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Santa Barbara County

Volume 6

Issue 3

129 Million Dead Trees And Counting!

2

California’s Exploding Homeless Population Result Of Failed Democrat Policies

3

Typhoid Mary And The Queen Of Heart

5

Why Does California’s Secure Choice Program Still Exist?

7

A Failed Coup By Impeachment

9

Party Like It’s The 1960's!

11

Sit-Hole Democrats

13

The Russian Troll Factory

14

Inside the March

Issue:

March

2018

COLAB

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Santa Maria, CA 93456

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129 Million Dead Trees And Counting!

By Andy Caldwell

Volume 6 Issue 3 COLAB Magazine

A clear and present danger is how our county su-

pervisors reckoned the threat of wildfires back in 1967! They issued a resolution that reads in part:

“This board of supervisors deems, on the basis of evi-dence presented to it and the facts ascertained by it, and on the opinion of its legal counsel, that the past and present lack of adequate financing of appropriate fire prevention programs and measures by the United States Government in Los Padres Forest constitutes continuing negligence, actionable as such against pri-vate citizens under the laws of the State of California and the common law. Therefore, in the light of the deep concern of the County of Santa Barbara for the interests and welfare of its people and in view of the County efforts to avert the impending peril to its citi-zens, then in the event that adequate financing for necessary fire prevention programs and measures in Los Padres Forest is not forthcoming, this County will take all possible legal action and encourage and aid all possible legal action by its residents and citizens (against the US government) for all loss of life, per-sonal injury and destruction of public and private prop-erty.”

Fast forward to 2018. The state’s Little Hoover Com-mission issues a report calling for transformational culture change in its forest management practices summarized as follows: “The U.S. Department of Agri-culture (USDA) reported in December 2017 that ap-proximately 27 million trees had died statewide on federal, state and private lands since November 2016. The tally brought to 129 million the number of trees that have died in California forests during years of drought and bark beetle infestations since 2010.

The Commission found that California’s forests suffer from neglect and mismanagement, resulting in over-crowding that leaves them susceptible to disease, in-sects and wildfire. The Commission found commit-ment to long-lasting forest management changes at the highest levels of government, but that support for those changes needs to spread down not just through the state’s massive bureaucracy and law- and policy-making apparatuses, but among the general public as well. Complicating the management problem is the fact that the state of California owns very few of the forests within its borders – most are owned by the fed-eral government or private landowners.

The Commission urges the state to take a greater leadership role in collaborative forest management planning at the watershed level. The Good Neighbor Authority granted in the 2014 Farm Bill provides a mechanism for the state to conduct restoration activi-ties on federal land, but state agencies must have the financial and personnel resources to perform this work. As part of this collaborative effort, it calls upon the state to use more prescribed fire to reinvigorate forests, inhibit firestorms and help protect air and wa-ter quality. Central to these efforts must be a statewide public education campaign to help Californi-ans understand why healthy forests matter to them, and elicit buy-in for the much-needed forest treat-ments.”

Alternatively, current plans to sue So Cal Edison for the Thomas Fire, misses the forest for the trees, er, read that dead trees, all 129 million of them.

First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press

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California’s Exploding Homeless Population Result Of Failed Democrat Policies

By Katy Grimes

Housing and Redevelopment Agency’s lottery for a place on the waiting list, the SacBee reported. Howev-er, Only 7,000 slots are available, taking up to two years before housing becomes available.

But what’s behind this explosion of drug addicted, criminal and insane homeless on California’s streets?

In this picture (to the right) is the list of “non-violent crimes” in California from the “Keep California Safe” initiative to repeal parts of AB 109, Proposition 47 and Proposition 57:

Assembly Bill 109, Proposition 47, Proposition 57 de-criminalized theft, drug crimes, sex crimes, and emp-tied out California prisons.

The Obama administration policy encouraged states to ignore certain crimes, decriminalize certain crimes, in exchange for receiving extra federal grants… along with a massive homeless population.

The Keep California Safe initiative plans to 1) reclassi-fy currently “non-violent” crimes like rape of an uncon-scious person, sex trafficking of a child and 14 other serious crimes as “violent” — to prevent the early re-lease of inmates convicted of these crimes. 2) reform the parole system to stop the early release of violent felons, expand parolee oversight, and strengthen

(Continued on page 15)


What is behind the explosion of drug addicted,

criminal, and mentally ill homeless on California’s streets?

Democrat policies and politics going all the way up the ladder to California Gov. Jerry Brown and the Califor-nia Legislature, on up to the Obama administration, and the Obama-Holder prison reform program which subverted the law as well as Congress.

The so-called reforms succeeded in promoting crime by decriminalizing many crimes, and reclassifying vio-lent crimes as “non-violent.” Gov. Jerry Brown’s A.B. 109, “realigned” California’s overcrowded prison sys-tem, shifting responsibility of repeat, newly classified “nonviolent” offenders from state prisons to county jails. Those released were assigned county probation officers rather than state parole officers. Those newly “non-violent” criminals let out of county jails due to overcrowding are living on the streets, living on our parkways, rivers, and canals, and using the streets as their toilets.

The two-mile long stretch of homeless tent encamp-ments in Orange County along the Santa Ana River Trail, littered with human waste and used needles, is becoming a common sight in most California cities.

