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SANTA BARBARA NEWS-PRESS
VOICES
SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 2023
LETTERS TO THE NEWS-PRESS Henry Schulte
The author lives in Solvang
Wendy McCaw Arthur von Wiesenberger
Banning guns isn’t the answer
Co-Publisher Co-Publisher
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GUEST OPINION
The kitchen and its nonprofit were founded after restaurateurs Diane and Rob Perez identified a troubling pattern of recovering employees falling back into the cycle of drug abuse after only a couple of weeks on the job. Mr. Perez said last year in his testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship that he and his wife “lost 10 of (their) employees to fatal overdoses” in the eight years preceding the start of their charitable enterprise. The couple knew something had to change. Lives were on the line. That’s when people – not profits – became Diane and Rob’s focus. So, the couple reimagined their business model and started their nonprofit. DV8 helps those struggling with addiction communicate honestly about their vice, which opens the door to building a support system, something Harvard University researchers say is key to climbing out of drug dependency. Already, the eatery employs nearly 30 people, 95% of whom are in recovery and graduates of the DV8 nonprofit. Its turnover rate is 70% – a seemingly big number but one that’s actually low for the industry. The average
uns, guns, guns. It’s always about the guns. An inert object that does absolutely nothing on its own. A bunch of metal. Guns don’t breathe. They don’t eat. They don’t think. They don’t move. The only thing required for a gun to do something, is a human finger. The recent shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville was a powerful gut punch. Our thoughts can’t help but run through images of what happened from the deaths to the ensuing aftermath for those who survived. The photo of the girl in the bus with her agonizing expression brought instant tears. We’re helpless to offer any comfort. Yet before the dead were even driven from the school, once again the liberal agenda, which uses these terrible events against guns, was in our face. In this case, some of the ammunition was taken away because the shooter was identified as a trans. This threw the left for a curve. And as irony would have it, there’s even a trans group formed who are learning how to shoot and using AR’s. The reason? Self-protection. Let’s put that aside because it is totally irrelevant. So is the immediate magnetic pull toward the guns and the political agenda and motivation to take them away. Never does the left — and our president — ever first focus on the fact that it was a crazy person who pulled the trigger. Not the guns. A human, with obvious mental defects, in all cases, is responsible for the shootings. Humans are the reason; they are the story. As of this writing, the recent shooter’s reason wasn’t released, and we can only speculate why. You can ban every gun you want, but that doesn’t fix the heads of the shooters. Normal people don’t kill. Millions of normal people have guns, and they will not turn them on another human. Banning anything in this country won’t change a thing. Drugs used to be illegal, and our streets run red from their abuse. Fentanyl can waltz right into America, and I don’t see a single lawmaker stopping it. President Joe Biden can call for the banning of weapons all he wants, but he turns his back on the open border, allowing the deaths of hundreds of thousands with not a trigger pulled. California is taking sides with Mexico who are suing American gun manufacturers because they’re blaming them for too many Mexicans being killed. Now that’s rich. How those guns get there I can’t answer. But those triggers are pulled by Mexican killers who have zero regard for life. It also raises another question for me, “Why don’t we sue Mexico for all the drugs they send us used to kill Americans?” The horrific school shootings are enough to make us puke, but the massive drug deaths are nothing more than statistics on the news when they feel obligated to show the numbers. People are dying every single day. Show those faces too. When was the last time you heard President Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris or any lefty Democrat stand up and shout that eight black kids were killed last night in Chicago? Or 10 in Baltimore? Or 20 were shot in Washington, D.C.? When was the last time you heard that guns should be taken away from the gang members/drug dealers or the cartels taking over our streets? You can ban all the guns you want, and all that ends up happening is that the innocent people become defenseless. The government takes over and puts the criminals in charge. With all the liberal district attorneys
Please see BOLTON on C4
Please see SCHULTE on C4
COURTESY IMAGE
Private schools choose their students
their children with no additional fees. Do that, and I predict the differences between the educational outcomes of private and “failing” public schools will disappear in a heartbeat.
