No, I’m not referring to the kind that keeps the time, although those kinds may be in your future also. What I am referring to is the kind of watch you need to keep yourself and your possessions safe during the season that seems to bring out the entire criminal element at once.

I am talking about the people who will snatch your purse, will break into your gift-laden car in the parking lot, and will call you on the phone purporting to be a charitable organization looking for money. The most difficult are those who use the internet to rob you; they are also the most difficult to prosecute, because our law enforcement is not prepared to deal with computer invasions into your life -- as I have sadly found out.

A few months back, a couple of ex-employees joined forces with the intent to cause me personal and financial harm. For a period of time they “mined” my computer, reading every few minutes everything going in or out of my various accounts. Included in the e-mails were a series of confidential e-mails between one of my attorneys and myself regarding the final payment to one of the employees who had quit.

 

I discovered, accidentally, what was going on when another employee reported on an e-mail my husband had sent to me which I had not yet read. Subsequently, I was able to print out all of the “minings,” which I then transferred to another account. That report was deleted from the account remotely and an account password was changed by these dishonest individuals so I could not access it. I was able, however, to recover that printout, which I subsequently took to the sheriff’s department. There it ended with nothing accomplished so far.

 

There is not enough understanding of the computer world to warrant investigation unless you can prove you have been significantly financially harmed, even though “mining” is a felony. The sheriff’s department is still looking into it.

I would recommend that you be very careful if you, like I, do a lot of your holiday shopping on the computer. Make sure you are only on secured sites and be extra careful when moving from one screen to another that you have not been shunted off to a look-alike site.

 

Chinese ports

I was very distressed to hear that over the Thanksgiving holiday there were several incidents involving our naval ships being refused entry to the Hong Kong harbor. In one case, families had flown to Hong Kong in anticipation of spending some time with their loved ones for the holiday and were disappointed and angry at the Chinese decision. In another situation, our ships were looking for a harbor to escape severe storms out at sea. Once again, the Chinese authorities refused them entrance.

I cannot pretend to know why these two incidents occurred, as I am not privy to governmental information. However, on the surface, it appears very unkind and heartless to say the least.

I am unclear as to what would motivate this kind of unfortunate behavior -- perhaps flexing of one’s muscles or just being obstinate could explain it. In any event, although I would hesitate to suggest a boycott of products until better behavior is forthcoming, I would hope that people are aware of just how much trade goes on between our two countries and that we are being overrun with products from other countries because they can produce them cheaper and faster.

 

Unfortunately, our trade unions, while performing some valuable service in the past, have systematically made us unable to compete financially with the rest of the world. Most people understand that our standard of living is exponentially higher here than it is in most parts of the world, including much of Europe, but when are we going to take into consideration that virtually everybody can beat our price.

When you think of price, you tend to look for the cheaper items. I do this as well. What I fear many do not do is consider more than just the price: What about quality, or where the item in question was made?

 

It is our own car manufacturers’ fault that Japan, Korea and other countries made smaller, more efficient cars. Fuel prices for many years were not one of the reasons for Americans to buy foreign makes. These days, that is definitely a factor, but are we going to give our manufacturers their due as they have improved their product to be as good as or better than foreign made cars and try to buy American? Some of us will, but many will not, and it is on their heads that the economy will strengthen or falter.

The same goes for our food supply. There has been a push in recent years to label food as to country of origin, so that people who do not want, for example, to buy Chilean grapes or avocados in favor of U.S. products can avoid doing so. Since the days of the Mad Cow disease scare,  there has been considerable conversation in the cattle industry about somehow labeling cattle born in the U.S. as such, so that when a piece of beef is presented in a meat case, the consumer knows that it came from an animal born and raised here. Because the only cases of Mad Cow in the U.S. have been from animals raised in other countries, and less than a handful have ever been found, people should feel pretty confident about the source of their meat.