“In stark contrast from local governments in Los Ange-les and San Francisco, the Orange County authorities are beginning to clamp down on the tent city, describ-ing the ‘illegal’ housing as a major public health con-cern,” Sean Hannity reported over the weekend.

In stark contrast to Orange County leaders, Sacra-mento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat who is the most recent former California Senate President, and local Democrat politicians are proposing more tax increases to build thousands of tiny houses for the homeless. “Less than a week after calling for a multi-billion-dollar fund for infrastructure, arts and affordable housing, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg pro-posed Tuesday spending $21 million over the next three years to subsidize construction of hundreds of small homes to help shelter the city’s growing home-less population,” the Sacramento Bee reported.

Steinberg plans to allow homeless drug addicts and criminals to jump ahead in the long waiting line of Section 8 public housing vouchers. In January 2018, 34,766 applicants had entered the Sacramento

Been There, Burned That!

By Andy Caldwell

in, writing in the News Press that “The longer an area remains unburned the greater its potential for fires of uncontrollable fury. It has remained over the years the dreary repetition of unarguable demonstrations that by preventing fires we are also accumulating fuel, increasing the danger to life and property and virtually assuring the uncontrollability of some future out-break. It’s our choice.”

We keep hearing talk about choices. As I mentioned, the law of the jungle applies, it is kill or be killed. We only have two choices: manage fires under our control or suffer the consequences of uncontrollable fires. Just how desperate were the Supervisors in 1967 to prevent further loss of life, homes and habi-tat? One of the chemicals used locally to control the brush was Agent Orange! Like I said, it is a jungle out there, but unfortunately now, we are allowing the fires and floods to have their way with us.



Have you ever heard of the kill or be killed doctrine

of jungle warfare? It is a take-no-prisoners situation and we just witnessed a version of it. In our situation, our only choice is to kill the brush and chaparral that fuels the wildfires and spawns floods. Otherwise, na-ture kills everything in its path.

In 1960, the state of California came up with a plan to address wildfires that called for increased access to previously inaccessible areas in order to get our fire-fighters and equipment to the front line just in time. The plan also called for hazard reductions, in-cluding fuel breaks and replacing the native brush with less flammable habitat. Having said all that, the plan was not implemented due to funding short-falls. Ergo, the 1964 Coyote Fire had its way with us.

After the Coyote Fire, our county supervisors vowed never again, as this fire was then considered the worst disaster since the 1925 earthquake (sound fa-miliar?)! In 1967, the supervisors commissioned a report “The Wildfire Threat, Challenge and Choice”. The report made six recommendations to prevent further mass devastation from fire happening again. In his book, “Santa Barbara Wildfires”, Ray Ford cites the recommendations of the commission as follows:

“Hazard reduction is the first of these. An accelerated program of hazard reduction should be instituted with-out delay, including physical removal of fire hazards, as well as coordinated city, county, state and federal regulations requiring this.

The second recommendation was a proposal that controlled burning be instituted at all levels of govern-ment including the assistance and participation of the Forest Service, on both public and private lands.

Land management recommendations include type conversion of the more flammable chaparral and sage cover to grasses or other vegetative cover; the initia-tion of studies to find chemicals which will control or retard the growth of new brush and kill old-growth brush; development and implementation of a system of fuel breaks and access roads in the forest; and cre-ation of a series of fuel breaks on the front side of the Santa Ynez mountains.”

Back in the day, a UCSB biology professor weighed

Typhoid Mary And The Queen Of Heart

By Andy Caldwell

When I confronted Supervisor Wolf about all of this during a recent hearing, as usual, she took um-brage. She denies she has a history of haranguing staff members while she defended her right to protect Goleta beach at all costs because that is what her constituents want her to do. Well, I would normally give her that last point. However, her constituents have it completely wrong. Lives were at stake and it was the only thing we could do.

Moreover, the reason the county has been dumping mud and other materials at Goleta beach for decades is only partly due to the time and cost factors of haul-ing the materials elsewhere. Without the additional materials, including the infamous boulders which ar-mor the beach, Goleta beach would otherwise wash away!

Contextually, Supervisor Das Williams has not been complaining about the county dumping mud in his dis-trict on a Carpinteria beach. That is because he has done the math, including calculations having to do with human suffering! The estimated amount of mud and debris would require 200,000 truck trips to haul it away. But to where? Supervisor Wolf has no answer and neither does anyone else.

Nevertheless, Wolf’s lack of common sense priorities on this matter has burned up more good will and mo-rale among county workers than did Sherman’s march through the south! She can and must do better.



Not long after our federal government made it its

priority to lay out bales of straw to protect frogs from the impending storm, rather than doing what they could to protect the scores of people whose lives were threatened in Montecito, I endured my proverbial last straw, relative to the similarly misplaced priorities of County Supervisor Janet Wolf and her chief assistant Mary O’ Gorman. In the midst of the Montecito catas-trophe, Supervisor Wolf proved once again that she is tone deaf. You have heard of a dog on a bone? That is nothing compared to Wolf on a bone.

