Austin Voters Reject Bumsville

May 2nd, 2021

You expect Austin voters to embrace crazy leftwing policies, but turning every grassy median and underpass in the city into a garbage-strewn 24/7 amusement park for drug-addicted transients (with side order of arson and mayhem) was too much even for them, and yesterday they reinstated the camping ban. Proposition B passed 85,830 (57.13%) to 64,409 (42.87%). It’s a grave blow to Austin Mayor Steve Adler, City Councilman Greg Casar, the homeless industrial complex, and a number of random drug dealers.

Other May 1st Voting results:

  • Proposition F, which would turn Austin in a “strong mayor” form of government (i.e., let Adler control spending more directly instead of a City Manager) was overwhelmingly defeated, 126,847 (85.91%) to 20,810 (14.09%).
  • Proposition G (adding another city council district) was defeated more narrowly, 83,092 (56.58%) to 62,702 (43.42%).
  • Proposition H, to give every voter two $25 vouchers to contribute to political campaigns (i.e., another way to pass taxpayer money to leftwing politicians) was defeated 83,092 to 63,809.
  • All the other propositions passed, including Proposition E (ranked choice voting), which is illegal under Texas law.
  • In the special election for the U.S. 6th Congressional District, Republicans Susan Wright and Jake Ellzey head to a runoff, guaranteeing that the seat will stay in Republican hands. Carpetbagger Dan Rodimer finished with a dismal 2,086 votes, or 2.66% of the total, good for 10th place.

    • Some Twitter reactions:

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Texas | 3 Comments »

    Remember: May 1st is Victims of Communism Day

    May 1st, 2021

    Today is May 1st, which means that once again it’s time to observe Victims of Communism Day, remembering that a false, brutal ideology killed over 100 million people.

    VictimsofCommunismDay

    Here’s a list of memorials to the victims of communism.

    Here’s a video of some Israelis explaining why they’re observing Victims of Communism Day:

    Note that November 7 is also observed as a day commemorating the victims of communism. There’s no reason we can’t observe both…

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    Posted in Communism, video | No Comments »

    Austinites: VOTE TODAY!

    May 1st, 2021

    If you live in the Austin City Limits and haven’t voted yet, go vote for Proposition B today. Travis County Voting locations are here, while Williamson County voting locations can be looked up here.

    Voters finally have a chance to undo Steve Adler and the Austin City Council’s bumsville madness.

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    Posted in Austin, Texas | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for April 30, 2021

    April 30th, 2021

    If you live inside the Austin city limits and haven’t voted yet, don’t forget to vote to reinstate the camping ban tomorrow!

  • Joe Biden declares war on America:

    The country had “done nothing about immigration in 30 years,” (most of them under Clinton and Obama), except that under Trump illegal immigration was reduced by 90 percent, and the principal problem was effectively solved until Biden stopped construction of the southern border wall and reopened the borders. He said it was time to do something about the ”dreamers” but that was not the policy of his party when Trump attempted to help them. Biden called for resources to deal with the “root cause of why people are fleeing” Central America as if it were the business of the United States to raise the welfare of those poor countries, and feed more graft into them, rather than to monitor its own border and apply a sane system of an admission of immigrants.

    He revived the old Obama nonsense about combating employment with unionized green jobs, and leaped into the time warp of bygone days with the bunk that “the middle class built the country and the unions built the middle class, and we must promote the right to unionize.” Unions today are an almost wholly retrograde force redundant to market pressures for higher wages and better working conditions and largely confined to the stagnant backwater the public sector.

    The former administration created huge numbers of “millionaires and billionaires who cheat on their taxes
adding $2 trillion of debt and extending the pay disparity between the chief executive and the lowest wage earner to 320 to 1.” Naturally ignored were the facts that under his predecessor the income taxes of 83 percent of taxpayers were reduced, the number of positions to be filled exceeded the number of unemployed by over 750,000 and the lowest 20 percent of income-earners was in percentage terms gaining income more swiftly than the top ten percent.

    He taxed the former administration with “trickle-down” economics, though that charge was leveled at President Reagan’s massively popular and successful economic policies. Most outrageously, Biden took all credit for 220 million vaccinations with no hint that if it had not been for Trump’s direct intervention to accelerate the development of vaccines, none of it would have happened.

    Almost as disingenuous was the claim that House of Representatives Bill Number 1, which would effectively eliminate any serious method of verifying the validity of individual votes, is really an attack on the Republican effort to attack “the sacred right to vote.“ That bill is almost certainly unconstitutional, would institutionalize and protect mass ballot harvesting, and it ignores the fact that 77 percent of Americans support photo-identification for voters.

    The climate was again bandied as an “existential crisis” even though Biden acknowledged that the U.S. only provides 15 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. He also omitted to mention its splendid record in reducing those omissions even though there remains no convincing argument that they are relevant to the alleged crisis. Foreign affairs was an unrecognizable dreamworld: ”while leading with our allies” and “working closely“ with them to deal with Iran and North Korea, (principally by recommitting the West to acquiescing in Iranian nuclear militarization), he will ”stand up to (Chinese leader) Xi” whom he realizes is ”in deadly earnest” in his determination to supplant the United States as the world’s most important country.

