46 Comments

Wait until SpaceX is checked for emissions. Who knows what's in the tailpipe of a Falcon 9.

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On the upside, they will be able to broadcast those emission findings on Starlink.

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The Demented Against Fermented! 🤦🏼‍♀️

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A proposal re: public housing for "workers".

Can a referral list be established for various workers and trades people, who benefit from the public housing provided in our area?

That way we mutually benefit when we provide this tax-supported municipal housing. These workers can also establish themselves financially finding a market for their services, so in time they can move on to regular housing. This in turn leaves openings in the tax-supported public housing for someone else

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That's a fascinating story, but the only fact you've shown any evidence for is that mid/north county receives more welfare. Who's even to say that's a bad thing? Welfare is income dependent, so I would imagine this just means there's a higher number of lower income families in north county. You're not analyzing any of the information you've found. Furthermore, citing a city council meeting that just says "Social Services Public Assistance Programs Overview" doesn't mean anything. All I know from that is social services have oversight. It doesn't state that any other industry doesn't.

But most importantly of all, you don't even have a conclusion. Let's say you're right, and this is a huge issue, which contrary to the tone of this comment, I am completely willing to believe. What do you actually suggest being done about it? You have no action step. Help me do something, don't just shove another problem with no hope of solution down my throat. Have a point to your journalism.

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Marcel, it sounds to me that the point of the article is that over regulation is killing our local jobs and creating an entire population of government dependency. The obvious solution is to vote the inept politicians out of office which would be possible if we voted for the best and brightest every single time instead of ‘blue-no-matter-who”.

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That sounds great. What makes a politician the "best and brightest?" Where is the actual evidence that overregulation is killing jobs? These are the kinds of details I'm asking for from a publication.

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Marcel, I appreciate your insistent nature towards facts and data. Imagine if everyone asked as many questions, how much better off we would be. Let’s start with the ‘best and brightest’ question. Sometimes an example is worth a thousand words. If you live in Santa Barbara, you’ll remember the mayoral race which put Cathy Murillo against Angel Martinez. Angel Martinez, a Cuban immigrant, who lived the American dream. A shoe executive who ran billion dollar companies, spoke fluent Spanish, raised his family in Santa Barbara and donated much time and resources to our non-profit community, a committed husband and father, wise and measured in temperament. He wasn’t even a (gasp) Republican! Angel was truly one of the most if not THE most qualified mayoral candidate we’ve ever been given the opportunity to vote for. Angel ran against Cathy Murillo who had less job experience on her resume than I did as a 19 year old. Cathy wasn’t known for any particular personal or work successes in life, which I think is a big deal if you are responsible for running a City with thousands of employees and a multi million dollar budget. She’d not created anything of much substance that I recall. I’ll be kind in saying that she wasn’t known for her ability to problem solve, or even for being bi-lingual. Yet with this being said, the DEM party put all of their might, weight, resources, and media support behind getting her elected as the mayor of Santa Barbara in a landslide victory. These results lack any common sense.

Regarding actual evidence of over-regulation killing jobs, I think we have several examples. The pot industry is the latest of course. Love it or hate it, the industry was making money hand over fist until the State of CA stepped in to ‘help’. As much as people love to blame high rents for our decaying downtown, the truth is that when it takes 5-6 years to sometimes pull permits (the City’s favorite form of over regulation), who can afford that kind of time? One of many beautiful restaurants to come and go, the Little Door was over regulated into bankruptcy over a 4 year period. Their trash enclosure deliberated into oblivion whilst being trapped in an ADA wheelchair lift nightmare that the DRB wouldn’t allow. I’ll give you a more personal example. My husband commissioned a beautiful mural from renowned local artist Thomas Van Stein. The permit cost us $60,000 and approximately 5 years of hell for a beautiful historic mural to be placed on our property in SB. Yet, many politically correct murals don’t even require a permit at all! The list of over regulation in our City, County and State is so long that that there isn’t enough room to write about it all, but I think you already know it.

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Mayoral candidate Angel Martinez promised he "would stick around", even after he lost that first time run for public office. I am sorry he did not. He had a lot of good new energy. And would have brought large business discipline to the range of our current city council deliberations.

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If you knew they filthy, vile tricks they did to him, you’d understand why he disappeared away from the limelight and into the sanctuary of his loving family and friends.

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Ouch. The legendary local Mean Machine. We have seen it in operation too many times, destroying good people who stood up and wanted to participate. Just got notice the Independent's political writer Jerry Roberts endorsed Roy Lee for District One County Supervisor, which goes against the local political machine too. Wonder how that will play out

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To Emerald Eye and J. Livingston. I apologize if I made my points feel directed at anyone. I understand that I am able to find these facts myself, but I believe that when a writer makes a statement in an article, the readers are relying on them to back up their argument. I have seen that when this is not done, it results in people staunchly believing things without reason and being frustrated when they struggle to convince others. It isn't your job or mine to support the original author's argument.

