The scoop: Save this business, eat ice cream
The surest way to kill an economy is to kill its entrepreneurial spirit. In the brief, 10-year history of the Business Times, we’ve seen this attempted on a few occasions. The killers can wear suits — as in the case of the tort lawyer who went up and down the Central Coast filing Americans for Read More →
New carrier arrives
Speaking of free enterprise, United Airlines is about to get some competition on its heavily traveled route from Santa Barbara to Denver. Frontier Airlines, which emerged from bankruptcy recently under the ownership of Republic Airways of Indiana, is going to give United its first head-to-head competition to Denver in decades. Business travelers and ski fans Read More →
Where the rubber meets our road rage on repairs
Headed northbound on Highway 101 in late January, a car driven by one of our staff literally went airborne when it went over a large bump just past the Ventura city limits. The car landed with a crunch as it smacked the bottom of a pothole. Some $300 later it’s back to normal — and Read More →
Green districts garner attention
A few weeks ago our news pages touched on a special kind of special district — one that promotes and funds green energy projects. Santa Barbara County and San Luis Obispo both are considering such districts, though with slightly different approaches to funding. And the idea caught the attention of The Economist, which wrote about Read More →
Editorial: Behind McCaw’s victory, a chance to reset her role
Wendy McCaw has notched an admirable victory for the First Amendment, but her job as the owner and co-publisher of the Santa Barbara News-Press may need some reinvention. McCaw’s struggle with her newsroom over who controls the content of the news pages came to a head in 2006, when the paper’s top editors and reporters Read More →
Santa Paula: Showing true grit
As Mayor Jim Tovias explained in his state of the city address on Groundhog Day, Santa Paula hasn’t spent the past year hiding from a weak economy. Without a single layoff or salary reduction, the city has shaved $1 million from a $10 millon budget and reached zero deficit without tapping into reserves. Fearing another Read More →
Schwarzenegger has exit lesson for Obama
We are inclined to think about our leaders in historic terms. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and the Roosevelts are viewed as figures who tamed their legislatures and achieved great things. But as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger heads into the sunset, we are confronted with a new paradigm — a larger-than-life figure who is unable to overcome Read More →
