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SANTA BARBARA NEWS-PRESS
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2023 Dan Savickas
The author is with the Taxpayers Protection Alliance
Wendy McCaw Arthur von Wiesenberger
Co-Publisher Co-Publisher
GUEST OPINION
COURTESY IMAGE
Let’s be fair and establish a flat tax
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e are overtaxed and, more than others, have bigger bills. So in the following are my suggestions for reform. A FAIR AMERICAN — FLAT TAX The United States and the
states must reform their tax structures The authorlives to make it in Lompoc more equitable for everyone. Presently, the Congress is just “fooling around with the numbers,” but not giving us tax reform. That means no IRS in Justin Ruhge
the future. Today 40% of the people pay 90% of the taxes. In addition,everyone wants to be excluded from paying any taxes by gaining special exemptions at the expense of other taxpayers. This is social redistribution of wealth and is un-American Please see RUGHE on C4
LETTERS TO THE NEWS-PRESS No end to our troubles COURTESY PHOTO
California is aiding and abetting selfdestructive behavior
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n 2021, here in who adopted President Barack California, there were Obama’s housing first policy in 5,622 fentanyl fatal 2016. overdoses. The stupid theory posits that There were some homelessness can be solved by 70,000 fentanyl deaths in the providing housing to people U.S. in the same year. who are not held responsible or Fentanyl is considered 50 accountable in any way for any times stronger than heroin. of their debilitating behaviors Drug dealers are mixing such as drug and alcohol abuse fentanyl into all sorts of — and the refusal to get a job. other drugs, including fake I recently interviewed prescription pills. The price Mary Theroux, a successful for a fentanyl high businesswoman from decreased from $20 to the Bay Area who $1. has published the And just 2 milligrams documentary “Beyond of fentanyl — an amount Homelessness: that fits on the tip of a Finding Hope.” pencil — is considered a She indicated potentially deadly dose. peer-reviewed Andy Caldwell What’s worse? A real research indicates zombie apocalypse is that alternative upon us! Drug addicts, approaches, to including scores of homeless that which is commonplace people, are now inhaling a in California, can result in concoction that is a mixture actual radical declines in of fentanyl and “tranq” — the homelessness and a path to animal sedative Xylazine. transformed lives. These two drugs combined Using San Francisco as an lead to a variety of unpleasant example, homelessness has outcomes: death, flesh-eating increased more than 50% while abscesses and zombie-like spending to solve homelessness trances. has increased 130%. Why is California’s response to outthat? of-control opioid and fentanyl It has to do with the fact that overdoses? recovery programs that take up Create safe spaces for to 6 months to complete have a addicts where ample supplies 90% failure rate. of naloxone, aka Narcan, can Whereas, programs that deal be administered — albeit with the underlying causes there is no antidote for tranq. of homelessness, including Hence, once again, California’s addiction, can take 2-3 years approach to self-destructive but with a success rate of up to behavior is a Band-Aid 90%. approach, after the fact. However, here in California, One reason the drug problem it is against the law to require is getting worse in some sobriety or treatment for states, such as California, is sobriety as a condition to that possession of drugs for receive services, including personal use is no longer a housing. The approach here in felony. More importantly, our California to provide medical de facto open border with care, food, shelter and places Mexico has allowed the drug to shoot up are hindering the cartels to flood America with homeless from hitting rock enough fentanyl to kill every bottom, which is the one thing American, according to the that can cause the person to be U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. willing to make new choices The cartels manufacture the that can lead to healing and fentanyl with chemicals largely wholeness. sourced from China, and that If county supervisors cherryis why some representatives of pick people who are simply Congress are demanding that poor, rather than those who are fentanyl be labeled a weapon of addicted and mentally ill, as mass destruction. to who receives the benefit of Meanwhile, this is one of their $90 million effort to end the main reasons California’s homelessness, the program approach, including right could succeed. However, the here in Santa Barbara County, people who are making a to ending homelessness is nuisance of themselves are the guaranteed to fail. addicted and mentally ill and A significant number of are the least likely to welcome homeless people are drug meaningful help. addicts. As Michael Steeb of the Texas Public Policy Andy Caldwell is the COLAB Center and the author of executive director and host of “Answers Behind the RED “The Andy Caldwell Show,” DOOR: Battling the Homeless airing 3 to 5 p.m. weekdays on Epidemic” states, California KZSB AM 1290, the News-Press is the only state in the union radio station.