    After the usual reassertion that everyone is created equal, Biden slipped in the need to ”root out systemic racism that plagues America
 White supremacy is terrorism” and has “surpassed Jihadism” as a menace. He gave no hint of what he thinks of organizations that are constantly threatening to burn America down if they’re not successful in extracting a full-body immersion in self-humiliation from the majority of Americans who despise all racism. Rarely in his rabidly bowdlerized summary of the nation’s affairs does the president allow the truth to intrude. This made the opposition response by Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina particularly effective.

    (Hat tip: Zero Hedge.)

  • Dissecting Biden’s lies.

    Biden tried to persuade his audience that gun violence has exploded due to the expiration of the ban on “assault weapons” in the early 2000s.

    In fact, says [David] Harsanyi, “the rate of gun homicide continued falling for more than a decade after the ban ended, even though gun ownership exploded.” Indeed, “from 2006, overall homicides fell ten out of 14 years” and “twenty-one years after a gun violence peaked in 1993, and a decade after the assault-weapon ban ended, homicides by firearms hit a historic low.”

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • North Carolina Senator Tim Scott have the response speech to Biden’s. Naturally, Democrats went full racist in response.
  • MIT study: Social distancing and limited occupancy are bunk.
  • “Unions Sell Out Their Own Workers for the Biden Energy Plan“:

    Another pro-President Joe Biden union just told its rank-and-file members: Sorry, guys, you are all fired.

    Last week, the United Mine Workers of America union endorsed Biden’s energy policies. Yes, you read that right. The coal-mining union bosses have embraced a bill that outlaws coal mining.

    This is about as dumb as the Pipefitters Union endorsing Biden for president. He repaid them with his first act as president — killing the Keystone pipeline. So now we have the Pipefitters Union against pipelines and the coal miners union against coal.

    Did anyone bother to actually ask the rank-and-file members what they thought? Can they get their union dues back?

    They should. The livelihoods of more than 50,000 coal miners just got sold down the river by their own union bosses.

  • “Bill to Ban Critical Race Theory from Texas Classrooms Passes House Committee.”

    State Reps. Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands) and James White (R-Hillister) are each carrying an identical duplicate of the bill, though the Public Education Committee of the Texas House only passed Toth’s. White’s twin never received a hearing.

    The bill tackles a number of educational tactics feared by some Republicans to be nascent trends in the classroom, such as “action civics,” overly political curriculums, and a strain of sociological thought which organizes racism through structural rather than interpersonal terms, translated from academia to popular literacy by bestselling writers such as Ibram X. Kendi and commonly called “critical race theory.”

    Specifically, the bill would adjust three key areas of education: the state curriculum, classroom education, and training for teachers and other employees.

    It would require the State Board of Education to include an understanding of the country’s founding documents in the state curriculum standards, as well as an understanding of “the fundamental moral, political, and intellectual foundations of the American experiment in self-government.”

    On top of barring teachers from asking students to engage in political activism, the bill would also forbid teachers from promoting racial preferences or concepts like inherent racism and racial guilt. It bans similar ways of teaching with regards to gender, such as fostering guilt on account of sex, teaching inherent or unconscious sexism, and encouraging worse treatment for one sex over another.

    Lastly, it would forbid “training, orientation, or therapy that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or blame on the basis of race or sex” for school employees.

    Good. Critical Race Theory is pure poison.

  • Tape leaks exposing the truth about Iran’s government:

    Deeply embarrassing leaked audio has surfaced which has sparked a crisis in Iran and which may negatively impact ongoing nuclear talks in Vienna. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was heard in audio confirmed by The New York Times as authentic saying that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) overrules many government decisions, strongly suggesting it’s the military that’s actually fully in control of the country. While this may be to some degree stating the obvious, it’s hugely unexpected for Iran’s top civilian diplomat to actually candidly admit as much. One state media newspaper has already emphasized it’s a major “scandal” for the country.

    Zarif is typically very guarded, but in the tapes that surfaced Sunday (it’s unclear at this point the origin of the leak) he’s heard discussing slain Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani and how the elite commander undermined him in a variety of ways, noting he often went against Iran’s interests. The audio interview took place over two months ago, reports say, and was intended as a classified “oral history” project covering President Rouhani’s two terms in office from Zarif’s perspective.

    “In the Islamic Republic the military field rules,” Zarif is heard telling a pro-government journalist.”I have sacrificed diplomacy for the military field rather than the field servicing diplomacy.” He goes so far as to say that Soleimani would often task himself as Iran’s top diplomat with “requirements”.

  • “John Kerry, Enemy of Israel“:

    We know now that former secretary of state John Kerry isn’t merely a critic of Israel; he is an adversary. In leaked audiotapes obtained by the U.K.-based Iran International, as reported by the New York Times, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a supporter that the former secretary of state had informed him about “at least” 200 covert Israeli actions against Iranian interests in Syria. Zarif listened to this information in “astonishment.”

    Snip.

    A high-ranking American official feels comfortable sharing this information with an autocratic adversary — a government that’s murdered hundreds of Americans, regularly kidnapped them, interfered with our elections, and propped up a regime that gasses its people — about the covert actions of a long-time American ally. What else did he tell Zarif? The Times doesn’t say.

    It wouldn’t be surprising if Israel was more reluctant to share intel with the United States when Democrats such as Kerry show more fondness for those making genocidal threats against the Jewish people than they do for the state that protects them. It’s worth remembering that others like Senator Chris Murphy (who is now “requesting a classified briefing” on the Natanz incident, in which Israel likely sabotaged a nuclear facility) also secretly met with Zarif in Munich in a coordinated effort to undercut the Trump administration’s efforts to derail Iran’s ongoing nuclear-weapons program — an incident that comports far more closely with the definition of “collusion” than anything turned up against Trump officials. We have no idea what Murphy discussed with Zarif, either.

