Commentaries

When I read “the sea is boiling hot” in Lewis Carroll’s famous poem “The Walrus and The Carpenter,” I imagined a hot tub near the ocean. I never thought it literally would be our ocean or our beloved Maui burning to the ground. I wonder whether Carroll was thinking about climate change when he wrote […]

From the Founding Fathers who became political leaders until today, politicians have misled and/or outright lied about so many issues that it’s hard to keep up. For centuries they have promised better days if only we would vote for them; we are still waiting. And activists—they just make noise. To prove they care about us, […]

Madame Secretary, The following appears on the California secretary of state’s website: Summary of qualifications and requirements for the office of United States president Republican Party, March 5, 2024, presidential primary election: I. Qualifications: Every candidate shall be a natural-born citizen of the United States, at least 35 years of age, and a resident of […]

It never ceases to amaze me how the powers that be, including the Board of Supervisors and the county Planning Commission, can abuse the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to punish some applicants and reward others. Two recent cases demonstrate the county’s bias when applying CEQA requirements and its own land use code requirements. The […]

The month of August regularly serves up earthshaking, history-making events: • Two years ago in August, the U.S. finally pulled out of Afghanistan after our longest war. • On Aug. 6, 1945, our nation dropped the first of two atomic bombs on Japan, soon ending World War II. That’s the event at the center of […]

“Stop work; substantial work completed without a permit,” on a red tag affixed to your project is one thing a project manager and/or building owner doesn’t want to see. Last October, the Lompoc Planning Commission held a public hearing to consider the architectural design and site development review for the KFC remodel project. The architecturally […]

Sammy Roth, the reporter who covers energy issues for the LA Times, recently had occasion to express the received wisdom on how energy must be generated and consumed in California. Roth recited the accepted wisdom in the July 13 edition of his newsletter (“Boiling Point: Peek inside Diablo Canyon”). Roth, like many of his colleagues, […]

 I honestly believe that the political class in Sacramento is losing their collective minds. In my last commentary (“Solutions?” July 13), I pointed out that “the U.S. government is now preparing to hand out $400 billion for green energy projects, and this is just the beginning of the trip down the climate change rabbit hole.” […]

As we all await the final environmental impact report (EIR) on the Dana Reserve, it’s valuable to look at how the county process for the Dana Reserve project has reduced community involvement. Changes in the 2019 Affordable Housing Ordinance allows developers to work more closely with county staff in the planning process to assist the […]

Since the 1970s, environmental alarmists have been predicting the “end of the civilization in five years” if their latest demands to change the climate aren’t implemented immediately. As near as I can tell we are still here, the climate changes hourly, and those alarmists are still making their predictions and demanding change. Their dog whistle […]

At the height of the fight over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget trailer bills (see “How a bill shouldn’t become a law,” my June 1 column), he took time to sit down for a New York Times interview with a sympathetic Ezra Klein. Newsom unloaded on ungrateful environmental groups for the reception he got for his […]

Back in September 2017 in a locally published commentary, I observed “Broken windows; Lompoc is full of them”; this commentary was based on a theory by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982 that used broken windows as a metaphor for disorder within neighborhoods. Expanding on the theory, they wrote, “If the […]