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Santa Barbara County
Volume 2
Issue 5
Don’t Vote Early!
2
Ivanpah
morphs into
gas-solar
hybrid
4
Why Debate When You Can Equivocate, Prevaricate And Obfuscate?
6
Say Yes to A Boost In The Economy
9
Questions Our Supervisors Can’t Answer
11
Day Of The Dictator?
13
Who Will Face Congress-woman Capps In November?
14
She Works Hard For Her Family
15
Inside the May
Issue:
May
2014
COLAB
PO Box 7523
Santa Maria, CA 93456
Phone:
805-929-3148
E-mail:
We Need More Than Huff And Bluff From Our Leaders
By Andy Caldwell
The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians recently announced plans to increase the size of
their hotel, parking structure and food services areas at their casino resort. Predictably, Su-pervisor Doreen Farr proceeded to take a cheap shot at the Tribe instead of engaging in a meaningful and thoughtful dialogue befitting an elected representative.
Specifically, Sup. Farr said she was curious how the tribe could find room for these expan-sion plans on the reservation property while they couldn’t find room for the homes they now desire to build on their Camp 4 property. Personally, I expect more from Supervisor Farr and so should the rest of the community if we are ever to enjoy an end to the bitter acrimony in the valley, which in my opinion, is primarily due to an ongoing leadership gap in the offices of both the supervisor and the 24th congressional district.
The reason the Tribe has room on the reservation to expand these facilities has to do with the fact that the construction of these facilities is vertical in nature. In other words, it doesn’t take much of a footprint, acreage wise, to build up in comparison to the amount of land it takes to build 140 additional houses on a 99-acre reservation. That is, unless Supervisor Farr is suggesting the Tribe build a 60-story skyscraper residential building on the reserva-tion instead of annexing Camp 4?
We have all witnessed an endless stream of complaints having to do with anything the Chu-mash propose to do. Whether it was the honorary designation of Highway 154 as the Chu-mash Highway, or the tribe’s attempt to build a cultural museum directly across the road from the resort, or the proposal to annex the Camp 4 property- the tribe is constantly met with sus-picion, derision and opposition- no matter how benign the project. Are they not allowed to have their own aspirations in the valley or is that solely reserved for others? Think of all the changes that were made in the valley and to the valley while these tribal members were rele-gated to living on a reservation that straddles a ravine. Did anybody bother to ask the Tribe’s permission to build a Danish village, horse farms, wineries, resorts, golf courses and luxury estates in the valley?
The real issue that needs to be discussed is the proposed annexation of Camp 4. Supervi-sor Farr, and Congresswoman Lois Capps should call for a government to government dia-logue with the Tribe as nothing less shall do. These two elected officials should quit blaming when they could be negotiating, because, quite frankly, everything is negotiable and that is what real leaders do. And, in the meantime, who can blame the Chumash for looking for help elsewhere when our local officials refuse to sit down with them and plan for our future together? As a point of reference, consider UCSB which also has independent jurisdiction from the county’s land use codes. The county sat down with the university to discuss long-range plans, so why won’t it sit down with the Tribe?
(Continued on page 16)
Don’t Vote Early!
By Andy Caldwell
Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine Page 2
The current trend of a majority is to vote by mail
and to do so within days of receiving their ballots meaning they are voting weeks before the campaign cycle has concluded. This is not a prudent thing to do because a lot can change in the last month of the campaign. Take Measure M and the 2nd District Su-pervisor’s race for example.
Supervisor Peter Adam is to be commended for im-pelling the board to deal with a mountain of mainte-nance debt, several hundred million dollars worth, that has been allowed to grow out of control for dec-ades. This debt actually grows exponentially because if maintenance is not performed routinely, then public assets eventually can no longer be repaired, instead they have to be rebuilt.
During last year’s county budget cycle Adam was suc-cessful in getting his fellow supervisors to spend more on maintenance but it obviously was not enough to put a dent in the problem as evidenced by a study the board recently commissioned. Measure M does not require the county to actually eliminate the mainte-nance deficit, it simply states the board of supervisors will not allow the debt to grow any larger than it is right now. Nonetheless, the county would have to set aside tens of millions of dollars to comply with the measure if approved by voters. The final report detail-ing this mountain of debt is not due to be formally dis-cussed until the middle of May- weeks after a signifi-cant number of people will have already voted on Measure M!
I believe the county needs to catch up on their debt. The board of supervisors now have the oppor-tunity to come up with a plan to do just that. Voters could wait until after the board has their deliberations on the maintenance deficit to determine how to vote on Measure M. They can then cast their vote as a vote of confidence or condemnation depending on what the board does or fails to do. If the board does the right thing and agrees to a cogent plan to pay down the maintenance deficit, then voters need not approve Measure M. However, if the board fails to commit to a plan, then voters should tie their hands and vote Yes on Measure M.
