The Two-Timing Politician

November
2015
Santa Barbara County
Volume 3
Issue 11
Inside the
November Issue:
VW And
California’s
Cheatin’ Ways
2
America’s Class
Of Psychopaths
3
By Andy Caldwell
A
Less Freedom In 4
California:
Residents Fleeing
Growing Welfare
State
Spend More To
Make More?
5
Limited
Government No
More
7
It’s Scary Season
Again
8
Generation Faux
Injury And Rage
10
Anything And
Everything For
Nothing
11
Santa Barbara
Needs And
Deserves These
Leaders
12
The Great
13
Holiday Giveaway
COLAB
PO Box 7523
Santa Maria, CA 93456
Phone:
805-929-3148
E-mail:
[email protected]
The Two-Timing Politician
ssemblyman Das Williams could be the poster boy for the career politician who will
say and do anything in order to stay in office. For instance, do you recall he claimed to
be a Mexican when he wasn’t? Perhaps he was the pioneering inspiration of Rachel
Dolezal?
Recently, he claimed that he wants to run for County Supervisor in 2016 so that he
could be close to his family, including a new born (congratulations by the way!). Das’s
new found family values would portend a nice sentiment if it weren’t for the fact that Das
has already opened a campaign account in order to run for State Senator in 2020! That
makes Das the first politician I know who is running for two offices at once, albeit, it
makes sense when you scour his donor list.
Give Das credit; he is shrewd if nothing else. He has already amassed over $300,000
in campaign contributions in his effort to succeed Salud Carbajal as the county’s First
District Supervisor without as much as lifting a finger. He was able to amass this
amount of money for one of two reasons. First, he still has another year in the Assembly and second, because of his declared run for Senate in 2020. How do these two
state seats help him in his run for supervisor? Well, as the old adage goes, money is
the mother’s milk of politics and Das has his mouth firmly on the teat of every political
action committee imaginable throughout the United States of America.
In a nutshell, these PACs, heavy on trial lawyers by the way, want Das to remember
them while he is in Sacramento so they have seen fit to help keep Das gainfully employed until current State Senator Hannah Beth Jackson is termed out. Therefore, the
largesse of Das’s supervisorial war chest comes from PACs who have absolutely no
interest whatsoever in what Das does as county supervisor.
Das is transferring the money from PACs he received for his assembly run in order to
fund his run for supervisor. These PACs will keep the money flowing to hedge their
Sacramento bets for the remainder of his current term and for 2020 and beyond. Why
else would the following have dumped money into the political coffers of a termed-out
State Assemblyman? America Bankers Insurance of Florida, Anheuser Busch of St
Louis, Asian American Small Business PAC, Astra Zeneca of Delaware, Recording Industry of America, Southern Wine and Spirits from Florida, Terra Gen Finance of New
York, Wells Fargo Employee PAC from Minnesota, and the list goes on and on!
This leaves voters and residents of the first district and the county in a very untenable
situation. Das obviously plans to be a one-term wonder as a county supervisor, not to
serve, but to be served, by way of a steady paycheck while he stakes out his campaign
for State Senate. Nice work if you can get it, but it comes at our expense.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 2
VW And California’s Cheatin’ Ways
By Andy Caldwell
F
or decades, California has sought to drive innovation by legislation. In essence, we have passed regulations that dictate energy and emission standards in
an attempt to force innovation. The way the politicians and the bureaucrats figure, since no manufacturer can afford to lose market share in the most populous state in the nation, science and engineering will
find a way. As an added bonus, in many cases, the
manufacturer’s end up utilizing the new technology
with the built-in environmental benefits in the products
they sell throughout the rest of the United States.
So, what’s not to love?
For starters, nobody wants to discuss what this has
cost consumers. Additionally, the law of diminishing
returns kicked in a long time ago on the wisdom of
this strategy and what’s worse, the Volkswagen scandal is proof positive that this approach is fraught with
technological limitations.
It is almost too easy to blame the Volkswagen diesel
scandal on corporate greed. The rest of the story,
however, has to do with the fact that there is no reliable substitute known to man to take the place of the
internal combustion engine. And regardless of how
many laws the State of California and the EPA pass,
where there is smoke, there is going to be fire, and
fire emits pollutants.
Volkswagen, like other manufacturers, was caught
between a rock and a hard place. Regulators demand fewer emissions and higher gas mileage, while
consumers want economy, power and performance. Something had to give. That something was
the truth because in the real world, you can’t have it
all. In essence, VW cheated by emitting more real
pollution in the form of nitrous oxides from the tailpipe
in order to achieve politically correct greenhouse gas
emissions, all the while beguiling their customers who
are now set to sue the bejesus out of the company.
Thankfully, German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirms the point I am making here. She has been quoted as saying, “We have to ensure politically that
what’s doable can indeed be translated into law, but
what’s not doable mustn’t become law”. Translation? We should only legislate what is technically feasible and not put our leading manufacturers in a bind
between the requirements of the law and the bounds
of engineering science.
Merkel’s epiphany is still obviously lost on Jerry
Brown and the state legislature. He is still intent on
cutting the use of petroleum fuels used in our state by
50% within the next fifteen years. He doesn’t bother
to furnish us with one iota of details on how this would
work in the real world nor does he have to. He has a
phone and a pen and he intends to use them both in
order to make his faustian fantasy a reality.
