Like namesake and fellow doomsayer Jeremiah, the genial host of Newsmakers TV on this week's edition warns of impending doom, seeing portents of a human extinction event in the latest reportage from the program's all-star journalist guests.
Nick Welsh reprises his piece revealing that nearly 300 people have applied for permits in the county to carry a concealed handgun since the U.S. Supreme Court's latest decision advancing the evisceration of common sense gun safety regulation (presumably to ensure that every citizen over the age of 7 is armed at all times). Then he turns up the depresso ray to full blast, disclosing that data he dug out shows a record number of 168 local drug overdose deaths last year, 115 caused by Fentanyl (the silver lining here is that the overdose antidote Narcan prevented many more, and now is becoming widely available).
Josh Molina weighs in with the not-so-good news that Planning Director Lisa "Build, Baby, Build" Plowman (whose two stints working for the county bookend 17 years working in the development industry) has located an additional 19 sites -- most of them on the South Coast -- to add to the county's Housing Element, which, politically, may make the pack-em-in-like sardines strategy more palatable but, practically, won't reduce the associated traffic, congestion and infrastructure problems to accompany this bout of government genius social engineering; then Josh is off to the races recapping the effort by the management of Earl Warren Showgrounds to make it a haven for pickle ball and flag football by giving short shrift to the now outraged local equestrian community.
Plus: Let churches earn their tax-free status, an attack on golfing attire, and share a big laugh at the spurious huffing and puffing emitted by pot industry puppets and Supervisors Das Williams and Steve Lavignino in response to the effort by an ad hoc group of Carp citizens, who have been afflicted by their reckless cannabis legislation, for state auditors to investigate the sleazy process by which Santa Barbara became the weed capital of California.
All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV.
JR
Watch the new show via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. The program is broadcast on public access TVSB, Channel 17 on Cox Cable, at 8 p.m. Monday-Friday, and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB 91.9 FM broadcasts it at 5:30 p.m. Mondays.
Image: New Yorker cartoon by Brooke Bourgeois.