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Santa Barbara County
Volume 2
Issue 4
The Phony Frack Attack
2
Gov. Brown, Legislature push ground-
4
A Mighty Big Effort for Such Little Fish
6
Our Farmers Need Your Help
9
Let’s Be Fair In This Fight Over Water
11
The Pen, The Phone and The Pigs
13
Teachers' Union Gets Skunked
14
No Water, No Food, No Problem?
15
Gone To Texas 17
Inside the April
Issue:
April
2014
COLAB
PO Box 7523
Santa Maria, CA 93456
Phone:
805-929-3148
E-mail:
The Phony Frack Attack
By Andy Caldwell
Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine Page 2
Voters, please decline to sign a petition to qualify
a Santa Barbara County ballot initiative to ban oil pro-duction in the North County. Why? Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: “Nothing in the world is more dan-gerous that sincere ignorance and conscientious stu-pidity”.
The initiative is portrayed as an anti-fracking initiative, but fracking isn’t being used in our county! That is because this particular production technique doesn’t work here! So, why bother to ban a non-event?
The activists behind this measure have something else up their sleeve, no less than shutting down local oil and gas operations. They want to eliminate the use of steam in oil production, and restrict the ability to descale production operations which is something akin to you using a chemical agent to get rid of depos-its in your bathtub!
The oil companies use steam to simply heat oil to make it flow better. The activists will try to deceive the voters into believing the oil industry is using pre-cious fresh water to make steam. If that were true, I would be fighting them myself! Rarely do oil compa-nies use fresh water to make steam. They use water from sewer treatment plants or water from the same production zone they get the oil from- water that is not potable.
Oil production actually uses much less water than California golf courses and, in some cases, oil opera-tions actually end up producing potable water! This is simply another point of misdirection in this proposed initiative. They are trying to pit urbanites and agricul-turalists against the oil companies in a fight over wa-ter.
The activists behind the measure are also trying to delude the voters into believing that a sudden oil boom is going to destroy our environment and further our dependence upon fossil fuels accentuating their fears of global warming. The truth is oil production in California is half of what it was twenty years ago and greenhouse gas emissions are also declining.
California already leads the nation in reducing its reli-ance upon fossil fuels, and the US leads the world. Thanks to our shift from coal to natural gas, greenhouse gas emissions in the United States have dropped 509 million metric tons while China, India and
Russia have increased their emissions by 4,000 mil-lion metric tons! But, we can only go so far in this effort. That is because renewable sources of power, such as wind and solar, will never be anything more than a supplemental energy supply because these sources are completely dependent upon traditional sources of energy to produce a stable and predictable base load. Energy from oil, gas, coal, nuclear and hydro-electric sources must be available when the sun isn’t shining and the wind is not blowing- which is most all of the time!
Practically speaking, we must depend on fossil fuels well into the future which leaves us with the choice between local resources or imports. There is no question the impacts to nature, our economy and na-tional security are less if we use local sources, which is why this ballot initiative should be rejected.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Supervisor Wolf’s Two True Constituents
By Andy Caldwell
out some services to save over a million dollars per year. Dr. Takashi Wada brought the fairly routine item to the board and ran into a buzz saw of opposition, primarily from Supervisor Wolf. Why would the county not want to save money? Especially, when the public health department is facing severe cuts?
What explains this bizarre vote has to do with some-thing I predicted would happen several weeks back and that is SEIU just dumped $40,000 into Wolf’s re-election campaign. You can bet that even more union money is on its way. On average, employee unions dump more money into political campaigns in CA than most private sector special interest groups com-bined. The unions own local and state government and as a result we are teetering on the verge of bank-ruptcy.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Page 3 Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine
I have watched Supervisor Janet Wolf on the
dais every week since she was elected. Until last week, I have never seen her blow off the Environ-mental Defense Center (EDC). In fact, on one occa-sion, Wolf was caught red-handed reading from a talk-ing points memo provided by the EDC on an issue before the board.
Last week, however, Supervisor Wolf apparently sur-prised everyone by reversing course and opposing the EDC’s Goleta Beach managed retreat plan. I use the word “apparently” for a reason. If you think Goleta Beach has been saved by Supervisor Wolf’s political death-bed conversion, you don’t understand how things work around here! After several years of advo-cating for managed retreat at Goleta Beach, Supervi-sor Wolf, in the midst of a bid for reelection against challenger Roger Aceves, all of a sudden did an about face? I don’t believe it and I will tell you why.
An age-old strategy politicians employ when they want something done that is not politically palpable to voters is to have someone else do the dirty work for them. In this case with Goleta Beach, you can bet that Supervisor Wolf and the EDC simply handed the ball over to the Coastal Commission to buy time and leverage in their pursuit of managed retreat. Wolf has a very amicable and deferential relationship with the coastal commission and its staff.
The scheme? In essence, Wolf temporarily assures the voters she is not going to let the beach wash into the ocean, while behind the scenes, she and the EDC will lobby the Coastal Commission and its staff to deny the county’s plan to leave the boulders in place that are protecting the shoreline. By the time the commission kicks the issue back to the board of su-pervisors, Wolf hopes to have dodged this reelection challenge and be scot free to support managed re-treat once again as she pretends her hands are tied by the Coastal Commission.
