C2
SANTA BARBARA NEWS-PRESS
VOICES
SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 2023
LETTERS TO THE NEWS-PRESS Brent E. Zepke
The author lives in Santa Barbara.
Wendy McCaw Arthur von Wiesenberger
Biden’s first veto raises questions
Co-Publisher Co-Publisher
GUEST OPINION
T COURTESY IMAGE
Stop trashing Homer
I NEWS-PRESS FILE PHOTO
Sins of omission, commission and emissions!
T
he truth is out largest manmade source of air there — just pollution. By way of emission offshore of the controls, such as catalytic aptly named Coal converters and the like, along Oil Point. with changes in the fuels we That is where the second use, California smog is mostly most prolific oil and gas a thing of the past, except in seeps in the world are those places where smog is begging to be included in trapped by weather-induced the Santa Barbara County inversion layers. Climate Action Plan. The Relatedly, the seep pollution climate action plan is, of is so large it exceeds the course, ostensibly nothing emissions from all the traffic less than a war against on the 101 freeway the production and every day, which consumption of fossil is, once again, the fuels, according to a largest source of theory that posits that air pollution in our fossil fuels must be region. eliminated to save the The efforts that planet. had little to no Andy Caldwell The inconvenient effect? Never-ending truth as it relates emission controls on to Santa Barbara County? manufacturing and industry. Fossil fuel production The ugly truth is we did not actually cleans our air and reduce emissions from most water of pollutants that are of these sources. Instead, we naturally occurring by way drove these industries out of these oil and gas seeps of state or offshore because off the coast of UCSB while the technology to reduce the also reducing greenhouse emissions didn’t exist or the gasses. Contrary to the cost was too much to bear. blathering of politicians and Moreover, if you couple the activists, decades of research emissions from transportation by bonafide scientists and offshore seeps, locally, have produced data that in the aggregate, emissions empirically proves that oil from industrial sources are and gas production decreases less than 1% of the emission the seeps that happen to inventory, meaning they be the largest source of the are no longer worth further most potent greenhouse gas, regulating. methane, which is 25 times Although air quality in more potent than CO2. Southern California has vastly The routinely described improved over the decades, air pollution inventory for the regulators and activists all sources of air pollution will never admit that things conveniently omits the are clean enough as they pollution emanating from would be out of power and these and other natural out of a job. Moreover, the sources as if there is no effort to label greenhouse abating the same. However, gas emissions as a form of air an alternative approach does pollution is one of the biggest exist, and it offers multiple lies out there. The truth is, benefits! That is, permitting carbon in the atmosphere is oil and gas operations will as important to life itself as save our economy from is oxygen., It is not pollution. energy-related inflation and Feel free to exhale all you abate both air pollution and want. greenhouse gas emissions, Moreover, speaking of not to mention eliminating existential threats, life on globs of oil on our beaches. planet earth will cease to exist We know this for certain, if carbon levels get too low. by way of the published And moreover, proving once study correlating oil and gas again that correlation is not production and its effect on causation, increased carbon seeps by a team of research levels in the atmosphere scientists from UCSB and to this day have no proven Tufts University, among direct relationship with others. climate change despite all the As a way of background, bloviation to the contrary. for the past 50 years or so, regulators have been Andy Caldwell is the COLAB trying to clean our air of executive director and host of various pollutants. The “The Andy Caldwell Show,” efforts that paid off had airing 3 to 5 p.m. weekdays to do with emissions from on KZSB AM 1290, the Newstransportation sources, the Press radio station.
read an article by Frank Sanitate who argued that Homer’s “The Iliad” was trash (“The Iliad” Is Trash — and Other Thoughts About Education,” News-Press March 11). I’ll refrain from being frank by not describing the quality of his article. However, as a student who studied classic literature in high school and now in a liberal arts college, I believe Frank represents most critics of this style of writing. They tend to not understand and therefore underappreciate what’s actually being expressed and why it’s important that it be transmitted down the ages. Critics like Frank often point to the battles as lengthy and dull, the Greek gods as chaotic, and the work being outdated. First, it’s a mistake to think that Homer’s works are read today just because they are ancient. From it, we learn about Greek culture: what they believed, why they believed it, how it affected the way they approached life, and more. Homer heavily influenced western literary tradition. His works have allowed us to expand our minds and question the goodness, truth and beauty of nature and humanity. While one does not have to agree with everything presented in this work, there are attributes that are still admirable, such as nobility, bravery and responsibility. When taught and approached correctly, Homer can influence young and old readers to seek out truth, goodness and beauty. I once had an assignment where I had to find something
I
outside and write a lengthy description on it. After submitting the assignment, the professor contrasted my description as abstract and bland compared to the way the Greeks were able to see the same beauty in nature. Because of my professor’s guidance through Greek literature, I’ve become a more independent thinker. I now appreciate with enthusiasm the ideas, themes, and questions of morality addressed throughout the epic poem. Furthermore, Homer has influenced many other works throughout western classical tradition such as “The Aeneid,” “The Divine Comedy,” “Ulysses” and more. It is hard to picture the ancient world and not think of Homer’s works. He has been a basis in representing Greek thought, religion, and customs. Without his work, there would be no basis for even the modern heroic tale, which we find in many literary genres — most of which are directly and indirectly inspired and attributed to him. Barbara Najera Santa Barbara Editor’s note: Barbara Najera is a graduate of Saint Therese Classical Academy in Santa Barbara and is an English literature major at the University of Dallas.