Currently, in our society, nearly 90% of all consumer
goods are delivered by trucks which run on diesel engines. Due to a CA state rule that was passed on the
basis of outright academic fraud, truckers have been
struggling to keep their trucks running due to the requirements placed on their engines in this state. Even
worse, there have been a number of these truck en(Continued on page 15)
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 3
America’s Class Of Psychopaths
By Andy Caldwell
Each and every time our nation is burdened with the
grief of a deranged mass murderer going on a killing spree
of innocents, opportunistic politicians and activists, such as
President Obama, skip the mourning and reflection phase,
choosing instead to go directly to their loathing and disdain
for the rights afforded all Americans by the 2nd Amendment
of the Constitution.
I firmly believe that our nation’s penchant for producing
psychotic young men has absolutely nothing to do with
whatever weapon the perpetrator eventually uses to carry
out their heinous acts. The one thing all the mass murderers have in common is not their weapon of choice, but the
fact that they are either mentally ill and/or just plain
evil. Here locally, David Attias used a car to kill innocents
in Isla Vista. Eliot Rodger used a knife, a gun and a
car. Yet, I have never once heard the President call for
either knife or car control as a means of putting an end to
mass violence.
Historically, our nation has always enjoyed the right and
privilege to own and bear arms for the singular purpose of
being able to protect our own lives and our property. The
blunt truth is that when seconds matter, cops are at best
minutes away. We have an unalienable right to protect
ourselves and our loved ones knowing full well that it is impossible for government to protect us anywhere at any
time.
We enjoyed these rights for nearly 200 years before the
onset of this recent spate of mass violence, all of which
have occurred in the last few decades. The point here is
that Americans, for most of our history, never questioned
the wisdom and practicality of the right to protect ourselves
because these types of crimes were not part of our experience. To respond to these tragedies by changing the 2nd
Amendment is to miss the point of what is going on here
entirely.
The fact of the matter is our country is suffering from a colossal mental health crisis that disproportionately affects
young men. Many, if not most, of these killers come from
broken homes. Many of them were under the care of a
mental health care professional. Many of them were under
the influence of mental health treatment drugs known to
have the potential to create violent psychotic derangement. So, the question is, why are we not discussing these
common traits and experiences of these killers versus their
weapon of choice, in those cases when the weapon happens to be a firearm?
President Obama is grossly irresponsible to manipulate and
distort the American perspective when it comes to violence
in the world today. He tends to side with the Black Lives
Matter crowd which seeks to blame way too many problems in our country on supposedly white racist cops, while
ignoring black on black violence. He refuses to blame the
basic tenets of Islam for promoting terrorism around the
world, while he casts dispersions on Israel’s right to defend
herself. And finally, he would take guns away from lawabiding Americans even though he knows full well that this
would accomplish absolutely nothing to stop these mass
murderers.
America deserves better leadership than this. We need
leaders who will help us examine our hearts and souls. We
need to strengthen families. We need a new regimen for
treating mental health, one that relies less on strangers with
a prescription pad and more on establishing mentoring relationships that foster personal growth, responsibility and
empathy. These issues all have to do with what is in the
heart, not the hand, of an emerging class of psychopaths.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 4
Less Freedom in California: Residents Fleeing Growing
Welfare State
By Katy Grimes
People move for more freedom. States that have
more freedom attract more businesses, more jobs and
more workers.
According to the John Locke Foundation, freedom is
based on fiscal policy, which measures taxes and
budgetary measures, and generates 50 percent of a
state’s score. Twenty percent each goes to education
and to regulatory policies, and 10 percent to health
care policy.
The ‘least free’ state according to the John Locke
Foundation is New York, closely followed by California, then New Jersey, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
This would explain why California has a record number of residents who left the Golden State for other
states during the last decade, according to new tax
return data from the Internal Revenue Service. “About
5 million Californians left between 2004 and 2013,”
the Sacramento Bee reported. “Roughly 3.9 million
people came here from other states during that period, for a net population loss of more than 1 million
people.”
The IRS said this also resulted in a net loss of nearly
$26 billion in annual income.
Along with about 600,000 California residents who left
for Texas, California also has lost more than 650,000
manufacturing jobs.
Texis-fornia
There’s another California-Texas comparison, which
factors into the decisions of Californians migrating
elsewhere: rent and housing prices. The average rent
in San Francisco — California’s most expensive city
— is $3,458 versus the average rent in Austin — Texas’ most expensive city, is $1,185, SF Gate reported.
California has the greatest number of overpriced cities.
Yet Democrats, California’s ruling Party, continue to
pass wicked regulatory laws which skyrocket the cost
of housing, food, gasoline and transportation to such
heights, the poorest are hurt the most.
Housing
California’s high cost of living is inflated by the strictest, most burdensome government regulations.
High housing prices are driven by inclusionary housing ordinances that require developers to set aside
and price a certain percentage of new rental units at
below-market rates. Add unworkable strict building
codes to the inclusionary housing ordinances, and it’s
the state government making it difficult to build
enough housing in the state. This in turn leaves the
housing market unable to meet demand, which drives
prices higher.
Rather than allow the market to dictate what kind of
housing people want and need, the state forces builders to provide affordable housing units at regulated
rents, solely to obtain project approval. This is how
business is done in California — hostile and punitive.
Food
I am spending more on food today, than when my son
and all of his hungry friends were still in high school
eight years ago. And I don’t eat meat!
California egg prices are up more than 150 percent
since last year. The average price for a dozen eggs is
$3.69. But many stores are charging more than $5.00
for a dozen now. Californians can thank the state’s
Democrats once again, for enacting Proposition 2,
which now requires egg-producing chickens to be
“free-range.” The absurd law, aggressively pushed by
liberal elites within the state’s high-priced urban centers, requires that farmers provide hens double the
roaming area they once had, resulting in fewer egg
farms, and much higher costs to California’s egg eaters. The egg used to be one of the most costeffective, inexpensive and healthy meals; not so in the
Golden State.
