Letters to the Editor

Edited by Jim Buckley

Jun 18, 2024

The Comment section after every featured article is always active with opinion, but occasionally we run letters that SBCurrent receives via e-mail and never appear as Comments. What follows are some of those missives.

Leftist Radical Administrators in Charge

It’s never a good idea to negotiate with Islamic radicals or their supporters.

But that’s exactly what’s been happening at many university campuses nationwide. Take Northwestern University and Rutgers University, for example.

In the wake of pro-Hamas protests, Northwestern told these radical agitators that the school would hire two Palestinian faculty members for two years and provide the full tuition for five Palestinian undergraduates. In addition, the university will provide “immediate temporary space for [Middle Eastern, North African,] and Muslim students.”

At Rutgers, administrators agreed to “hire senior administrators with cultural competency and knowledge about Arabs, Palestinians, Muslims, anti-Palestinian racism, and Islamophobia.” And the school also promised to develop leftist training sessions for its administrators and staff!

And the preferential treatment for radical jihadist sympathizers doesn’t stop at these two campuses.

For weeks, UCLA had been stonewalling an event featuring Young America’s Foundation (YAF)’s lecturer Robert Spencer—founder and director of Jihad Watch—citing security concerns.

After legal pressure from YAF, the university seemed to decide to allow the event to take place.

But at the eleventh hour, UCLA blocked the pro-Israel event in a clear violation of students’ constitutional rights.

Instead of cowering to the demands of Hamas-supporting radicals, all three of these universities should have upheld law and order by clearing the leftist encampments and prosecuting all violators to the fullest extent of the law. And they certainly should have protected the First Amendment rights of conservative students!

That’s why YAF is fighting back against leftist administrators at Northwestern and Rutgers to challenge the illegal agreements each university made with pro-Hamas radicals.

You can read more about our civil rights complaints here:

And YAF is also fighting back against UCLA’s unconstitutional censorship and has announced legal action against UCLA administrators for violating students’ freedom of speech.

You can read the latest right here:

I hope you will read about how YAF is advocating for your conservative ideas.

YAF is the leading youth outreach organization in America and holds schools accountable when our students’ First Amendment rights are infringed. We are grateful for the ways you support this work to protect freedom of speech for young conservatives on campuses nationwide.

Clare Hinshaw

Development Relations Director

Young America’s Foundation

(Editor’s note: You didn’t mention the excellent speaker program co-sponsored by former Santa Barbara News-Press publisher, Wendy McCaw, so we will. K.T. MacFarland, U.S. Senator Rand Paul, Ben Shapiro, Chloe Coe, and Dr. Ben Carson are just some of the more recent guest speakers who’ve graced the Reagan Ranch Center. Anyone interested in finding more information about YAF should go to: yaf.org. – J.B.)

Liberals Banning Books Again!

The cover crusade at the Independent this week is censorship and book banning. The fact that columnist Nick Welsh must go back almost a century to come up with a classic prudish American example of book banning (James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence) should indicate to an educated readership that there isn't much in the way of actual book banning for adults in our modern era. In an age where the most vulgar and classless tripe is aired publicly in front of children, what possibly could be subject to censorship? Mr. Welsh's examples of modern-day book banning all involve pro-gay, pro-queering and pro-transgender volumes specifically aimed at minors. Parents object to these "works of art" because they violate the sexual innocence of children: their children.

Of course, the 800-lb. elephant rampaging through society on behalf of censorship is the dominant leftist cultural forces imposing its political orthodoxy on anything adults may stumble across in their search for relevance and truth. From the low-tech censorship practiced by booksellers at Chaucer's (not one right-wing magazine is for sale on its extensive shelf display) to the high-tech sophistication involved in keeping curious researchers – by insidious manipulation of algorithms – from accessing conservative viewpoints online on issues of public importance, it is the conspiratorial deliberations of the Left whose fingerprints are all over the literary and broadcasting scene today.

Using inane sophistry such as "Speech is Violence," organizations that used to trumpet your right to say anything have in the last 30 years done a 180. Now in the name of “decency” and protecting supposedly persecuted classes, they will cancel you and, if possible, throw you in jail for saying the most obvious things.

The Left still tries to hang onto the banner of free speech by promoting such things as Banned Books Month, or virtue-signaling (such as Chaucer's) that they sell every book that's published and still in print (when that's simply impossible space-wise, and in fact isn't true when it comes to runaway best-selling politically conservative tomes).

In reality, much of the Left has abandoned any pretext to permitting all viewpoints to be aired equally in the public square. Leftists are as reluctant – and prudish – to allow a free citizenry today to decide for themselves what's readable as any Southern Protestant Women's Group a century ago with their panties too tight over sex in novels.

David Samuel McCalmont

Santa Barbara

U.S. Debt About to go Over a Cliff

The U.S. is on an "unsustainable" course with regard to its debt-to-GDP ratio, according to a million simulations on Fox Business.