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n 2020, we had an election. One nominee traveled the country and spoke to overflowing enthusiastic crowds every time, standing room only. The other nominee stayed in his basement, coming out occasionally to speak to a small audience. Amazingly, when the votes were counted, the basement man had more votes than had ever been cast, outnumbering the popular candidate who himself numbered in millions more than the last time. How could this be? Then the truth began to come out about malfunctioning voting machines, ballots entered secretly at night, millions given by a social network to fund illegal vote harvesting, ballots cast by deceased voters, other ballots from conservative areas mysteriously disappearing. For some reason, to this day no one will recall an illegally elected president. Millions of illegals come through our open southern border, bringing disease and enough fentanyl to kill all of us, and actually killing 100,000 a year. Where are they going? Into indentured service as laborers or criminals or sex slaves to the cartels. Ukraine and China have bought favored nation status with our new president, while industries here are punished. Our own gas reserves have been shuttered and pipelines canceled while we beg our enemies to supply our needs. Part of that is the push to turn everything electric.Guess where the solar panels, windmills and batteries come from? You’re right. China. Furthermore, when all these electrical supplies wear out,
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they become hazardous waste. As millions of dollars are going to Ukraine, and our strategic oil reserves are being sold to China, a rail accident in Ohio threatens the residents in the area, and nothing is done. In the aftermath of COVID-19, small business owners lost everything they had, thousands died needlessly, being denied effective treatments, our children may never catch up scholastically and more suffer from after effects of a vaccine that was mandated and is not only ineffective, but dangerous. Furthermore, our whole country is being attacked with racist lies trying to divide us as we were finally really coming together. And our young people are being fed lies about their own sexual identity. There seems to be no end to our troubles. And Joe Biden shrugged. Gretchen Kieding Solvang
Who’s helping East Palestine?
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ow can Santa Barbara County residents help East Palestine, Ohio and Pennsylvania poor citizens who need water, testing services, medical attention, and relocation? There is NO government entity, no non-government organization, no nonprofit, helping these citizens with their survival needs. I’ve called several organizations (Direct Relief, Red Cross, …) plus Congressman Salud Carbajal asking “where’s the leadership?” Everyone is MIA. This is shameful; and it horrifies donors and taxpayers.
I contacted American Hero John Rourke, CEO of Blue Movers in Florida after learning he is personally with staff delivering cases of water to trapped, frightened residents. Like me, he saw a poor young mom with no car and two children under age 6, walked to the store with her kids to then attempt carrying a case of water plus an infant back home. Frail elders and disabled require front door survival assistance. Talk show host Benny Johnson went to East Palestine with $20,000 to randomly pass out $1,000 checks to 20 desperate people so grateful that any fellow American even cared. We know disasters well. Our generosity is remarkable, the Bucket Brigade are exemplary citizen driven responders. What can we do? Where’s the leadership? Denice Spangler Adams Montecito Editor’s note: After seeing Ms. Adams’ letter, the News-Press contacted Direct Relief, and Tony Morain, the Goleta nonprofit’s vice president for communications, said Direct Relief reached out to health facilities in the affected area but has not received any requests for medications or supplies. The News-Press also reached out to U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal’s office, and the Santa Barbara congressman said, “As a senior member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I have been monitoring the updates and reports coming from East Palestine, and am committed to ensuring that federal entities our committee oversees — like the Federal Railroad Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board — take necessary steps to enable the people of Ohio to put this disaster safely behind them.”