    We do know that after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani — head of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force and the terror group behind the death of over 600 American servicemen and thousands of others — Kerry and Murphy were among the many people scaremongering over a “massive regional war” that never materialized. In his leaked conversation, Zarif says of Soleimani that “by assassinating him in Iraq, the United States delivered a major blow to Iran, more damaging than if it had wiped out an entire city in an attack.”

  • Illinois judge finds state firearms ID law unconstitutional:

    “A citizen in the State of Illinois is not born with a Second Amendment right. Nor does that right insure when a citizen turns 18 or 21 years of age. It is a façade. They only gain that right if they pay a $10 fee, complete the proper application, and submit a photograph.

    If the right to bear arms and self-defense are truly core rights, there should be no burden on the citizenry to enjoy those rights, especially within the confines and privacy of their own homes. A citizen’s Second Amendment rights should not be treated in the same manner as a driver’s license.”

  • “One Year After George Floyd, Minneapolis Is ‘Murderapolis‘ Again.”

    It simply cannot be disputed that the prevalence of unjust killing and violence in the Twin Cities area has vastly increased since last summer’s protests and riots. Minneapolis recorded its second-most homicides ever in 2020 — after only 1995, when the city was ignobly dubbed “Murderapolis” in national media. And the trend has continued to escalate in 2021: between January 1 and April 25, the number of homicides increased by 92% compared to the same period in 2020. More than 80% of the shooting victims in 2020 were black.

    “We’re gonna blow Murderopolis off the charts this year,” one Minneapolis cop told me. (Names in this post have been withheld or partially redacted. As you may be aware, there is often intense suspicion of journalists amongst both civilians and police.)

    The situation is roughly the same in Saint Paul, which tied its all-time record for homicides in 2020. This year, it is on pace to break that record comfortably. The latest homicide was on Sunday night; a man was shot and killed outside a bar in an apparent carjacking. I visited the bar the following day and there was hardly any sign something was amiss — the manager only insisted that the killing had nothing to do with the bar. (Carjackings in the area have surged to an astronomical degree…)

    “There’s way more people it seems like with guns now than there ever has been,” another Minneapolis cop told me, and “much less hesitation to use them.” These officers theorize that the explanation for the crime surge is related to the city’s political climate over the past year, which in their view has allowed perpetrators to wreak havoc without consequence. “They feel emboldened and they feel untouchable, in my opinion,” the cop said.

  • Texas school district with no racial achievement gap inexplicably institutes white-shaming critical race theory classes. (Hat tip: Holly Hansen.)
  • “Texas Senate Approves Ban on Puberty Blockers, Sex-Change Surgeries for Minors.”
  • “Chinese Smart TV-Maker Accused of Spying on Owners’ Other Devices. “Smart TVs made by Skyworth were found to have an app — Gozen Data — installed on the Android-based operating system of the TV, according to a post on the V2EX website titled ‘My TV is monitoring all connected devices.’ According to the post, Gozen Data scanned for and collected the names of his computer, his network interface card, IP addresses, and the usernames of those connected to his and other local wifi networks.” Chinese electronic devices spying? Try to contain your shock…
  • “Faced with complaints from parents about the indoctrination of children, an official in Rockwood School District, Missouri, instructed teachers to create two sets of curriculum: a false one to share with parents, and then the real set of curriculum, focused on topics like activism and privilege, according to a memo obtained by The Daily Wire.” Fire everyone.
  • Dan Crenshaw update:

  • People you’re not allowed to make fun of part 1: cop suspended for daring to make fun of LeBron James.

    But: Just pulled in $100,000 from GoFundMe.

  • People you’re not allowed to make fun of part 2: University of San Diego law professor Tom Smith may be fired for daring to make fun of the Chinese Communist Party.
  • Eric S. Raymond thinks that since Microsoft makes most of its money off its Azure cloud services these days, and most of their cloud stuff is already on Linux, that their desktop future is actually running Windows on top of Linux via an emulation layer. Maybe. But if the history of tech teaches us anything, there will probably be some new, unforeseen technology that massively disrupts the entire market. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Still a lot of pollen this time of year…

  • Researchers remove offerings left in “Satanic” Icelanidc cave intended to help ward off the apocalypse. The rest of the script pretty much writes itself, doesn’t it? (Hat tip: Jack Posobiec.)
  • Merica:

  • “Dems: ‘If America Isn’t Racist, How Do You Explain These White Hoods We’re Wearing?'”
    ï»ż

  • What sort of grade do you get if you don’t even show up for school for two years? In Baltimore, a D-. “Nearly half of students in one Baltimore high school have 0.99 GPA or lower.” (Hat tip: Nick Short.)
  • What happens when a hot round blows up your singles-shot .50 BMG in your face. Short summary: Holy crap! For values of “Holy crap!” that includes a lacerated jugular, in-tubing a collapsed lung without anesthetic, Lifeflight, orbital bone repair and 5 pints of blood. This is probably a good excuse to throw up another link to Dwight’s overview of his “stop the bleed” course.
  • I was thinking of bidding on this, but I fear the shipping from Europe would be prohibitive.
  • “College is a $120,000 hooker, and you are an idiot who fell in love with her!”
  • “Biden Official Confirms Plans to Ban Fried Chicken and Grape Drink.”