The other special interest group in the county that has equal sway over Wolf are the various county employ-ees’ unions who continually bankroll her campaigns in exchange for their own special favors, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
The second recent head-scratching vote had to do with the public health department’s attempt to contract
Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine Page 4
Due to the current compound drought and water
storage shortage, California legislators are consider-ing enacting groundwater regulation over the entire Central Valley aquifer. Some recent developments:
°State Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, chairperson of the Water Committee of the California Senate, is considering legislation to do so. Pavley has been floating bills to regulate groundwater since 2009.
°Water expert Peter Gleick has been saying for some time that there is a looming groundwater catastrophe in California.
°In his 2014 State of the State Address, Gov. Jerry Brown called for “serious groundwater management” to crack down on overdrafting.
°The California Legislative Analyst Office on March 11 released a new study, “Improving Management of the State’s Groundwater Resources.” It reported the gov-ernor’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2014-15, which begins on July 1, includes $1.9 million for 10 positions to establish a new groundwater policing and regula-tory bureaucracy that would begin superseding long-standing state groundwater and property rights laws.
However, as of 2000, the aquifer had 390 years of remaining water storage left and is depleting at a rate of only 0.25 percent per year, according to a 2012 study conducted under the sponsorship of the Na-tional Academy of Sciences. Additionally, the study concluded that nearly the entire threat of depletion is isolated in the Tulare Basin.
The study was headed by researcher Bridgett R.
Scanlon, of the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas, Austin. The title of the study: “Groundwater Depletion and Sustainability of Irrigation in the U.S. High Plains and Central Valley.”
According to the California Department of Water Re-sources Groundwater Bulletin No. 118 in 2003, Cali-fornia depends on groundwater to meet about 30 per-cent of its needs in average years, about 60 percent in wet years.
Adjudicated groundwater
Currently, the California government effectively does not regulate groundwater, leaving regulation to a long-standing adjudication process in state courts. Such adjudicated groundwater basins are examples of self-regulated groundwater management, with the courts acting only as referees. It is unnecessary to regulate or adjudicate many agricultural water basins because farmers have agreed not to draw down underground water levels below a certain pre-agreed depth to avoid depletion that would ruin their farms.
If groundwater basins are not drawn down below their annual safe yield, they will recharge. If they are low-ered below the safe yield, they will deplete. According to Scanlon’s study, California’s Central Valley aquifer is depleting, but at a very slow rate. However, the un-intended consequences of diversions of water for fish under pressure from environmental lobbies are result-ing in a secondary groundwater depletion crisis.
Scanlon’s study and the State Department of Water Resources estimate the annual overdraft is about 1 million acre-feet of water per year. However, the pri-mary source of recharge of water basins (60 percent) is agricultural irrigation.
But in recent years, the greater percentages of sys-tem water being flushed through rivers to the ocean for fish runs means the newest source of groundwater depletion is environmental diversions of water. In 2012 alone, 800,000 acre-feet of Central Valley water was flushed to the sea for fish runs. In 2013, up-stream from the Central Valley, 453,000 acre-feet of water was diverted from Trinity Lake for fish flows.
If Brown’s new state regulatory program is instituted, ironically farmers would end up being policed for over-drafting, when actually they are the primary source of recharging basins.
(Continued on page 18)
Gov. Brown, Legislature push groundwater regulation
By Wayne Lusvardi - Part 1 of a two-part series
The County’s Secret Desal Plant
By Andy Caldwell
rolls in view of the negative impact this will have on our on-going revenue streams. Yet, year after year, the Board of Supervisors entertains plans to do just that.
Finally, consider the fact that 95% of our county is undeveloped! And, about half of the property in the county generates virtually no taxes at all and is off limits to development as it is owned by the federal government in the form of the Los Padres National Forest and Vandenberg Air Force Base. Should we really continue to suffer multi-million dollar property tax losses by taking even more land off the tax rolls when we could instead be solving long term problems affecting public safety and our water supply?
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Page 5 Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine
The latest proposal to take land off the tax rolls
involves the industrial property located at Gaviota. This land, used by the oil industry for decades, is also one of only two local coastal sites dedicated, via voter approval, to processing off shore oil and gas. In spite of the voters clear intentions, Supervisors Wolf, Carbajal and Farr have expressed interest in working with the Land Trust to purchase this land. This would eliminate future intensive use of the property and take it off the tax rolls. As an alternative, what could a community of visionaries do with this property?
At a minimum, a better use of this property would include relocating the rest stops at Gaviota to the sight as it is served by the only interchange on the coast. It was stupid and dangerous to locate the two rest stops in their current location at the dead man’s curve of the Gaviota pass. We should also move the dangerous access to Gaviota State Beach and Hollister Ranch to the location of the interchange as well while we are at it.
The grand idea? Why not build a massive desalinization plant on this site? Did you know there already is a desal plant on site that serves the current facility and the fire station? That means there is existing and already permitted infrastructure to bring water on land! We also have the infrastructure and resources to power the plant with ample supplies of natural gas just sitting off shore waiting to be tapped.
The lack of vision and initiative on the part of leaders in government to solve longstanding problems is a phenomenon that continually plagues society. On the other hand, we clearly have no shortage of politicians and bureaucrats spending our money while accomplishing nothing in the long run.
