediments to the same. Decades ago, the County of Santa Barbara drew a line around the boundary of every city in the county and zoned everything outside those limits “agriculture.” It made no difference if these “ag” lands have no water, poor soils, steep gradients, and the like. Moreover, not only are these ag-zoned lands pretty much off limits to housing, farmers also must go through arduous permitting processes to build facilities to process their ag products, including coolers, greenhouses, and wineries. The county treats “ag-zoned” properties as defacto open space, thereby limiting development of any kind on these properties.

LAFCO Adding Insult to Injury

What’s worse is that while county supervisors can rezone ag properties that are in the unincorporated areas of the county to allow for the construction of housing, industrial, and retail, the cities have no such authority. Cities must go through an organization known as LAFCO, the Local Agency Formation Commission, to annex the “ag” lands surrounding their city to convert the same to urban type uses. The LAFCO board is comprised of a couple of county supervisors, city reps, and public members.

The insult to injury? The hypocrites on the Board of Supervisors conveniently rezone ag properties in the county to urban uses as they see fit by way of their own authority, while the county supervisors who sit on the LAFCO board do everything within their power to block annexations by the cities that would allow them to expand their urban footprint.

This is extremely problematic by virtue of a law known as RHNA, the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, which requires all jurisdictions to facilitate housing growth in their communities to facilitate population growth. If your city is surrounded by ag, you either must annex land or rely on infill projects.

Your only two choices are to go up or out!

Below are the current RHNA cycle numbers, (24,856 units total) thru 2031 for our region:

Doing the Math for Land Conversions

For example, the City of Santa Maria, which is surrounded by actual farm fields, has done its best to avoid conversion of the same. But the RHNA process is currently requiring the city to build another 5,400 units (to accommodate some 15,000 people) by 2031. Beyond 2031, the city expects it will have to build another 15,000 units to accommodate another 34,000 people by 2050.

Santa Maria is proposing to annex up to one thousand acres to accommodate this growth. But LAFCO is insisting that this growth be absorbed by way of infill projects via converting empty spaces within the current city boundaries. However, the brain trust at LAFCO is failing to recognize that to accommodate a 50% increase in population over the next two and a half decades, the city would need 250 acres of parks for the new population growth, along with 10 new elementary schools (10 acres each), four new junior high schools (20 acres each), and two-to-three new high schools (40 to 60 acres each). Thus, these public serving “amenities” could take up over 600 acres, and that is without the tens of thousands of new homes driven by state mandates.

There are a couple of major problems the supervisors glossed over when they opened up 16,000 acres of land, including lands on the Gaviota coast, to solar and battery development. The first thing they ignored was fire! The very real possibility of wildland fires burning up the solar and battery farms or battery fires burning up the wildlands.

Land-Hungry Solar Systems Push Out Oil and Gas

Second, the county envisions that building these electricity generation and storage units will enhance our local grid stability when our power gets shut off by our utilities. However, they are ignoring the fact that the one wind turbine plant in the county, near the city of Lompoc, generates power used by Marin County, as they have purchased the power from the project. The one large solar farm in Cuyama generates power for Kern County, not Santa Barbara County. In other words, we may end up sacrificing our coastline and our ag lands for the benefit of other jurisdictions, and all we get out of it would be the impacts and associated risks.

Finally, at the same time the supes are going all-in on solar and battery, they are also trying to ban new oil drilling and eliminate existing oil production. As you probably know, one of the biggest costs to housing is the price of land. This is why cities that are doing infill projects are starting to build three- and four-story buildings on a routine basis in some parts of the county, which we have never seen before.

Regardless, solar fields take up much more land that will no longer be available for housing and farming, while oil and gas facilities have such a smaller physical footprint and easily coexist with agriculture. Oil turbines produce far more electricity per acre than solar PV. For example, a 100 MW diesel plant on 12 acres yields 8.3 MW per acre, while a 100 MW solar farm on 700 acres yields 0.14 MW per acre. You would have to cover pretty much every acre of ag land in CA to try and replace our oil industry while simultaneously eliminating the same amount of land for future housing.