    The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) is preparing to institute more measures to safeguard black lives by banning products they like. After it was announced that the Biden administration would prohibit the sale of menthol cigarettes, officials are looking at other ways the government can save the black community from itself.

    Only days after the menthol ban was announced, the FDA declared that it was pushing full steam ahead with its effort to rescue the black community through what they refer to as “strategic race-based prohibition.” An FDA official explained that the fried fowl and grape-flavored cola – also known as “grape drank” – must be banned because “these hopeless negroes don’t know how to act.”

    “Preventing black people from killing themselves by banning certain products is the least we can do given the level of oppression they have endured in this country,” said a high-ranking member of the Biden administration. “This is why fried chicken and grape soda have to go.”

    He added: “How could they possibly survive if we don’t make these decisions for them?”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • There’s something weirdly fascinating about this video of England from 1901:

  • I bought some original art based on a timeless theme. And that theme is “Godzilla.”
  • It’s Friday!

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    Posted in Border Control, Budget, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Guns, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, video | 2 Comments »

    Austin T Minus 2 Update

    April 29th, 2021

    Two days from now, Austin voters will go to the polls to decide the fate of reinstating the camping ban, along with a number of other proposals. (Cheat sheet: Vote for Proposition B and against everything else.) So here’s an update on Austin news in advance of the election.

  • Austin crime has exploded, and it’s all due to the feckless actions of leftwing politicians:

    Three members of the Austin City Council (AKA local control/city government) politicians are guilty of promoting the crime-enabling policies not unique to Austin. Mayor Steve Adler, Greg Casar, and Natasha Harper-Madison are the main culprits who expedited this radical shift away from public safety. Mayor Steve Adler has shown a careless lack of leadership on the issue, most notably during the Summer 2020 city-wide riots. Greg Casar has used the issue to push his Marxist values. Natasha Harper-Madison has exploited the safety of Austin citizens in order to promote her racism and perpetual victim ideologies. History will judge the actions of these three local partisan politicians poorly. How long are Austin citizens going to continue to sit back while these three continue their radical progressive experiment to the detriment of the city?

    Austin was one of the most sought-after, safest cities, but in 2020, there was an increase in murders by 50% from the previous year. Currently in 2021, there have been a whopping 21 murders to date. Austin is well on its way to breaking last year’s record number of murders.

    Also, this is a pretty sobering chart:

  • Paul Martin on factors driving crime increases in Austin:

    First, our police department is losing officers. The latest information can be found here, but here’s a summary for the TL;DR crowd:

    Last year, the Austin Police Department lost about eleven officers per month through resignations and retirements. In the first four months of this fiscal year, the police department has already lost an average of fifteen officers per month. The department will have more than seventy-five vacancies by the end of January, in addition to positions previously cut from the budget.

    (emphasis original)

    Fewer officers in a city with a growing population means fewer officers per citizen. This means increased response times for even high priority calls. Increased response times mean less policing and thus less deterrence to crime.

    The second component to this is the new policy in the Travis County District Attorney’s office under which the D.A. “will present all use-of-force cases [of law enforcement] to grand juries that involve deaths or serious injuries.” In other words, any time a citizen is injured during an arrest, the arresting officer runs the risk of being subjected to the grand jury process. The concern here is that officers will be less likely to use force moving forward. Violent criminals know this, and they know the officer will be reluctant to use force to take them into custody.

  • Matt Mackowiak makes the case for reinstating the camping ban:

    1) The homeless community has exploded, from around 2,500 to what I estimate to be 5,000 now, although according to Austonia a report commissioned by consultants for the city recently put the estimate at 10,000.

    2) Homeless fires are on track to double last year’s all-time record (to 503), endangering homeless Austinites and their personal property and our courageous firefighters.

    3) City parks are being destroyed all over the city, despite the fact that the camping ordinance specifically exempts parks from legal camping.

    4) Every single major highway intersection is worse today, and this is especially visible on Hwy. 183 and Hwy. 71, as well as on IH-35.

    5) Public safety in Austin is at the worst I can ever remember (I arrived in Austin in 1984), with our homicide rate set to double this year (after last year’s all-time record), and regular violent attacks by homeless individuals happening almost daily at this point. A quick review of the Citizen app will cause you to lose sleep at night.

    6) Public health in our city is far worse today than it would be without the ordinance, as the city had no plan for the human and physical waste created by camping, and we regularly see human feces, drug needles and other waste at encampments across the city.

    7) Tourism has taken a direct hit. Major hotels are losing conferences, visitors are shocked to see what’s become of Austin, and the related economic effect on the hospitality and service industries has been profound.

  • Austin’s homeless policies have made the problem worse:

    What is happening in Austin is nothing short of a humanitarian crisis. It threatens the health and safety of the community, and in particular of those struggling with homelessness.

    According to pre-COVID-19 data released in late March by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the number of Austin’s unsheltered population—those who live in makeshift tents around the city—has risen a staggering 93% since 2016.

    The Austin metro area represents 7% of the overall population of Texas, but about 25% of Texas’ unsheltered population today resides on its streets today.

    Snip.