This issue also becomes a litmus test for Supervisor Janet Wolf too. Supervisor Wolf can only serve one master. Measure M is a choice of her allegiance be-tween the community at large or the public employee unions whom she describes as her family. These un-ions can claim her allegiance because they are keep-ing her afloat politically via their $100,000 plus contri-butions to her campaign. But, there is only so much money to go around. Supervisor Wolf is always push-ing to spend more money on salaries, benefits and pensions for the public employees which is the exact reason we don’t have enough money left over to pay our bills as it affects staffing our jail and maintaining our roads, buildings and parks.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Show Us, Don’t Tell Us, How We All Should Live
By Andy Caldwell
portfolio of the proponents of the ballot measure. Do any of them live off grid? Can they demonstrate how to live without natural gas and oil? Can they live with-out the ubiquitous byproducts of the industry, such as plastic? I want to see them lead by example before they attempt to lead by ballot initiative.
Talk is cheap but forcing change by hook and crook is prohibitively punitive and expensive. Europe already tried going down this path and they are now regretting it as they beat a retreat back to fossil fuels. We should be grateful to have fossil fuels available be-cause they work and they are affordable.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Page 3 Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine
How is it that rhetoric almost always outpaces
reason in the race to capture the attention of the un-suspecting masses? Is it because it is easier to ap-peal to emotion than intellect in this day and age? Launching sound bytes of hyperbole to influ-ence people only works because most people don’t have the time or patience to study an issue based upon a balanced presentation of the facts.
Recently, I challenged the proponents of a local ballot measure related to our oil and gas industry to a de-bate. The ballot measure claims its intention is to pro-tect water supplies but that claim is just a clever-by-half campaign trick. The real goal is part of a national campaign aimed to destroy our domestic energy sec-tor. The collateral damage of this effort will serve to eliminate a substantial portion of our tax base and the best paying job sector we have.
The real impetus of the measure is the belief that eliminating the use of fossil fuel is the best way to save the planet from global warming. But, this begs the real question! Which of us are really ready to live without natural gas and oil? It heats our homes and our water, fuels our transportation and industrial sec-tors, and keeps the cost of modern day living rela-tively inexpensive.
The literature on this subject is clear. The elimination of domestic oil and gas supplies means you will have to give up your personal automobile, frozen foods, central air and heat, and your travel plans- unless you are wealthy and this is true the world over. That is because we have no reliable alterative energy supply or distribution system that can replace oil and gas in the next fifty years.
How many failed bankruptcies of alternative energy scams, financed by taxes, subsidies and loans from our government, is it going to take before the public wakes up and recognizes this is all nothing less than green crony capitalism?
I believe this ballot measure is a rotten attempt to re-write laws, without the benefit of environmental and economic analysis I might add. I oppose this effort to bypass public debate and deliberation due to the fact that we all need a stable and reliable source of oil and gas to maintain our lifestyles, health and well-being, things these people take for granted.
What is really relevant to this discussion is the energy
Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine Page 4
As its name implies, the Ivanpah Concentrated
Solar Thermal Power Plant in the Mojave Desert is supposed to provide renewable energy from the rays of the sun.
But on March 26, 2014, Ivanpah applied to the Califor-nia Energy Commission and the California Air Re-sources Board to increase, from one to five hours, its auxiliary gas-fired boiler’s use of pre-warmed fluid for its steam generators. Ivanpah generates power for about 12 hours of solar insulation each day, of which four to five hours are peak generation. Ivanpah is pro-jected to generate electricity for 249 days each year due to cloud cover, desert windstorms, nighttime and other constraints.
So Ivanpah has morphed into a hybrid natural gas-solar power plant. But it shouldn’t be considered like a Toyota Prius car that has a nearly non-polluting hy-brid gas-electric engine. It is more like a 1950’s hot rod without a modern catalytic converter in the ex-haust tailpipe.
Ivanpah denied any environmental impacts because a similar-sized natural gas power plant would emit greater tons of C02 per year. Ivanpah’s application to the Energy Commission stated that “the Project’s im-pacts therefore round down to 0.0” (Section 3.2).
The application asserted that Ivanpah met all applica-ble state and federal ambient air quality standards. But so did many of the coal-fired power plants in Ari-zona and Utah that Ivanpah was designed to replace that still serve the Los Angeles area with electricity, albeit with greater C02 emissions.
The application further said emissions of particulates (soot) exceeded regulatory standards, but the back-ground concentrations already exceeded the stan-dards anyway. The application said, “However, PM10 (particulate) impacts from Ivanpah operations are very small, and will not contribute significantly to the ex-ceedance of an AAQS (Ambient Air Quality Stan-dards).”
Worse air quality
Yet according to an April 26, 2010 article in the Las Vegas Sun, “New Wave of Solar Plants Could Worsen Air Quality,” there were 60 new solar plants planned to build out in the Ivanpah area, many of which also
would be solar-thermal power plants.
The relatively small impacts from Ivanpah alone might not exceed air quality standards. But the cumulative impacts from massing solar thermal power plants all in one area of Southwestern Nevada and Southeast-ern California likely will exceed air-quality standards. Ivanpah could have been sued by environmental groups on the grounds of cumulative impacts and possibly stopped.
But as noted in the first article in this series, on Octo-ber 4, 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 226, amending the California Environmental Quality Act so that “cumulative” impacts from a number of related public projects do not disqualify a project from cate-gorical exemptions under certain circumstances.
