Where's Carnac When You Need Him?

According to Betsy Newmark, the L.A. Times is only just noticing that Santa Barbara’s slow growth policies have had disastrous economic and social consequences. The Times writes, “Many of these ripple effects could not have been foreseen 30 years ago”. But as Betsy notes:

Well, maybe the geniuses in the Santa Barbara and at the L.A. Times couldn’t have predicted it, but anyone with the slightest acquaintance with economics could have told them what would happen.

It really does seem sometimes that newspaper men are absolutely incapable of extrapolating the future from current trends though–especially when it clashes with their worldview.