"Fuzzy do-good thinking"

That's what Jay from Taking Notes calls the thinking behind Tuesday night's political theatre in Santa Barbara:

It's not just typical fuzzy do-good thinking. Isn't it just trolling for votes? At taxpayer expense?

It's the end-result. 30 years ago, SB set in motion bad regulatory policies that have created a mess, part of which is that now business interests in the city can't recruit sufficient numbers of good employees because no one can afford to live closer than 50 miles away in Ventura County or Lompoc.

To compound the problem, they've decided that the fix for a government-created problem is to further tinker with the immutable laws of economics. That is to say, that people ought to make more than their skills are worth in the market because...well, because they say so.

This many years in, with no real answer in sight, Jay is very correct in calling it "trolling for votes."