Like much of urban California, Las Vegas is located in an arid basin surrounded by mountains. (For smog to become a visible problem, there needs to be a topog-raphical smog trap such as an air basin.)
The emerging problem of massing solar thermal-power plants originates with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s policy of designating specified areas for solar energy development that do not create visual impacts on highway visual corridors or on the natural
(Continued on page 16)
Ivanpah morphs into gas-solar hybrid
By Wayne Lusvardi
The Senator’s Shrimp Boy And The Union’s Wolf Pact
By Andy Caldwell
interest in hosting a mandatory hearing that could serve to bring even more senators down in the process. Further, he writes, most politicians can’t explain the difference between a bribe and a political contribution- it is a subject politicians don’t want to discuss openly or in detail!
Any examination of obscenely huge contributions from special interest groups preceding or following special favors, read that votes, is blatantly obvious in most cases. I have been seeking to draw attention here locally to a similar phenomenon. I reference the outlandish sums of union money, including one public union that contributed $60,000, donated to the reelection campaign of 2nd District Supervisor Janet Wolf.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Page 5 Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine
Back in 2006, a businessman and tong leader in
San Francisco was gunned down. Thus began an FBI investigation that resulted in indictments last week of 26 people on racketeering, gun running, narcotics and money laundering. Caught up in the sting was a prominent San Francisco State Senator and candidate for CA Secretary of State, Leland Yee, and his alleged primary partner in crime, Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow.
A Hollywood script would already be in the making were it not for the fact that tinsel town has no interest in producing a movie that tarnishes the image of democrats and the slew of activists who peddle influence within the party. For instance, one particular irony of this case has to do with the fact that Senator Yee was one of the most formidable proponents of gun control in the state, yet, part of this indictment has the senator in the middle of a transaction to facilitate the importation of military grade weapons from Muslim rebels in the Philippines! Yee, the anti-gun crusader, apparently had no problem placing these weapons in the hands of people who literally intended to kidnap, kill and extort for ransom. He allegedly promised the FBI undercover agents that he would even be more useful if he won the election for Secretary of State. Yee stood to make millions from the illegal arms trade.
Yee is accused of selling his vote, commonly referred to as pay to play, and herein lies one of the major lessons to be learned from all this. Yee is the third democratic Senator to be indicted this year. Nobody is paying republicans to play in Sacramento because they have no power. The payments are going to out of control democrats because with one party rule, they have all the power.
Some in the media are now scouring the voting record of Yee and the huge donations that flowed into his campaign coffers immediately following dozens of votes over the years that can scarcely be explained apart from the phenomenon of pay to play.
Willy Brown, the former all-powerful speaker of the assembly and Mayor of San Francisco, said it best. The reason that the State Senate refused to expel Lee and two other state senators, choosing to suspend them instead, is because the party has no
Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine Page 6
Right here, right now, I am issuing a challenge to
the Santa Barbara Water Guardians, aka 350.org, to a debate regarding their proposed initiative to ban oil and gas operations in our county. A debate is neces-sary because most voters do not know enough about the oil industry to recognize the initiative for what it really is: an attempt to change our laws based upon a manufactured crisis! A debate will afford the public the opportunity to form an opinion based upon a bal-anced presentation of the facts.
Specifically, I am challenging Ms. Katie Davis and Ms. Janet Blevins, the two leaders of this initiative, to de-bate two opponents of the measure in public. These two ladies are constantly writing opeds and letters to the editor, and organizing rallies in the community against oil. They spout off expecting us to believe they are experts on the subject of oil and climate change. Let’s see how knowledgeable they really are.
Citizens proposing to rewrite our laws is a serious matter. Voters are effectively being asked to bypass the normal public process of enacting laws which would otherwise include informative hearings and analysis required by the California Environmental Quality Act, debate at the Planning Commission, and deliberation before the Board of Supervisors. The abil-ity to deceive the public is at play here, made possibly by a cottage industry of activists and marketers who make their living blurring the lines between facts and fiction. Before the citizens vote to let these activists write laws affecting our energy supplies, tax base, mineral rights and economic well-being, we must be afforded the opportunity to hear both sides of the is-sue.
I believe a debate will serve to expose the truth on many levels, including proving once and for all that Ms. Davis and Blevin’s knowledge base is nothing more than hyperbolic talking points, more than likely written for them by someone else. A debate will serve to demonstrate they completely lack any objective knowledge about the oil and gas industry and the en-vironmental threats they claim to be upon us. The bottom line? It is easy to spout off in isolation; it is another thing to prove themselves capable of backing up their rhetoric with fact in an open forum.
For instance, the anti-oil measure claims it will help prevent global warming, water contamination and wa-ter shortages associated with oil and gas opera-tions. But, I can tell you right now, these campaign talking points are based on distortions. These ladies will not be able to answer simple basic questions, in-cluding, why ban fracking in our county when fracking isn’t employed by the industry in our region? Neither will they be able to give a real life example of a local oil company deleteriously impacting water supplies or water quality by using steam. Finally, how will they respond to the fact that the use of natural gas has actually helped us to reduce carbon emissions?
