(The following is just a trickle of some of the many comments, observations, claims, and suggestions received by Santa Barbara Current. To enhance your reading enjoyment, please follow the Comment thread that appears immediately after each column. If you’d like to contribute a letter to the editor, please add your city/town in your comment.)
Re: Tim Tremblay
Good job. Love the encapsulation of investing. Let's hope 2024 will truly be the end of the Biden financial chaos.
Henry Schulte
Wise Counsel
Thanks for Tim Tremblay’s always wise counsel and for constantly talking me out of the "Roulette" wheel for my retirement plans.
Phil Unander
Fall and Rise
I agree. I went through the same huge downturns over the years and watched the rise each time happy that I had not panicked!
Nancy Crawford
Santa Ynez
Re: Henry Schulte
Are there enough common-sense American voters left who are paying attention to make a difference in the 2024 election? So many of my (past) friends and young people have been snookered and suckered into believing so many lies. What's more convincing, what you are told or what you see right before your eyes?
Wally Hofmann
Registered American Independent
(Editor’s note: Apparently, what you are told is more convincing, i.e., the indifferent response to the massacre of 1,700 Israeli residents versus the world-wide support of “oppressed” Palestinians living in an enclave that Israel voluntarily abandoned. – J.B.)
Fuggedaboudit
You’re so right, and it’s because like most people, your (past) friends don’t watch politics much, they just cruise along picking up a name here and there then check the [x] D box. Trumpy and the GOP has gotta be sold like selling every other commodity. Who’s gonna buy Lux-O soap if the ads don’t tell you how great it is, how cheap it is, how people love it etc.
Why are you blaming Biden and the rest of the Commie-Dems? They haven’t changed tactics; they’re doing what they said they were going to do at the beginning. Blame the stupid people who keep voting them into office.
Forget about preaching to the choir; we need to appeal to the people who don’t watch Fox News. Everybody watching Fox is already voting for Trump.
We need to convince the few common-sense Commie-Dems and especially the Independents that Trump and the GOP can make their lives better, and the only way to do that is to hustle them with compelling advertising, marketing, and promotion.
Earl Brown
(Editor’s note: It’s not an easy sell, especially when your marketing plan is rejected by most media. – J.B.)
Loot and Pollute
What a great article by Andy Caldwell (“Looters and Polluters”). Thank you for an insightful explanation of how our government is not working.
Betsey von Summer
Spend More; Get Less
Yahoo just wrote an article recently on the four things Biden did right for 2023 and the three things that need improvement. It was a shrill piece for socialism, and all of it a lie. What Henry Schulte wrote is exactly the truth. And America is watching and listening, and most of us don't have our heads in the sand.
Just one example of the article: Yahoo stated that spending was up in America. Ha hah; of course it is; groceries, utilities, gas, taxes, inflation, everything is up, so if you need to feed your kids, you are spending more. As if we are all excited that America is spending more.
America is spending itself into debt. Highest credit card debt per capita in decades.
We all need to keep looking up, because the only constant in our lives, is the faithfulness and steadfastness of the Lord… and continue to pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.
Happy New Year fellow Santa Barbarians.
Elyse Rossler
Santa Barbara
Paying the Wrong People
We went to Cal Poly SLO orientation when our son was accepted there as an undergrad (he attended, and graduated elsewhere).
When we listened to the Engineering Department orientation the department head was saying they were looking to hire new professors. The positions only paid $80,000 per year and they were struggling to find professors. His conclusion was, “So you know the professors we do have are here because they really want to be here and are dedicated to their jobs and students.”
That next week the new DEI (Diversity! Equity! Inclusion!) vice president was announced, and his salary was $275,000 per year. They could have paid three engineering professors with that salary.
Greg Wolf
Santa Barbara
Purely Political Over-Spending
It will be glorious to see these institutions of “Higher Education” lose it all when the worldwide financial crash erases their endowments. 2024 will be a Great Year!
The year 2023 was full of disclosures and it was fun to watch the masses awakening.
The Top 10 headlines the media didn't tell you in 2023:
10) The CIA paid off analysts to say Covid-19 didn't originate in the Wuhan lab.
9) 60,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate went missing from cargo train (10 times the amount used in the Oklahoma bombing).
8) Suspicious circumstances still surround tight-lipped Obama chef drowning case after new findings claim that Secret Service boats meant for search and rescue happened to be 'inoperable' that day.
7) Former VP of Pfizer says Covid-19 is just the beginning of a 10-year plan by Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab.
6) The Biden administration sent an embarrassing $700-per-person to Maui fire victims while sending over $100 billion to Ukraine, as rumors circulated that the government started the fires with space lasers.
5) Secret Chinese Covid biolab was funded upwards of $400,000 by California Governor Gavin Newsom.
4) FBI buries massive voter fraud bust in Michigan, discovering tens of thousands of fake voter registrations, bags of pre-paid gift cards, guns with silencers, burner phones, and a Democrat-funded organization with multiple temporary facilities in several states.
3) U.S. Governors to citizens: “Consider hosting illegal immigrant families in your homes.”
2) Trump vows to institute the death penalty for child traffickers after screening 'Sound of Freedom'.
1) Elon Musk tells advertisers to go f*ck themselves for blackmailing him, causing mass cancelations of Disney Plus and other services; this after 𝕏 users already canceled Bud Light.
Bonus: Lia Thomas was banned from competing against biological females in Olympic Swimming.
timeisup
Following the Money
It was always about the money. What to do with all those Sociology, Black Studies, Gender Studies, etc., PhDs and no place to work?
Ed Fuller
SBCRP 2nd District Caucus Chair
Forgot to Add UCSB
Lost amongst the college millionaires is UC Santa Barbara's very own UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang, who was paid a measly $684,829 in 2022 (plus benefits). https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2022/university-of-california/henry-yang/
Saying Her Prayers
One of my little nightly prayers is "Thank you God that Richard and I were able to raise our children in the good old days ".
Calla J. Corner
Meursault, France
Enough Already
Excellent summation! It’s beyond time to eliminate all income and property tax exemptions for NPOs and NGOs. Every organization is a business that needs to be taxed by the IRS and County property tax assessor, rather than subsidized by taxpayers. Put all currently tax-exempt properties and organizations back on tax rolls including schools, hospitals, and the millions of residential housing units that are currently exempt from taxation. They’re many of the largest most profitable businesses, paying highest compensation! Eliminate the IRS ‘so-called charitable’ tax deduction loophole that only benefits upper classes not those struggling in the working and lower classes.
Montecito 93108
(Editor’s note: Yes, we were lucky to have grown up "in the good old days." It's hard to believe, for example, that when I first moved to Manhattan, I worked as a "Kelly Girl" (now Kelly Services) as a temporary office worker, made about $4.10 an hour as I recall, yet could still afford a large ground floor studio apartment with a private garden on the Upper West Side (87th Street between Columbus Ave and Riverside Drive) ... and I lived alone! Often, my dinner would either be at Tad's Steak House where for 99 cents I'd order a steak and baked potato. Or head over to the Automat (subway fare was a dime) for a 3-veggie plate at 20 cents per veggie and a 5-cent cup of hot chocolate. I'm not even that old yet! – J.B.)
Ah, So!
That explains the heritage of Tad's Steak House in San Francisco, famous for their $1.10 steaks in our days. Established 1955. We assumed it was just a San Francisco treat.
J. Livingston
Santa Barbara