Too bad nobody on the Board of Supervisors or LAFCO sees the big picture.

Leave a comment

Share Santa Barbara Current

Subscribe now

Community Calendar

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

Last week, we discussed the kissing cousins of the affordability crisis, woke Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America. Now it is time to talk about their common grandparent: the union movement in America, which comprises some of the most economically illiterate people in America.

How so?

Because too many union leaders consistently attack and undermine the source of their own salaries and pensions.

Do you remember the “Occupy Wall Street” movement? That was created by the Service Employees International Union or SEIU. SEIU was supposedly protesting the “1%”. However, these morons and the media glossed over the fact that nearly every union pension fund in America is invested in, and dependent upon, returns on investments on Wall Street! Furthermore, SEIU is now the primary sponsor of Proposition 40, the tax on the assets (billionaires are already paying taxes on their income) of billionaires and their trusts in CA. Again, you can’t fix this type of stupid. Billionaires are the primary source of the taxes that pay the wages of SEIU employees working in state and local government, some 750,000 of them.

According to Professor Jeffrey Sklansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago, “On May 1, 1886, unions of skilled workers, organized by their crafts or trades, led a nationwide general strike for the eight-hour day. They were joined by radical socialists, militant anarchists, and many members of the Knights of Labor. More than 100,000 workers took part across the country.”

Sklansky continues, “The most dramatic demonstrations happened in Chicago, which had become the second-largest city in the U.S. after years of swift growth. Nearly 40,000 striking Chicago workers shut down much of that burgeoning industrial, agricultural, and commercial hub. Three days later, a bomb thrown at a rally in Haymarket Square killed seven police officers, sparking a sweeping nationwide crackdown on labor activism.”

Sklansky writes, “In 1889, socialist trade unions and workers’ parties, meeting in Paris for the first congress of a new Socialist International, proclaimed May 1 an international workers’ holiday. They were partly following the lead of the new American Federation of Labor, which had called for renewed strikes on the anniversary of the 1886 action.”

Even though we celebrate Labor Day in America in September, forever and a day, unions across America also continue to celebrate May Day because they are tied to a socialist type of political ideology root and branch.

The left is selling socialism to young people as the cure to the affordability crisis as they blame the crisis on capitalism. But little do they know that labor unions in America have been incubating socialist-type policies that, by increasing the size and scope of government, have hindered the ability of capitalism to thrive and help make things affordable. For more details, read “Atlas Shrugged”!

Of course, the truth is socialism doesn’t make things more affordable, and it certainly doesn’t magically make things free. To solve the affordability crisis we need less government, not more. Yet, nearly half of all union members in America are employed by the public sector and their future is intertwined with more government that they exploit to their own inurement. See. Transparent California for the gory details!

When Jerry Brown was governor the first time in the 1970s, his mantra was “less is more.”

What did that mean? By way of erecting barriers to development of all kinds, including all the things Gen X, Y, and Z are complaining about today, government policies have stifled the creation of affordable housing and everything else a community needs to support the same, namely, roads, highways, freeways, water, and sewers. Jerry’s policies began a trend that ended in much less investment in infrastructure but more investment in growing government by way of allowing government employees to unionize.

Meanwhile, our roads, bridges, dams, and schools are literally falling apart while public sector pay, benefits, and pension obligations, consume a significant and growing portion of government budgets. In Santa Barbara County, more than half the budget (over $800 million) goes to employee pay and benefits while our own maintenance deficit of roads, parks, and buildings, has soared to over $500 million.

To continue to pay inflated salaries and benefits to government employees, we have turned to debt financing for most infrastructure needs. Our state and local governments, including cities, counties, and schools have borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars in bond indebtedness, all of which must be paid back with interest. And now, our federal debt has hit $40 trillion. These government borrowing trends drive inflation, but again, young people have never been taught basic economics, so they blame capitalism.