The only thing that will save our community from be-ing taken in by charlatans such as Ms. Davis and Blevins hawking their solution to the crisis they them-selves manufactured, is if members of the general public have an opportunity to hear constructive criti-cism and objective rebuttal pertaining to the half-truths being disseminated. In essence, a debate would sub-ject the two of them to a form of cross examination with the audience being the members of the jury so to speak.
Pathetic as it is, I don’t expect these women to accept the debate challenge because they know their initia-tive and their knowledge of the subject matter at hand cannot withstand scrutiny.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Why Debate When You Can Equivocate, Prevaricate And Obfuscate?
By Andy Caldwell
The One Name In Crop
Production Inputs 1335 W. Main St. Santa Maria, CA. 93454
(805) 922-5848
Time To Pull Up The Welcome Mat For The Homeless
By Andy Caldwell
most part, we have nothing to show for it. That is because throwing money at the problem is not going to solve the problem, unless and until we begin to hold these people accountable for the choices they themselves make. There is only so much society can do to help people who are allowed to refuse treatment, the majority of which are drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill and societal drop outs.
The question I want to see the County and the City discuss openly is why must we be forced to tolerate the disruptive presence of those in our community who refuse help? First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Page 7 Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine
Amazingly, a lot of people in Santa Barbara are
looking to the city to solve the problem of the homeless people camping out on State Street and Milpas. It is true the city could and should do more to police the area, cutting down on aggressive panhandlers, crime, loitering and vagrancy. But, the fact of the matter is, if the city were to finally step up to the plate and do more to enforce the law in an attempt to restore order, whether or not the efforts would prove successful in the long run would be up to the county not the city. That is because the county runs the jail as well as our alcohol, drug and mental health services department. Therefore, city residents should hold County Supervisors equally responsible to the city council to address this intolerable situation.
Frankly, there are no easy solutions to the problem of homelessness for a variety of reasons. The foremost being current laws protecting the rights of the homeless which in many cases run contrary to their own long-term best interests. Specifically, in order to prevent abuse and to preserve individual freedom and liberty, treatment cannot be forced upon an individual, no matter how desperate their situation without their consent. To have to get the consent of a mentally ill or drug-crazed person to agree to treatment is no easy task and this is the core problem in solving this dilemma. The only exception to this is when the person is clearly presenting a danger to themselves or others or if they get incarcerated for having committed a crime, and even then our options are limited.
What doesn’t help the situation is blaming the sheriff for not providing mental health services for those who have been arrested. The blame does not belong to the sheriff, it belongs to the Board of Supervisors. They are in control of the county budget. They alone determine the resources available to each and every department in the county. And quite frankly, the sheriff runs the jail not the alcohol, drug and mental health services dept. of the county.
The truth is, we spend upwards of $100 million per year on our local homeless between the various government and non-profit agencies who feed, clothe, shelter, counsel, treat, and yes, incarcerate these individuals. We are spending a fortune and for the
805-937-6151
Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine Page 8
One of the most ridiculous programs we have in
America is the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Now, don’t get me wrong, I value saving endangered spe-cies. However, what we have now is a political agenda that has mangled the otherwise good inten-tions of preserving animals on the verge of extinction into an unrecognizable and ridiculous conglomeration of laws, regulations and controls that are actually counter-productive to true preservation goals.
Take, for instance, the recent headline in the News Press about steelhead trout suffering mortality be-cause the United States Bureau of Reclamation can’t figure out how to pump a steady supply of water from Lake Cachuma. This is the same agency that re-quired us to create this failed program in the first place! We pump water to artificially sustain fish in the Santa Ynez River until such time as a flood occurs to carry them to the ocean and back. If somebody in the private sector, through a similar act of dereliction and incompetence, had caused the death of these fish, they would have been charged with a felony. Instead, we are just expected to keep pumping the water down this stream of failed utopian dreams, no questions asked. I believe we should be asking questions in light of the fact that we have other priority uses for this water.
The first question is, why are we trying to create habi-tat for a cold water fish in sunny Southern Califor-nia? Moreover, why are we trying to create habitat on a river that has been damned up for more than 50 years? An even bigger question? Why do we con-sider trout endangered in the first place when they are available for consumption at restaurants and grocery stores throughout our nation? And, how is it that you can go fishing for trout in several states, including right here in California, with no threat of penalty?
None of this makes sense due to the fact that the pur-pose of the ESA has been perverted over the years. The original intention of the ESA was to iden-tify species on the brink of extinction, afford them pro-tection and set them on a path to recovery and self-sustenance. These were laudable goals. However, today, we have mad scientists and activists using the ESA to try to create habitat outside of the natural
range of the species. The real goal is the protection of habitat, not the species. They are simply exploiting species that are otherwise present in abundance in other locales.
Another great local example of this is the Santa Bar-bara County Tiger Salamander. Salamanders don’t thrive here because we don’t have enough standing water throughout the year. Yet, salamanders are so prolific in areas with abundant water resources, that they are sold as fishing bait! So, you can buy sala-manders by the bucket in some states for bait, but here we are telling our farmers, ranchers and the oil industry that they have to idle their land to preserve this subspecies as if it is on the verge of extinction? First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
How Can An Endangered Species Be On The Menu?