Evictions ordinance raises questions
T
his week the Santa Barbara City Council passed 7-0 an ordinance that safe, decent, sanitary housing is a human necessity and a “right.” A right is a power or privilege
held by the general public as the result, and it gives people a legally enforceable claim. Now that housing is a “right,” how will the City Council meet the necessity? Beyond limiting just cause evictions, where will the city put units to meet this new local right to housing? Will the council finally prohibit Santa Barbara City College from admitting non-district residents to free up housing? Santa Barbara has one of the highest per capita numbers of public housing rental units in the country. Safety is a huge factor with only one highway in and out, which has been closed due to weather and disasters. Water and topography are other limitations to increasing densities. The City Council based its decision to expand renter protections on the 2015 Housing Element, which claims 50% of local renters overpay for housing, compared to statewide rents — as do homeowners. Let’s compare coastal Santa Barbara housing costs and rents only to other California coastal communities. They are comparable: pricey. Council put in place rights for renters without regard to the present value costs to own here and the rights of property owners. Ask yourself: • Is living under City Council control of private property desired? • Do contractual agreements between two parties no longer provide adequate protections? • Will the City Council require empty bedrooms be rented to meet local rights to housing? Denice Spangler Adams Montecito Please see LETTERS on C4
School choice is the new civil rights movement
n 1957, the eyes of the nation were focused on Arkansas, when Democratic Gov. Orval Faubus refused to allow nine black students to attend Little Rock Central High Chris School three Taigo years after the landmark The author Supreme Court is with The decision in Heartland Brown v. Board Institute of Education, which ended public school segregation based on race. Eventually, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to ensure the black students, who became known as the “Little Rock Nine,” were safely admitted to the previously “whites only” high school. With this, the era of public school segregation came to an end, as black students were finally able to enroll in public schools that had hitherto been open solely to whites. Unfortunately, more than six decades after this monumental step in the civil rights movement, far too many American children — and black students in particular — are facing a much different problem. Now they are stuck in unsafe, poorly performing public schools simply based on their zip codes. To solve this problem, many states are embracing a commonsense solution that also happens to be overwhelmingly popular among broad swathes of the American electorate: school choice.
COURTESY PHOTO
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders
On March 8, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the newly elected Republican governor of Arkansas, signed into law a universal school choice bill, joining Arizona, Iowa, West Virginia and Utah as states that offer education savings accounts so that families can choose whichever type of school — public, privat or charter — their children shall attend. According to the State Policy Network, “The Arkansas LEARNS Act will give Arkansas families $6,600 per student per year to pay for education expenses, such as textbooks, tutoring and private school tuition. The program will have income requirements in the first three years, but by 2025 the program will be open to all families. The legislation will also increase the base salary for teachers from $36,000 to $50,000.”
As mentioned above, school choice is one of the rare issues that blurs political, racial, generational and socio-economic lines. As recent polling shows, among registered voters, 72% of all Americans “support” school choice. What’s more, 72% of whites, 70% of blacks, 77% of Hispanics and 66% of Asians support the concept of school choice. And, perhaps most telling, 68% of Democrats, 82% of Republicans and 67% of independents agree that parents should have “the right to use the tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school which best serves their needs.” In many ways, school choice is the new battleground for the modern civil rights movement. Whereas in the 1950s, only certain people could attend certain schools based on their race, we now live in a time wherein only certain people can attend certain schools based on the location of their home and amount of money at their disposal. Like it or not, this is the state of the American education system. Yet, this system is fundamentally flawed, hopelessly outdated, and in dire need of immediate and wholesale reform. Myriad data demonstrate that our public education system, as currently constructed, is simply failing to educate and keep our children safe. While it is true that these problems became more evident during the pandemic, when the vast majority of public Please see TAIGO on C4
he recent headline proclaiming “President Biden issued his first veto” caught my attention for several reasons, including why it took over two years for his first veto. The answer was that the president’s and Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s agendas were the same and the only ones she permitted Congress to consider, such as the Jan. 6, 2021 stuff and climate change, but never scheduling anything important to Republicans, such as the border. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, with the help of Vice President Kamala Harris, a California Democrat, controlled the Senate. What were the president’s agendas? President Joe Biden followed his inauguration speech proclaiming he was the “great uniter” with an executive order for federal agencies to “search and destroy” any actions taken during Donald Trump’s presidency without considering whether they helped the American people. He set another agenda item by prioritizing climate change issues. His federal agencies implementing these two priorities led to the veto. The federal agencies during the term of President Trump issued a rule that required the plan administrators under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act prioritize the congressional intent of “to protect the pensions and retirement savings from mismanagement and abuse by clarifying that those in charge of the savings be held to a high standard with the best interest of the plan participants.” Their rules limited the ability for plan fiduciaries for “mismanagement and abuse” by only allowing them to weigh the economical effects of climate change and other ESG — environmental, social and governance — considerations as long as the effects are relevant to the “risk-and-reward” economical analysis, and clarified that those in charge be held to a high standard with the best interest of plan participants. How did this lead to a veto? Well, the “search and destroy” executive order from President Biden and his fixation with climate change caused the heads of the federal agencies that administer ERISA — the Labor Department headed by Marty Walsh, the former union president, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, whose credibility faded with her prediction that this inflation was “transitory” — to alter the Trump rules that followed the congressional intent of ERISA. The federal agencies are requiring fiduciaries to invest in accordance with ESG considerations to “safeguard the economy from climaterelated risks that may threaten the pensions and life savings of working Americans and their families.” What was it about ERISA that led to its being the subject of the first veto? This young lawyer’s adventures with ERISA began when I was asked — OK, ordered — by Art Vangeli, the regional attorney in charge of the 1 Presidential Boulevard, Bala Cynwyd, Penn. law department office of my new employer, Gulf Oil Co. Mr. Vangeli “asked” me to become the company “expert” in ERISA that had just been Please see ZEPKE on C4
Henry Schulte took some time off. His column will resume next Saturday in Voices.