The Hoover Institution reports that during the 1960s, four spending categories— health care, pensions, welfare, and interest on debt—took up about 34 percent of the CA budget. Today, the budget share of those four categories has nearly doubled to about 66 percent, leaving only a small piece of the pie for other budget areas, such as infrastructure. In the 1960s, California spent 20% of every dollar on infrastructure. Now, we spend less than 3%.

Of course, if there is a limit to what voters are willing to borrow, perhaps we can get them to steal. That is, Prop. 40 proposes to tax the accumulated assets of billionaires and trusts. We used to call that “asset seizure.” Regardless, it is plain to see that SEIU is selfish, greedy, and stupid for jeopardizing the tax revenue that billionaires pay in income taxes, as they are moving out of the state, leaving the rest of the upper and middle class holding the bag forever and a day for government largesse.

In conclusion, while the costs to employ “public servants” has exploded, look at the American Society of Civil Engineers’ report card on the associated decline having to do with California’s infrastructure. It reads like the report card of our public-school children. Here is a snapshot:

See this report here:

https://infrastructurereportcard.org/state-item/california/

Leave a comment

Share Santa Barbara Current

Subscribe now

Community Calendar:

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

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 wh…

Read more

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 whic…

Read more

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, …

Read more

I have been doing a three-part series about revolution, including first, the proposed Democratic Socialists revolution in America, along with the bloody history of socialist and communist revolutions in recent times.

We now turn our attention to the Islamic revolution.

For the record, Islamism by contrast is not Islam. It is a revolutionary death cult wit…

Read more

Here are a few prescient lines from the Beatles tune “Revolution” written by John Lennon.

You say you want a revolution

Well, you know

We all want to change the world

You say you got a real solution

Well, you know

We’d all like to see the plan

You say you’ll change the constitution

Well, you know

We’d all love to change your head

If you go carrying pictures of Ch…

Read more

Before you laugh off the demands and priorities of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), do realize that over 30 of their members have won their primaries against Democrats.

CNN political commentator and establishment democrat Van Jones is worried, and rightly so. He basically refers to these full-fledged communists as turds in the Dem’s punch bowl.

Read more

I, for one, am still celebrating our nation’s 250^th birthday. I recently wrote about Benjamin Franklin’s answer to the question of what kind of government were we going to have, to which he replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Of course, the basic principle of our Constitution posits that we are not solely governed by the majority as in a purely de…

Read more

In his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, Orwell critiques the “ugly and inaccurate” state of contemporary English, linking it directly to political and social decay. Orwell rightly observed that vague, pretentious, and euphemistic language is often used to obscure truth, justify morally questionable actions, and manipulate public perception.…

Read more

These words of Benjamin Franklin, in response to the question of what kind of government the United States was to have, a republic or a democracy, are exceedingly prescient today, for we are surrounded, infected, and infested, by enemies within and without.

The four enemies I will focus on today (there are many more than four) are progressivism, the Demo…

Read more

I must apologize for all the minutia in this piece, however, I feel it necessary to flush out the devil in the details as it pertains to all the ridiculous complaints about the SAVE Act, the passage of which is necessary to ensure the integrity of our elections.

Accordingly, what I will outline will serve to demonstrate that the requirements of the SAVE …

Read more

Sometimes it is hard to imagine just how stupid California legislators and regulators can be.

If you recall, for 68 years there was an oil facility in Nipomo, known as the Santa Maria Refinery, that treated oil produced from the Santa Maria Valley and received by pipeline. After treatment there, another pipeline sent the semi-refined oil to the Bay area …

Read more

The most puzzling election outcome in CA last week was the race for mayor in L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is the first mayor in 21 years that didn’t win outright in June. Spencer Pratt was the first Republican in a very long time consistently polling high enough to force a runoff.

But a funny thing happened after the polls closed. An L.A. councilwoman by the na…

Read more

At the time I am writing this, we only have preliminary election results to consider. That is because the state of California takes longer – by design – to count votes.