By Andy Caldwell
Independent Optometrists
inside Costco
Santa Maria 805-925-1092
San Luis Obispo
805-544-0450
MON-SAT 10AM-6PM
Say Yes to A Boost In The Economy
By Joe Armendariz
aging building, restored it back to its original glory, completely refurbished the restaurant and rebranded both as Hotel Corque and Root 246. Both the hotel and the restaurant have been featured in national travel and lifestyle publications.
It happened in 2010 when the tribe purchased 1,390 acres of ranch land commonly known as “Camp 4.” Tales of life ending as we knew it were being spread throughout the community by some local politicians and tribal opponents who couldn’t seem to grasp the concept that the tribe simply wanted to build homes for tribal members and their families.
And now it’s happening again with the tribe’s preliminary plans to add hotel rooms, improve its Food & Beverage offerings, build a parking garage and expand its gaming floor.
All the while, the tribe has created jobs, contributed significantly to the local economy and donated generously to the community. But none of that seems to matter to Supervisor Farr and the small group of tribal opponents who think they speak for the community. The only thing they want to do is criticize the tribe.
The bottom line: You may disagree about the merits of this project or any other tribal project, but it doesn’t give you license to continually insult the tribe or suggest that the tribe is untrustworthy. Should this latest tribal project happen, it would bring much-needed construction jobs to the community, a rise in tourism and a boost to the economy. Who can argue with that? Joe Armendariz is Executive Director of the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association
Page 9 Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine
It’s no secret that the relationship between the
Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians has been less than productive for the past decade.
The friction is chronicled in local media every time the tribe makes a move. But the latest situation has, in my opinion, taken the meaning of disrespect to a whole new level.
In an effort to be transparent, Tribal Chairman Vincent Armenta sent a letter to Board Chairman Steve Lavagnino last month providing the Board with advance notice on a reservation improvement project the tribe is considering.
Rather than ask for a meeting with the tribe or seek more information, Supervisor Doreen Farr wasted no time criticizing the tribe publicly. She tried to create doubt surrounding the tribe’s preliminary plans and suggested that something close to sinister was brewing. In turn, her comments started an entirely new onslaught of criticisms against the tribe from opponents who never seem to need a reason to oppose the tribe.
It’s a situation of mob mentality all over again. The scenario has become predictable: The tribe makes an announcement and a small group of tribal opponents overreact and try to create drama when none exists.
It happened in 2003 when the tribe announced a casino consolidation building plan. Many people called the hodgepodge of buildings on the reservation an eyesore, but when the tribe made a decision to improve the property by building a new facility, the criticism began.
It happened in 2004 when the tribe announced plans to build a four diamond-standard hotel. The same group of opponents doubted the tribe’s plans for a top-rated hotel. Three months after the hotel was completed, it received a four diamond rating from Southern California’s AAA – a rating it has received every year since it opened.
It happened in 2007 when the tribe purchased the former Royal Scandinavian Hotel property. One tribal opponent was quoted in the local paper saying that the tribe was going to “slap an Indian symbol on the side of the building and put slot machines in the lobby.” No Indian symbols in sight and no slot machines in the lobby. Instead, the tribe took the
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Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine Page 10
Ostensibly to save money, one supervisor is op-
posed to spending an extra six thousand dollars on a fake mission tower adorning the new county jail, but she is willing to risk upwards of twenty million in ap-proving a Project Labor Agreement (PLA), apparently to give union contractors an advantage in bidding on the jail construction project! Welcome to the malfea-sance of Supervisor Janet Wolf in response to a pres-entation by Sheriff Bill Brown
Sheriff Bill Brown came before the board to discuss approval of the draft architectural and schematic de-signs of the new county jail. The project is going to cost $90 million but thanks to the effort of the sheriff in securing money from the State of California, we are only paying ten cents on the dollar towards the cost of construction. Supervisor Wolf objected to the county’s expenditure of $6,000 because she does not think the aesthetic touch is worth the money. North county supervisors and residents disagreed and so did the county’s board of architectural review. Wolf apparently wants the jail to look like all other drab prison facilities even though this project has a focus on rehabilitation and reentry into society. Who can explain why Wolf, who is known for being a stickler for design guidelines, all of a sudden became a penny pincher? Perhaps the old adage “out of sight, out of mind” explains this anomaly?
The more important issue that needs to be discussed is the proposed PLA. Construction companies and taxpayer groups oppose these agreements because they can drive up construction costs 10-30%. The resultant cost of our PLA could be tens of millions of dollars. The increased cost is due to the fact that only union contractors will bid on the project because of the specific provisions having to do with a PLA.
To be clear, construction wages are not the issue here, as prevailing wage laws apply to this pro-
In Order To Fund A More Perfect Union
By Andy Caldwell
ject. The higher costs have to do with union benefit packages for workers. Under a project labor agree-ment, if a non-union contractor gets the bid, the con-tractor is required to pay for union benefits, as if their employees were members of the union, which they are not! And, their employees will never actually reap the benefit!
