There’s an old saying, “If you don’t plan on doing it right, you’d better plan on doing it again.” As I write, Governor Newsom has just stepped way out ahead of the federal government and ordered sweeping rollbacks of businesses in 30 counties across California, including our own. In Santa Barbara, not so long ago […]
There is a collective myth of how America started out as a haven for religious freedom. While there’s some truth to that, in fact, America started as a business. The first settlers in Jamestown were commercially organized as The Virginia Company, and granted a charter in 1604 to exploit New World resources for the British […]
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Right Side of History As I read the LA Times coverage of the independent SB Grand Jury’s scathing report on the unethical way our cannabis policy came to be, I had one silver lining thought: “Thank goodness the Montecito Journal had the wisdom – and guts – to be on the right side of history […]
I wrote this letter July 4th-5th, 2020. Growing up, Independence Day was one of my favorite holidays. It was a celebration of the strong shoulders upon which this great nation was built; a celebration of the principles our Founding Fathers fought for and a celebration of the Founding Fathers themselves. The food was great and […]
Last Thursday, the Board of Directors of the Montecito Water District (MWD) voted unanimously to approve the Water Supply Agreement (WSA) with the City of Santa Barbara. Next up is approval by the Santa Barbara City Council. The WSA is expected to go before the City Council June 30. If agreement is reached, city water […]
Way back in the Dark Ages (say, the year 1970 or so), the “political season” began the day after Labor Day, in early September. That allowed for a nearly 10-week stretch of politicizing and polarizing to lead up to the first Tuesday in November, which was, putatively, Election Day. Over the years, that paradigm shifted […]
When I made the decision to create the consortium to purchase this newspaper I did so with one primary goal: to create a forum for our community to talk with and to each other, not at each other. Nor to avoid each other. From where I sat, there was a vast diversity of political and […]
I’ve been thinking lately about all the money that’s been flowing into the economy from the CARES Act. The $500+ billion that went to big corporations has been in the news lately – mostly because of the brouhaha over Treasury Secretary Mnuchin refusing to tell the Congress how much he gave, to whom he gave […]
Thanks To the Internet of Things, It’s Always Open Mic Night at Su Casa Humanity may never have been more disjointed, tribal, and disconnected but our stuff, thanks to the Internet of Things, is thriving wirelessly and virtually everything has been WiFi enabled, or, in today’s parlance, is “smart.” It’s my observation that most things […]
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We are writing this piece on June 19, 2020, and wanted to wish everyone Happy Juneteenth! For many of our readers, this might be the first year you’ve heard about the holiday called Juneteenth, but it’s been celebrated around parts of the United States since 1886, with more and more people celebrating it each year. […]
Writing this column on Juneteenth, I am reminded of Bryan Stevenson’s fabulous 2014 book Just Mercy. In it, he observes that “Capital punishment means, ‘them without capital get the punishment’…” Stevenson ends the description of his first experience with prisoners on Georgia’s death row with this musing, “My short time on death row revealed that […]
The glue binding America is coming undone. Every aspect of life is becoming strained by growing divisiveness. Which media do we trust? Who is worthy of federal aid? How can we ever put this country back together as “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”? Trust in our political leadership has […]
Water has historically been Montecito’s (and one of California’s) most critical and controversial issues. We hope you’ve found helpful Nick Schou’s deep dive into the complicated nature of Montecito’s proposed “Water Sharing Agreement” or WSA, with Santa Barbara; and Montecito’s historical relationship to Santa Barbara’s desalination project and how the MWD has finally been able […]
Not Missing After All Nicholas Schou’s article in the 18-25 June 2020 edition of the Journal is a deeply flawed and misdirected screed against private wells disguised as an “investigation” of “Montecito’s Missing Water.” An alliterative headline to be sure, but missing? It may be unknown, but it hasn’t gone missing. At the outset, when […]