    It is important to understand the origin of Austin’s homelessness surge. In 2013, HUD rolled out a one-size-fits-all homelessness policy, called Housing First, with spotty evidence of efficacy. Their “solution” to homelessness? Provide life-long, “no strings attached” housing—no requirement of sobriety, no work requirement, no requirement to access services to change the behaviors that led to homelessness. Austin’s elected officials took the bait—hook, line, and sinker.

    HUD promised the Housing First approach would end homelessness in a decade. Instead, it resulted in an over 16% increase across the nation, including a 21% increase in the “unsheltered” population—ironically, the population for which this approach was originally designed.

    Because Austin elected officials chose to follow HUD down an uncharted rabbit hole, Austin has experienced the same disastrous results, indeed the same disastrous results California has seen since it adopted Housing First in 2016—a stunning 37% increase in homelessness.

  • Could the Austin police department animal units be defunded?

    Austin’s Reimagining Public Safety Task Force recommended in a work session Wednesday the idea of doing away with several police units in the next budget cycle. It suggests reallocating the money for other needs.

    Two of the units one workgroup focused on are those that involve animals — APD’s Mounted Patrol and K9 Units.

    “There are many tools police have. These happen to be very costly,” said Kathy Mitchell, chair of the workgroup that made the recommendations.

    The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force estimates that APD’s Mounted Patrol and K9 units collectively cost the city nearly $5.5 million a year.

    The real reason, of course is that the hard-left “Reimagining Public Safety Task Force” hates the police and wants to free up that money for left-wing crony graft. Plus they hate those units because they’re effective and provide good publicity for APD. Plus the mounted police are particularly good at breaking up riots before they start, which the #antifa/#BlackLivesMatter loving Austin left all but encourages.

  • Austin criminals are getting bolder:

  • Austin city government may finally be letting APD graduate a cadet class, but they’re changing training to “increase community engagement and involve citizen groups in the cadet training process,” which I’m pretty sure are codewords for cramming leftwing indoctrination into the curriculum.
  • More evidence of what Adler and the city council have brought to Austin:

  • It looks like conventions are returning post Mao Tse Lung, but a lot fewer groups want to have their conventions in Austin now that it’s turned into bumsville:

  • Speaking of conventions: Austin voters properly kicked leftwing City Councilman Jimmy Flannigan to the curb in 2020. Surprise! Right after his defeat, Flannigan landed a cushy $140,000 job with “Austin Convention Enterprises, or ACE, [a] public facilities corporation that was created by the city to own, finance and operate the downtown Hilton.” Evidently once you’re a corrupt leftwing insider, you get cushy sinicures carved out for you to keep you on the government teat no matter what voters think… (Hat tip: Adam Loewy.)
  • Steve Adler, liar:

  • Lots of Austin restaurants are bailing on downtown:

    “In downtown, we depend on foot traffic and vehicle traffic driven primarily by visitors, hotel guests, conventioneers and locals who want to bar hop,” [B.D. Riley’s Irish Pub] co-owner Steve Basile said. “There was no path that we could draw that was anywhere more optimistic than 10 or 12 months of financial loss before downtown began to see the things that made downtown what it was pre-pandemic.”

    Convention-less. Festival-less. Tourism-less. In downtown Austin, the pandemic has taken the regular menu of revenue drivers off the table, and the public health risks now attached to large, in-person gatherings and out-of-town travel have placed a particular burden on small businesses in the city’s central business district bound by Lamar Boulevard, I-35, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Lady Bird Lake.

    The drain has made the math especially difficult for restaurants and bars, where bottom lines also depend on a now-dissipated office workforce, and smaller real estate footprints exacerbate the impact of social distancing rules. According to Community Impact Newspaper’s tracking of business closures, at least 10 locally owned restaurants and bars have permanently pulled out of downtown since August but, like B.D. Riley’s, have maintained business operations in other parts of the city. Their reasons signal a pessimism about the pace of recovery in the city’s center.

  • Proposition E wants to move to ranked voting (which is illegal under Texas law anyway). Here’s why it’s a bad idea.
  • Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell speaks out against the Wilco homeless hotel”

  • A montage of Adler’s Austin:

  • First-hand evidence of sex trafficking among the Adlervilles, and how no government entity would help:

  • Truth:

  • Some numbers:

  • Your city government in action: “Nobody knew how to restore power at Ullrich Water Treatment Plant during the freeze.”

    On a normal day, Ullrich Water Treatment Plant produces roughly half of Austin’s drinkable water and is crucial to keeping the city’s water system functioning.

    State regulations require the plant to either have access to a backup power source or a substantial amount of water reserves in case the plant sees an unexpected shutdown. Ullrich has both.

    So when a tree limb fell on an electric line leading to a substation that powered Austin’s largest water treatment plant on Feb. 17, backups should have snapped into place to keep power running and water production churning.

    But there was a problem: Nobody on site knew how to operate a 52-year-old gear switch that would have restored power to the plant.

    And so Ullrich Water Treatment Plant went dark for three hours in the middle of the worst winter storm to strike Central Texas in decades. It cut off roughly half of the city’s potable water production and deepened the winter weather crisis that at that moment had thousands shivering without electricity in their homes.

  • Hey, remember Mellow Johnny’s, the Austin bike shop that announced they would no longer sell bikes to APD? Well, guess which bike shop was recently burglarized?

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    Posted in Austin, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Waste and Fraud | 12 Comments »

    James Carville Vs. Wokeness

    April 28th, 2021

    It seems that once a year or so, James Carville wanders out of his den to warn Democrats that they’re blowing it by promulgating far-left policies the overwhelming majority of Americans reject, then sees his shadow and returns to his Trump Derangement Syndrome cave until next year.