While county staff and others were doing their best to rescue people in peril and recover the victims who didn’t make it out alive, Supervisor Wolf was going apoplectic about the decision to dump mud on Goleta Beach and true to her nature, she just would not let it go. The last thing the search and rescue team mem-bers needed, while in the midst of peril and distress, was yet another dreaded call on the carpet by Super-visor Wolf, determinedly oblivious to the fact that they were waste deep in mud when they received that call.

Unfortunately, none of this comes as a surprise. For years, I have been told by county staff of Supervisor Wolf and Ms. O’ Gorman’s bad habit of calling people into their office to give them orders and grief, thereby bypassing the normal chain of command (to go through the county’s chief administrative officer) while also out of view of fellow supervisors who resist the temptation to run the county as if it is their personal fiefdom.

Live And Let Die

By Andy Caldwell

the local tourist business are our wineries, beaches, golf courses, missions, the dunes state camping and recreational vehicle park, and other tourist favorites such as our county courthouse and Hearst Castle.

Here too, we have trouble. Winery growth and devel-opment is being constrained by NIMBY’s and the drought (the effects of which could be abated with more water storage). Highway 1, the main access from the north to Hearst Castle, is closed, and some residents of Nipomo are trying to shut down the dunes vehicle and camping area and they would like to shut down the last local oil processing facility too. Ironical-ly, these people live in a development that cut down the trees that previously served to block the wind and sand!

Oh, for good neighbors who live and let live



The central coast is made up of Ventura, Santa

Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Monterrey coun-ties. These counties have in common agriculture, en-ergy production, and tourism as mainstays of their economies, with the 101 freeway serving as the means by which virtually all commerce flows through-out the region. Additionally, tens of thousands of peo-ple live in one county while they work in another, mainly due to the cost of housing.

With regard to agriculture, our region is unique in that we grow specialty crops that require hand planting and harvesting. Relatedly, the cost of labor and labor shortages present dire challenge to our area farmers, as does the continuing drought and the reams of reg-ulations that our farmers must contend with on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, urbanites are beginning to covet our farmer’s water hoping that less water for farmers means more water for them. What does that mean in practical terms? Urbanites would rather water their landscaping instead of helping our farmers provide our nation a stable, safe and secure food sup-ply! Moreover, without water, a farm is simply a worthless field of dirt unless it lends itself to other us-es, primarily more urban development. Moreover, those of us who value living in a rural county don’t be-grudge our farmers the right to use the water they bought and paid for when they bought the farm.

With regard to energy, activists continue to appeal to voters to shut down the oil industry (SLO has a peti-tion circulating now) and they have finally succeeded in securing the imminent closure of Diablo Nuclear Power Plant. Lost on these losers is the fact that Dia-blo and the oil industry pay the highest wages and taxes in our region. Who is going to make up the dif-ference when they are gone? Do the math! Our re-gional economy stands to lose over one billions dol-lars annually and California will lose 20% of its elec-tricity supply as a result of the Diablo (and San On-ofre) shutdowns. Bet on it, our electricity rates will keep going up while our supply becomes erratic.

Regarding tourism, tourists who come here have oth-er choices. In that regard, we have a common inter-est in making the central coast as attractive as possi-ble to as many people as possible. The mainstays of

Why Does California’s Secure Choice Program Still Exist?

By Jon Coupal

this can’t happen, but remember that officials in Stockton, Vallejo and San Bernardino once said the same thing.

From the beginning, the legality of Secure Choice, and similar programs in mostly liberal states, has been questioned because it is inconsistent with a federal law known as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. ERISA imposes requirements for retirement plans in the private sector. Because the Secure Choice programs appeared to be in clear violation of ERISA, those states that sought to adopt those programs received a regulatory interpretation from the Obama administration which, the states argued, granted them an exception. Forgetting for the moment the issue of whether that federal regulation was even legal (a recurring problem for much of President Obama’s regulatory efforts), it was rescinded shortly after President Trump took office.

The upshot is that the weight of legal authority is that California’s Secure Choice program, if implemented, would violate federal law. Until California and other left-leaning states convince Congress to grant them an exception — something very unlikely for the foreseeable future — spending further taxpayer dollars on planning and set-up costs is a waste.

California law allows taxpayers to commence legal actions, including injunctions, against government entities for waste of public funds. See, e.g. Code of Civil Procedure Section 526a. As long as California continues to spend taxpayer dollars on a program that, on its face, violates federal statute, it is vulnerable to legal challenge. In any event, don’t we have better things to spend our money on?

Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.


California’s planned “Secure Choice” program, if

implemented, would violate federal law. So why are we needlessly spending public tax dollars on its startup costs?

The concept of the program seems harmless enough: A voluntary program — at least for now — that would enroll private-sector employees who currently don’t have a retirement plan into a state-run retirement savings account.

But as with any government program, the first question is why is this program even needed? Private-sector employees pay into the Social Security system and, upon reaching retirement age, draw benefits from it. While some have argued that Social Security benefits are inadequate, the program is nonetheless backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government. Moreover, under federal law, there are many programs to assist private-sector workers whose employers don’t offer 401(k) or other employer-based plans. These include individual retirement accounts, both traditional and Roth IRAs. For workers without an employer retirement plan, there are generous limits on how much can be saved tax-deferred.

