Austin City Council Member Don Zimmerman, who led the opposition to the courthouse project, said the last-minute defeat of the bonds was an “absolute stunning result.”
“The corporate downtown special interest lobby spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this,” he said. His anti-courthouse campaign through the Travis County Taxpayers Union barely spent anything, he said. “I think a lot of people heard that and said, ‘Well why are hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent if it’s such a good idea?’”
He said part of the reason the bonds were rejected is that Austin-area voters are increasingly concerned about affordability and increasingly loathe to support tax increases.
Because I live outside the city limits and in Williamson County, I was only vaguely aware of the Courthouse bond issue. As long as I’ve been in the Austin area, I can’t recall another bond issue going down in flames like this one. Could the People’s Republic of Austin finally have had enough of tax increases?
“It is not that complicated,” said local attorney Mark Pulliam. “Travis County homeowners are sick of property tax increases.”
“Only pompous, out-of-touch downtown lawyers — like those who belong to the Austin Bar Association — would think that a 14-story high-rise costing more than The Austonian, and almost as much as the just-completed JW Marriott, the largest in the North America, made sense,” he told Watchdog.org.
The Watchdog piece suggests that the long overdue move to single City Council districts may have been a factor in defeating the bond issue.
Also, Travis County suburbs may finally have become populous enough to balance out the liberal central city for county elections like this one. Indeed, that’s what this map suggests.
I wanted to take a closer look at a few off-year election issues from last week, specifically the Proposition 6 “Right to Hunt and Fish” Amendment.
Really, if you wanted a “safe” vote for people favoring gun control to cast, opposing Prop 6, a constitutional amendment that wouldn’t change a single law in hunting-friendly Texas, seems ideal.
Just look at how the Houston Chroniclesneered at the amendment’s supporters in an editorial opposing it: “This amendment…is the most ridiculous on the ballot…[it’s] essentially a paean to the ‘black helicopter’ crowd that’s eager to harry and harass legitimate conservation efforts in Texas.”
And after all the sneering by smart set urban liberals, how did Prop 6 do? It won with over 81% of the vote. Evidently more than four-fifths of Texans are part of “the black helicopter crowd.”
That’s some fringe group.
My quick scan of county-by-county results shows not a single county in Texas voted against Prop 6. In the smaller counties, Prop 6 passed by a ratio of about 10-1.
A liberal data wonk sent out this tweet while voting was still going on.
That’s your gun control vote right there: A white liberal urban core. Prop 6 passed Travis County, the deepest blue white liberal bastion in the state, by 44,128 in favor to 28,797.
When actual citizens get to vote, gun control loses every time.
If gun control loses in Austin, it’s hard to see where it wins outside San Francisco and New York City.
What’s Obama’s strategy in Iraq and Syria? He doesn’t have one. “Without a clear overarching strategy to resolve the conflict.” Say what you want about Bush, he wanted to win in Iraq. Obama wants to do just enough to not get blamed for losing.
Speaking of Islamic refugees, shotguns (which don’t need a permit) are selling like hotcakes in Austria. Whatever could be the reason?
“The Democratic party is mainly a coalition of interest groups, and the current model of Democratic politics — poor and largely non-white people providing the muscle and rich white liberals calling the shots — is unsustainable…Democrats gleefully predict that demographic changes are going to give their party a permanent majority. The unspoken corollary to that is that white liberals think they’re going to remain in charge of it.”
The latest ObamaCare exchange plans are out, and if you’re a cancer patient in Houston, you’re screwed:
The healthcare marketplace is open once again, but if you look closely at the offered insurance plans you might find something lacking: coverage for specialized treatments.
Preferred Provider Plans, or PPOs, often do cover specialized treatment like care for cancer patients.The loss of individual-market plan PPOs will affect tens of thousands of people who buy their insurance privately rather than through an employer. Before the Affordable Care Act, it was the way most people who did not have employer insurance got coverage.
Jenny Deam, with the Houston Chronicle, investigates the disappearance of these plans. She says there will no longer be any plans, by any carrier on the federal exchange for the Houston area, that cover treatment at the MD Anderson Cancer Center.
If you’re unfamiliar with MD Anderson, they’re one of the best cancer treatment centers in the world. For many cancer patients, the difference between MD Anderson and another cancer treatment center is quite literally between life and death.
Remember “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”?
Not so much.
The media mocked Sarah Palin for using the phrase “death panels,” but in the name of cost controls, they’re already implementing them at the provider level.
As expected, all seven Texas constitutional amendments passed easily. The two most heavily promoted amendments, Proposition 1 (homestead property tax relief) and Proposition 7 (dedicating sales tax money to the highway fund), each passed with more than 80% of the vote.
Other Texas voting news:
Houston’s unpopular “tranny bathroom bill” went down in flames. Liberals crying foul that their pet transgender culture war bill was reduced to tranny bathrooms might want to remember that no one forced Houston Mayor Annise Parker (who whispered not a word of it during her own election campaign) to bring it up, and certainly wasn’t forced to sue churches who dared oppose it. Every time an item on the Social Justice Warrior agenda actually gets put before voters, it loses big time.
Austin voters rejected a courthouse bond package derided as a big-spending boondoggle. And keep in mind that Austin voters practically never turn down bond proposals.
But it wasn’t just Texas. Across the nation, conservatives won big in off-year elections:
Republican Matt Bevin won a big upset in the Kentucky governor’s race. The guy who Mitch McConnell crushed by 25 points in a 2014 primary will now become just the second Republican to govern the Bluegrass State in four decades.