To add insult to injury, the proposal to take this land off the tax rolls affects the discretionary dollars available to pay for vital county-wide services which is limited by the amount of local property tax revenue available. We are 90% dependent on property taxes to pay for the costs of operating the jail, the district attorney’s office and providing necessary funds for other services including public and mental health. You would think that the absolute last thing the board would entertain is taking land off the tax
Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine Page 6
Recently, I wrote about the efforts to restore trout
runs on the Santa Ynez River. In case you missed the editorial, the fact is steelhead trout runs were not altogether successful or entirely natural before Bradbury Dam was built. Now that the majority of the water in the watershed is diverted to the South County, the odds of restoring fish runs is at best an exercise in futility. The official plan is to artificially keep the fish alive just below the dam and pray for rain. Now, for the details!
The two most important questions that remain largely unanswered with respect to this project? How many fish are being supported by the water that could other-wise serve to alleviate Montecito and the rest of the South County of their dire water shortage? And, how many fish are actually making it to the ocean and back as a result of this program? Another pertinent question is how much is this all costing ratepayers?
In discussing this with the Cachuma Operations and Maintenance Board, the agency in charge of the pro-gram, I had a great deal of difficulty pinning down hard numbers. First of all, the number of fish in the program changes over time, depending on factors such as successful spawning. Second, since the suc-cess of the program is more dependent upon rain than anything else, well, let’s just say the program hasn’t had much to crow about during the last three drought years. In fact, the annual reports are not available for the last three years!
Here is the best data I could ferret out. Out of 1328 fish observed in Hilton Creek during the last wet year we had, which was 2010, only 84 fish were larger than six inches! The financial budget for the program is estimated to be a couple of million dollars per year, and the water budget is typically billions of gallons of water per year. In regard to the overall goal of the project, it appears that very few, perhaps only a hand-ful, of fish are successfully migrating to the ocean and back during years with above normal rainfall.
The truth of the matter? Our local water agencies are in a bind. If they were to make a big stink about the futility of this program, the likely response of the fed-eral agencies would be to demand even more water releases!
If you want this water to be delivered to you instead of being used to keep some fish temporarily alive at death’s door, it would behoove you to demand that Congresswoman Capps pursue a halt to these water releases, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Like it or not, South County residents, you are getting the amount of government and water you de-serve. As long as the community keeps electing rep-resentatives like Congresswoman Lois Capps, you are foregoing the opportunity to have an advocate in Washington DC to stop programs like this in their tracks.
Further, community support of organizations like the Environmental Defense Center isn’t helping either, as they lobbied hard and long for these water releases, whereas COLAB was there fighting against this ill-fated program.
We would all love to have enough water for humans and fish. But the fact of the matter is we live in a semi-arid part of the state and these fish need lots of cold, fresh water which means we are not in their prime habitat range. Providing enough water for the fish means we either need to cut back drastically on hu-man consumption-read that no more lawns, or create supplemental supplies. It is your call and your money.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
A Mighty Big Effort for Such Little Fish
By Andy Caldwell
The One Name In Crop
Production Inputs 1335 W. Main St. Santa Maria, CA. 93454
(805) 922-5848
Bill To Stop High-Speed Rail In Its Tracks
By Katy Grimes
HSRA argued that other sources of state funds,
including the state’s General Fund, could be used to
match the federal funds.
According to Patterson, this course of action would
enable the High Speed Rail Authority to obligate the
state to provide more than $3 billion in state resources
toward high-speed rail construction that may
otherwise be designated for purposes such as
education, health care, or public safety, without any
prior review or approval by the Legislature.
In November 2013, a Sacramento Superior Court
judge said the HSRA could not use Proposition 1A
funds that were approved by the legislature in 2012.
The judge denied a request by the HSRA to validate
the sale of $9.9 billion in Proposition 1A bonds,
determining there was no evidence that it is
“necessary or desirable” to issue the bonds now.
Prop. 1A
Prop. 1A authorized the state to issue $9.95 billion in
general obligation bonds and expend the funds for the
construction of a 520-mile high-speed rail system
between San Francisco and Los Angeles/Anaheim.
Voters were assured the only cost to the state’s
General Fund would be to pay bond principal and
interest.
Patterson’s AB 1501 would reaffirm the actual intent of the Legislature by prohibiting the High-Speed Rail Authority from spending federal funds, unless state funds are immediately available for the purpose of providing matching state funds – and not by using the General Fund.
Page 7 Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine
California’s High-Speed Rail Authority continues
to forge ahead with the project to build the $68 billion
train system, despite a court decision saying the
HSRA cannot use Proposition 1A funds that were
approved by the legislature.
To address this and many other controiversial
decisions by the HSRA, Assemblyman Jim Patterson,
R-Fresno, has introduced AB 1501 to protect
California taxpayers from a risky financial obligation
by the HSRA.
“By continuing to spend federal money, the HSRA is
leaving taxpayers holding a bag full of matching state
bond funds that a judge has said can’t be spent,”
Patterson said in an interview. “We are essentially
overdrawing our bank account by spending these
federal funds. We simply don’t have the matching
funds required by the federal government to go
forward with this project.”
Patterson said if the rail authority is “out-of-control”
and needs legislative oversight. “It’s the Legislature’s
responsibility,” he added.
If the HSRA was allowed to continued spending, it
would leave taxpayers on the hook to not only match
billions of dollars in matching federal funds, the
federal government could make California repay those
funds.
Proposition 1A, passed in 2008, required the High
Speed Rail Authority from spending any federal funds
unless matching state funds are immediately
available.