Re: “School Choice is the New Civil Rights Movement,” by Chris Talgo, News-Press, March 25. NEWS-PRESS FILE PHOTO
Pompous persecution and prosecution comes back around!
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fter decades Control Board is trying to of pompously force Santa Barbara County, persecuting the city of Santa Maria and and prosecuting the Santa Maria Airport to various business fork out tens of millions of interests throughout the dollars via a cleanup and county for mere accidents and abatement order. This, despite happenstance, Santa Barbara the fact that nobody, including County itself is finding out the water board, has any the hard way that what goes reason to believe these three around comes around. local government entities had While county supervisors anything whatsoever to do have historically liked to with the contamination. claim the moral high This is par for ground as protectors the course for the of the environment, tyrannical and via sanctimonious abusive water board, proclamations at which answers to press conferences, no one. Whereas a and litigation, now it sympathetic audience is the county that is might feel sorry Andy Caldwell lawyering up for their for Santa Barbara own misfortune. County for finding This time around, itself in the middle because there was no press of lawsuits for pollution it did conference, we must surmise not technically create, in my the details of two incidents opinion, the county deserves that have prompted the the karma because it has done county to hire the law firm similar things to countless of Perkins Coie. (Yes, that is others in the past. the same firm that Hillary The county has been oh Clinton used to launch her so happy in numerous times dirty tricks campaign against past to turn businesses in to Donald Trump ala the fake the water board (and other Russian dossier.) The lawyers agencies) for matters that from Perkins Coie are trying were legacy issues from to get the county out of hot long ago that the current water as it affects two cases owner had nothing to do of hazardous chemical with. In one instance, the contamination. county went after a fuel The first case has to do distributor for ground with a somewhat natural oil contamination, whereupon seep in Toro Canyon that has further investigation the been leaking for decades. contamination had come from Years ago, the federal a county operation. government came in and The most infamous case cleaned up a huge mess in of abuse ever? Instead of the canyon and then handed building houses on ground responsibility for future seeps that had been slated for to the very reluctant county development, Peter Adam of Santa Barbara. Due to the (years before he became happenstance of a wildland a county supervisor) and fire that burned through the family instead purchased the area, the equipment the feds land to farm it. The county placed there got damaged subsequently fabricated a while nobody from the county wetland designation on the bothered to monitor and property and got caught redmaintain the equipment. As handed doing it. The county a result, hundreds of gallons was fined by a jury for $7 of oil flowed freely down the million as a result, because canyon. The county is being the land was never a wetland prosecuted accordingly. to begin with. The fine got The second case is in thrown out on a technicality, Santa Maria where there but the finding of “fraud, is alleged contamination of malice and oppression” the aquifer at the site of the stands. former Semco company. “Fraud, malice and Albeit most people believe oppression” sounds like that most of the contamination somebody’s de facto mission originated long before statement, if you ask me. Semco located there by way of a Department of Defense World War 2 air training base Andy Caldwell is the COLAB that had no less than 250 executive director and host of tanks of all sorts of bad stuff “The Andy Caldwell Show,” including, of course, various airing 3 to 5 p.m. weekdays on aviation fluids. In this case, KZSB AM 1290, the News-Press the Regional Water Quality radio station.
Robert Lindsay Santa Barbara
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hile I prefer to ignore most of the propaganda that currently passes for political discourse, as a retired public school teacher, I feel compelled to respond to the recent editorial characterizing school choice as the new civil rights movement. The article — and virtually all like it promoting school choice — leaves out one very important difference between public and private schools: the choice that schools have. I’m quite sure that testing outcomes in private schools are substantially higher than those of public schools. Of course they are. Private schools get to choose their students whereas public schools must accept anyone within their boundaries. That includes students with emotional and physical disabilities (excuse me, differences) for whom it can be incredibly expensive to provide appropriate care and who are unlikely to be academically high functioning. Students must be enrolled regardless of their language skills with dozens of languages other than English represented in California and nationally. Students with behavioral issues or low academic potential must be accepted by public schools when they enroll and their needs must be addressed regardless of the extra cost and drain on district resources. Private schools can reject any of these potential applicants, and they do reject them. Is it any wonder their outcomes appear superior? So to all proponents of school choice, let’s make this fair. Give parents their checks for education expenses, but require any school to which they apply to accept
The proper regard for money Re: Frank Sanitate’s column, “SVB Board, Executives Became Greedy,” News-Press.