Secure Choice is a solution in search of a problem. Given all the existing retirement programs authorized under federal law and managed by private investment firms, the only reason to adopt a massive new government program is so that government can control yet another part of the economy currently being serviced by the private sector. Progressives truly believe that government can do it better.

But better than what? The California Public Employees’ Retirement System and other public employee retirement funds are carrying unfunded liabilities in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Then there is the cost to taxpayers. While the program is ostensibly voluntary, the startup costs of the program are huge. For fiscal 2017-18, the Secure Choice program has requested a $170 million general fund loan for staff, external consultants, overhead costs and related expenses. Speaking of “choice,” it’s too bad taxpayers didn’t have a choice in seeing their dollars spent on this questionable program.

Finally, there is the risk to taxpayers in the event Secure Choice goes bankrupt. Defenders claim that

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The County of Santa Barbara has been broke, flat

broke, for years due to pension obligations. Now, as a result of the Montecito mud slide, the county is in a new fiscal hole as deep as the mud and rocks piles are high. Why? Because neither the feds nor the state are going to pick up 100% of the tab to rebuild our damaged infrastructure or haul all the debris away. So, what is the county to do? You have heard of the phrase “pigs at the trough”?

County supervisors are pinning their hopes on taxing the bejesus out of the marijuana industry while they do everything they can to shut down other growing revenue streams! This plan of theirs is nothing more than a bong, er, pipe dream as the bottom is already falling out of the pot market due to increased competi-tion. Accordingly, you can expect with certainty that our economy will go to pot, literally and figuratively.

Never mind that the county is in competition with other jurisdictions for marijuana grow and processing opera-tions. True to form, the county couldn’t help itself but to pile on onerous regulations on the industry thereby encouraging businesses to go and grow else-where. Alternatively, other jurisdictions are handling pot with an over the counter permit meaning surety of outcomes, expenses and time requirements!

To make matters worse, the county is making it most difficult for farmers who own large parcels, located far away from urbanites, to grow pot. The reason this is important is because the number one complaint from neighbors of these grow operations are the odors as-sociated with the plants. If the county wanted to max-imize revenues while minimizing impacts, well then, they should have made it easier, instead of nearly im-possible, for the larger farms to grow pot.

The other big problem the county has? Growing pot is still considered illegal by our federal govern-ment. That means the county could be deemed com-plicit in committing a felony once they start taking in proceeds in the form of fees and taxes. What does this mean in practical terms? The pot belly pig trough might prove to be empty as the feds could confiscate all the revenue derived from the same!

Let’s be perfectly clear on this. If voters approve the marijuana tax on the June ballot, it will be because

they will have been led to believe the money will be used to mitigate the impacts of pot and to pay for new additional services. But, the county is so mired in debt, the extra money must actually be used to main-tain the status quo and nothing more! The supervi-sors have not addressed their ongoing structural defi-cit, meaning this new money, at best, will stave off layoffs of current employees.

There is a reason the marijuana tax is a general tax. General taxes, unlike special taxes, come with no guarantees of how the money will be spent! Fur-ther indication that the county can’t assure a single voter, or impacted resident, that the money raised by the tax will be used to mitigate the impacts of growing or consuming pot due to the aforementioned pension and mud disasters. And impacts there will be, on law and zoning enforcement, and public and mental health services.

I don’t know about you, but I am bedeviled by the no-tion that the county would roll out the red carpet for pot, while barring the door for other revenue-generating businesses such as wineries, short term rentals, new hotels, along with safe and sane legacy oil operations, but then again, maybe that is why they call it the devil’s weed!


Pot Belly Pigs

By Andy Caldwell

A Failed Coup By Impeachment

By Andy Caldwell

let that happen”. Think about the meaning of those words.

Who is the “we” and what power do they have to abort a Trump presidency? The “we” is the deep state. The plan was nothing less than a coup by way of impeachment! These two pillow talkers reference the dossier as their “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency. Nixon was impeached for lying about a botched burglary by his cronies. Trump was being set up for impeachment by the highest law enforcement officials in the country. What we have here is a constitutional crisis.

Why did the aforementioned deep state operatives do everything within their power to squash the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s destruction of tens of thousands of emails under subpoena by Congress, going so far as to write a letter of exoneration before the investigation began in earnest? First, according to their own written communication, they expected Hillary to win and they did not want hell to pay for having prosecuted her! They went so far as to give Clinton key staff members immunity from prosecution despite the fact that the staff members pled the 5th Amendment, meaning they refused to testify! Nobody ever gets immunity except in exchange for testimony! And, their computers were destroyed as part of the bargain! The second reason? The destroyed emails would have certainly served to corroborate all of the above.

Finally, inquiring minds want to know, what did Obama know and when did he know it?


Richard Nixon was impeached for lying about

Watergate, albeit, he himself had no advance knowledge about the third-rate attempt to spy on the democrats. If Nixon had told the truth, the burglars would have faced misdemeanor charges and there would have been no impeachment.

Fast forward to 2016. Hillary needed a fall guy to distract people from her email expose by Wikileaks, i.e., she wanted people to focus on who leaked the emails rather than the content. Who better than her opponent Donald Trump by way of Russian collusion? Ergo, Clinton’s campaign pays millions to concoct a dossier, compiled most likely by way of genuine Russian collusion (it is called dark PR) against Trump. Part of the sting operation involves a meeting with Trump in order to incriminate him. The bait? They claim they have dirt on Hillary Clinton, which due to Clinton’s own negligence, was probably true!