“According the USDA’s Pacific Region Poultry Report released this week, California chickens produced
about 311 million eggs in April, down nine million from
March and down 78 million from April 2014,” the Los
Angeles Times reported. “The number of laying hens
was about 13 million, down from 16.7 million at this
time last year.”
Gas
The national average gallon of gas costs drivers $2.76
a gallon. In California, drivers pay $3.88… and higher.
Democrats recently tried to raise the gas tax by 12
(Continued on page 18)
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 5
Spend More To Make More?
By Andy Caldwell
I
had to laugh out loud, because it was too painful
to cry, while reading the Santa Barbara City Council
candidate interviews featured in the News
Press. One particular response had to do with raising
the minimum wage to $15 per hour. One candidate,
Ms. Missy McSweeney Zeitsoff wants the minimum
wage raised with no exceptions. She actually believes that raising the minimum wage will be a benefit
to business as more money will end up being spent in
Santa Barbara as a result. Pardon me for pointing out
the obvious to the oblivious, but Missy missed the
basket altogether while launching her lead brick of
economic theory.
I happen to agree that working for minimum wage creates the phenomenon known as the working poor but
the solution to this phenomenon is to help the people
stuck in these jobs to become upwardly mobile via job
coaching and a growing economy. In reality, in most
cases, being stuck in a minimum wage says more
about the employee than it does about our free market system. Most people only held one job at minimum wage, their first, and that typically occurred
when they were teenagers. For somebody to claim
they have been stuck in a minimum wage job for a
number of years tells me they lack the motivation to
risk change by taking their skills and their experience
to the next highest bidder for their labor or they have
another personal problem. The fact is, none of these
people are slaves. They are free to go out and compete for better paying jobs. The question is, what is
stopping them from doing that? Another question,
what has stopped them from getting a promotion right
where they are at?
The most important thing you need to know about the
movement to raise the minimum wage is that the campaign is being fueled and funded by organized labor
despite the fact that virtually no union in America has
signed off on a minimum wage contract with an employer. The unions are exploiting the issue for personal gain not because they are concerned for the
working poor but because they know that raising the
floor for entry level workers raises the wages of everyone else in the market place. Second, and most insidious, in some communities organized labor has
pushed for these $15 per hour minimum wages while
at the same time lobbying that union workers are exempt from the ordinance! Why would they do
that? So that they can become competitive in the
market place again. If for instance the union wage for
a janitor is $12 per hour while the new minimum wage
for non-represented employee is $15, well, the advantage gained is obvious and considerable.
A principle which serves to ferret out truth from fantasy has to do with taking the parameters of a discussion point to an extreme in order to reveal the veracity
of the principle being debated. In this case, if a $15
per hour minimum wage is good for business and
good for the economy, why not make it $50 per
hour? Or, how about $100 per hour. We would all be
rich, right? Of course the problem here, ala Margaret
Thatcher, is that these progressive socialists will
eventually run out of other people's money to spend.
Seriously, I would love to ask all the candidates who
are supporting $15 per hour to explain why an even
higher amount wouldn’t be better? I also want to
know if they have ever signed the front of a paycheck
or owned a small business, although we already can
surmise the answer to that question.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 6
Thall Shall Not Covet
By Andy Caldwell
Control freaks.
There is no other name to describe
the mentality of people who use government to control
every facet of our lives, including the use of our property. They assuage what should be their collective
guilt by maintaining that they alone know what is best
for the community and the planet. But, in the end,
these busy bodies are nothing less than an esprit de
corps of elitists hell bent on using the power of government machinations to rob people of their liberty,
property and common sense.
The combination of tools used to achieve these ends
are zoning and environmental regulations implemented through a tortuous and arcane process called a
community plan. Most of these plans take upwards of
ten years to complete and typically involve up to fifty
community meetings and a half dozen planning commission hearings. They can cost taxpayers over one
million dollars each.
In the end, the real purpose of these plans is to freeze
everything in place so that nothing changes except
that inevitably somebody loses their right to use their
property as intended. In every community plan there
are those unfortunate souls who were not paying attention until the very last minute only to learn that the
zoning on their property has been changed and they
just lost the bulk of their investment-backed expectation and eventually they will lose the historical use of
their property.
The latest effort to run this gauntlet was the Eastern
Goleta Community Plan. The most dangerous aspect
of the plan had to do with the Environmental Defense
Center demanding that the brush (read that fuel for
fire!) throughout the plan area be preserved as if it
were rare and threatened. In the end, staff met them
half-way indicating that though the brush was not worthy of protection in and of itself, they would require
some level of inspection to see if other species are
present in the brush that do warrant protection. What
that means in practical terms when somebody wants
to clear some brush from their property is anybody’s
guess. My personal view is that we have hundreds of
thousands of acres of these fire fuels permanently
protected on forest lands; we don’t need to preserve
the same along the urban rural interface.
Now that the county has finally wrapped up this Goleta Plan, up next is the Gaviota Plan. What is unique
about the Gaviota plan is that almost all the land
zoned in the area is zoned for agriculture, not urban
development. The agriculture community is extremely
worried that Supervisor Wolf, Farr and Carbajal are
going to limit the ability of agriculture to survive on the
coast in the name of preserving ag. This includes limiting the ability to build housing for their family members, barns and processing facilities for their operations, all the while imposing limitations on the ability of
the landowners to manage the natural resources on
their property for the maximum benefit of their ag operations.