Supervisor Carbajal, who has also been pushing hard for a PLA, asserted that a modified agreement could be crafted that relieved non-union contractors from the requirement that contributions be made to these union benefit funds. That would be worth discuss-ing! However, when pressed, the Supervisor would not, or could not, give an example of any such type of agreement in existence!
One speaker came up with a great idea. Send out two bids! One with a PLA and the second with-out. That way, the board members pushing this agreement would be forced to explain to the taxpay-ers the costs and benefits of the PLA.
Why is this so important? The construction cost of the project is fixed by the state grant monies. Higher con-struction costs means we will end up getting less jail for our money! Either that, or the county will have to borrow money to pay for the extra costs associated with the PLA.
I stand with all contractors, both union and non-union, in the hope that as many local contractors and work-ers get hired to build this project. However, since 85% of the local contractors are non-union, this means that the PLA, depending on the details, could result in fewer local workers getting the chance to work on the project. That is because there may not be enough union workers in our immediate area to complete the project on time and on budget. First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Questions Our Supervisors Can’t Answer
By Andy Caldwell
candidates and ballot measures?
Instead of spending millions of dollars preparing for sea level rise fifty years from now, why doesn’t the board of supervisors get into a crisis mode with respect to the drought upon us today? Other than declaring an emergency, the Board hasn’t done anything! Why have they not, at a minimum, petitioned the federal government to cease water deliveries to the relatively few fish in Hilton Creek in order to have that water available for the South County? Why not build a county desal plant instead of a waste to energy plant? And, why are there no plans to build some new reservoirs?
Our County Supervisors lack vision. Desperate times call for leaders who inspire change and innovation. Enough with the status quo.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Page 11 Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine
I research the county budget every year because I
believe the temptation of the board of supervisors is to just rubber stamp the business-as-usual status quo approach as they take but a casual glance at over 800 million dollars in expenditures. I always ask the question, what are we accomplishing, if anything, and should we be doing something else with our time, energy and money?
Along these lines, here is an account of a few of the concerns I raised during last week’s preliminary budget hearings:
Did you know the county is still funding what is called the local children’s health insurance program at $1 million per year? This despite the onset of Obamacare, the continued operation of free county health clinics, and the laws which require private sector providers and hospitals to provide care and treatment without regard to payment. This $1 million expenditure is therefore nothing short of redundancy.
The county, a few years back, created a program called Empower SBC. The goal is to facilitate energy retrofits. After spending an inordinate amount of time and money rolling out the project, only 300 homes thus far to date have utilized the program with the claim that they saved 30% on their energy bills. We live in a moderate climate! Just what have we accomplished in terms of ecological and monetary value in achieving a 30% energy reduction for 300 homes?
The county intends to spend a fortune building a waste-to-energy conversion facility at the Tajiguas Landfill. Why? We already exceed the state mandate in diverting waste from the county dump with one of the most successful programs anywhere. We divert over 60% of our trash and recyclables. So, what is the value in building a multi-million dollar facility that will require increases to our trash rates in order to achieve a 85% diversion rate?
The county elections office is having trouble recruiting polling place workers. In view of the fact that a growing number of people, over 50%, are voting by mail-in ballot, why don’t we eliminate polling places in their entirety and go with vote-by-mail exclusively? Another issue I raised, is why hasn’t the department put campaign contribution reports on line so that all voters can see who is donating to
May Entertainment Thursday, May 1
Thunder From Down Under
Thursday, May 8
Mariachi Vargas
Thursday, May 22
Ziggy Marley
Thursday, May 29
Bruce In The USA
(Tribute)
Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine Page 12
A recent letter by Victoria Frost challenged my
assessment of the education establishment in Amer-ica today as a wasteland of progressive ideol-ogy. Frost took particular offense of my criticism of the scandal at UCSB involving Dr. Mirielle Miller-Young and her class on pornography. She thinks I should take the class, or at least read the curriculum, before I judge the subject matter unworthy of taxpayer support. She also chastises me for “moralizing”.
Allow me to boil down my specific criticism of what passes as education today in one sentence. What is wrong with our education establishment in America is that the focus is on teaching our children what to think instead of how to think.
For example, PETA, the People for the Ethical Treat-ment of Animals, is an organization that believes that pet ownership, animal confinement, and a host of other uses of animals in our society is unethical. Re-cently, PETA was able to get one of their missives incorporated into a lesson plan thanks to the Common Core curriculum guidelines. The lesson for fourth graders focused on the abuse, neglect and torture of animals in classrooms detailing unconscionable acts of cruelty against animals. It directed the students to state their opposition to pets in the classroom in re-sponse to the lesson plan.
This material from PETA did not help these kids to comprehensively think about the subject matter. It was propaganda aimed at training and recruiting a new generation of activists to their cause and ideol-ogy. And, more to the point, the lesson was an exam-ple of moralizing! Why is it okay for PETA to, in es-sence, lead this discussion on ethics in a vacuum?