Legal battles
August 16, 2013, Superior Court Judge Michael
Kenny ruled that the High Speed Rail Authority had
not yet met the legal requirements to spend
Proposition 1A bond funds for high-speed rail
construction.
In its October 11, 2013 response, the High Speed Rail
Authority did not dispute this finding but argued that,
even if it cannot access or spend Proposition 1A bond
funds, it can proceed with construction using federal
funds.
In a show of unrestrained hubris and contempt, the
805-937-6151
Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine Page 8
County employees each cost about $120,000 to
employ per year on average. You would think when the county shed nearly 600 employees during the re-cent economic downturn, then that would have al-lowed the county to begin experiencing a windfall, but you would be wrong.
The $60 million plus dollars that were saved on the salaries and benefits of these 600 former employees was all spent on pension obligations to other employ-ees! And, we won’t be done paying the extra pension costs accruing from the 2008 stock market crash until 2030! Think about that for a moment. Even though the county pension fund has recovered over $1 billion in assets that were lost in 2008, this shortfall of stag-gering proportion remains! These additional pay-ments spread out over the next 22 years amount to $1.32 billion. This is money that could have otherwise been available to spend on public health, safety and infrastructure.
I have been to every county budget hearing in the last twenty years. What is happening right now is no sur-prise. Neither am I surprised that last week when I attended a three hour workshop on the county budget, it was business as usual. Time and time again, the impacts of national and state debt, high taxes on our state’s long term fiscal outlook, infrastructure deficits, and the regulatory climate on our tax base were not discussed at all, as if nothing matters that happens outside the halls of county government. Well, these things do matter and they matter greatly.
I have characterized the way the county does its fiscal outlook as the equivalent of looking through a key-hole. This myopic outlook is not giving the public the benefit of the bigger picture and the big picture is bleak at best. Our state and federal governments are trillions in debt. They have spent us into obliv-ion. And, if the board of supervisors were honest, they would admit they are broke too.
Each and every year, at the county budget hearings, I ask the same question, “Where is the plan”? The plan to fix our failing infrastructure? The plan to lower the cost of pension obligations that are obliterating our ability to provide adequate services including protect-ing the public from crime? The plan to increase reve-
nues by helping to grow our economy? Each year the board of supervisors look back from the dais with a blank stare on their face, for there is no plan.
The board members just keep hoping property values, which provide 90% of their discretionary funding, will start shooting through the roof again and their trou-bles will be over. Fat chance that is going to happen, because the economic condition of the county, state and nation are anything but static. In other words, what worked in the past is not going to help us in the future because the business climate is suffering from self-inflicted blows to our economy by our own gov-ernment while government salaries, pensions and benefits have grown to a level that is no longer sus-tainable.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
We Either Need a New Plan or New Supervisors!
By Andy Caldwell
Independent Optometrists
inside Costco
Santa Maria 805-925-1092
San Luis Obispo
805-544-0450
MON-SAT 10AM-6PM
Our Farmers Need Your Help
By Andy Caldwell
The source of this quote was a former Director of the County’s Planning and Development Department and one could say with confidence that this was the defacto mission statement of the department! The translation? Those of us living here right now believe we have discovered paradise and we don’t want anyone to ruin it. If that means depriving others of their property rights and opportunities to better their lives, well then, so be it.
I would be the first to say that there has been some improvement in the Planning dept. since those dark days but the reality is, there are a host of organizations in the community that are carrying on the mission quite nicely.
I once videotaped a prominent local activist attorney giving a public lecture to other activists on how to use the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to kill any project by delay and obfuscation. In essence, our local activist community has perfected the use of CEQA to inflict virtually endless paralysis by analysis, and they also use it to exact expensive mitigation measures, all in the hope of bankrupting any number of projects. They are now effectively aided by regulatory agencies who are staffed with activists on the government payroll. The Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Coastal Commission are two such public agencies serving these nefarious purposes. If you like having locally grown food and living in a rural community, you need be concerned.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Page 9 Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine
Agriculture commodity production here in
California is anything but static. At one time the predominant agriculture operations in our region included dairy farms and growing sugar beets, none of which survive to this day. Agriculture has survived only because it has been able to evolve. Unfortunately, the outlook for agriculture is worse than it has ever been. Legislation, regulations, and litigation are increasing the impact of factors which work against agriculture, including the availability of water and labor. Additionally, the imposition of rigorous land use and overwrought environmental controls are anathema to successful farming operations.
Currently, every single commodity group in our county is facing serious challenges from government and activist groups. Strawberry growers are facing the loss of several different pesticides essential to their survival. Wineries are facing the lost ability to market their wine due to restrictions on events. Cattle operations are being restricted in their ability to augment their income through other uses of their property. Flower growers are limited in their ability to build greenhouses. And, all of agriculture is struggling mightily with various mandates from the Regional Water Quality Control Board that are absolutely impossible to comply with. These mandates include requiring the farmer to guarantee the quality of storm water that leaves their fields!
Santa Barbara County is not helping this situation due to being extremely myopic when it comes to land use issues and some people love it so! Whereas, once this animus was primarily directed at developers and the oil industry, it is now focused on agriculture. This is what got me involved in the creation of the Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business, COLAB. If I were to describe COLAB, I would say we are an organization that wants facts and common sense to facilitate our ability to reliably produce food, shelter and energy.
Another way I describe COLAB is by describing a mission statement that is entirely opposite to everything we believe in. The following quote describes this antithetical purpose quite nicely, “The cost of preserving the high quality of life here in Santa Barbara County includes limiting opportunities for others. It limits economic mobility but that is a legitimate political choice”.