In other words, we expect the Board of Supervisors
will force the farmers and the ranchers to manage the
wild plants and brush, along with the potential habitat
for wildlife, as if these were public lands instead of
private property. That is, they will require the farmers
to protect habitat at the expense of their ability to
farm. Lost on the public is the fact that these ag lands
are neither open space nor bucolic view corridors, although they can double as such. They are in fact
somebody’s livelihood via the delicate balancing act of
making a living while being a good steward of the natural resources on the property.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 7
Limited Government No More
By Andy Caldwell
O
ur founding fathers definitely believed in the
principle of keep it simple stupid when it came to
establishing the principles of limited government in
order to afford maximum liberty to the citizenry. To
accomplish these purposes, they proposed two
specific amendments to the constitution, via the Bill of
Rights, without which the Constitution would never
have been adopted. These two provisions are
Amendments 9 and 10, the last two, which were
designed to serve as blanket provisions for whatever
would come up in the future that would serve to
threaten the freedom and liberty of Americans.
Amendment 9 is quite simple. It states in its entirety
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
retained by the people”. To understand what this
means, it is helpful to go back to the Declaration of
Independence which can be considered the prologue
to the Constitution. Jefferson laid out the principle
espoused here by signifying that “among these rights
are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The
often overlooked words here are “among these”, i.e.,
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were general
descriptions of unalienable rights, not to be confused
or construed as an exhaustive list of unalienable
rights. Now, fast forward to the Bill of Rights, which
served to delineate unalienable rights including
freedom of religion, speech, the press, the right to
keep and bear arms, etc.. Article 9 basically says,
that the Bill of Rights was never to be construed to
limit the rights of the people to what was listed herein,
as the people must not be denied or disparaged of
any of the rights that should be retained by themleaving the list of rights open-ended!
Amendment 10 is also very straightforward and is one
of the strongest statements imaginable meant to
constrain the power of the federal government. It
states that “The powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to
the people. This too was meant to be a catchall
provision. What it means is that whatever this
Constitution did not expressly grant authority to the
federal government to do, well in that case, the
powers to do those things rest entirely with the states
or the people. It is the provision in the document that
805-937-6151
boldly expresses the concept of limited government at
the federal level.
The founding fathers made provision for the people
and the states to amend the Constitution as they see
fit, but they made sure such amendments could not
be accomplished apart from a super majority of the
citizenry and the states agreeing to such
amendments. Unfortunately, we failed to heed the
warnings of the founding fathers with respect to the
threat of an unelected oligarchy, namely the Supreme
Court, from assuming the authority to amend the
Constitution apart from the people! Worse than
that? The creation of mammoth bureaucracy.
So it is that our founding fathers laid out the concepts
via our Constitution of the limited powers of the
federal government, the maximum liberty to be
afforded the people and the default authority of the
(Continued on page 17)
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 8
It’s Scary Season Again
By Jon Coupal
(Our Annual Update on How to Translate Your
Property Tax Bill)
F
or many the real scare this time of year is not the
monsters at our doors on Halloween but the property
tax bill in the mail box.
Fortunately, as a direct result of Proposition 13, which
limits increases in a property’s assessed value to two
percent annually, most property owners have a good
idea what their tax bill will be even before opening the
envelope. However, like we do every year about this
time, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association reminds taxpayers to carefully examine their latest property tax bill. Although not common, there may be mistakes.
Taxpayers should understand the various charges
and make certain that they are not being assessed for
more than they are legally obligated to pay. The best
way to check a tax bill is to have your previous year’s
bill handy for reference.
Checking the bill is especially important for those who
bought their homes a few years ago at the height of
the market. If your home value is actually lower than
the assessed value shown on the tax bill, you should
consider applying for a reduction in taxes. (Sometimes called a “Prop 8 reduction”).
For most California counties, the property tax bill will
show three categories of charges. They are the General Tax Levy, Voted Indebtedness and Direct Assessments.
General Tax Levy
The General Tax Levy is what most people think of
when talking about property taxes. It is based on the
assessed value of land, improvements and fixtures. This charge usually makes up the largest part
of the tax bill and it is the amount that is limited by
Proposition 13.
Proposition 13 passed overwhelmingly by voters in
1978 and it established a statewide uniform tax rate of
one percent of assessed value at the time of purchase
and limited annual increases in assessed value to no
more than two percent. From a practical standpoint,
this means that once the base year value of your
property is established the General Tax Levy cannot
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1335 W. Main St.
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(805) 922-5848
be increased more than two percent each year. This
allows all property owners to predict their property tax
bills into the future and budget accordingly.
The best way to check to make sure that your current
General Levy of Assessment is correct is to compare
it with the previous year’s bill. The increase should be
no more than two percent unless there have been improvements to the property like adding a room to a
house or if you previously received a Prop 8
“reduction in value.” This bears repeating: Because
the real estate market in many parts of California is
recovering many homeowners who previously received a temporary reduction in “taxable value” from
their assessment may now see an increase in their
tax bill more than two percent from last year. But in
no case will the taxable value be more than the initial
Prop. 13 base year plus two percent annually from the
date of purchase. Although that may seem unfair,
keep in mind that while the reduction was only temporary, the savings you received when your property
was worth less are permanent.
If in doubt about the current value of your property,
check sales of comparable homes in your neighbor(Continued on page 16)
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 9
The Real Costs Of Artificial Shortages
By Andy Caldwell
People living in paradise tend to forget that their
water and energy have to come from “somewhere”
just like their trash and other waste streams need to
go “somewhere”. Going green in the extreme may
seem to be the noble thing to do these days, but it is
very expensive and presents problems of its own
when it comes to the cost of providing products and
services both coming and going. Serving to obfuscate
this reality check are the activists and the politicians
who continually fight the associated costs of living in
the real world. Wearing green-colored lenses, they
refuse to consider the value of “the old way” of doing
things while completely low balling the cost and
reliability of their theoretical approach to life.
