Letters to the Editor
Edited by Jim Buckley
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Edited by Jim Buckley
(The following is just a trickle of some of the many comments, observations, claims, and suggestions received by Santa Barbara Current, a publication that is reader supported and receives no direct or indirect USAID or nonprofit funding. To enhance your reading experience, please follow the Comment thread that appears immediately after each column. If you’d like to contribute a letter to the editor, please send separately, and don’t forget a full name and city!)
Life’s a Holiday for SB City Council
Thanks to Bonnie Donovan’s column (Did You Know?... City Council Members Never Miss a Holiday, 28 Mar ‘25) for the city council information and the number of “days off” council members enjoy. What an eye opener; no wonder they can’t get anything done. I can’t imagine running my business with that many days off and it being successful. It is flat stupid to think that think they can be successful in making decisions to keep our beautiful city running in an orderly manner. I would love to see them get off their butts on one of their many days off and take a walk up State Street to see what a failure that it is. OPEN UP STATE ST! It’s obvious it is not working the way it is.
Thank you, Bonnie, for the great job you do.
Jerry Shalhoob
Founder, Shalhoob Meat Co. Est. 1973
Fraud and Hypocrisy
CNBC would have its viewers believe that President Trump "reversed" his tariffs via Truth Social and Wall Street gave him a pat on the back with a 2,961-point one-day surge of buying.
What occurred is somewhat different. The U.S. Treasury Dept. held a $39 billion auction of 10-year Treasury bonds and buyers outside the U.S. gobbled up 88% of the offering at an unexpectedly low 4.435%, with a significant "stop-through" - a sign that investors were eager to buy even below prevailing market rates. The huge sale delivered a sharp rebuke to the media doomsayers who predicted foreign investors would steer clear of U.S. financial instruments in protest of President Trump's structural reconfiguring of the world's marketplace.
Taking place simultaneously was the president's Truth Social announcement that nations seeking a negotiating time-frame vis a vis his tariff rate schedule would be provided with 90 days of relief – but that a floor rate of 10% would be levied in the meantime against their imports. Meanwhile, nations, such as China, retaliating against the new rate schedule will see their tariffs increased.
Trump opponents were quietly wishing for a robust "sell-America" rout in hopes of embarrassing the administration and pressuring him to choose between Wall Street or his program touting (economic) regime change. They were actively hoping for a liquidity crunch which would lead to a Federal Reserve intervention not to Trump's liking.
The 10-year Treasury auction poked the naysayers in the eyeballs. Demand was broad and deep. Treasury prices rose sharply; yields fell back from crisis levels. With investors reassessing their risk outlook, they jumped all-in with the largest, broadest rally in 17 years on the Dow Jones and S-P 500. It could be said that Donald Trump is playing a game of incrementalism. Two steps forward - one step back. For a time, the ground was shifting and swaying under our feet. When the dust and smoke cleared, however, everybody in this high-stakes game was accommodated to some degree...
...But Team Trump just passed downfield for a 20-yard gain and a first down.
David McCalmont
Santa Barbara
(Editor’s note: Right you are, sir. Lucky for us, Democrat Party leaders have been so feckless that they sent millions of their former adherents into the arms of the man they regale in calling a “felon” and his newly focused “America First” Republican Party. And on Wednesday, April 9, they did it again. Anyone with half a working brain could see that this was a spectacular victory for President Trump, but the mainstream press spun it as a big setback. His brand-new lower poll numbers – which his detractors had been hailing as the beginning of the end – will accelerate his support up, up, and away, after this. Funny how pollsters were out polling people not 24 hours after the Friday, April 4th sell off, knowing of course, that those numbers would be diminished by the event. I didn’t know they worked weekends.
In any event, all I can say is Halleluiah; the Lord really does move in mysterious ways… – J.B.)
What’s Wrong with Democrats?
Why haven't any prominent Democrats publicly decried the senseless violence against Tesla and Elon Musk? What is wrong with these people (rhetorical)? These domestic terrorists are potentially harming individuals both physically and financially. Do they think they're going to generate support by their despicable actions? How stupid can they be? The Democrat leaders have demonstrated how worthless they are by their inaction by not making public denouncements.
Harold J. Baer, M.D.