Health Sanitation Services
1850 W. Betteravia Road
Santa Maria, CA 93455
(805) 922-2121
Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine Page 10
In 2009, Warren Buffett said if he could have just
one piece of economic data, it would be U.S. freight traffic reports, the weekly measure of how much cargo is traversing the country by rail, with breakdowns for coal, ore, wood, food and more. These raw materials at the front end of the supply chain provide a long-term look at future economic activity. Some of that information is available in weekly public reports, but the reports contain a big blank spot: About half of all rail shipments are simply filed as “container,” with no centralized knowledge of what’s inside them. Or is there?
For years, Chinese businesses – all of which are on some level state-controlled – have been dashing around the world buying up natural resources like oil rights in Canada, fresh water sources in the Tibetan plateau, food supplies and the infrastructure needed to bring everything back home. Today China owns or controls much of the global freight shipping system and as both the Wall Street Journal and The Econo-mist reported last year, Chinese companies are now purchasing ownership stakes in deepwater ports around the world.
These moves have been a boon to port operators, for whom Chinese investment can mean huge expan-sions and upgrade. One interesting point about this move, however, is that port management and logistics is not a terribly profitable business. There is plenty of competition and large capital outlays are required to keep up with the ever-increasing size of modern con-tainer ships.
Is China Winning The Race For The World's Economic Data?
By George O’Conor
Which raises the question: What if China’s endgame isn’t the physical ports at all? What if – in addition to the benefits of securing the “new Silk Road” – this is really about tracking the flow of global shipping and using that information to support a new kind of irregu-lar economic warfare?
What’s scary is that this could be happening right now. I have built two companies that use advanced analytics to mine complex supply chain data stores to pull out critical business information. It is pattern rec-ognition on steroids and it’s the same approach that China could be following here.
This type of information is incredibly valuable in world financial markets. Six weeks after making his state-ment about freight reports, Buffett’s Berkshire Hatha-way paid $44 billion for one of the country’s largest railroads. Commodities traders hire spotters to count the number of containers on ships entering port and to see how low they are riding in the water. Helicopters fly twice a week over oil storage tanks in Oklahoma to measure how full they are. There are even companies operating satellites that try to grab all this information from space.
A company or country able to control the flow of sup-ply chain data would have access to incredibly valu-able, proprietary information three to nine months ahead of quarterly earnings reports. With this knowl-edge, enough cash on hand, and a motive, a country like that could cause all kinds of havoc in world financial markets.
(Continued on page 17)
Let’s Be Fair In This Fight Over Water
By Andy Caldwell
coordination with other districts, regardless of the price, so that millions of dollars in investments are not lost. Finally, a long range plan to create additional water storage capacity and supply must be implemented and financed.
The challenge in all of this is how to apportion the water and the costs? The temptation is to charge the owners of large properties more than is feasible while limiting their supply of water. An alternative remedy is to eliminate the water demand of large properties by allowing owners to subdivide; something the community is loath to do because it is considered growth inducing. The community simply can’t have it both ways.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Page 11 Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine
Crisis and conflict have a way of bringing out the
truth about people and relationships. Such is the case with our current drought situation being played out in Montecito, a community that is running out of water because of poor planning and poor priorities. Proper planning and priorities should mean increased storage capacity and increased supplemental supply and that would entail raising water rates. Either that, or we radically alter the status quo, which means the practice of using 90% of available water for landscaping is going to have to be severely restricted.
Every community should be prepared ahead of time to deal with drought situations instead of going into panic mode when it becomes too late to stave off crisis. What that means in practicality is that people who are living beyond their water means, something that holds true for the entire south county by the way, have to be willing to cut back their usage or pay dearly for supplemental water supplies. But, there is a caveat. Because some people in Montecito are ready and able to pay whatever it costs to keep their water flowing, the fact is supplies must be allocated based upon need, not the ability to pay. Defining need can be downright convoluted!
There are some people with large estate grounds who have poured tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, into their investment. Similarly, there are businesses, such as hotels, that require secure water supplies to serve their guests lest they be forced to close their doors. Finally, there are farmers in the region, who stand not to lose one year’s worth of crops, but several years worth. That is because they grow tree crops and if the tree dies due to lack of water, it takes years to bring a replacement tree to fruition. All of these people have much more to lose than an ordinary homeowner with a simple amount of lawn and shrubs. What should be done?
Well, first of all, the Montecito Water Board should allow as many landowners as possible, especially the farmers and large estates, to at least temporarily leave the district and join the Carpinteria District because this jurisdiction still has water. Second, an emergency ordinance should be passed which raises the water rates in the community to a level that allows the Montecito District to obtain water, preferably in
March Entertainment
Thursday, April 10
Michael Bolton
Thursday, April 17
Staying Alive
(A Tribute To The Bee Gees)
Thursday, April 24
Pesado and Hermanos Vega Jr.
Thursday, May 1
Thunder From Down Under
Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine Page 12
County District Attorney Joyce Dudley has
charged UCSB Associate Professor Mireille Miller-Young on three counts: battery, theft, and vandalism stemming from an incident which occurred on cam-pus. This Friday, sixteen year old Thrin Short, the primary victim in this incident, who was allegedly pushed, shoved, kicked and scratched by the profes-sor will have her day in court.
