The weather and the election of Donald Trump don’t appear to have much in common. But the rainstorms that struck over President’s Day weekend and the Trump bump in the stock market have had a big impact on the fiscal fortunes of Santa Barbara County. Hopefully, the powers that be will take advantage of a Read More →
The region’s newest business workspace made its public debut Feb. 23 with the opening of Sandbox, a medium-sized business incubator at 414 Olive St. in Santa Barbara’s emerging Haley Street corridor. About 85 people attended a forum on “The Business of Virtual Reality” with VR experts and author Shel Israel. Sandbox is the brainchild of Read More →
The dam was declared totally safe. The collapse was totally unexpected. This month’s emergency evacuation of 200,000 people below the troubled spillways at the Oroville Dam in Northern California recalled memories of a disaster right in our backyard. On March 2, 1928, as many as 600 people, many of them residents of Ventura County, died Read More →
Two of the smartest journalists I know are Thomas J. Friedman of the New York Times and Fareed Zakaria of CNN. When they reach the same conclusion about Donald Trump, the Russians and his tax returns, I’m pretty confident they’re on to something. That’s why I’ll add this newspaper’s voice to those calling for President Read More →
Just a day before his confirmation hearing, CKE Restaurants and subsidiaries Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s CEO Andy Puzder has withdrawn his nomination for secretary of labor. Puzder, a former Santa Barbara resident who was ideologically in step with President Donald Trump, was rapidly losing support from the left as well as the right. And after Read More →
From its perch in Thousand Oaks, Amgen continues to be one of the savvier companies in the biopharma space when it comes to navigating drug policy and drug pricing. It continues to win the battle to keep copycat biosimilars from eroding its core franchises while gaining approval for new drugs – the latest is for Read More →
Innovation happens in the most surprising ways. And history shows that some of America’s greatest innovators are immigrants. Recently, many of these immigrant-entrepreneurs are refugees like Intel’s Andy Grove, whose family left Hungary after the USSR cracked down. Or the kids of refugees — think Steve Jobs, whose dad was from Syria. Most of them Read More →