Santa Barbara
(Editor’s note: Fortunately, Democrat spokespeople really are that stupid. Adam “Pencil Neck” Schiff, Cory “Spartacus” Booker, Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren, Charles (Chuckie) Schumer, Eric Swalwell, Jasmine Crocket, et al, are a pathetic group of self-serving clowns who only make things worse for their party whenever and wherever they speak. – J.B.)
Making Memories
The meaning of life in so many words is a tough assignment (re: Henry Schulte’s “It’s Your Journey” 8 Apr ‘25). I think of my own life and try to define those moments which gave it lasting meaning, moments which will pass through my mind as I take my last breaths. It is never my career or a car I built or a brilliant stock pick but something much simpler. It is the chocolate pudding with the dollop of whipped cream that my mother made for desert or how my sister tricked my father into taking us to a fair under the lie that there was a beer tree there. It is the family moments that are all that really matter in the end. With that in mind I ask myself if I have touched another in a way so dear that they might think of it in their last moments. It is the least and it is the most we can do.
Jeff Barton
Santa Barbara
Crowds are Fickle, Craven, and Easily Spooked
Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent offers insights in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson about the current market situation with reminders of past performance histories and why we have chosen to rely on stock prices as the only measurement of national economic health.
Secretary Bessent suggests it was the surprise introduction of China's “Deep Seek” that first rattled the market, since this radically impacted the prior Wall Street darlings dubbed The Magnificent Seven, who were a large part of many wealth fund investments. They went down first. The current litany of Trump, Trump, Trump, is specious as usual, and intentional. Just look at every over-wrought news story headline in The Wall Street Journal, dripping in Trump-Trump-Trump purple prose to wonder who in fact is attempting to manipulate the markets, and why?
Additionally, Bessent reminds us that the health of Main Street is equally important as the health of Wall Street, for the country as a whole and how we are required to spend tax dollars. One must also be reminded of how much the Left vilifies Wall Street and “corporations” as the personification of human evil, until their own portfolios start losing value. More Democrat amnesia and self-serving hypocrisy.
What good are paper investments when our nation rots from within, life is no longer safe, and our children's futures are compromised from birth? Who in fact is killing Social Security and Medicare when children are no longer being educated, other nations are rotting out our middle class, and we become a nation dependent on the mercurial goodwill of other countries that plot our economic demise?
Somehow the United States survived when an Autopen was running this country for the past four years and faceless bureaucrats were spending ceaseless and unaccountable billions of our tax dollars. Thank you very much, but I will choose more solid and accountable footings for my own financial future for the long term, rather than the erratic fumes driven by this current Democrat and unelected deep state partisan vindictiveness.
The animal spirts of the marketplace turned euphoric sensing there would be a Trump victory in 2024. The poetry part of the 2024 Trump election, however, was that the animal spirits were rudely shot down when Trump was immediately faced with the calculated and organized Democrat activist judge lawfare, cynically intended to sabotage every single move Trump made, that being the prose part of actual governance.
People can be both fickle and craven. And easily spooked, which is why Warren Buffet remained so successful in the long run. He recommends looking at investments on an annual basis, not this current hysteria-inducing hour-by-hour micromanagement.
J. Livingston
Santa Barbara
(Editor’s note: Right you are. If one had looked at his stock market portfolio, say, one year ago (9 April 2024), he would have been ecstatic that he had done so well, and would not have suffered the debilitating decline of the past month! – J.B.)
Markets just closed for Thursday. CNBC reports with glee that the Dow Jones surrendered a "big chunk" of Wednesday's gains. They could've said that the two-day gain in the Dow netted investors a 1,948-point surge in value. Both assessments are correct, but the media always aims to reduce the psychological edge that any good news may provide to Donald Trump.
Congratulations to Mr. Shallhoob for sounding the alarm regarding local inaction by our elected officials. Clearly, the BOS and respective City Councils have taxpaying property and business owners as being way down on their priority list. Ironic, given we pay the majority of taxes paid to city and county coffers. Typically, those representing the homeless, illegal migrants, renter unions, bike lobbyists, environmentalists, LGBTQ activists and public unions seem to get the majority of our elected officials attention.
Enough already!
Our Congressman, Salud Carbajal has recently made a series of videos posted on social media. Repeatedly, I have asked him “what are you doing for homeowners, small business owners and taxpayers?”
I am still waiting for a response.