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Marcel, you demand others provide solutions so here are a few. Please throw in your support in your own future political endeavors: ban all government employee unions and eliminate the defined-benefit public pension. Eliminate all automatic municipal compensation escalators that are not tied to increased city revenues. Drop all "climate change" agendas, DEI and "local labor agreements" that now impact municipal policy decisions. Stop pretending taxpayers are obligated to provide "affordable housing as a right" to anyone who demands it. Prohibit rent-control and punitive, one-sided landlord demands. We are wasting time and money on all of the above. Yes to current zoning protections and design standards, support maintenance and improvements of our municipal hardscape infrastructure, anti-blight regulations and enforceable community standards for public conduct.

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Welcome to today's standard for "journalism" for all sides of the fence. We all have the duty on our own to trust, but verify. There is a pretty astute group of participants here. You needn't worry they might innocently get "led astray".

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Our astuteness is irrelevant. Look at any article in Wall Street Journal or New York Times; any reputable source from either side of the aisle provides valid sources, even in commentary.

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One place to start is the annual U-Haul report for outbound truck rentals:

https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/U-Haul-Growth-States-Of-2022-Texas-Florida-Top-List-Again-28337/

Curious what your demands are that you place on a "publication". Google is your friend. Research is at everyone's fingertips.

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What an interesting article, thanks for sharing! As a Native Californian this is great news! But, people are still not leaving fast enough. It does beg the question, if so many people are leaving, why is there still so much demand for housing? Prices keep going up, and new housing needs to be built.

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You can start with the UCSB conveyor belt of new graduates every single year who decide they don't want to leave Santa Barbara, and declare it a "housing crisis" if they cannot find something they can afford to buy or rent with their newly minted UCSB degree.

The other obvious pressure is due to the influx of high-birth rate "new comers" over the past few decades that created internal new housing demand pressures that grow exponentially, which are not mitigated by the current outward migration.

But we were talking about state over-regulation and micromanagement of revenue producing businesses, causing this critical economic sector to decamp and leave the state. Not just internal population numbers who demand housing, regardless of revenue production abilities.

Did Jeff Bezos recently decamp from California to Florida, just to "spend more time with his family". Or was he motivated by California's always bottom ranking business climate, high taxes, and wealth confiscation threats?

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I, too, am a native Californian. 4 generations of us in my family. I'm a rarity for sure. And I wonder about this too. SO many wealthy out of state people who own homes here that sit empty. When the prices are this high only those kinds of people can afford a home. It isn't paradise when locals cannot afford to live here.

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Legacy unearned privileges are on the chopping block elsewhere. Why should they be instituted here? There are many multi-generational legacies living in this town - some of their ancestors handled their initial patrimony better than others.

Plus there is plenty of Housing Authority and non-profit housing for seniors in this town, with a built in turn-over rate. Santa Barbara may work best as a place you come back to later in life and get on those waiting lists, if you "can't afford to live here" now. Your own personal flexibility is the key.

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“homes that sit empty” Presumably ripe for squatters, except for the squatter squad. _Here’s_ how to get ‘em out: https://squattersquad.co

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Just read it for what it is; no need to attack it for what you demand is missing.

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But that's what I'm saying. It isn't anything. And if it's not going to provide any evidence for its claims, it's convincing people of a nonexistent problem.

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What you are saying is, the author must meet your personal burden of proof while you avoid providing this burden of proof yourself. This is a discussion group; not a fount of holy writ. You raised in interesting point. So did he. Thank you.

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That’s not at all what I’m saying. I never made a claim. I was requesting that when a point is made, with the goal of influencing or informing people, it should have a foundation in fact.

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Like I've said before. The morons at the county and cities of Santa Barbara want windmills that kill scores of birds, but that's okay. Now if the oil company(s) leak out a few hundred barrels of oil the county and city are all over them. Funny how it's okay for the county to accidentally (Accidentally being the key word) release 1,000,000 gallons of raw sewage into the Goleta oceans, and Meh, we, the County don't care.

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Maybe you can leave ... get a fake Venezuelan identity ... and swim back across the Rio Grande ... and Abbott can bus you back to Santa Barbara ... and then the county will care about you.

just a suggestion. I'm not sure it'll work. Individual results may vary.

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If I am reading Andy's charts correctly, for that to work for you, you would have to be sent to North County to pick strawberries, or some other crop in the rain or in the heat of day for minimum wage with no benefits and live in a crowded apartment with just one toilet. If you can afford a car, other options would include commuting to South County to work for minimum wage bussing some tourists dirty dishes or cleaning their soiled hotel bed linens.

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Willing buyers meet willing sellers.