The dossier was first used to discredit candidate Trump, it then became the pretext to impeach him. In fact, the unclassified memo released last week by Congress indicates that, without the dossier, the FISA surveillance warrant would not have been requested at all. Please note, the key player, Christopher Steele, who assembled the salacious and phony dossier, double-dipped, having been paid by both the Clinton campaign and the FBI (the FBI eventually fired him)!

Another key player, FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who has also since been fired, exonerated Hillary Clinton for having top secret documents on unsecured servers, while simultaneously attempting to implicate Trump on the basis of the dossier.

A third key player, Bruce Ohr, was a high-ranking Justice dept official also directly involved in the fraudulent FISA warrants who has since been demoted. Why? Ohr’s wife was employed by Hillary’s team to help produce the fake dossier! Ohr conveniently provided his wife’s “research” to the FBI as part of the anti-Trump effort!

We know all of these things because Congress declassified a key memo and because messages have been obtained between two key people in the FBI, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. In anticipation of the unlikely scenario of Trump winning the election and being inaugurated, the two agree that “we can’t

Virtue Signaling With Cheese On Top

By Andy Caldwell

apples for fries, which also made my happy meal experience very unhappy!

In spite of selling billions of cheeseburgers, fries and sodas for a living, McDonalds figures it will throw guilty mothers a bone by withholding cheese in a Happy Meal? This attempt to avoid blame for helping make kids fat is all Michelle Obama’s fault, as her version of “no child left behind” was “no child with a fat behind”.

Nevertheless, if I choose to eat cheeseburgers with abandon and if I get even fatter as a result, I am neither a victim nor a candidate for government intervention or corporate virtue signaling. I am just a guy who likes cheeseburgers and I can live with that if you don’t mind!



A sure sign that our society is in a state of decline

has to do with living lies and selling contradictions, i.e., truth has become a victim of what’s popular, even when it makes no sense whatsoever.

Consider the newest victim class, fat people. Fat shaming is now the subject of focus groups on college campuses as do-gooders seek to instill a sense of pride and self-respect in people who nevertheless need to lose weight. Though everyone knows that being fat is unhealthy, giving encouragement to someone to eat less and exercise more is now a micro-aggression. Doctors now tip toe around the issue lest they too be condemned for telling the truth, albeit, this is nothing new. There are all sorts of proclivities in our society whereby unhealthy lifestyles, indeed, deadly lifestyles, are shielded from criticism.

I discussed this victim status phenomenon in the context of black history month with Dr. Marilyn Singleton, a black woman who, in her own words, was admitted to Stanford despite being told that Stanford doesn’t admit Negroes! The doctor subsequently brought up the concept of a nocebo, the opposite of a placebo. In medical studies, unbeknownst to them, some patients are given a placebo, a pill of no effect, that nonetheless makes the patient feel better. In the case of a nocebo, a patient is actually given, for instance, a power painkiller that has been presented as a benign substance. The result? No pain relief. The lesson? Perception is everything!

Take this lesson and apply it to victim status. If we keep telling people they are helpless victims, some people will believe it and live accordingly. Conversely, if we tell people they have opportunities based upon their choices, and that they alone are responsible for the choices they make, well, good things can and will happen.

As you know, I am a firm believer in our nation’s founding principles, the unalienable right to pursue happiness being one of them. Relatedly, this phenomenon of victimhood is making a victim of yours truly due to the fact that a couple of times a week, I pursue happiness in the form of a Happy Meal from McDonalds. So, you can imagine my disappointment when McDonalds announced they would no longer list the cheeseburger Happy Meal on their menu. It was a painful reminder of their decision to substitute

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The greatest problem we have in our society today

has to do with people living in an alternate reality! If that weren’t bad enough, in the case of Santa Barbara and progressives in general, their alternate reality happens to be stuck in the 1960s! If you care to think about it, this diagnosis explains a lot!

Last week, the board of supervisors heard a presenta-tion that posited that the great income disparity be-tween the north and south county was rooted in rac-ism and discrimination. Whereas, there is no denying the gross income disparity between the two regions, the root theory is completely false and absurd! More-over, this false narrative gives moral, political and so-cial cover to the people partly responsible for the in-come gaps!

If you were to analyze the socio-economic status of most residents of the South County, you would come to the realization that relatively few people who live here earn their living locally. That is to say, their in-come is not directly related to the health and well-being of our local economy. This would include wealthy people who live here but work elsewhere (if they still work at all), college students and retir-ees. Furthermore, retailers in general, are more de-pendent on tourists than locals. Add to this mix those who work for the government, as they tend to believe they can do whatever they want to local business owners and it will never come back to bite them!

These local residents want to preserve, at all costs, everything they have and enjoy. This sentiment was summed up by a former county planning director who honestly admitted that “The cost of preserving the

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high quality of life here includes limiting opportunities for others. It limits economic mobility, but that is a legitimate political choice”.