All of the charges levied against Dr. Miller-Young are classified as misdemeanors. It will be interesting to see if the District Attorney’s office makes the case for the imposition of maximum penalties against Dr. Miller-Young, should she be found guilty, in view of the fact that the young lady attacked is a minor. The police report indicates that Miller-Young pretty much con-fessed to her involvement in this shameless episode albeit she also defended her actions as the right thing to do and claimed that she herself was the victim of a hate crime!
One of the reasons this story is so important to our community is that it gives us an opportunity to under-stand the values and thought patterns of the people we are entrusting to teach and lead university stu-dents. UCSB enjoys a fine reputation as an institu-tion of higher learning, but in light of this scandal and the revelations that Dr. Miller-Young’s area of aca-demic focus is pornography, I am certain that more than a few people are beginning to question whether the reputation is justifiably earned.
Just when you thought this story couldn’t get any stranger, UCSB Vice-Chancellor for Student Affairs Michael Young, in a memo to the entire campus com-munity, gave us another view of life inside the aca-demic bubble. To his credit, Mr. Young extolled the virtues of free speech and for that I commend him. But, much of the rest of the memo had to do with how students should treat “outsiders” especially “evangelical types” whether they be true believers or self-proclaimed prophets or provocateurs on campus to promote ideology, promulgate beliefs, including ex-treme beliefs, or simply to create discord to further personal agendas.
Mr. Young’s reference to outsiders is very telling. The fact is, the university is a defacto closed campus of ideologically aligned insiders. I know this first hand because I have previously lectured on campus and every time I did students came up to me to indicate
The Chancellor’s Got Trouble in the Bubble
By Andy Caldwell
they had never once heard a lecture from a conserva-tive perspective.
Surveys indicate that 90% of all professors at univer-sity campuses across America self-identify as liberal and progressive. The rare exception is in the hard science and economics departments. What this indi-cates is that universities like UCSB are closed to any ideology or belief system being presented which is antithetical to the group speak/group think phenome-non that passes as higher education. What is even more telling is that tiny areas on campus are desig-nated as free speech zones, which by definition, indi-cates that free speech is not tolerated throughout the rest of campus! Ironically, it was in a free speech zone where Thrin the “outsider” was initially accosted by campus provocateur Miller-Young and for that very reason the judge should throw the book at her.
Thrin Short has now heard from District Attorney Dud-ley and the students have been dutifully warned by Vice-Chancellor Young. Yet to criticize Dr. Miller-Young or issue an apology to the community at large is University Chancellor Dr. Henry Yang. My opinion on that is nobody on campus is truly sorry for what happened to Trin, they simply regret she was there to begin with. How bad does it have to get before the Chancellor will admit and realize something is funda-mentally wrong and out of balance with life inside the academic bubble?
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
The Pen, The Phone and The Pigs
By Andy Caldwell
movement which is promoting this transportation justice scam, has to do with the distinction between equal rights and equal outcomes. An all time classic book that speaks to the distinction between rights and outcomes is Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Rand completely eviscerated any notion that work could be assigned according to ability, while wealth could be distributed according to need in a free market economy. And, she also completely decimates the notion that a free society could continue to exist in any other economic system than a free market economy.
Another classic book which outlines the inevitable evolution of egalitarian ideology from noble intentions to brutal oppression is George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, wrote this book as an allegorical attack on Joseph Stalin whom he regarded, rightly so, as a brutal dictator. The book brilliantly highlighted the fatal flaw of many political ideologies, that is, it is the nature of power to corrupt. Orwell’s pigs (his allegorical description of ambitious, greedy, and flawed men) become dictators despite their initial commitment to egalitarian purposes.
The problem at Animal Farm and here in America is when government favors equal outcomes more than equal rights, well, people begin to lose their rights, not the least of which is the right to keep what they earn.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Page 13 Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine
Call it cash for clunkers on steroids. Going one
step further than paying cash to get polluting clunkers off the road, the Sacramento brain trust now wants to subsidize the cost of buying newer cars for the less fortunate. The program is being described, this is no joke, as “transportation justice”! I believe over time, this problem of older high emission, low mpg vehicles will take care of itself as these vehicles gravitate towards the salvage yard, but there is more to this than meets the eye.
I refer you to the old maxim that government only has money to give away that they first had to take away from someone else- that someone is you! We give out food, shelter, medical care, and a whole host of other subsidies and services to those who can least afford the same, so why shouldn’t we subsidize the cost of a better car while we are at it? Well, I am not against helping those who can’t help themselves, but I am dead set against helping those who continue to be in need simply because they are irresponsible. Of course, the important thing here is that the more subsidies we give out means the greater the dependency we create in a class of people who will have even less incentive over time to become financially independent.
One of the foundational principles of our form of governance in America is rooted in our belief that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. The timeless great debate between our form of government and various forms of egalitarianism, including today’s progressive
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Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine Page 14
Recently, I wrote an editorial on the failure of the
teachers' unions across America to protect children from sexual predators in the classroom. In essence, the unions have blocked meaningful legislation at both the state and federal level that makes it easier for school districts to fire teachers that are both sus-pected of sexual misconduct and even those who have been convicted of the same. This story is not new and it has been written about and documented in newspapers across America.