    This year’s outburst came in the form of an interview with (ugh) Vox. Nonetheless it’s worth reading:

    James Carville: To me [Biden]’s biggest attribute is that he’s not into “faculty lounge” politics.

    Sean Illing: “Faculty lounge” politics?

    Translation: Illing is either not very bright or must feign ignorance for fear of being dragged by the social justice warrior types he has to pretend not to understand.

    James Carville: You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like “Latinx” that no one else uses. Or they use a phrase like “communities of color.” I don’t know anyone who speaks like that. I don’t know anyone who lives in a “community of color.” I know lots of white and Black and brown people and they all live in … neighborhoods.

    There’s nothing inherently wrong with these phrases. But this is not how people talk. This is not how voters talk. And doing it anyway is a signal that you’re talking one language and the people you want to vote for you are speaking another language. This stuff is harmless in one sense, but in another sense it’s not.

    Sean Illing: Is the problem the language or the fact that there are lots of voters who just don’t want to hear about race and racial injustice?

    Translation: “I must stay on the reservation. I must stay on the reservation. I must stay—”

    James Carville: We have to talk about race. We should talk about racial injustice.

    Translation: We’re screwed unless we can keep blacks pulling the (D) lever in overwhelming numbers, and constant talk of racism (and welfare state giveaways) are the only tools we have to do that.

    What I’m saying is, we need to do it without using jargon-y language that’s unrecognizable to most people — including most Black people, by the way — because it signals that you’re trying to talk around them. This “too cool for school” shit doesn’t work, and we have to stop it.

    There may be a group within the Democratic Party that likes this, but it ain’t the majority. And beyond that, if Democrats want power, they have to win in a country where 18 percent of the population controls 52 percent of the Senate seats. That’s a fact. That’s not changing. That’s what this whole damn thing is about.

    Sean Illing; Sounds like you got a problem with “wokeness,” James.

    If this were a cartoon, at this point a very dim candle would appear above Illing’s head

    James Carville: Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It’s hard to talk to anybody today — and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn’t say this. But they don’t want to say it out loud.

    Absolutely true. Now let’s skip forward a bit.

    Sean Illing: Part of the issue is that Republicans are going to paint the Dems as cop-hating, fetus-destroying Stalinists no matter what they say or do.

    That might be because a significant fraction of Democrats are indeed cop-hating, fetus-destroying Stalinists, and they’re the ones driving the conversation. What was the last pro-life Democrat at the national level? Tulsi Gabbard? And it sure as hell isn’t Republicans marching with “All Cops Are Bastards” signs.

    So, yeah, I agree that Democrats should be smart and not say dumb, alienating things, but I’m also not sure how much control they have over how they’re perceived by half the country, especially when that half lives in an alternate media reality.

    For “alternate” read “those that refuse to march in lockstep with the Democratic narrative.” It isn’t Fox News reporters standing in front of burning buildings and declaring that the riot is “mostly peaceful.”

    James Carville: Right, but we can’t say, “Republicans are going to call us socialists no matter what, so let’s just run as out-and-out socialists.” That’s not the smartest thing to do. And maybe tweeting that we should abolish the police isn’t the smartest thing to do because almost fucking no one wants to do that.

    Yet it is Democrat-dominated city councils in places like Minneapolis, Portland and Austin that have actually voted to defund the police. So clearly someone does indeed want to do that, and they sure as hell aren’t Republicans.

    James Carville: Look at Florida. You now have Democrats saying Florida is a lost cause. Really? In 2018 in Florida, giving felons the right to vote got 64 percent. In 2020, a $15 minimum wage, which we have no chance of passing [federally], got 67 percent. Has anyone in the Democratic Party said maybe there’s nothing wrong with the state of Florida? Maybe the problem is the kind of campaigns we’re running?

    If you gave me an environment in which the majority of voters wanted to expand the franchise to felons and raise the minimum wage, I should be able to win that. It’s certainly not a political environment I’m destined to lose in. But in Miami-Dade, all they talked about was defunding the police and Kamala Harris being the most liberal senator in the US Senate. And if you look all across the Rio Grande Valley, we lost all kinds of solidly blue voters. And the faculty lounge bullshit is a big part of it.

    Sean Illing: If you’re a Democrat, you could look at the state of play and say, “We’re winning. We won the White House. We won Congress. We have power. It ain’t perfect, but it ain’t a disaster either.”

    James Carville: We won the White House against a world-historical buffoon. And we came within 42,000 votes of losing. We lost congressional seats. We didn’t pick up state legislatures. So let’s not have an argument about whether or not we’re off-key in our messaging. We are. And we’re off because there’s too much jargon and there’s too much esoterica and it turns people off.

    Some self-deluded “Oh we Democrats are the good people and Republicans are the bad people” babble snipped.

    James Carville: Let me give you my favorite example of metropolitan, overeducated arrogance. Take the climate problem. Do you realize that climate is the only major social or political movement that I can think of that refuses to use emotion? Where’s the identifiable song? Where’s the bumper sticker? Where’s the slogan?

    Are you high Mr. Carville? Environmentalism free of emotion? Does the name “Greta Thunberg” ring any bells? Have you never seen a Prius with a “Save The Whales” or “Save the Rainforest” bumper sticker?