These people must be reading Santa Barbara Current!

Their projections for future debt levels and consequential interest payments predict a very grim future for America, unless very serious action is taken to change direction and start a deliberate long-term reduction in the national debt.

If that does not happen soon, we should look towards Venezuela and Argentina for a glimpse at our own future. At least we could ramp up the oil, gas, and coal exports to help in debt reduction.

Derek Hanley

Santa Barbara

Cold Spring School has Too Much Money

The following statement was made on June 3, 2024, to the Cold Spring School District Governing Board Meeting:

I want to express my alarm, once again, at what you all, as a Governing Board, have done to administrative salaries over the last five years. In perusing the proposed budget for 2024-2025, I noticed that it includes a $23,521 raise for the Superintendent-Principal.

That amounts to a 10.5% increase in base salary over this year.
When Amy Alzina was first hired in July 2017, her base salary was $170,000 per year. Her current contract guarantees her a $225,000 base salary (a $25,000/12.5% increase from the previous year).

If the Board chooses to implement a full 10.5% raise for FY 2024-2025, her base salary will then be $248,521. That’s a 46% increase in base salary in just eight years. With benefits, District contributions to taxes and retirement, vacation payout, etc., the total compensation will be about $334,000 – for one employee –, which represents about 6% of the total budget.
As a point of comparison: Goleta Unified School District’s newly hired Superintendent, who will start the position on July 1st, will have a base salary of $227,000. She will oversee nine elementary schools, about 3,400 students, and a $73.5M budget.

If the Cold Spring School Board chooses to give Ms. Alzina a 10.5% raise for FY 2024-2025, we as District residents would be paying her $21,000 MORE in base salary than GUSD’s Superintendent to oversee one elementary school, 178 students, and a $5.7M budget.

Maybe you think this amount of compensation is appropriate and/or necessary, for whatever reasons. Maybe you even think that this amount of compensation is warranted and deserved by this particular person.
Well, I disagree.

These numbers are outrageous, in my opinion, and wildly inappropriate for a school district of less than 200 students. I understand that the Superintendent-Principal, like anyone, wants to enhance the appearance of her financial worth. It’s great leverage for when she negotiates her compensation for her next job. I understand that she, like anyone, wants to greatly increase her retirement savings. We all want comfortable retirements.

But I want you, as Governing Board members, to understand that you have saddled our District with these ridiculous compensation packages for years to come, regardless of the District’s future income and future challenges. Of course, future Superintendents and Principals will expect as much, if not more as their starting salaries, which will eat up even more of the total budget, leaving that much less for our teachers, our support staff, and our students.

Be careful what you ask for, Governing Board. Many of us are paying attention to your questionable use of District resources.
Katherine Davidson
Montecito

(Editor’s note: This kind of overpayment to what are essentially government employees is responsible for the shabby state of so many governmental entities. After the unwarranted salary and benefit levels, there is pitifully little left over for repair and maintenance of what does exist. Which is why there is this incessant quest for new taxes, nearly all of which is used for higher salaries and perks. Mr. Hanley’s above remarks comparing the U.S. to Venezuela and Argentina are spot on. – J.B.)

Stupidity Does What Stupidity Does

How much more stupidity does this city have to suffer in streets? Sola from Castillo to Garden has failed to generate bike use and cost close to a million. Bulb-outs on Garden failed to increase pedestrians and there are now fewer bike riders. I drove up State at De la Vina today and saw the city put in a three-foot bulb-out on the north side.

Why?

Think about it.
1) The bulb-out removes a considerable safety factor for bike riders where there is heavy daily traffic. Previously, bikes had the ability to move to the curb when traffic was heavy.
2) The bulb-out constricts the turn radius of patrons for the building who want to enter their parking lot. Another hammer on business activity that accumulates.
3) There still is no evidence that pedestrian accidents are reduced, and pedestrians are safer with bulb-outs. Show me any major study that proves me wrong.
4) If this is part of “Vision Zero,” it is just one more reason why it will not work. As the LA Times wrote over two years ago Vision Zero had increased accidents in Los Angeles, where it was implemented on a large footprint.

Also today, there was a fire and ambulance response where the idiotic pedestrian island at State and Calle Palo Colorado was built. It interfered with traffic clearance, making it impossible for both the fire truck and ambulance to travel down State. These events are real-world evidence of street planning failures, and idiotic plans based upon ideology vs. reality.

The new CURBS at the De la Vina side of State street entrance is another example of fantasy. The previous street configuration allowed for emergency vehicles to "roll over" the intersections and are now facing serious damage to them. Identical to the tank trap in the middle of State Street, starting at State and Calle Palo Colorado.

I don't get it.

Is no one in Public Works willing to stand up and say NO MORE?

Scott Wenz

CARS ARE BASIC

(Editor’s note: Why would they? They’re having fun and getting paid handsomely playing around with Santa Barbara’s streets. – J.B.)

Letters to the Editor

Edited by Jim Buckley

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