Did You Know? Bonnie Donovan
Speaking up and exercising our ability to choose are vitally important.
Especially now.
Did you know that the Santa Barbara City Council plans to seriously curtail the use of natural gas?
The plan is to take away the freedom of choice whether to use gas or electrical appliances.
It is commonly known that natural gas is much cheaper than electricity. And it is a proven fact that natural gas is no less green than electricity.
With electrical power, not only do we experience the inconvenience of scheduled outages, but also the entreaty not to use electrical appliances during times of high power demands to prevent overloading the grid.
So why is our City Council proposing this no-win situation for the citizens?
As covered in previous columns, this same council has started a city-owned power company that employs only electric power. Higher prices, loss of freedom of choice and more susceptibility to loss of power, what gives?
Please send emails to object to this proposal to sbcitycouncil@santabarbaraca.gov. These communications must be sent to City Council by 10 a.m. Monday before council members cast their votes at Tuesday’s meeting.
Mayor Cathy Murrillo states that people are expressing fear that “we are going to remove natural gas infrastructure or ban natural gas use in existing buildings, which is simply not the case.”
No, that would just be the beginning. This sort of change is always done in phases.
How long would it be before natural gas would be eliminated altogether? For example, when a building permit application is made, the city often makes its own stipulations for your project.
Weighing in on this manner is former councilman Dale Francisco.
“The United States is one of very few industrialized nations whose CO2 emissions has declined in recent years, all because of the replacement of coal-fired power plants with one’s powered by natural gas,” Mr. Francisco said. “This should be especially obvious in a state where rolling electricity black outs and brown outs have become a fact of life.”
This action would be in lockstep with NorCal environmentalism gone wild — stigmatizing a source of reliable, clean, and plentiful energy.
During a Planning Commission meeting, the pleas have been for developers to bring down the cost by using no-frills construction. However, the City Council’s program to eliminate natural gas will increase the cost of construction. How does that benefit us?
In the new year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that Congress is promoting the use of a genderless society by striking pronouns and words that denote familial relationships. That means eliminating such terms as sister, brother, husband, wife, mother, father, daughter, son, grandmother, grandfather, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews. Clearly this points to the erosion of the family unit.
Is this why the City Council has recently begun addressing the mayor as “Honorable,” instead of the traditional “Madame”?
Imagine the impact of eliminating these definitive pronouns from our vocabulary.
In fact, on Jan. 3, U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., ended the opening congressional daily prayer with “amen.” Then added, “and ‘a-women.’ ” He was only demonstrating that he did not know the translation of amen is “so be it” and has nothing to do with gender.
Please be aware the Santa Barbara Unified School District is lowering the educational bar even further with its decision to refrain from giving grades lower than a “C.” With this elimination of the grades ” D” or “F,” we suspect this is a move toward the “no child left behind” credo.
But the ulterior motive appears to ensure the district loses no funding due to its subpar educational system, which would be evident in what they have delivered.
This is clearly a situation where the board acts without adequate input from the teachers who are the educating professionals.
By removing the “stigmatizing” effects of a D or an F on a student’s record, the district also lowers the overall academic expectation.
Students lose the incentive to avoid a D or an F, knowing they can just make it up later. And that loss of incentive impairs the rigor of schooling and undermines the tried-and-true method of education.
This has all been worked out: how to educate effectively, how to hold students accountable for getting the work done in a timely manner.
Pushing through these drastic changes without proper discussion is another example of taking advantage of a time when culturally and socially we are not unified, when we’re not able to gather and share ideas.
This smacks of political power play as well. We see it in all areas of local and national arenas.
Again, instead of worrying about “feelings” and going gender-neutral, teach students how to think and reason and how to perform well in math, reading and writing. Teach them about civics. All of that would help ring in the future.
We have been told that Santa Barbara does not have a gang problem. But consider last week’s news. What is this called?
On two different days, a body was found.
There was a gang shooting on Monday at 9 p.m., when Santa Barbara officers were dispatched to Arrellaga and Castillo streets.(“SB police respond to call about shots fired,” News-Press, Jan. 6).
Upon their arrival, officers discovered evidence of a shooting but noone on the scene.
The city has had an apparent gang/turf skirmish during the past week. One involved a stabbing, and one a double murder with others injured, as reported in the News-Press.
Another stabbing was reported on San Pascual; however, it was reported as involving transients. It appears the gang activity is under-reported. Another serious city matter is being swept under the rug.
No matter one’s political persuasion, what happened in the Capitol Wednesday is a shameful blot on American history. This kind of violence can never be justified.
It is a travesty to the American way of life, which is predicated on law-abiding order and civility, decency and decorum. “(Americans) do not storm their own Capitol over a lost election … They do not push and shove police officers …”
We need to pray for and work toward restored peace and unity throughout our nation.