In response to my piece, the President of the Santa Barbara Teachers Union, Mr. John Houchin, sent in a commentary to “set the record straight”. I believe his response is a perfect example of the main point in my article, namely teachers' unions are self-serving at the expense of our nation’s children. Dealing with such a serious and somber issue as predators in the class-room calls for an adult conversation. Instead, Mr. Houchin’s commentary struck me as being nothing more than an attempt at political gamesmanship. Al-low me to illustrate with a point by point comparison of what I wrote and how he responded.
First, the huge nonevent. The main reason I wrote my article was to expose the unions blocking reform measures having to do with predators. Funny thing is, Mr. Houchin didn’t address this issue at all!
I included a quote from Albert Shanker who I refer-enced as the leader of the “teachers' union in America for 30 years”. I included the fact that the teachers' unions will dispute the quote, and true to form, Houchin did just that. The quote attributed to Shan-ker? “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that is when I will start representing the interests of school children”. Houchin then refers us to that great reference book Wikepedia to prove his point. Wikepe-dia quotes the Albert Shanker Institute (clearly an un-biased reference source on this subject) that says, “we cannot demonstrate conclusively that Albert Shanker never made this statement”.
Houchin also pointed out that Shanker was not the president of the teacher’s union because there is no single teacher’s union in America. Well, here is what Wikipedia has to say on that. Shanker was president of the United Teacher’s Association from 1964-1985 and the American Federation of Teachers from 1974-1997.
Mr. Houchin’s then tries to make the point that teach-ers' unions play an important part in education as he references Singapore and Finland! Is he kid-ding? What does that have to do with kids getting molested by teachers in America or the other prob-lems in America that have given rise to private schools, home schooling, charter schools and the school choice movement?
Mr. Houchin’s next point is so bizarre, it is hard to fathom a meaningful response. Somehow, out of this discussion Houchin indicates that teachers need un-ions to “fight against private entities who have public education in their crosshairs as a means to increase personal or corporate wealth”. Huh? Is he talking about our local catholic schools who produce a better outcome at half the price of the public schools? Maybe he is trying to say that alternatives to public schools increase the future individual and cor-porate wealth of our children? I could agree with that, but instead I think this is a dig at the privatization of schools, which by the way, seems to work just fine at both the elementary and college levels across America.
The final point was a distinction without a differ-ence. Houchin claims teachers do not have “tenure”. Instead, they have what he refers to as “permanent status”.
If this were a game, now would be the time to say “game over”.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Teachers' Union Gets Skunked
By Andy Caldwell
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No Water, No Food, No Problem?
By Andy Caldwell
Page 15 Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine
I recently interviewed Wesley J. Smith, a Senior
Fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Smith believes humans are excep-tional because we have the capacity to accept both obligations and duties with respect to being good stewards of our planet. He is sounding the alarm against the trend among environmentalists whereby the movement is becoming stridently anti-human in its efforts to protect both flora and fauna. He cites the emergence of a movement which seeks to criminalize farming operations as “ecocide” along with efforts to grant legal rights to nature, including plants and rocks. All of these trends could serve to wreak havoc on the ability of mankind to feed ourselves and protect ourselves from the ravages of Mother Nature.
At the heart of this movement is the goal to eliminate the concept of property rights in deference to the rights of nature. For instance, the movement poses the question does a river have a right to flow? The activists would like the river to be able to sue man-kind! What is lost, of course, on many in the environ-mental movement today is that nature itself is not be-nign. For instance, consider the damage created by floods to riparian habitat and species. And, if we to let all rivers flow by removing dams, and we also quit pumping water which affects the flow rate of rivers, we would have no drinking water and no protection against floods and droughts. Who in their right mind wants that?
We are not immune from this extremism here lo-cally. I will never forget the San Marcos Preserve pro-ject in Santa Barbara as it pertained to a plan to miti-gate the impacts moving some rocks would have upon lichen, the green fungus that was growing on rocks! Really, fungus? Are we experiencing a short-age?
There is no doubt about it, if we did not cultivate the land, raise animals and fish the oceans, most of man-kind would starve to death. It is one thing to have a healthy respect and admiration for nature, it is another thing altogether to ignore the reality of our vulnerabili-ties. Do we really want to abandon our means and sources of energy, food, shelter, and infrastructure in deference to inanimate objects including plants and rocks? How many people would perish? Billions, but that is okay with some, as they want to see the human
population of the earth reduced to under one billion inhabitants.
I am a firm advocate of animal rights and animal wel-fare but one has to question one’s values in view of how strident some people are willing to go to level the playing field between humans and the rest of planet earth. What advantage, rights and commensurate responsibilities have humans to be stewards of the planet? This is more than a philosophical argument, since we are discussing a campaign to drastically re-duce the human population of the planet. It truly is a matter of life and death. I wonder, who decides who lives and dies?
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine Page 16
Texas Governor Rick Perry is returning to Califor-
nia, and to left-leaning politicians in Sacramento he is about as welcome as Godzilla in Tokyo. The cause of this consternation is Perry’s pro-business record which exposes all the weaknesses of the California approach to governing. While Texas focuses on job creation, California lawmakers give their highest prior-ity to reducing the calories in soft drinks. While Texas cut taxes last year, Sacramento is constantly search-ing for new ways to burden taxpayers.