In the good old days, many of us worked our way through college happy to get low skill jobs in the hospitality industry - short hours, flexible schedules and often even free meals.

Plus significant work experience that paid off in many intangible ways later in life. Those "dirty jobs" let us leave college debt-free and did not thrust our own personal choice to get a college degree on others who played no role in that personal choice to obtain a college degree.

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Yep, that's what we did. And I pulled National Guard at the same time ...

... have a great Sunday, Livingston!!

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Stephen, Sounds almost like the deal I got being an American.

Maybe it's not worth it.

... have a great Sunday!

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On the issue of housing and lack of it in our county and district. Can we just blame our existing politicians who make local and national rules? The over regulation that Mr. Caldwell is describing surely exists, and slows down all building projects, and stops most projects from getting off the ground. When builders cannot make a project pencil out, that is the end of the project. And this should be noted when the city or county wants to get involved with a building project like the Macy's downtown development that the city partnered with. Without the cities 'help' and tax breaks, these projects would not have penciled out and would have been abandoned. Now we can see these giant white elephants sitting empty, because of distortions caused by government butting into the building process.

In the area of housing, county wide, prices are too high for most people. Families must double up, young people must live two to a room and worse. But one of the biggest causes of so called housing shortage is an over population caused once again by government interference. If we look at the numbers - When our city votes to be a sanctuary city, or when our local Congressman Salud Carbajal votes in congress for open borders policies, the result has been to bring in 10 million illegal aliens in the last few years. And ten million is a 3.3% increase of our nations population.

In our 24th district of 750,711 people that 3.3%  increase means 750,711 X .03 = 24,773 new people living in our district. These are new, out of work, unemployed and unskilled men, just sitting around, collecting welfare, taking up space, hospital space, police, schools and housing space. These new unemployed, broke people that Congressman Salud has unwittingly brought into our neighborhoods are the main cause of our so called housing crises. If there were suddenly 24,773 fewer people in the county, there would suddenly be many places for rent over night and prices would drop accordingly.  

 Question is: did Salud create 24,774 new jobs for these new men? No. We are supposed to employ them all or else. How many gardeners and pot farmers do we need here? And did Salud create 24,774 new apartments for anyone?  And the answer is a resounding no. There are no new apartments and no new jobs because of excessive and unrelenting government regulation on building and business as Mr. Caldwell points out every other week!

And certainly Salud has not created a single job anywhere, except maybe a few staffers. And Carbajal is very proud of using taxpayer funding for one apartment building for 100 illegal aliens in Guadalupe, while he imported 24,773 new guys into our district. New illegal immigrants with no money, no skills to hang out on our streets and be given welfare, while our governments destroy the manufacturing business, and destroy the energy business and so what is left? Will everyone work for the government soon?

So it's no wonder there are not enough living units for average American families here. We could tell Salud NO, America is not your dumping ground. And say that our district is not a giant welfare hotel.  But unless we change politicians who vote for these policies, these are results of forces beyond our control. Forces in DC, the DNC, from Davos, from the central banks that decide America needs to be fortified with 10 million young men every few years.

I for one disagree with these policies of flooding America.

Thomas Cole for Congress. CA CD 24

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Good review Thomas, but don’t worry. When Trump gets elected that 24,773 - will be reduced to zero after he deports them all back to where they came from. If they want to then come in legally, fine. Btw, just reviewed your bio - excellent - https://ballotpedia.org/Thomas_Cole Finally . . . a true American!

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Gonna be kinda hard to do that from a prison cell.

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This may explain why I have seen price increases at our local wineries but not in stores that carry wine from elsewhere.

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Yes. excellent article.

to be fair to your county officials though ... they sound positively reasonable compared to some.

I know a certain midwest state (take a guess) ... lost 98% of their manufacturers between 1974 and 2004. That's lots of jobs and opportunities. Many sold out to the Bigs, which kept the stats from falling 98%, but most just went bankrupt and shut their doors.

So y'all have a lot of "improvements" yet to come.

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How awful and sad. But they just don’t get it. Very unfortunate. Thanks for the insight.

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Thanks for your always in-depth research, Andy.

A question: Had the north county-south county split that was proposed to voters a number of years ago taken place, is there any way to plot their separate hypothetical trajectories from that proposed split to the present?

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Don't forget jeep tours, hotels, restaurants. SB wine tours were birthday parties for LA people.

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I'd be upset by then I realized that this was written by Andy Caldwell so the chances of it being accurate are slim.

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Wow this is so sad for South County! Thank you for the great informational news!

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Roy Lee is a good alternative to the nonsense created by the current board of supervisors. Das Williams is the perfect example of why this is happening. Drive through Carpinteria and inhale

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Are you suggesting that on the subject of marijuana, the government let the market be too free? That they should have centrally planned the permits or supply to ensure prices didn't crater?

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