The biggest news is that, for the first time in a very long time, it appears that a Republican with a chance to win will be on the November ballot in the governor’s race. Steve Hilton could be competitive, if and only if, Bianco and his supporters will work for him in November. Unfortunately, Republicans are famous for holding grudges due to bruised egos and other abnormalities.

The LA mayor’s race could result in the first run-off, versus an outright win for a Democrat, in 21 years. All it took was for an entirely inept administration, led by incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, to be held accountable for helping to burn entire communities to the ground and then stand in the way of the victims’ ability to rebuild.

Locally, the 5^th district supervisor’s race appears headed to a runoff too. In this case, I am fairly confident that the supporters of the apparent third-place finisher will get behind Maribel Aguilera for the win in November.

Having said all that, let’s go back to systemic delays in counting votes because those delays create conditions ripe for fraud.

Democrats and Rigged Elections

Do any of you remember Rod R. Blagojevich, who served as the 40^th Governor of Illinois? In December 2008, a federal investigation led to Blagojevich’s arrest on corruption charges after he attempted to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama upon his election to the presidency. He was subsequently convicted and sent to prison, only to have President Trump commute his sentence before pardoning him.

I bring this up because Blagojevich says that rigged elections by his party were commonplace during his time as Illinois governor through illegal aliens voting, fraudulent electronic voting machines, and phony mail-in ballots; and the fraud was particularly egregious in the Democrat-controlled city of Chicago, albeit, he added that cheating is a ‘time-honored’ tradition in Democrat-controlled cities throughout the country. That is, when asked if the Democrat Party steals elections, Blago’s answer was quite blunt: “Is the Pope Catholic?”

Here in CA, we may not know the outcome of some of the electoral races for an entire month. This is because CA has some of the laxest rules in the nation pertaining to turning in and/or mailing in ballots. I firmly believe the reason for this is to legalize opportunities for fraud. That is, one of the most basic opportunities for fraud is via ballot harvesting which breaks the chain of control of the ballot between the voter and the registrar of voters.

Illegal Voting Continues Apace

We also know for certain that there is nothing stopping illegal aliens from voting in our state because there is no required proof of citizenship needed to obtain a ballot and vote if you are willing to lie on the registration form asserting your right to vote. As reported by the California Post, “Welfare offices and other agencies in at least 46 U.S. states are providing voter registration forms to migrants without requiring proof of citizenship, leading Republicans, and conservatives to call for swift federal action to stop the handouts. If an applicant (illegally) attests that he is a U.S. citizen, that is considered valid on its face and the person is registered to vote — except in Virginia, Tennessee, and New Mexico, where they must provide a full Social Security number as well.

Every state but North Dakota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, give applicants for either welfare benefits, driver’s licenses, or in some cases, mail-in ballots, federal voter registration forms without demanding proof of citizenship.

To remedy this situation, The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require states to receive proof of citizenship when anyone registers to vote by mail, at a DMV or a welfare agency office. But, of course, the Dems in the Senate are stalling the bill.

Regarding fraudulent homeless voting in CA, as reported by USA Today, the feds dropped several felony charges in exchange for a guilty plea from Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, of Marina del Rey, California, a longtime signature collector for ballot initiatives. She was charged with one felony count of paying another person to register to vote, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a Monday, May 18 news release. Armstrong has agreed to plead guilty, prosecutors said.

The quote “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes,” is often attributed to Joseph Stalin. Whether or not he said it, it is a truth that hits home too often in California.

Leave a comment

Share Santa Barbara Current

Subscribe now

Community Calendar:

Read more

In my 35 years of serving as a county government watchdog, I have seen the Gaviota coast and prime ag lands throughout the county preserved at all cost by county supervisors, even when it didn’t make sense. The California Coastal Act and the Williamson Act (which serves to preserve the viability of prime ag lands) both technically permit development benefiting coastal dependent industry and agriculture. However, the county has denied common sense projects in both these areas because they consider the same sacrosanct due to their no growth agenda outside of existing urban areas.

