Government is legalized theft.
They take your money, give it to their friends, donors, special interests and corruptors. We the people must give. Otherwise we go to jail.
“Forever and a day, while wrapping themselves in an environmental superhero cape, the folks who run the County of Santa Barbara have relentlessly excoriated, persecuted, and prosecuted any and all industries for accidents that harmed or had the potential to harm the environment, with a special focus on the oil industry. When the Plains oil pipeline sprung a leak at Refugio beach several years back, the County sought to prosecute the pipeline company for the leak and for having failed to report it within the hour as required by law.
For the record, they were 29 minutes late in their report. However, when an oil and water separator – the management and control of which was relegated to the county by the Regional Water Quality Control Board – leaked globs of oil down Toro Canyon creek, the county failed to report the same for 17 days!
Government is corrupt. The above example shows the double standard it uses to prosecute the productive and protect the corrupt and incompetent. The bigger the government, the more corruption and cost. When asked for a bond or tax increase—just say NO—they are already stealing more than they should.
Looters and Polluters
by Andy Caldwell, SB Current, 12/31/23 https://www.sbcurrent.com/p/looters-and-polluters?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2074654&post_id=140214115&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=x9o3&utm_medium=email
The year in review for Santa Barbara County government reveals two momentous, reprehensible scandals.
Forever and a day, while wrapping themselves in an environmental superhero cape, the folks who run the County of Santa Barbara have relentlessly excoriated, persecuted, and prosecuted any and all industries for accidents that harmed or had the potential to harm the environment, with a special focus on the oil industry. When the Plains oil pipeline sprung a leak at Refugio beach several years back, the County sought to prosecute the pipeline company for the leak and for having failed to report it within the hour as required by law.
For the record, they were 29 minutes late in their report. However, when an oil and water separator – the management and control of which was relegated to the county by the Regional Water Quality Control Board – leaked globs of oil down Toro Canyon creek, the county failed to report the same for 17 days!
Moreover, when the District Attorney threatened prosecution, the County spent $1 million on lawyers attempting to thwart the investigation. Eventually, the county pled guilty to one felony and one misdemeanor associated with their numerous failures in this case, thereby staining their environmental street cred.
When all was said and done, the always nauseatingly sanctimonious First District Supervisor Das Williams said that replacing the failing equipment was the “right thing to do.” The county supervisors who directed this hypocritical fiasco should have done the right thing without first wasting more than one million in taxpayer money to avoid their culpability. They should also resolve to go a little easier on companies who make similar “mistakes” in the future.
County Supervisors, the County Fire Chief, and the County Fire Chiefs’ Association need to start telling the truth in 2024 after having been called out by a local judge in a court case involving the County’s ambulance contract. There is little doubt the County violated state law and abandoned all sense of fair dealing when it conspired to steal a contract that American Medical Response (AMR) won fair and square in an open competition with the County Fire Department for ambulance services.
That is, when AMR won the contract to be the sole ambulance provider in the county, the Fire Chiefs’ Association lobbied the Board of Supervisors to cancel the contract and to ostensibly require AMR to share the contract with the County Fire Department.
The Association stated that “a two-permit-based model is financially viable, and reasonably equitable, for both permit holders, and it will improve services while requiring no county subsidy.”
It has now been reasonably assumed by the court, via an injunction, that the County was most likely only pretending to create a process to share the ambulance services contract with AMR, as the Supervisors’ real intention was to, by fire hook and crook, give County Fire the sole service contract. Hence, the hubris of the county to purchase 35 ambulances surreptitiously in the middle of the contract competition.
When AMR sued the County over this dirty deal, however, the Fire Chiefs’ Association then reverse-argued in court that, “If the County is forced into a multiple-provider situation, the harm to the public will be severe. It will be inequitable, unsafe, and unsustainable. Permit applications from both County Fire and AMR articulate concern regarding insufficient revenue to support more than one provider per permit type.”
Here, the well-worn phrase, “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” comes to mind…
The County Supervisors must abandon their commitment to collegiality in a woke echo chamber to avoid breaking the law and getting sued. That is, somebody, anybody, in the County must start telling the truth in public meetings rather than having to rely on a judge to inform the public what is really going on behind closed doors.