For instance, when Assemblyman Das Williams killed
a plan to help facilitate the construction of additional
dams and reservoirs (he called such projects
dinosaurs), he simply subjected you and your lawn to
rationing. Meanwhile, the politicians and activists
pursuing the ponzi scheme referred to as Community
Choice Aggregation are setting you up for similar
shortages and rationing in the energy sector. In the
end, with respect to water and energy, you will end up
paying more for less! Now, let’s do some trash
talking!
Imagine if the Tajiguas Landfill, located smack dab in
the middle of the “pristine, unspoiled” Gaviota Coast,
was privately owned and the owners were applying to
extend the life of the landfill along with a permit to
build an industrial facility to process trash on
site. Under no circumstances, whatsoever, would the
county even accept the application.
But, of course, this landfill is owned by the
county. Ratepayers have been cumulatively charged
an extra $1 million on their bills over a period of three
years so that the county could study the construction
of a trash “digester” they intend to build along with a
sorting facility and a gas collection system. The
county continues to pursue the project despite the fact
that they have run into some serious roadblocks,
including the fact that trash customers could be facing
a 75% rate increase! The supervisors are in a bind
because they are artificially running out of permitted
space to store trash. I say artificially because there is
actually more than enough room to bury a lot more
trash in the dump. Nonetheless, this project proposes
to divert trash from being buried by digesting and
recycling some of the waste stream at a cost of $100
million.
It is beyond my technical expertise to determine if this
investment is worth the price, so I am not opposing
the project per se. The one thing I have asked is that
the trash customers assume the rate increases
instead of passing on the costs to taxpayers who will
not be served by the facility, as that would be a
violation of Proposition 218. Moreover, the ratepayers
must have some say in determining whether the
project is worth the price. Finally, I have asked the
board to be fair to other property owners on the coast
who have been denied the right to build homes as if
that were some sort of an audacious request. For
how can a house “ruin” the coast in comparison to this
project?
In conclusion, despite our need for effective solutions
to everyday problems, our local politicians avoid at all
costs coming to terms with the practical reality of our
needs. They don’t hesitate either saddling you with
higher prices or dumping impacts on other
communities, all in the name of preserving
paradise. Hence, we suffer water rationing and
energy shortages, complete with dead lawns and
gasoline that costs double what other states are
paying!
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Health Sanitation Services
(805) 922-2121
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 10
Generation Faux Injury And Rage
By Andy Caldwell
I
do not want to appear at all insensitive to the fact
that a young man lost his life and grieving parents lost
their son in what appears to be another senseless
tragedy in Isla Vista. However, some students from
UCSB are in essence accusing the Isla Vista Foot
Patrol, County Dispatch, County Fire and the
Paramedics who transported the young man to
Cottage Hospital of a form of negligent homicide
fueled by racism. This appears to me to be nothing
less than our own local version of a Black Lives
Matter smear campaign complete with ridiculous
allegations and exaggerations.
What appears to have happened based on various
accounts is that a young man, apparently under the
influence of a drug, punched his fist through a window
and suffered a severe laceration in the process. He
then began running around, screaming for help, while
at the same time, resisting the bystanders that sought
to render aide. All forms of emergency personnel
were on the scene within minutes doing their best to
stabilize the patient as they rushed him to the
hospital. Unfortunately, the victim suffered too much
blood loss and passed away within a matter of hours.
The students who claim to have witnessed the whole
ordeal seem to be blaming each and every person in
the response chain. They claim the dispatcher didn’t
take them seriously. They believe the IV foot patrol
didn’t respond with the urgency required by the
situation. They are complaining that the foot patrol
did not have enough training and equipment to render
adequate first aide to the victim (as if they are trained
paramedics). They claim the fire department and the
paramedics did not get there fast enough. And, so
the story goes.
The issue with dispatch is going to be cleared up
rather quickly as the calls are all logged and
recorded. So are the basic response times of the foot
patrol, county fire and the ambulance. What can’t
necessarily be corroborated is the attitude of either
the foot patrol, the decedent and the eye
witnesses. However, I am of the firm opinion that our
emergency response staff acted professionally and
efficiently and the charges against them are false.
What gives me this confidence? My lack of
confidence in this current generation of young people
who are altogether too quick to blame anybody and
Thursday, November 5th
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Thursday, November 19th
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Friday, November 20th
Sharon Cuneta
Thursday, December 3rd
Gloriana & Dan + Shay
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Thursday, December 10th
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everybody for their own misfortunes. This young man
would ostensibly be alive today if he had not punched
a window and run around like a mad man accelerating
blood loss. That alone is the bottom line. It is thus no
surprise that the only thing the students wish to
discuss is the alleged failure of the adults in the
situation.
Our emergency response people cannot be expected
to risk their own lives, health and well-being in
responding to an emergency until they have had time
to assess the situation and take measures to protect
themselves in the process. That all takes time and
unfortunately time was not on the side of this young
man.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 11
Anything And Everything For Nothing
By Andy Caldwell
The most exasperating aspect about spending tens
of millions of dollars on regulatory programs has to
do with the foundation on which the regulatory paradigm rests. In a nutshell, we are supposed to believe
that doing anything is worth everything even when our
efforts are sure to accomplish nothing! Case in
point? Our efforts to improve air quality in our region.
The first thing you need to know about our air quality,
as it pertains to criteria pollutants which truly are a
health hazard, is that it is excellent. If the legislators
and the regulators wouldn’t keep adjusting the standard downward in order to justify keeping their jobs,
you could say our air quality is nearly perfect except
for two qualifiers. The first qualifier is Mother Nature
herself! The oil and gas seeps off of our coastline are
among the largest air pollution sources in the region. These emissions are on par with the emissions
from all the vehicles on the 101 freeway each and
every day. The second qualifier has to do with wind
and/or the lack of it. In essence, transport pollution
from the freeway, Los Angeles and ships in the Santa
Barbara Channel can end up swirling around the region, held captive by our steep mountain range, thereby triggering violations of regulatory standards, albeit,
the sum total of exceedances we experience only last
for a few hours a year!