However, we could surely see both the Gaviota coast and prime lands sacrificed to the gods of green energy by local high priests masquerading as County supervisors. I have teamed up with former county planning commissioner Roy Reed to share the details of the most current horrible example of a solution in search of a problem.

As Californians find themselves inundated in layer upon layer of green energy initiatives, the state finds itself awash in an embarrassment of riches – simply put, during daylight hours when untold acres of solar electricity generation hits peak production the state must pay its neighbors to absorb that excess power only to find itself caught short during evening hours when demand peaks. Without safe and accessible means of storing generated solar electricity there is no way to match peak output with peak demand.

Meeting peak evening electricity demand often requires supplementation by fossil-fuel-fired “peaker plants” to generate adequate power. In a more sensible state there would be adequate capacity for pumped hydroelectric power, such as in PG&E’s Big Creek or Los Angeles DWP’s Castaic Power Plant where water, pumps, and gravity are used to store energy without pollution.

Unfortunately California hasn’t built any new pumped hydro facilities in decades leaving the state with but one power storage option – battery farms, along with all their potential hazards and concerns. Add to that excess power storage puzzle, the distribution question: can solar facilities be built conveniently close to the power distribution grid, or do they require miles of expensive transmission lines? That is the perplexing situation much of the state now faces.

A Utility Grade Solar Ordinance

Santa Barbara County, undaunted by those facts and under the direction of its green-leaning Supervisors Laura Capps, Joan Hartmann, and their obedient minion, Roy Lee, has, nonetheless, leapt into the fray, and has directed Planning and Development to craft a Utility Grade Solar Ordinance for the County, which will expand a previous ordinance that limited utility grade solar to a 600-acre footprint in the Cuyama Valley. The new ordinance has just emerged from two Planning Commission hearings with a potential footprint of 16,000 acres doled out at 100 acres per project limited to one 100-acre plot per parcel of 1,000 acres or more, along with permission to build associated battery storage. If fully built out, those 160 projects could potentially produce double the County’s current electricity consumption.

On its face, the plan appears workable, but the questions regarding distribution on the power grid remain, compounded by the fact that Santa Barbara County sits at the nexus of the state’s two power providers: Southern California Edison in the south county, and PG&E in the north. Which brings us to the next question: how does the County get to its 16,000-acre goal when the southern half, linked to SCE, has little open land suitable for solar other than the Gaviota Coast?

So, is this turning out to be another south-county initiative for which the north county will bear the brunt? Will the disproportionate share of proposed solar be borne by the north county on prime ag lands, those with the best soil and water availability?

Despite assurances to the contrary, solar farms are rarely built on hillsides because of the limited sun exposure. Moreover, prime ag lands are closest to power substations, thereby reducing the cost of the projects, meaning the decision makers had better not overlook the very real fact that there are few power substations located near ag lands that are not immediately adjacent to urban areas.

Moreover, as we saw in Monterey County, battery energy storage system fires can create a toxic plume, endangering communities and contaminating ag lands. Furthermore, consider the required cost of $500,000 to potentially $5,000,000 per mile of transmission lines that would be required to move the power from a remote area to an existing substation. This would unquestionably tax the viability of any such project.

Virtue Signaling at its Finest

In the end, this initiative produces far more questions than answers. While the BOS seems hellbent on eliminating gas and oil production (nearly one acre of solar panels are required to produce the same energy as one barrel of oil), it has embarked on a path that will undoubtedly result in the loss of many thousands of acres of productive agricultural lands in pursuit of a goal which may never be realized. And for what? Completely, totally, and redundantly excessive solar capacity? When our state is drowning in the same?

Please do recall that solar only produces four hours per day and battery energy storage systems can only save what has been produced. We’re going to sacrifice 16,000 acres of land for four hours of energy? And what about the fact that our region is subject to catastrophic wildfires that would render the solar panels and the requisite battery energy storage system toxic waste?

Mark this down as just another dumb idea in green virtue signaling.