    There are some good nuggets of truth buried in the Crazy Cajun’s commentary, but a lot of it is the same self-serving “oh we Democrats are just too pure for this world” bullshit that’s a naked lie right out of the gate. (Kavanaugh hearing, anyone?) Democrats overwhelming control of the majority of media outlets lets them continuously get high on their own supply, so much so that a simple revelation already realized by everyone outside that bubble (wokeness is a problem for Democrats) has to be treated as though it were some sort of controversial declaration for fear anyone not reacting that way will be dragged.

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    Posted in Democrats, Social Justice Warriors | 2 Comments »

    Texas Gains 2 Congressional Seats, California, New York Lose 1 Each (With Some Thoughts On Texas Redistricting)

    April 27th, 2021

    The 2020 Census results are out:

    Florida and Texas gained House seats while California and New York lost one seat each as a result of population shifts, according to the 2020 census results announced on Monday.

    Texas gained two House seats in the census apportionment for a new total of 38 congressional districts, while Florida gained one House seat, bringing its total number of districts to 28. California lost one House seat and will decline to 52 congressional districts, while New York also lost one House seat and will now have 26 congressional districts. Those four states are the nation’s most populous and together provide one-third of the House’s total seats.

    A census official noted that if New York had counted 89 more people, the state would not have lost a House seat.

    Too bad Andrew Cuomo killed off all those old people before they could be counted.

    The population of California stopped growing several years before the coronavirus pandemic, and in 2020 the state lost more residents to outmigration than it gained. Residents have migrated to Texas as well as to neighboring states such as Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon.

    Once again, blue states lost population and red states gained population. People flee Democratic governance and its symptomatic poverty, high taxes, crime and disorder. It’s also the first time California has lost a congressional seat ever.

    With two new congressional seats to play with, how will Texas Republicans approach redistricting? I am very far indeed from a redistricting guru, but I have a few educated guesses about how they’ll approach things:

  • Obviously, they’ll try to carve out two more Republican districts, but that may prove difficult. Expect a new Metroplex-area suburban/exurban Republican majority district, but don’t be surprised if they have to create another Hispanic majority district for Democrats somewhere.
  • The next-highest priority has to be taking back the two seats lost in 2018, AKA The Year of Beto. Both the 7th (John Culberson losing to Lizzie Fletcher) and the 32nd (Pete Sessions losing to Collin Allred) were typical sleepwalking incumbents caught by end of election cycle demographic shifts, but there’s no reason those districts can’t be redrawn to make them Republican majority districts again. Republican challenger Wesley Hunt only lost by 3% in the 7th in 2020. (Sessions carpetbagged his way into the Waco-based 17th.)
  • Next up would be protecting Republican incumbents whose current districts are starting to get purple. To that end, I would guess that the 2nd District, with Dan Crenshaw, a rising national star regarded as a solid team player (as newly minted congressmen Beth Van Duyne and August Pfluger can attest) in a district that’s only R+5, would be the top candidate for shoring up. Van Duyne’s 24th (R+2) and Chip Roy’s 21st (R+5) would be next. John Carter’s 31st (R+6) is starting to get purple as well, but since he’s 79, he may not get as much consideration as other incumbents. Michael McCaul’s 10th (R+5) would be another candidate, but as one of the richest incumbents, there might be sentiment that he can stand fast without much additional help. Van Taylor’s 3rd (R+6) looks like a candidate on paper, but neither he nor previous Republican incumbent Sam Johnson ever won by less than 10 points.
  • A separate issue than the above, due to different dynamics, is what to do about the 23rd. The only true swing district in Texas over the last decade is currently held by Republican Tony Gonzalez, who defeated Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones by 4% in 2020. Despite having a giant target on his back every time, Republican Will Hurd held the seat for three cycles before retiring despite never breaking 50%. The fate of the 23rd is highly dependent on whether they decide to carve out another majority Hispanic Democratic district for San Antonio, or whether they want to…
  • Make a play for the Rio Grande Valley? One of the more surprising results of 2020 was that Republicans made significant inroads into the Valley, including President Donald Trump winning Democrat Henry Cueller’s 28th outright. Part of this is due to Trump’s increasing popularity among Hispanics, but the Texas Republican Party has been pouring significant resources into the Valley. Combined with Biden’s border crisis, all this adds up to an opportunity to pick up one or more seats through redistricting. Michael Cloud’s adjacent 27th is looking pretty safe, so the temptation will be to turn one or more of the 28th, Vicente Gonzalez’s 15th (D+3) and/or Filemon Vela Jr.’s 34th (D+5) into competitive swing districts.
  • Another issue will be what the hell to do with Austin, the blue tumor in the heart of red Texas. One driving rationale for the shape of the 35th district (running from Austin down I-35 to San Antonio) was trying to knock off Democratic incumbent Lloyd Doggett by forcing him to face off against a San Antonio-based Hispanic Democrat. That failed, and Doggett won handily. It’s going to be mighty tempting for Republicans to throw in the towel and fashion a liberal urban core district for Austin to free up redder suburban areas to shore up Republican incumbents.

    • I can see one approach solution that solves a lot of those problems: an urban Austin district, a new majority Hispanic district near San Antonio, and a new majority Hispanic district huddling the Rio Grande Valley, reinforcing the 23rd and turning two of the 15th, 28th and 34th into majority Republican districts. But the fact it is obvious means that it probably won’t come to pass, with the likely result a more sophisticated (i.e., gerrymandered) solution.