 

Vegetables as a product face similar issues, and farmers are working hard to ensure the safety of what you put on your table. We have had a few problems with vegetables from other countries only because they do not have to follow the same strict regulations that American farmers do. There is nothing we can do to control that, and many of these problems cannot easily be detected ahead of time. As a result, some groups are suggesting that we buy only locally produced fruits and vegetables. Although it is great to support your local farmers, something I would heartily agree with, this practice will limit you to only seasonal items. No tomatoes in the winter in most of the states unless they are hothouse grown, which is why they come from Mexico during that part of the year. No year-round supply of many of the fruits and vegetables that we have all come to expect, because they are not produced in our part of the country or even in our part of the world during some part of the year. Do we even remember what is “seasonal”?

 

Unhappy Canyon

While I was concerned about developments in other parts of the valley, unbeknownst to me a development was marching towards completion right in my back yard. Apparently, a neighbor of mine is planning to build a 22,000 sq. ft. winery right down the road. The project is contemplating and applying for eight events a year, which are supposed to be “private.” There are several issues about this project that seem a bit odd to me. First, unless all traffic is prohibited from using Armour Ranch Road, which of course it won’t be, my ranch will certainly be impacted by this development in a negative way with workers, harvesters, more heavy trucks and the wine-drinking public. Aside from the fact that Armour Ranch Road is a very narrow, winding, limited-sight-distance and limited-shoulder-width road, it is also a designated bike trail – something I also find to be very poor planning.

 

The property on one side of Armour Ranch Road is entirely owned by one entity, San Lucas Ranch. The fences are also owned by San Lucas Ranch, which is why some of them are not the usual combination of barbed wire and hog fencing or non-climb wire, but are instead solely strands of barbed wire. This is because numerous times during the year cars will go through the fence on one of the curves, and it is simply too expensive to continually replace every couple of months. Of course, every time the fence goes down, there is a good chance that cattle will get out on the road, increasing the peril both to them and to any drivers who might not see them.

I am very unhappy that Santa Barbara County did not see fit to notify me of this project in advance, and I am furious that the Board of Supervisors found that no negative impacts will result from the project in this neighborhood and have made a Negative Declaration.

 

I only found out about it this last weekend when a neighbor from Happy Canyon called me up to ask if I would sign a petition against the development. I called another neighbor who gave me a lot more information about what has been going on in the last few years with my immediate neighbors, such as the person who persuaded everyone to abandon their neighborhood association (which they can reform at any time) assuring them that the County would keep them safe from development.

So much for that idea! I daresay the County will recite its mantra that they only have to notify people within 1000 feet of the project, but that notification is certainly inadequate when you consider the limited access and impacts on a tiny bike-trail road.

What a great mix -- people from a winery party, grape picking trucks and bicycles! How could anybody think that was a good idea? And, yes, I did sign the petition.

 

HR 2421

Also known as the Clean Water Restoration Act of 2007. More than 450 environmental organizations have put their support behind this all-encompassing vehicle for another federal grab at rights that belong to state and local authorities.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that these organizations, which often are in no way representative of citizens, should want to be a part of this horrible bill.

 

Why should you care? Because if you, for some reason, get on the wrong side of a local “environmentalist,” and there are a few of them living in the valley, they can report you for polluting the waters of the United States or some such other nonsense if you have so much as a mud puddle or rut in your driveway that gets wet during rain storms.

The name of the bill is very misleading, deliberately so I believe, because who doesn’t want clean water? What the real aim is, however, is to grab control away from local authorities and give it to federal agencies who have no idea about local conditions. Remember when I talked about “ground-truthing”? This is something that almost never happens, which is why we have blue line creeks running all over the county when we all know that these are merely drainages for when rain runs over the land.

 

This is why Santa Barbara has such inaccurate maps, because they rely on a radical “environmental” group named Center for Biological Diversity, located in Arizona, to provide them. These people have never even been here, and certainly have never “ground-truthed” anything.

They all rely on air photos from satellites. If you have ever looked at those on Google Earth you know they don’t give much detail.

So, if you haven’t called, written or e-mailed all of your representatives about this disgraceful bill, please do so now before it is too late. We will have no one to blame but ourselves for losing our rights if we don’t take the time to speak up!