Chinese balloon floats with air of mystery
he farmer saw a white object in the clear Montana skies on the fourth Saturday of January, the 28th. His first reaction was to grab a cell phone and submit his photo to the local newspaper. Gosh, times have changed from my youth when our reaction might have been to think of the intro Brent E. to a popular Zepke radio show of “It’s a bird, it’s The author a plane, it’s …” lives in Santa What were the Barbara. reactions to the photos? The telephones of Montana Gov. Mike DeWine ran off the hook searching for answers that he did not have, but he reached out to President Joe Biden for answers. What did the president say? Nothing because it was a Saturday, and President Biden has spent 164 Saturdays in the silence that surrounds his Delaware houses. Unfortunately, this time it proved the wisdom of the line “Silence like a cancer grows” from the Simon and Garfunkel song “The Sound of Silence.” And grow
it did. the shoulder” responses to the Since the photo showed a round, question of why he had not ordered white object, it was believed to be it shot down with “I gave the order a balloon. to the Pentagon three days ago.” When my friend Francis X. Mr. President, the Pentagon is a O’Sullivan, the 6’5” former Marine building. Who was that person, captain said “People want a or persons, who refused a complete story, so when some presidential order? facts are missing, they tend to As the days drifted by, and the ‘fill-in’ the story circle by adding balloon drifted over the U.S., something that including sounds right to missile sites, the them,” I listened “fill-in” became ELSEWHERE IN VOICES because his deep that it was too Columnist Arthur Cyr looks at the voice was full of dangerous to history of military balloons. C3. wisdom: Semper shoot down over Fi. the wildernesses Since the of Alaska, concept of a balloon being able Canada or Montana, because to carry something as heavy the waste might fall on people. as a person was demonstrated Unexplained was the reason that it centuries ago by none other was not shot down as soon as it was than Ben Franklin, the “fill-ins,” spotted in U.S. airspace over the necessary by the absence of our Aleutian Island where we have an president, began with the story observation post. that it might be a weather balloon As the balloon continued its that had drifted off course from journey over the U.S., the “fillChina. Or was it Russia? ins” became that the military Another “fill-in” — that it was blocked their transmissions, then an Unidentified Flying Object that they learned from it. Really? — caused stories of pilots, both They learned from blocked military and civilian, seeing transmissions after they blocked strange objects standing still or them? flying at supersonic speeds. On the Saturday before the Once the weekend passed, president’s State of the Union while the balloon was leisurely speech on Feb. 7, the balloon moving over the U.S., the president Please see ZEPKE on C4 gave one of his crisps “over
EVA RINALDI CELEBRITY AND LIVE MUSIC/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Taylor Swift
Era of frivolous antitrust hearings
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he 118th Congress has barely begun. A wave of freshman representatives and senators are coming in with a mandate to help address a lagging economy, record inflation and an increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape. The federal government also just hit its borrowing limit and is approaching a fiscal cliff. January and February are months to get down to business. Yet the full Senate Judiciary Committee held one of its first hearings of the year on another topic: last year’s Taylor Swift ticketing debacle. For context, ticket presales for Ms. Swift’s “The Eras Tour” experienced a barrage of difficulties. “Eras” was the first tour for the singer since she toured back in 2018. Fans were stuck in massive online queues, with some waiting days and many not being able to get any tickets at all. Things got so out of hand that Ms. Swift and ticket distributor Ticketmaster canceled the presale event. Given Ms. Swift’s popularity, national outrage promptly ensued. This is what led to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., calling this hearing, claiming consolidation in the ticketing industry led to the incident. Claims by politicians like Sen. Klobuchar rest on the notion that Ticketmaster has been a monopoly in the ticketing space since its merger with global entertainment company Live Nation Entertainment in 2010. Sen. Klobuchar — who has attempted to bring antitrust action against a variety of American industries — is urging the Department of Justice to unwind the merger between the two companies. However, the merger between Ticketmaster and LNE has already been thoroughly litigated. The 2010 merger agreement came about as part of a meticulously negotiated settlement with the DOJ to ensure the protection of consumers and competition. The joint entity is also operating under a consent decree with the DOJ so that they continue to uphold the terms of that merger and comply with regulatory standards. Further, the joint entity still has a host of competitors like SeatGeek, Spotify, Vivid and StubHub. In fact, SeatGeek has agreements with several venues on the Eras Tour and was the primary vendor for five locations for Ms. Swift’s upcoming shows. There is adequate competition in the space. The merger — and any alleged consolidation as a result — is not the issue. However, what is clear to many Taylor Swift fans across the nation is that something clearly did go horribly wrong. Eric Budish, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, points out some of the mistakes Ms. Swift made that led to the disaster. Dr. Budish notes that Ms. Swift likely played an outsized role in determining pricing, instead of using an algorithmic system based on actual demand. Please see SAVICKAS on C4