Translation? Jobs and affordable housing? Who needs them? Not us! Ergo, who gets elected in this region? Those that promise to preserve the status quo while giving lip service to helping the poor escape the throes of “racial discrimination”. Yet, the real problem as such is class warfare!

Hence, to pretend and portray themselves as heroes, our erstwhile progressive politicians want to fight and party (political party that is) like it’s 1960! They pre-tend that women still can’t get ahead, that the environ-ment is still being destroyed, that business profits are the enemy of the poor, and that white people are still racists whether they know it or not.

Never mind the Civil Rights Act, the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, nor the fact that more women are graduating from college than men, or that we elected a black president. No, none of that mat-ters. The only thing that matters is that these phony public servants need villains to slay to satisfy the vic-tim class they must manipulate and exploit to stay in power.

To escape poverty and avoid dependence on govern-ment power brokers, people need jobs! The North County supervisors would give them just that if they could only convince the South County supervisors that job creation won’t affect their life in paradise.


Here’s Mud in Your Eye

By Andy Caldwell


When you dial 911, the operator asks “What’s

your emergency” to ascertain whether law enforce-ment, a fire truck and/or an ambulance needs to be dispatched. Let’s consider government’s response to a different type of emergency.

The response to the Montecito disaster by our local, state and federal governments was nothing less than heroic. They rescued scores of people, moving mud and debris as necessary in haste. They eventually dumped thousands of truck loads of mud at local beaches and into a pit in Buellton located in the mid-dle of the Santa Ynez riverbed! Part of the rationale in doing this is that in a storm event, were it not for the impediments associated with the human environment that stands in the path of least resistance, this is where Mother Nature herself would be dumping storm runoff. This is nothing new. Over the years, the county has dumped millions of cubic yards of storm debris at Goleta Beach.

Unfortunately, virtually every beach had to be closed as a result of the debris flow and the dumping be-cause the water became unsafe. Heavy metals, gas-oline, oil, household chemicals and human waste are the likely pollutants. Nevertheless, we continue to spread the material on the beach under the euphe-mism of “beach nourishment”.

Now, consider what private citizens must do to begin removing these same types of materials from their own property. Believe me, they are not going to be allowed to take what is on their property and dump it into the ocean! No, they are going to be charged, at great expense, to transport and dump the material at a location permitted to receive hazardous materials.

Historically, farmers, ranchers, and business owners, under normal and emergency circumstances, are not allowed to have anything other than clean water leave their property, even in a rain storm, lest they be fined. That is, the water that leaves their property in a storm is required to be free from “pollution” of any kind, including clean dirt (we call that erosion)! If they purposely dump or store any hazardous material on or near a beach, or in a riverbed, they are subject to ar-rest and prosecution forthwith.

Speaking of prosecution, I want you to consider what occurred as a result of the oil pipeline spill at Refugio beach a few years back. Even though Mother Nature

herself deposits gobs of oil in our coastal waters and on our beaches, on a 24/7/365 basis by way of natural seeps, the pipeline company was forced to pay to clean up every single spot of oil in the water and in the sand, and on every rock the cleanup crews could find and, that still wasn’t enough! To top things off, they are being prosecuted for the accident.

Moreover, the Exxon and Venoco operations (the lat-ter went bankrupt) were shut down, though the acci-


Sit-Hole Democrats

By Andy Caldwell

step up to the plate with their own wallets. In es-sence, our congressman is suggesting that taxpayers throughout the rest of the country, who did not ignore their freeways, dams and bridges, as did California, should pony up and pay our bills! Well, folks, the fact is most other states have been exercising due dili-gence in maintaining their infrastructure and they are under no obligation to send their federal tax dollars our way.

The dems dug themselves into a hole, a political grave if you will, that night, sitting on their hands while the rest of America applauded courage, comforted the grieving, defied terrorism and celebrated the fact that America is great because America is good (to borrow from De Tocqueville). I now refer to them as sit-hole democrats.

Hats off to President Trump for his address. What I loved about it most is that he put a face on every point he was making. It is one thing to talk about a wall; it is quite another to witness the grief of parents who lost their children as a result of our porous border.

Personally, I don’t believe in the America that Barack Obama disparaged and divided for eight years, nor the dark America portrayed by Rep. Joe Kennedy in the official democratic response.

Thankfully, the only thing the dems have going for them in the mid-term elections is their “we hate Trump more than we love America” demagoguery. Good luck with that as the economy booms, unemployment plummets, ISIS is defeated, and MS13 is on the run.



Unfortunately, whoever wrote Congressman Salud

Carbajal’s talking points on the State of the Union ad-dress must not have watched the same speech as the rest of us!

For instance, Rep. Carbajal claims that the president failed to give dreamers a “clear path forward” despite the fact that the president proposed a path to citizen-ship for well over one million dreamers, knowing full well his offering of amnesty would not sit well with his base. That type of political courage and willingness to compromise is obviously lost on our congressman and his party whose new mission statement appears to be “no illegal alien left behind”. Hats off to the pres-ident for reminding everyone that Americans have dreams too!

Rep. Carbajal also had the audacity to mention the loss of jobs via the impending closure of Diablo Nucle-ar Power Plant while berating the president for not doing enough to grow our economy. Yet, while he was a county supervisor and even now, Rep. Carbajal has never lifted a finger to keep Diablo running.

