KEN McCALIP

Good riddance to redevelopment districts, thanks to our new governor and the Legislature, who justifiably eliminated them to end an enormous drain on public resources, despite howls from municipal bureaucrats throughout the state. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that annually more than $5 billion of redevelopment money in California was not used for redevelopment […]

I frequently travel the breadth of Santa Barbara County on highway 166, from the Santa Maria Valley to the Cuyama Valley, and I am always struck by the immense diversity of this road trip and the beauty that makes our county what it is, a wonderful place to live, from the rolling, sometimes green or […]

There is chicanery afoot in California in its worst form, which will keep us from meeting our evolving energy needs in a changing world. Here in California, as is true in the rest of the country, we need to be free as citizens to explore other sources of energy. Many communities are now choosing to […]

Extremism in recent years seems to pop its ugly head up again and again, both locally and nationally. The vast majority of American voters tends to want America to tread down the middle of the road and not to veer off either to the extreme left or right. Today, according to recent polls, we see […]

As major banks with local branches continue to ask for our taxpayer dollars in bailout funds, we see two themes emerge as excuses for their current despicable condition and reasons why they should not be taken over by the federal government, reorganized, and resold to the private sector. Everyone has memories of President Franklin D. […]

It’s hard to find examples of success in the State Housing Mandate program because there are not many. It’s a program that does not work, but rewards bureaucrats and developers. Those who favored or spoke in favor of high density rezoning in recent county meetings were mostly landowners and bureaucrats whose job depended on the […]

When humans first came together to live in agricultural communities, the need developed for rules and laws. It became important for those early leaders, just as today, to set good examples to follow for the rest of the community. Those social rules and laws have become the glue that holds modern civilization and societies together. […]