Is it completely lost on Ms. Frost that the one of the original purposes of education was the inculcation of values? Values matter in all aspects of society, in-cluding family, business, and community. Without values, we have moral and ethical chaos, which gives rise to abuse in all its forms, all of which is leading to the deconstruction of our society and the devaluation of life in general for both animals and humans.
To instill critical thinking skills in our children, the
Teaching Our Children How To Think Instead Of What To Think
By Andy Caldwell
teacher in this class should have balanced this piece from PETA by including something written from an opposing viewpoint on the same subject. At a mini-mum, why not use this opportunity to teach children to be kind to animals instead of assuming the worst about all kids and banning pets altogether? More-over, this lesson did not indicate whether any of the perpetrators of this cruelty were brought to justice. If they were punished, then the system to protect the weak from the powerful works and that matters.
Finally, why not use these horror stories to make a moral judgement and denounce the evil tendency of some people to be cruel to both animals and people simply because it is in their power to do so? Take child abuse as an example. Is the takeaway lesson that nobody should have children because some par-ents abuse theirs? First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Day Of The Dictator?
By John Wohlstetter
global order because doing so is difficult or discomfiting will invite challenges from nimble adversaries willing to take geopolitical gambles.
At some point the momentum will shift back. That, too, is inevitable. The dictators will err; their corruption will become excessive; their cynicism will become transparent to their own rank-and-file. A new democratic wave will begin to build.
Whether that takes five years or 50 depends on what the West does now. Five years is a blip. Fifty is the tragedy of a lifetime.
Except, I would caution: dictators have ways of staying in power not available to democracies. Also: what if voters--let alone, what if courts--prefer identity to performance, and vote for someone because of color, gender or some other immutable characteristic--or, just as bad, because of emotional satisfaction derived from a belief that a candidate "cares about me"?
That is how one gets governments that fail for decades--think Detroit, the District of Columbia, California. The presidential contest in 2016 will see if voters choose identity over performance, as they did in 2008 & 2012, despite the president's abysmal first term.
Bottom Line. No victory is permanent, and voters can over time unlearn lessons that were thought to have been learned for all time. John Wohlstetter is a Senior Fellow at the Seattle based Discovery Institute.
Page 13 Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine
Are dictatorships becoming the preferred
model?....
Bret Stephens writes that dictators are riding higher in the polls than Western democracies (think Putin v. Obama):
Maybe it's something in the water. Or the culture. Or the religion. Or the educational system. Or the level of economic development. Or the underhanded ways in which authoritarian leaders manipulate media and suppress dissent. The West rarely runs out of explanations for why institutions of freedom—presumably fit for all people for all time—seem to fit only some people, sometimes.
But maybe there's something else at work. Maybe the West mistook the collapse of communism—just one variant of dictatorship—as a vindication of liberal democracy. Maybe the West forgot that it needed to justify its legitimacy not only in the language of higher democratic morality. It needed to show that the morality yields benefits: higher growth, lower unemployment, better living.
Poor performance undermines even successful models, and will eventually undermine dictators too:
A West that prefers debt-subsidized welfarism over economic growth will not offer much in the way of an attractive model for countries in a hurry to modernize. A West that consistently sacrifices efficiency on the altars of regulation, litigation and political consensus will lose the dynamism that makes the risks inherent in free societies seem worthwhile. A West that shrinks from maintaining
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Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine Page 14
Voters have discovered an unusually crowded
field of challengers vying to replace Congresswoman Lois Capps who, by most accounts, is running for re-election this one last time.
Two candidates will eventually emerge from the herd and face one another in November. I recently inter-viewed the four leading republican candidates in the race and, at a later date, I will interview the remaining candidates.
I would like to share my observations with you regard-ing the candidacy of Dr. Brad Allen, Chris Mitchum, Councilman Dale Francisco, and Justin Fareed. I asked their perspective on a wide variety of topics in-cluding Obamacare, immigration, energy, debt, and climate change. You can hear and download the en-tire forum at www.theandycaldwellshow.com web-page.
Dr. Brad Allen is a candidate that I would describe as a heat-seeking missile aimed to save our country’s health care system by sinking Obamacare. You need to hear what Dr. Allen has to say about Obamacare. It is truly frightening. Staving off the in-evitable destruction of Obamacare is of paramount importance before it is too late! Electing Dr. Allen to Congress would be of great value on a variety of other issues as well as he is a charismatic and dynamic leader, well respected in the field of medicine and the community at large.
Chris Mitchum is a name we are all familiar with be-cause he has run for office previously. Chris is a solid conservative, perhaps, the most conservative candi-date in the field. He is articulate, passionate and prin-cipled. He espouses the values of Ronald Reagan. Need I say more?
Dale Francisco needs no introduction to the Santa Barbara community as he is the only candidate in the field who has been elected to office. Currently serving on the Santa Barbara City Council, Dale has earned a well respected reputation as a moderate who can work with anybody to get things done. He is articu-late, thoughtful and has proven he can win a cam-paign in a district controlled by democrats and that is important for obvious reasons.