Rep. Carbajal wants to give President Obama the credit for today’s booming economy, including histori-cally low black and Hispanic unemployment numbers without giving any credit to Trump! Regardless, Trump is succeeding despite the democrats’ blocking appointments and delaying initiatives, even going so far as to shut down the government.

Finally, Rep. Carbajal took the president to task be-cause the president’s plan to repair our failing infra-structure will require states and local communities to

The Russian Troll Factory

By Andy Caldwell


A baker’s dozen of nothing burgers! Thus far, that

is all that Robert Mueller’s investigation has come up with! Thirteen Russians indicted for trolling America from 2014 going forward. Their goal? Create havoc, division, and unrest in America by exploiting partisan divide. Is that a real crime or is that good old-fashioned spy craft?

To quote Hillary Clinton slightly out of context, “what difference does it make” as to who paid the Russians to do what? Outside interference in American politics is outside interference no matter who is paying the bill. So, if some Russians hired 90 employees to troll the internet, set up rallies, and hire professional pro-testors to promote angst and division in America, is that any worse than Hillary Clinton’s campaign paying Russians to do much of the same?

Consider what we know about the Mueller indictment of 13 Russians. First of all, this Russian troll factory operation was hardly a secret! Russian media did a full-blown story on the troll factory last October! Rus-sians are rather proud of how much they accom-plished thanks to the unwitting stooges in America who didn’t know they were being played.

Now, don’t you for one minute think that their goal was to promote Trump as much as it was to foment division in America long before Trump entered the race, and to cause consternation for the presumptive winner Hillary Clinton. After all, these same trollers also went after Trump and Bernie!

The Russians have been playing us as fools. For in-stance, they sponsored two protests on the same day, one in favor of Trump and the other in opposi-tion. Useful idiots like Michael Moore participated in the Not My President rally; perhaps he should register as a foreign operative?

None of this is new or news! While Russia was med-dling in American politics, let’s not forget that Barack Obama sent money and personnel to Israel in an at-tempt to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection campaign. Then, there were the Chinese bundlers who in 1996 got caught funding Bill Clinton’s reelec-tion campaign in addition to his legal defense fund.

As was pointed out by Robert Barnes writing in “Law and Crime”, if Mr. Mueller is going to attempt to prose-cute the thirteen Russians he just indicted (good luck with that, they will never be extradited) then for the

very same violations, he must also indict Christopher Steele (a foreign operative in his own right), Hillary Clinton, Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie, and the DNC, for they all colluded with Russian operatives that were neither registered as foreign agents nor were the pay-ments reported to the Federal Election Commission.

While he is at it, a few years ago, I wrote about a US Senate report which indicated that American green activists were being funded by Russian money that was being green washed through off shore ac-counts. The goal of these green groups, which fit hand in glove with Russia’s national priorities, was to shut down American fracking operations by way of protests and political machinations. Why has this not been investigated?


The One Name In Crop

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California’s Exploding Homeless Population Result Of Failed Democrat Policies Cont.

organization. “One of the Institute’s key priorities and areas of work is in organizing robust legislative agen-das for mental health in California and engaging elect-ed officials,” Steinberg’s bio says.

In 2015, Steinberg published a report claiming that Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act is working. Steinberg spearheaded Prop. 63, which lev-ies an additional 1% tax on incomes of $1,000,000 or greater to fundamental health service programs be-ginning January 1, 2005. However, the 2015 report, published in conjunction with the County Behavioral Health Directors of California, used statistics from 2011-12. They claim through the “Whatever it takes” mental health services, homelessness and shelter use was down in 2011-2012, due to the extra $500 million in funding provided through Prop. 63 taxes on Califor-nia’s top income earners. However, in 2011, the Cali-fornia Legislature passed AB 109, known as prison “realignment.” So before the effects of AB 109 could possibly be known, this study was claiming the tax money was the result of declining incarcerations.

Steinberg also authored SB 82, the Investment in Mental Health Wellness Act of 2013, “which allocated $142 million in state General Funds for a grant pro-gram to expand the number of community-based mental health crisis services.” But what it really did was send funding to The California Health Facilities and Financing Authority (CHFFA) to administer the



penalties for parole violations. 3) reform theft laws to restore accountability for serial thieves and organized theft gangs. 4) expand DNA collection to include those convicted of drug, theft, domestic violence and other serious crimes to help solve rape, murder and other violent crimes.

This is what real reform looks like. Conversely, Mayor Steinberg, who has no solutions to the drug addled filth living and defecating on downtown streets, wants to punish taxpayers once again to make it appear he is doing something.

Yet, during his last year in the California Legislature in 2015, Darrell Steinberg created The Steinberg Insti-tute, to supposedly battle mental illness. “Since its inception in January 2015, the institute has helped enact sweeping improvements in California mental health policy, including securing $2 billion to provide housing and care for homeless people living with brain illness,” the foundation claims. In three years of operation, the Steinberg Institute claims it “has had outsized impact on California’s legislative agen-da. Key to our mission is inspiring legislative champi-ons – and 2017 saw the largest number of bills dedi-cated to mental health in recent history in California.”

I’m not sure what the Steinberg Institute is spending its funding on, but in the three years since Darrell Steinberg created his foundation, the mentally ill homeless population has exploded in downtown Sac-ramento and surrounding city neighborhoods.

