Legislators should help manufacturing rebound
While the South Coast is reveling in its waterfront makeover, tri-county tourism is getting stronger and economists are heralding a boom in craft spirits, the manufacturing core of the region is looking more and more hollowed-out. Large sections of Simi Valley and west Ventura County and North Santa Barbara County are losing head-of-household jobs. San Read More →
Self-driving cars: Disruptions on the road ahead
By Paul Witman Self-driving cars and trucks are making their way from the lab to city streets and highways. Projects from Google, Audi, Tesla and others have made considerable progress in enabling the “driver” just to tell the car where to go and the car does the rest. Uber, the taxi alternative, is testing these Read More →
Kurland stepping down but influence continues
PennyMac Financial’s Stanford Kurland has a habit of working in mysterious ways. A veteran of Countrywide Financial, he joined that company in the late 1970s and rose through the ranks to become its president, leaving without fanfare in 2006 — just as the excesses in the mortgage market were beginning to become apparent. In 2009, Read More →
Supervisor’s defense of SOAR misleading
By John Krist In her Dec. 2 commentary criticizing a Pacific Coast Business Times article about the effect of Save Open-space and Agricultural Resources on property values, Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks accurately but selectively quotes from Farm Bureau of Ventura County’s Land Use Policy. Her cherry-picking of a single passage from this five-page document Read More →
Lumps of coal for employers’ holiday stockings
By Jonathan Light There is great uncertainty about whether proposed federal wage and hour laws are going to be implemented in 2017, but there are plenty of other things to worry about on the employment law front in California. Regardless of the federal implementation, we won’t see much federal effect in California. Here are just Read More →
No more delays in widening Highway 101
There they go again. The no-growth crowd is crowing about a newly-released environmental impact report that shows a handful of intersections on Highway 101 will experience slowdowns after the highway is widened between Carpinteria and Montecito. But to anybody who’s been following the buzzing of political gadflies around the estimated $428 million project, the complaints Read More →
Navigating the land of Trump-portunities
By Mike Panesis Donald Trump is not my president. He is my country’s president, so we need to prepare for the next four years with him in charge. Most true entrepreneurs are constantly evaluating startup opportunities, especially during times of great change. President-elect Trump has issued an action plan for his first 100 days in Read More →