Justin Fareed is one of the most impressive young men I have ever had the privilege to meet. Don’t let
his youth fool you. He is mature beyond his years and is extremely earnest in his pursuit of this congres-sional seat. He represents the future of the party. As voters get to meet him and hear him, they will come away believing there is hope for our country’s future.
In my opinion, any of these candidates can do a better job than Lois Capps as Ms. Capps is an ineffective representative at best. She cannot lay claim to any legislative accomplishments despite her long record of service. Her voting record is so extreme and partisan, she is one of the only members in congress to the left of Nancy Pelosi! Capps remains in office simply due to the power of incumbency and that is one sad com-mentary in a country where the approval rating of Congress is 17%!
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Who Will Face Congresswoman Capps In November?
By Andy Caldwell
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Santa Maria CA 93454
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She Works Hard For Her Family
By Andy Caldwell
Page 15 Volume 2 Issue 5 COLAB Magazine
During county budget hearings, I offer analytical
remarks about each department’s performance meas-ures, accomplishments, goals and objectives. The worst performance measure ever, in terms of mission relevance, was presented in this year’s budget by the public defender. It had to do with the department sav-ing 20,000 gallons of water by virtue of a recycling program. A better measure would have indicated the degree this department is under water.
One of the most valuable and fundamental tenets of our jurisprudence system is that we are all guaranteed the right to be represented by an attorney in a court of law. In the event a person can’t afford an attorney, our system provides representation free of charge. Here locally, the Public Defender’s office of the County of Santa Barbara provides these ser-vices. The Public Defender serves as the counter part to the District Attorney’s office. The DA, of course, presses charges and prosecutes criminal cases on behalf of the citizenry.
Over the years, there has been an interesting dance, so to speak, between the Public Defender’s Office and the District Attorney as they vie for funding from the Board of Supervisors. The more money the Pub-lic Defender receives means more time can be spent defending their clients in court. The more money the DA gets means that more criminals will be prose-cuted. Typically, when one of these departments asks for more money and staff, so does the other, so that some semblance of balance is achieved in the halls of justice.
Recently, however, someone has asked to step in be-tween these two partners and that is the private sec-tor. A very strong argument can be made that the salaries, benefits and pensions paid to the public de-fender’s attorneys, in the greater context of over-whelming government debt, has robbed their clients of adequate representation. This pertains to the over-whelming number of cases assigned per attor-ney. San Luis Obispo County contracts with the pri-vate sector to represent the accused. The re-sult? Representation at a lower cost to the taxpayers, which can translate into better representation ren-dered per dollar spent.
When I suggested our county should follow suit, Su-pervisor Janet Wolf, true to form, called the idea ab-horrent and indicated that the employees in the de-
partment are part of the county family and she doesn’t even want to consider the idea. Supervisor Wolf, you should know, receives upwards of $100,000 per cam-paign cycle from county employee unions to protect their jobs. Certainly, she works hard for the money.
If the people who work for the county are part of Su-pervisor Wolf’s “family”, what does that say about us ordinary citizens? Who are we? What rights and pre-rogatives do we have? What expectation do we have of receiving a reasonable amount of services for our family? In regard to social justice concerns in our community, should the poor be deprived of adequate representation in deference to Supervisor Wolf’s con-cern for “her family members”? Our concern should be on delivering services not saving employment op-portunities for county workers! A lesson obviously lost on Supervisor Wolf.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
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Calls for the Tribe to go through the normal permitting process is a ruse, because there is no routine permitting process to secure a change to the zoning on Camp 4 and everybody knows it. The process is a dead end. I would like to call the bluff! Nothing is stopping the county from self-initiating a zone change on the Camp 4 property and seeing it through to completion, including the inevi-table legal challenges. Upon completion, the county could hand the Tribe the permits they need for the housing they plan to build for their families. First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
We Need More Than Huff And Bluff From Our Leaders Cont.
view sheds of national or state parks.
Yet massing thermal-solar power plants runs counter to Paracelsus’ first principle of toxicology: concentrating anything will make it toxic.
Ivanpah solar now ‘dirty power’
With a number of other large solar projects queuing up behind Ivanpah to locate nearby, the ultimate result could be just exporting Los Angeles’ air pollution to the desert 35 miles from Las Vegas, the Lake Mead Recreation Area and the Mojave Desert National Reserve.
Las Vegas so far has not been initially opposed the Ivanpah plant near the Nevada borderline with California be-cause of the jobs solar projects would create for the area. Nevada’s unemployment rate in March was the second worst in the country, at 8.5 percent; California’s was fourth worst, at 8.1 percent. So the jobs will be appreciated in both states.
Ivanpah received a $660 million federal tax refund under the 30 percent Investment Tax Credit in Lieu of Produc-tion Tax Credits as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (President Obama’s 2009 federal Stimulus Program).
It has also been reported that Google profited from tax credits for its $750 million renewable energy investment plan.
California’s environmental policies are proving to be more successful reducing relative regional air pollution, not overall pollution — with the dirty air just shifted to the Las Vegas-Lake Mead areas. Wayne Lusvardi is a columnist with Cal Watchdog.
Ivanpah morphs into gas-solar hybrid Cont.
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