For defenders of the California system, where the triv-ial is exalted and issues about which real people care are ignored, it gets even worse when Perry leaves. This is because so many California businesses are following him back to Texas. After comparing the two states and seeing that Texas’ taxes are lower, regula-tions are more reasonable and the legal system more fair, over 50 companies have relocated or expanded in Texas in the last year and a half. This business flight has shifted thousands of California jobs to the Lone Star State. And we are not just talking about small or insignificant businesses. Last month, oil giant Occidental Petroleum, a major presence in California for nearly a century, announced its relocation to Hous-ton.
Ironically, apologists for California point to Texas’ un-employment rate of 6% -- the national average is 6.7% -- as a disadvantage to business. They suggest that California, with its 8.3 unemployment rate, is best for business because the pool of available workers is so much larger. This is like claiming that having only one hand is an advantage because you can make a pair of mittens last twice as long.
According to the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foun-dation, the California business climate ranks 47th while Texas comes in at number 11. In every recent survey of CEOs, California rates at or near the bottom as a place to do business
Those who ridicule Perry for successfully poaching Golden State businesses might want to suggest to Jerry Brown that he make a similar effort in Texas. Let’s see, the governor could travel from city to city telling business leaders the advantage of relocating to California. His message: “We have Disneyland.”
Actually, in fairness to Brown, he is right that there is
more venture capital in California and, indeed, one could argue that more ideas are incubated here. But for those ideas which take hold, they are more often than not realized in Texas. According to a Te-chAmerica Foundation report last month, Texas has now surpassed California in technology exports.
In the 19th century, those immigrating to Texas often painted “Gone to Texas” on their abandoned homes. If the California political class does not want to get a similar note from more businesses, they had better take their boot off the neck of our productive sector.
As we look forward to June and November elections, we should be asking those running for governor and the Legislature what they plan to do, not only to keep businesses and jobs in our state, but how they will work to attract new business investment that would improve the economy and put Californians back to work.
Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpay-ers Association -- California's largest grass-roots tax-payer organization dedicated to the protection of Proposition 13 and the advancement of taxpayers' rights.
Gone To Texas
By Jon Coupal
Is China Winning The Race For The World's Economic Data? Cont.
Page 17 Volume 2 Issue 4 COLAB Magazine
Recently, I briefed the U.S. Naval War College Center for Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups and the Army Irregular Warfare Center on just these issues. China is well on the way to information dominance, as it controls 20 percent of all container ships, builds 90 per-cent of new containers and through its new investments in ports can now track the infor-mation from up to 40 million bills of lading at any given time.
The world is big enough for both the United States and China. In a sharp departure from the Cold War, neither side has committed itself to an ideology that preaches the destruction of the other. However, at the international level, only China is really competing right now. They have an organized plan to control everything from fresh-water resources to each link in the energy supply chain, gain valuable early ac-cess to trade intelligence, and meet global de-mand for goods by incentivizing exporting Chi-nese-made goods. Meanwhile the U.S. hand-cuffs itself with overregulation, unsound mone-tary policies and an outrageously punitive tax code.
If the U.S. is going to remain a world super-power for the long term, it won’t be just through military might, but aggressive eco-nomic and trade policies that free U.S. busi-nesses to compete with China, along with greater awareness of all the fronts on which this struggle is already being fought.
The Chinese aren’t just buying access to oil and other natural resources. In executing a broad economic strategy that should draw the serious attention of U.S. business, regulatory and intelligence communities, China is buying access to the most valuable commodity of all: information. George O’Conor is the founder of Oco Inc. and Chime Media, which develop and implement data mining and advanced analytics solutions for businesses. First published at Forbes.com
(Continued from page 10)
Media misunderstanding of how groundwater works also often portrays farmers as criminals. The Modesto Bee recently reported that the expansion of almond or-chards totaling 4 million trees in Stanislaus County would consume enough water for 480,000 people. That would be enough water for the entire City of Fresno for one year.
But the groundwater in Eastern Stanislaus County is not available to be put into the San Joaquin River for state-wide municipal use or for fish runs. Moreover, the Cali-fornia Area of Origin Law would prohibit grabbing water
(Continued from page 4)
Gov. Brown, Legislature push groundwater Regs Cont.
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in Stanislaus County for use elsewhere. And shifting orchards to where groundwater is abundant liberates water in the State and Federal water systems for cities and fish.
Groundwater managed, not regulated
Up to now, groundwater has not been regulated, but managed in California. After the passage of Assembly Bill 3030 in 1992 (Water Code Section 10750 et seq.), local agencies were authorized to manage groundwa-ter. More than 200 agencies adopted groundwater management plans.
The major difference between voluntary local government groundwater management and state regulation is that the state has the power to issue shut-down notices and compel compliance with law enforcement. A local groundwater management agency is able to monitor wells and issue surcharges on pumping too much water, but it can’t stop a landowner with water rights from pumping water.
And there still are some areas of the state that have not adopted such management plans. Liability issues, the high cost of adjudicating water basins, the ability of farmers to self-manage groundwater levels, the complexities of existing water rights, and the lack of legal conflicts over local groundwater usage have made groundwater regulation unnecessary in many areas. Groundwater is not generally monitored in some 200 water basins where the population is sparse and groundwater withdrawals are typically low.
The DWR reports that groundwater is already monitored in 10,000 active water wells where the water is mostly used.
DWR recently implemented a new groundwater surveillance mechanism, the California Statewide Groundwater Elevation Monitoring in 2012, in accordance with State Senate Bill SB-X7-6 of 2009. This report is provided every 5 years to the legislature.
Previously posted at Calwatchdog.com sponsored by the Pacific Research Institute.
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