Having said that, our local Air Pollution Control District
has no regulatory authority over any of this pollution. It only has authority to regulate relatively few
businesses which are called fixed and stationary
sources. Yet, the stationary source emissions don’t
even register as a contributing factor to air pollution! If you were to add the emissions from the vehicles on the 101 freeway, oil and gas seeps, plus
transport from the Los Angeles basin, and the ships in
the Santa Barbara Channel, they would total 100% of
the emissions. The emissions from fixed and stationary sources wouldn’t show up in the emission inventory pie chart because by comparison, they account for
zero percent of the inventory.
What is worse is that with respect to the off-shore
platforms often cited as a source of air pollution, the
reality is, as a condition of their permit to operate, they
were required to offset their emission in their entirety
and then some. What does that mean? If the operation were to emit 100 tons of pollution per year, they
were required to eliminate significantly more than 100
tons of pollution per year in perpetuity. That means
our air is actually cleaner than it would be if the platform wasn’t there! Nonetheless, the industry still is
forced to pay fees for its emissions, even though the
emissions have been completely offset and then
some.
Regulating naught in the form of fixed and stationary
sources has thus become a cottage industry which
accomplishes nothing except to raise the cost of doing
business and the cost of living in our region.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 12
Santa Barbara Needs And Deserves These Leaders
By Andy Caldwell
Santa Barbara voters have an opportunity to establish a semblance of balance and common sense as it
affects the priorities, values, and direction of the city
council. For far too long, the city has been controlled
by activist politicians who have not been taking care
of the basic needs of the people including adequate
public safety staffing levels for police and wild land fire
protection. The community also suffers from a lack of
investment in infrastructure, the myriad issues arising
from the homeless, and common sense management
of city finances.
This election presents voters with the opportunity to
choose between candidates who want to serve the
community vs those who want to continue to exploit
the community for the sake of narrow-minded special
interests. For far too long the citizenry have been
used as a guinea pig for social, environmental and
political experimentation, as well as, political grandstanding. Examples of experimentation? The blue
line, traffic calming (read that congestion inducing narrowing of traffic lanes), hedge ordinances, and the
like. In the meantime, water main ruptures have become routine as have power outages, chronic water
shortages, and a downtown that resembles a mental
health ward. Besides the homeless people setting up
squatter camps on State Street, some are now climbing up on roofs to stake out a camp site with a view!
Accordingly, I believe voters would do well to vote for
Jason Dominguez, Randy Rouse and Sharon Byrne
for City Council.
Jason Dominguez has an impressive employment
record and years of civic engagement that will serve
the community well as the representative of District
1. Comparatively speaking, the other candidates for
District 1 are downright scary, hard core activists who
have little to offer the community as a
whole. Dominguez, on the other hand, has successfully worked with youth, seniors, veterans and the
poor. Domiguez is a proven crime fighter and somebody who has served to help address the underlying
causes of poverty and lawlessness, which is exactly
what Santa Barbara needs.
Randy Rouse deserves your vote to represent District
2 for all the right reasons. He has proven himself to
be a practical, balanced decision maker and common
sense voice on the city council. He is somebody who
is engaged in solving problems instead of exploiting
them to score political points. He has worked to minimize the impacts of experiments purposely designed
to increase traffic gridlock. He helped to increase the
size of the police force. And, he works hard to improve the condition of the downtown.
In District 3, Sharon Byrne has proven that she is a
helpful, insightful leader and her common sense real
world perspective would be a welcome relief to the
community considering the alternatives. That is to
say, Cathy Murillo, who I have known for well over a
decade, is better suited to return to private life in order
to pursue her activist agenda. The other candidate in
this race is another activist in search of a bully pulpit,
life coach Cristina Cardoso.
For example, both Murillo and Cardoso want to advance the progressive experiment in Santa Barbara,
by raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour which
will be a job and small business killer, all the while
complaining about the lack of job opportunities in the
community for young, unskilled workers. Go figure! Alternatively, Byrne’s experience working for
both small businesses and neighborhood preservation
gives her something more to offer the community than
divisive rhetoric! Byrne’s real world experience will
unite and serve Santa Barbara well.
Although it sounds cliché, please vote! Every vote
really does matter as these races will be decided by
relatively slim margins.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 13
The Great Holiday Giveaway
By Andy Caldwell
Christmas came early for county employees thanks
to Supervisor Janet Wolf. To understand the spirit of
largesse and generosity, at taxpayer expense mind
you, that Supervisor Wolf uses to drive up the cost of
employing some 4,000 county workers, we need only
consider the words of a local nun who used to regularly encourage the board to “give the employees all they
ask for and more”. Although Wolf is not a catholic,
she acts like she has the moral authority to give away
the store whenever the opportunity arises as was the
case last week when she and her fellow board members, at her behest, gave all county employees an additional four days off (this year only) between the
Christmas and New Year’s holiday.
What was most irritating about this extremely expensive gift is the fact that the county staff report pretended that this wouldn’t really cost the taxpayers anything
except a little bit of lost productivity. Further, to avoid
breaking the law having to do with a gift of public
funds, the board declared the gift a business necessity. The board never bothered to disclose how much
money this gift was worth nor what the business necessity was, except that in a poll of county employees,
they indicated they would like to have more time off
during the holidays! Duh! Who wouldn’t want extra
paid time off during the holidays?
