CCWs are a way to fight evil

Here they come, again. And just as stupid and deceitful as ever.

The Supreme Court ruled the Second Amendment guarantees Americans the legal right to carry a concealed weapon without providing a reason. This doesn’t mean everyone is going to get one, but it’s nice to know you can.

Of course, for left-wing gun haters and socialist Democrats, this is as bad as getting a permit to drill for oil. For liberal politicians, it just can’t stand. Americans need to be stripped of their rights and freedoms, and we’re going to make something up to stop you.

Don’t change De la Guerra Plaza

storage systems are expensive, they can take up a lot of acreage — and they are prone to an “extensive cascading thermal runaway event, initiated by an internal cell failure within one battery cell”! Read that as a chemical reaction within the battery system that causes an inferno that can’t be put out by firefighters. (They simply hose it down for days, hoping it won’t spread).

3CE has a lot of dumb ideas on how to solve this dilemma, the most expensive being a compressed air storage facility to be built in Kern County. 3CE, which means you the rate payer, is committing $1 billion over the next 25 years to get upward of 200 megawatts of power from the facility. The only problem? As county Supervisor Das Williams figures (he is on the board of 3CE), our region will need three times as much storage in the future.

Please allow me to point out the obvious to the oblivious. All these expenditures for storage don’t create any electrical power nor do they transmit the power. They simply store it.

That means, on top of the $1 billion being spent on the hot air technology project in Kern County, rate payers are going to be on the hook for billions more for additional storage, not to mention the cost of the projects that must first generate the power to be stored in these types of facilities and then the transmission cost to deliver the same to our region.

What we are dealing with here then is nothing less than a doomed-to-fail, no-holds-barred attempt to completely transform our energy system by way of a neophyte technology that is nowhere near ready to debut in prime time. Consumers will find out soon enough that this green energy cult is delivering nothing less than a kick to the family joules.

Caldwell is the COLAB executive director and host of “The Andy

Editor’s note: Local organization Cars Are Basic sent this letter to Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse and the Santa Barbara City Council, and the writer emailed the letter to the Voices section.

Mayor Rowse and Council

City of Santa Barbara

Re: De la Guerra Plaza & Street

As the city is aware, CAB has repeatedly opposed changes to De la Guerra Plaza and De la Guerra Street from State Street east to Anacapa.

When this was first proposed, local businesses circulated a petition opposing changes to the Plaza and/or closing the street. CAB was shown the outcomes, and all but one business opposed any changes or closing of the plaza/ street.

As a result of the petition, the head of the Downtown Organization at the time (Marshall Rose) opposed any changes. The DO later hired a director who had extensive experience with the city of Pasadena. She made the point that Pasadena had attempted closing and narrowing of streets with the outcome of hurting city center business.

Pasadena, with her direction, re-opened streets and widened streets that had been narrowed.

When Mr. Harris was hired by the city of Santa Barbara to force the closing of the plaza and/ or street, she strongly opposed it. The same Mr. Harris has for years in opposition to businesses would continue to press what the businesses did not want.

After a disagreeable and loud discussion with former Councilman Hart (now Assemblyman), she quit and left Santa Barbara.

The next DO director was against this continuing bullying of the city for this plan. She made it clear the businesses did not want it, and she backed the previous director’s position. Again after being disagreeable, the city staff was able to force her out as director, and she resigned.

CAB has requested repeatedly for the city of Santa Barbara to report the 40-year outcome of the MIG State Street narrowing. The response by the city and various mayors and councils has been to ignore the requests.

Unless CAB has missed a point, this is part of the long-term closing of State Street, using the same philosophy presented by MIG. CAB asks why would the council continue with a 40-year failure and use a company that designed this failure?

We have watched 25 years of projects that were supposed to increase the economic viability of Old Town Santa Barbara and failed. CAB has watched traffic management continue to convince city councils to narrow streets for bike paths that failed. The latest game of “just give it time it will work” are parklets.

The health of Old Town State Street would be the same rebound that has Goleta thriving with more business and people who now travel from Santa Barbara to buy and do business in Goleta.

With the long term State Street narrowing- social experiment failure, the petition against the closing of the Plaza/Street, the three directors of the Downtown Organization opposing this, and repeated calls by the general public to open State Street and keep the plaza as it is, you are urged to defeat this plan.

CAB request is rational and backed by fact.

Please add this comment to the Public Record. On behalf of the board and members,

Scott Wenz President CAB