Leave a comment

Share Santa Barbara Current

Subscribe now

Paid Advertisement:

Funded by our local conservative Super PAC Analytics805

Community Calendar:

2 DAYS

SBCurrent’s Primary Endorsements Here:

A NOTE FROM BOB SMITH

Friends,

Republicans are essentially tied with Democrat turnout on the Central Coast right now. That means this primary can absolutely be won if Republicans who still have ballots at home turn them in immediately.

If you have not voted yet, we need you now.

* Avoid Mail Delays * Please do not use regular mail at this point.

Instead:

• Drop your ballot in an official white ballot box

• Take it directly to your county elections office

• Vote in person at an authorized voting location

Every ballot matters in a low-turnout primary, and we are close enough to beat Democrat turnout if Republicans finish strong over these final days.

Please also contact friends or family members you know who have not voted yet. We need all hands on deck. Thank you!

PROUDLY RUNNNING FOR
CALIFORNIA’S 24th CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

Read more

I have been tracing America’s transition from a world of faithful pilgrims to nihilistic pirates, that is, discussing that which has caused cultures and civilizations to either flourish or meet their demise throughout modern history. It was British Anthropologist J.D. Unwin who studied the fall of some 86 cultures and civilizations throughout history, only to find that the longevity, health, and well-being of culture was largely determined by their attitudes, customs, and mores having to do with sexuality, faith, and marriage.

Another brilliant scholar, Carle Zimmerman, a Harvard sociologist, studied the role of family in the rise and fall of civilization, determining that the one thing that advanced civilizations had in common was the nuclear family construct. That is, tribal and clan-type family constructs never amounted to much and, on the opposite end, when men and women became so narcissistic and hedonistic that nuclear marriages fell by the wayside, the culture soon met its demise.

I previously focused on the unraveling of the home and family by way of events and values that began in the 1960s with a focus on women and mothers. Now, let’s turn our attention to men.

1) The feminist movement was a two-edged sword. As it sought to liberate women, it did so at the expense of men while it attacked so-called toxic masculinity. Along the way, it eviscerated the vital role of men as fathers, heads of households, providers, and protectors. Specifically, society at large, encouraged men to get in touch with their “feminine side” as they abandoned their traditional roles in family and society in deference to the ability of women to supplant them as equals.

2) The attack on men, became a war on boys. Even though nearly all scientific literature indicates that boys and girls mature at different rates and are stimulated by different things, mothers in the home and teachers in schools began to push back against the things that little boys are made of, including boundless rambunctious energy. In the 1960s, with the dispensing of drugs like Ritalin, hyperactive young boys were diagnosed as having attention deficit disorders at twice the rate of girls and were deleteriously drugged accordingly.

3) Traditionally, one key God-given role of women in society was to domesticate men by way of withholding sex apart from marriage, and sometimes, in marriage. The free sex movement and the commensurate loss of the fear of God, made possible by way of the pill and abortion, served to throw chastity out the window, and men became somewhat free to roam before, during, and after marriage, sans any personal moral constraints. Now at full throttle, the hook-up culture has replaced courtship, and porn addiction among men is epidemic.

4) Subsequent to number 3, no-fault divorce facilitated awarding primary custody to mothers which means the fathers ended up spending more time with their second family rather than their first. The destructive and disruptive impact of this resulted in successive generations of boys who were raised without their natural fathers in the home to guide, mentor, and discipline them, that is, if a man was present at all. This has proved a disaster for society as nearly every social ill including drug and alcohol abuse, criminality, homelessness, and the like can be traced to boys who were essentially abandoned by their fathers.

5) There has been a massive loss of 7.5 million jobs among men, such as those found in manufacturing, logging, mining, and the steel industry. These sectors virtually vanished, including by way of environmental regulations, thereby destroying head of household jobs for men without a college education. The resultant wage loss put pressure on spouses to find work at the expense of family life.

Jordan Peterson said it best, “If you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.”

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

Paid Advertisement:

Read more