I
enjoyed Frank Sanitate’s article on March 18. It made me think of the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 2, verses 1-11. Many view the Bible as the word of God others see it as a good book with some good stories. The book of Ecclesiastes was written by King Solomon, who, if our understanding is correct, was one of the wisest men to ever walk the earth. Those verses in chapter 2 outline all the riches and pleasures he was able to accumulate in massive amounts. What I have always found interesting is what he wrote in verse 11 concerning riches. “But when I reflected on all the works that my own hands had done and all the hard work that I toiled to accomplish, I saw that everything was futile, a chasing after the wind, there was nothing of real value under the sun.” If the Bible is the word of God, it is interesting He had these verses written down for us to meditate on the proper place money and things should be in our lives. Thanks for your writing, Frank. Jay Gretchen Santa Barbara
We can do better
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think it’s pretty obvious that the U.S. is a mess: drugs out of control, Southern border
destroyed, gender confusion, governmental spending, one-way justice, reverse racism, green new deal and problems with national strength, education and spiritual values — and the many “byproducts” of all of this. Crime is rampant, along with inflation, as we head into our own destruction. We have forgotten the pillars and lives that brought us to 2020. It’s all about money and power. Our last presidential election remains very dubious,and was won out of hate for the opposition, which continues to this day, as we head for 2024. There are too many people who will refuse to acknowledge an unwise decision. Presidential candidates often choose running mates for their own tenure ”insurance.” I still remain hopeful that, as a nation, things will turn around for us again. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again! Love this country. There is nothing better! Randy Rosness Solvang
Let’s act to prevent school shootings
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chool shootings. It is a shocking travesty that those two words can occur next to each other! We all feel helpless in the face of evil. However, I believe it is a multi-faceted problem, and until all three problems are addressed, the carnage of the innocents will continue. The United (I prefer Untied) States of America is the only country where children are murdered, and homicides are through the roof. I hosted a student from Belgium for a semester, who asked if it was safe to go to school or would he possibly be shot. They think our country is completely nuts in Europe and Canada for electing crazy people and allowing assault Please see LETTERS on C4
Universal charitable deduction helps people address local needs
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on’t itemize your guarantees a broader array of taxes but still want givers a voice in our country’s to streamline philanthropic future, creating your H&R Block a nonprofit ecosystem that is experience this tax more inclusive and that better season? You’re in luck. reflects the charitable vision of A bipartisan group of all Americans. lawmakers led by U.S. Sen. James American philanthropy is Lankford, R-Okla., introduced a increasingly a thing reserved bill earlier this month that would for the wealthy – a top-down let you do just that. system for mega-donors Carolyn If enacted, the to direct and execute Bolton Charitable Act would their charitable vision. allow charitable givers Creating a universal The author is deduction would create who don’t itemize — with Donors so, don’t deduct things more of a bottom-up Trust like mortgage interest system of philanthropy and medical expenses that better represents from their taxable income – to American values. nonetheless claim a charitable This bill does just that, deduction and get money back on freeing all people to give to the their taxes beginning in the 2023 nonprofits that tackle issues in tax year. their own community like, for Lawmakers should support this example, DV8 Kitchen Vocational common-sense legislation. Training Foundation, a Kentucky As the bill’s primary sponsor, charity that provides job Sen. Lankford said in a training for those struggling with statement earlier this month, addiction. “Our nonprofits provide our The charity helps those neighborhoods and families actively recovering from drug vital job training, compassionate and alcohol abuse earn foodhomeless assistance, food in service certifications and learn times of crisis, and spiritual valuable skills that make them counsel during our best and worst the perfect candidates for jobs at days.” DV8 Kitchen, a for-profit eatery The Charitable Act rewards that employs graduates of the philanthropic givers with a nonprofit vocational-training tax incentive and, ultimately, program.