By conservative calculations, the cost of giving these
employees four days off is going to cost somewhere
between $4-8 million! What you should know is that
a large number of county workers, those with 14 plus
years of service, already earn 25 days of vacation, 12
holidays, and 12 days of sick leave every year. That
means that a current employee in good standing that
took all the time off available to them, coupled with the
extra four days this holiday season, would be off 53
days this year or ten full weeks plus three days! That
comprises 20% of the work year! Relatedly, on any
given day, 5% of the county workforce, or 200 employees, don’t show up for work via illness or injury.
In addition to the regular time off, some county employees receive bilingual pay, overtime pay, administrative leave time, family leave time, and uniform allowances. All county employees receive health insurance, life insurance, and disability insurance and, of
course, the most valuable benefit of all, a defined benefit pension guaranteed for life. Additionally, some
county employees also are eligible to collect social
security in addition to their county pension!
The county is so generous it has a huge liability, tens
of millions of dollars, in terms of unused vacation and
sick leave they allow the employees to cash out upon
retirement because they don’t have a use it or lose it
policy in place. Contextually, what this means is that
a good number of these employees already are earning more vacation per year than they are willing to
take! That makes this gift of four days off all the more
excessive.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
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Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 14
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 15
VW And California’s Cheatin’ Ways Cont.
(Continued from page 2)
gines that have caught on fire. Ironically, the fix for
VW diesel cars will most likely involve the same technology that is the bane of the trucking industry. Yet,
despite all this, the State of California is not done with
their attempt to mandate even further reductions in
both greenhouse gas and diesel particulate emissions. In California, you can’t fix stupid, but you can
obviously manage to elect stupid to office time and
time again.
Long ago, our society became very intolerant of
wrongdoing by the private sector especially in the
case of corporate fraud or environmental damage. Both prosecutors and consumers show little tolerance and empathy for scofflaws as the scandal involving VW’s diesel engines is demonstrating. Having said that, have you ever stopped to consider that
ideologues within the halls of government are capable
of strikingly similar misconduct?
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is a regulatory agency that sets standards to improve air quality in our state. A few years back, they proposed a
diesel engine rule that requires every diesel engine in
the state (other than consumer vehicles) to be replaced twice within a ten year period time frame with
cleaner running engines. The original engines were
not all that old by diesel engine standards, resulting in
a significant cost burden especially to small businesses. What’s worse is that the second mandated engine
replacement requires the purchase of an engine that
has yet to be invented!
This rule will cost the California economy $20 billion. To illustrate, a family owned company that I
know owned a grader that cost $225,000 when it was
purchased over 20 years ago. It still ran fine, but it
was rendered obsolete by virtue of the diesel rule. In
the middle of the recession, the company was forced
to sell the grader out of state for a mere $20,000. The
replacement grader cost $800,000 forcing the company to lay off staff in order to afford the capital outlay.
CARB promulgated this diesel engine rule based upon a scientific study that indicated that diesel engine
exhaust was a health hazard. Well, it turns out the
findings of the study on which CARB relied were in
error. Proving that case, through peer reviewed research, was Dr. James Enstrom, a UCLA research
scientist with a Ph.D from Stanford with 35 years of
experience. Dr. Enstrom also discovered that the
staffer who headed up the project for CARB, Hien
Tran, actually bought his Ph.D on line!
What happened next? Dr. Enstrom got fired from
UCLA! He had to sue to get his job back. In the
meantime, we learned that Governor Brown’s political
appointee that runs CARB, Mary Nichols, knew about
the academic fraud but helped keep the deceit a secret from the other board members of the agency
while they were in the process of approving the diesel
engine rule!
Unfortunately, these public/private double standards
with respect to wrongdoing are not rare. The pipeline
spill at Refugio has already resulted in huge cleanup
costs, fines and perhaps even prosecution for what
amounts to an accident having to do with 20,000 gallons of oil. Yet, under direct EPA management and
oversight, government contractors in Colorado spilled
over 3,000,000 gallons of toxic mine sediment into a
river affecting drinking and irrigation water in four
states! The EPA, within days of the spill had the temerity and the audacity to claim the river would clean
itself! Nobody has been held responsible and apparently no further action is required!
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 16
It’s Scary Season Again Cont.
(Continued from page 8)
hood. If homes like yours are selling for less than the
valuation on your latest bill contact your county assessor and ask that the value and resulting tax be adjusted to reflect true current value.
Voted Indebtedness
Voted Indebtedness charges reflect the repayment
cost of bonds approved by the voters. Local general
obligation bonds for libraries, parks, police and fire
facilities and other capital improvements are repaid
exclusively by property owners. Because a minority of
the population is required to pay the entire amount,
the California Constitution of 1879 established the two
-thirds vote for approval of these bonds. This assures
a strong community consensus before obligating
property owners to repay debt for 20 or 30 years.
Until the year 2000 local school bonds also required a
two-thirds vote but the passage of Proposition 39 lowered the vote to 55 percent. (Of course this did very
little to improve schools as was promised). Because
the 55 percent requirement guarantees that most
school bonds will pass regardless of merit many
homeowners are seeing a significant increase in the
Voted Indebtedness column on their tax bills.
In some counties, parcel taxes may appear under this
second category of property exactions even though
parcel taxes are rarely used to repay debt. Parcel
taxes are taxes on property ownership but are not imposed as a percentage of taxable value. Although
there is no upper limit to amount of parcel taxes you
have to pay (HJTA is working to change that) the
good news is that under Proposition 13 they still require a two-thirds vote.