“In addition, we have pushed for – and won – decisive gains in the areas of homeless housing and ser-vices, foster youth, law enforcement training, sui-cide prevention, and college mental health ser-vices,” the Steinberg Institute says. “We have done so with bipartisan support, reaching across party lines to grow awareness of brain health issues; and through thousands of calls and meetings with elected officials, agency heads, advocacy groups, business leaders and research groups, as we educated, advocated and systematically built our network of supporters.”

Founded in 2015, The Steinberg Institute is not rated by Charity Navigator or Guidestar, nor are the Stein-berg Institute’s IRS Form 990’s available. The Stein-berg Institute actually appears to be more of lobbying

(Continued from page 3)

https://behavioralhealth.ucdavis.edu/about/darrell-bio.html

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particularly steep in California where there is a signifi-cant lack of affordable housing. Last January, Los An-geles and Los Angeles County counted a total of 55,188 individuals living in sheltered and unsheltered settings, an increase of nearly 26 percent over Janu-ary 2016. Dr. Carson said HUD would be providing $2 billion in grants to cities to address the housing short-ages. “We know how to end homelessness, and it starts with embracing a housing-first approach that relies upon proven strategies that offer permanent housing solutions to those who may otherwise be liv-ing in our shelters and on our streets,” Dr, Carson said. He agreed that California is not approaching the problem correctly by allowing the massive tent cities to flourish; he said it costs cities less to get the home-less off the street than to deal with filthy homeless en-campments and the ensuing health and disease con-cerns. Dr. Carson is also a believer in not making the homeless too comfortable. “Compassion means not giving people ‘a comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here. They will take care of me,'” Carson told the New York Times last year.

Dr. Carson and I briefly discussed the Haven For Hope, in San Antonio, Texas, a model holistic home-lessness program using public and private funds, which addresses all of the issues surrounding home-lessness. Haven for Hope, which is listed and rated on Charity Navigator and Guidestar, provides short-term residential housing on-campus, substance abuse, mental health treatment, employment services, education services, life-skills training, legal services,



capital outlay function of the Act, which is to “convene public forums and webinars, reach out to stakehold-ers, craft emergency regulations and then permanent regulations, and design grant application processes–” …Lots of talking about homelessness and mental ill-ness, costing $142 million.

Flash forward to 2018. The federal Housing and Ur-ban Development agency published its 2017 report on homelessness which found California not only has the largest homeless population in the country, the popu-lation grew from 2016. California had 134,278 home-less in 2017, of which 91,642 were unsheltered — a 13.7% increase from 2016.

The HUD report found the number of homeless de-clined in 30 states during the same time period be-tween 2016 and 2017, with the largest decreases in Georgia (2,735 fewer people), Massachusetts (2,043 fewer people), and Florida (1,369 fewer people). The largest percentage decreases were in South Carolina (23%), Georgia (21%), and Louisiana (17%).

The number of homeless increased in 20 states be-tween 2016 and 2017, with the largest increases in California (16,136 people), New York (3,151 people), and Oregon (715 people). The largest percentage in-creases were in North Dakota (18%), California (14%), New Mexico (10%), and Vermont (10%).

I recently interviewed Dr. Ben Carson, HUD Secre-tary, Feb. 13, 2018, about HUD’s approach to de-creasing homelessness in cities throughout the coun-try. Dr. Carson said the significant increase in the number of unsheltered homelessness, was


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/politics/ben-carson-hud-poverty-plans.html

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.profile&ein=208075412

https://www.guidestar.org/profile/20-8075412

https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2017-AHAR-Part-1.pdf



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childcare, health care, even an animal kennel, and housing.

Lobbying the California Legislature might be more effective if the goal was to teach homeless residents to learn to become self-sufficient active members of the community. “Most cities think they’re doing a great job if they feed and clothe the homeless, but they’re not,” Haven for Hope founder Bill Greehey said in a 2011 interview. “We’re putting them through a program to become drug- and alcohol-free and live independently.”

In Sacramento, after already legislating hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for combating homelessness ineffectively, we’re now going to tax responsible residents out of more of their hard-earned income, and build tiny homes for people currently living and pooping on the street. The numbers don’t lie; The Steinberg Institute may be busy doing something, but homelessness is only increasing in California. Tent cities, used needles, piles of defecation on the streets are increasing, as are communicable diseases.

Democrats have solved nothing, and are spending ridiculous amounts of money doing it. It’s hard not to ask who is getting rich off of these bogus programs.

Katy Grimes, Investigative Reporter and Senior Correspondent at FLASHREPORT


Here’s Mud in Your Eye Cont.

dent was no fault of their own. A request to truck oil production to an alternative relatively nearby refinery was denied. Unfortunately, the loss of hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in revenue and taxes was not con-sidered an emergency that would have otherwise allowed these companies to continue operating!

This reminds me of the saying that the path of least resistance makes crooked both rivers and men (and gov-ernments!). It is obvious, that the rules that apply to all of us don’t apply to government. All things being equal, in an emergency, the private sector is on its own, subject to nothing less than persecution and prosecution. So much for the concept of government of the people, by the people and for the people.



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