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Democrats, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »

    Texas Sales Tax Prep Weekend Snuck Up On Me This Year

    April 26th, 2021

    Today is the last day:

    These emergency preparation supplies qualify for tax exemption if purchased for a sales price:

  • Less than $3000
    • Portable generators
  • Less than $300
    • Emergency ladders
    • Hurricane shutters
  • Less than $75
    • Axes
    • Batteries, single or multipack (AAA cell, AA cell, C cell, D cell, 6 volt or 9 volt)
    • Can openers – nonelectric
    • Carbon monoxide detectors
    • Coolers and ice chests for food storage – nonelectric
    • Fire extinguishers
    • First aid kits
    • Fuel containers
    • Ground anchor systems and tie-down kits
    • Hatchets
    • Ice products – reusable and artificial
    • Light sources – portable self-powered (including battery operated) Examples of items include: candles, flashlights and lanterns
    • Mobile telephone batteries and mobile telephone chargers
    • Radios – portable self-powered (including battery operated) – includes two-way and weather band radios
    • Smoke detectors
    • Tarps and other plastic sheeting

    • The Comptroller page notes that online sales count, so I’ve thrown some Amazon links up from my cheap prepper’s guide for surviving cold weather.

    Speaking of axes, Dwight put up a video by a woodcraft guy who reviews axes, so some of those videos might be worth watching if you’re looking for an axe. He seems to favor the Gransfors Bruks Small Forest Axe, which, at $249, doesn’t qualify for the sales tax holiday, and is probably too pricey for someone who isn’t going to be doing a lot of woodcrafting…

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    Posted in Texas | No Comments »

    Austin City Council Continues Assault On APD

    April 25th, 2021

    It’s obvious that the current Austin City Council hates the Austin Police Department, and will do anything they think the can get away with to strip it of money and power. The most recent example: They’re stripping 911 funding from the police to hand it over to a newly created department:

    In continuing to restructure the Austin Police Department, the City Council on Thursday voted to move 911 communications and several other services out of police control and into other city departments.

    The total funding to be transferred out of the Police Department’s budget will be about $33.3 million — much of it due to 284.5 full-time positions moving to other city departments.

    The decision builds on the council’s work during last year’s budget process when it cut or reallocated $150 million from the Police Department’s budget — one-third of the entire budget. The money removed Thursday came from funds that were set aside to explore shifting roles assigned to police to other city departments.

    Why strip money from a functioning 911 dispatch system? Obviously, because the current employees support the police department, and lack of control over it means it can’t be staffed with leftwing cronies, making it much harder to rake off the graft and embezzlement. The “efficiencies” the Austin City Council claims the move to an “Emergency Communications Department” will bring is efficiently siphoning taxpayer money from the causes for which it is earmarked and into the hands of the hard left. But don’t think the crazy stops there:

    Thursday’s vote followed a presentation earlier in the week from a community task force assembled by City Manager Spencer Cronk’s office to consider ways to improve public safety.

    The recommendations included removing various line items in the Police Department’s budget and investing them in low-income communities through things such as health care access, food, housing and sex worker outreach services.

    Some of the more extreme recommendations came from a four-person working group over patrol and surveillance. They included removing all deadly firearms from police officers and putting an end to new cadet classes. By eliminating neighborhood-based policing, the working group said the city would save $210 million that could be reinvested in communities of color.

    “Any City Council member who supports that should be fired,” [Austin Police Association President Ken] Casady said. “It’s crazy town. Just by reading this one recommendation this committee has lost all credibility.”

    Removing firearms from police and giving money to whores: Your Austin City Council at work.

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Waste and Fraud | 7 Comments »

    NC Lt. Governor Isn’t Having Any Of This Voter Suppression Nonsense

    April 24th, 2021

    North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson appeared at the House Committee meeting on Voting Reform, and he’s noting having any of this “voter suppression” nonsense in relation to Georgia’s election reform law:

    Am I to believe that black Americans, who have overcome the atrocities of slavery, who are victorious in the civil rights movement, and now sit in the highest levels of this government, could not figure out how to get a free ID to secure their votes?

    Just a few days ago, the Vice President went to the very place that I mentioned, the Woolworth counter in Greensboro, but you know who wasn’t there you know who wasn’t invited? My good friend Clarence Henderson, who is a civil rights icon. He sat at that counter and endured the suffering and pain to make sure that black voices were heard. And why was he left out? Because he’s of a different political persuasion.

    As usual, Robinson speaks truth. The Clarence Henderson who participated in the Greensboro sit-ins is “a staunch conservative who supports Donald Trump and the Republican party now. He has been an outspoken supporter of the President since the 2016 campaign.”

    Then he gets down to what Democrats are actually trying to do:

    The goal of some individuals in government is not to hear the voices of black Americans at all, it’s to hear the voices that fit their narratives and ultimately help keep power with one group. And that’s what this is all about, it’s about power. Just look at HR-1. It’s despicable. The entire thing is designed to keep one party in power and ensure they stay there indefinitely. They plan to do that by taking away the rights of states given by the constitution to govern their own elections. To mandate a partisan wish list that comes down from that federal government. Some of these items include using government dollars to fund campaigns in order to give an advantage to one party, mandating that felons are allowed to vote, including illegal immigrants on voter rolls, and of course trying to ban states from having voter ID.

    (Hat tip: Byron Preston via Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, video | No Comments »

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