Direct Assessments
The third type of levy one finds on the typical property
tax bill is for direct assessments for services related to
property such as street lighting, regional sanitation,
flood control, etc. Because of Proposition 218 — the
Right to Vote on Taxes Act placed on the ballot by the
Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association in 1996 —
property owners must be given a meaningful say in
approving new assessments. Before an assessment
can be imposed or increased property owners must
be informed in writing and be given the opportunity to
cast a protest vote on the new assessment or
assessment increase.
For more information regarding your property tax bill
go to HJTA.org and click on Frequently Asked Questions then scroll down to “About Property Tax Assessments”. If you have a question about your property
tax bill you can contact your county assessor, county
tax collector or, in many instances, the phone number
of the levying agency for each levy that is reflected on
your bill. It’s your money and you have a right to be
certain that your bill is correct.
Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — California’s largest grass-roots taxpayer organization dedicated to the protection of
Proposition 13 and the advancement of taxpayers’
rights
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Page 17
Limited Government No More Cont.
(Continued from page 7)
states and the two biggest threats to our freedoms
and liberty are the courts and bureaucracy. The fact
that judges legislate from the bench is so obvious, I
am going to highlight the fourth branch of government,
bureaucracy, as the focal point of this threat to our
fundamental liberties using the Clean Water Act as an
example of this phenomenon.
The Clean Water Act was created to address out of
control pollution in the United States. However,
Congress in enacting the act clearly intended to live
within the bounds of the limited power and authority
afforded it by the Constitution. Therefore, the Clean
Water Act applied to waters of the United
States. What does that mean? Well, there are water
bodies that exist solely within state
boundaries. These are considered state
waters. However, there are waters that flow between
states, such as the Mississippi River, and there are
water bodies that exist as a border between the US
and Canada, i.e. the Great Lakes. Clearly, no state
has sole jurisdiction or the authority to keep such
waters clean, hence, the need for the federal
government to intervene because back in the 1960's
and 70's we obviously had a problem with water
pollution.
So, that is how it all began. In the meantime, various
judges and bureaucrats have sought to extend the
power and authority of the United States government
to waters of the states and more particularly, waters
on private property, as if these were of concern to the
federal government and fell within the jurisdiction of
the same. Fortunately, after decades of such
regulatory abuse and overreach, the US Supreme
Court published two decisions that comported with the
intentions and constitutional limitations of the Clean
Water Act by delineating that not all waters in the
United States are waters of the United States.
In response, did the EPA go back to Congress to
address these court-imposed limitations on its
authority and jurisdiction? No, they did the
opposite. They published a notice in the federal
register that clearly maintains that all waters in the
United States come under their jurisdiction by virtue of
regulatory fiat clearly blowing off the Supreme Court,
Congress and the States in the process. It is no
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wonder that dozens of states are suing the federal
government as a result. Moreover, the EPA has
continued to prosecute individual citizens over
perceived violations of their power grab levying fines
of $37,500 per day! One farmer and livestock owner
has amassed $20 million in threatened fines for
having created a stock pond on his property, despite
the fact that stock ponds are expressly exempt from
the provisions of the Clean Water Act!
Quite literally, the Obama administration is trying to
control land use throughout the United States by
laying claim to any land that may be covered from
time to time by water. We are no longer even talking
about lakes, rivers and streams. We are talking about
mud puddles and areas subject to rain runoff! The
California Farm Bureau took the language from the
federal register and mapped the state
accordingly. The result? Over 90% of the land in
California is now considered “waters” of the United
States-even dry land! That means any activity on
the land will become subject to a federal permitting
process! If this power grab is allowed to stand, it will
obliterate the rights of states and the concept of
private property.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Volume 3 Issue 11
COLAB Magazine
Less Freedom in California:
Residents Fleeing Growing
Welfare State Cont.
Page 18
COLAB
Santa Barbara County
(Continued from page 4)
cents a gallon, and add $65 to the vehicle licensing fee, but
could not get enough votes to pass either measure. (There is a
God, and surely he drives a SUV)
Refiners in California are required to comply with the California
Air Resources Board’s cleaner-burning gasoline mandate, at a
cost to them of about $5 billion, according to the Western States
Petroleum Association.
PLEASE
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In most of the decade prior to 2015, gasoline prices in California
averaged 31 cents a gallon more than the national average, the
Los Angeles Times recently reported. But pricing fluctuations
have reached as high as an additional 81 cents a gallon, largely because of regulations.
WSPA attributes the added cost to regulations imposed by the Air Resources Board and other government
agencies.
The state’s high taxes also contribute significantly to California’s sky-high gasoline costs. “With a cost at the
pump of 66 cents per gallon, the state’s gasoline taxes are the highest in the nation, 18 cents per gallon higher
than the national average,” WSPA said.
Welfare
It’s ironic that as Gov. Jerry Brown and his wife are getting ready to move into a newly renovated governor’s
mansion, welfare in California is multiplying.
The total state budget for 2015-2016 is $167.5 billion, which includes $45.7 billion from special funds, and
$115.3 in the state’s General Fund.
California shells out $52.3 billion in welfare – more than one-third of the entire state budget. Welfare, which is
made up of government programs which provide financial aid to individuals who cannot support themselves.
Funded by taxpayers, welfare in California includes Medi-Cal, Cal-Works, housing, childcare, food stamps
(CalFresh), in-home services, and immigration.
California’s Obamacare health insurance, Covered California, has already cost the state $1 billion more per
year than anticipated, and Gov. Jerry Brown is planning on spending $200 million more, including more than
$6o million next year on illegal immigrants.“
Katy Grimes, Investigative Reporter and Senior Correspondent at FLASHREPORT
722 West Betteravia Rd.
Santa Maria, CA 93455 805-922-1262
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