Democrats failed to pick up Virginia’s state Senate. It’s a huge blow to Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who went all-in to make it happen. Democrats could have won by capturing just one seat because of the tie-breaking authority of Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D). But Republicans held every single seat…
Even in San Francisco, the sheriff who steadfastly defended the city’s “sanctuary city” policy went down. Fox News: “Ross Mirkarimi and his office received heavy criticism after Mexican illegal immigrant Francisco Sanchez allegedly shot and killed 32-year-old Kate Steinle on San Francisco’s waterfront July 1. Sanchez had been released from Mirkarimi’s jail in March even though federal immigration officials had requested that he be detained for possible deportation.” The city also rejected new regulations on Airbnb.
The Kentucky Governor’s race was the one where Fark’s Drew Curtis ran as an independent. He garnered just over 3% of the vote.
I’m not a huge fan of Cornyn, whose turned into bit of a squish, but I’m not even remotely buying that a guy who was born in 1952, and who went to school at Trinity University and St. Mary’s Law, got anywhere near the Klan, which was already a joke by the 1970s. Even assuming Cornyn was An Evil Racist (he’s not), unlike West Virginia in the early 1940s, the Klan was not on any ambitious politician or lawyer’s plans by the 1970s, and the only people joining by then were strictly white trash rural losers.
Moreover, we’re given to understand that these names were culled from email membership lists, which suggest that Cornyn joined, when, 1995 or so? When he was already on the Texas Supreme Court? Because joining a bunch of white trash losers was totally more important than avoiding scandals and winning elections.
To begin with, the Ku Klux Klan is pathetically small compared to the overall white male population of the South and Midwest. Membership estimates range from 3,000 to 5,000. The likelihood that four separate members of the Klan could find their way into the ranks of the Senate are astronomically low, even if you assume that your average Klansman is coherent enough to manage it (spoilers: they aren’t).
Or to put another way, you’d have to believe that a Klansman is roughly 10,000 times more likely to become a senator than the average American. Or, put even another way, there are supposedly twice as many Klansmen as Princeton grads in the Senate. Now that’s an alumni network.
But even a cursory look at the lives and voting records of the accused should have clued people in. One, for example, voted for Martin Luther King Jr. Day to become a national holiday, a proposal that a sizeable minority actually opposed back in 1983. Why would a Klansman go out of his way to vote for a holiday that promotes racial harmony, instead of joining the 90 Congressmen who voted against it?
Another of the accused senators is Catholic. While the Klan’s anti-black activities are much more rampant and widespread, they are also virulently anti-Catholic.
Oh, and did I mention one of the accused mayors is openly gay? I don’t think that’s the kind of “flaming crosses” the Klan has in mind.
As Ayn Rand once noted: “The Ku Klux Klan is not a Republican issue or problem; its members, traditionally, are Democrats; for the Republicans to repudiate their vote would be like repudiating the vote of Tammany Hall, which is not theirs to repudiate.” As far as the historical record shows, Sen. Robert Byrd (Democrat, West Virginia) is the only U.S. Senator elected after World War II to have been a member of the Klan.
Even the most base liberal propagandist should be ashamed to spread such pathetically laughable bullshit…
Meanwhile, at the University of California system: “The number of those making at least $500,000 annually grew by 14 percent in the last year, to 445, and the system’s administrative ranks have swelled by 60 percent over the last decade – far outpacing tenure-track faculty.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Another example of California’s perpetual trial lawyer enrichment act: “cumulative trauma” awards for employees after termination, even if they’ve never reported symptoms before. Shouldn’t every former member of the Raiders, Chargers and 49ers file a lawsuit?
So now the California high speed rail boondoggle is going to cost $68 billion and require 36 miles of tunnels, including some dug right through an active tectonic fault. That’s ten times the length of tunnel Boston needed to dig for the Big Dig. And the cost is equivalent to the Gross Domestic Product of Sri Lanka. For a train line. It would probably be cheaper to buy cab rides for everyone traveling between Los Angeles and San Francisco, but that wouldn’t provide enough opportunities for graft…
Also filing for bankruptcy, yet another West coast grocery chain, Fresh & Easy.
Another bankruptcy filing: Fresno’s One Club Casino. California casinos are different from Nevada casinos, and I believe One Club is what is called a “card room”. Still, when you can’t make a profit off gambling…
California plastics company opens plant in Pflugerville. “Medway, founded in 1974, will also relocate its research and development laboratory to the new Pflugerville facility. Though Medway Plastics will continue operations in California, the company may consider relocating its headquarters to Pflugerville within the next five to eight years, the company said.”
Right now Austin is enjoying our traditional “two weeks of flooding following three months of drought” fall. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
“In Iraq, Obama took a war that we had won at a considerable expense in lives and treasure, and threw it away for the callowest of political reasons. In Syria and Libya, he involved us in wars of choice without Congressional authorization, and proceeded to hand victories to the Islamists. Obama’s policy here has been a debacle of the first order, and the press wants to talk about Bush as a way of protecting him.”
Paul Ryan elected Speaker of the House. If Ryan decides to govern as an actual Republican, he could be a very effective Speaker…
At the most recent Republican Presidential debate, Sen. Marco Rubio said the H1-B visa program is badly in need of reform. One tiny problem: Sen. Rubio’s own H1-B bill doesn’t implement any of the reforms demanded by Presidential Candidate Rubio. “It does not require recruitment of American workers. It does not require employers to ‘pay more than you would pay someone else’…Rubio’s bill would provide Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his comrades ‘a huge increase in the supply of lower-cost foreign guest workers so they can undercut and replace American workers.'” Indeed, Rubio’s bill “would triple the number of H1-B foreign workers admitted.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
How to fix the Republican debates: “First, cancel the rest of the debates. Instead, announce that the RNC will host the debates and pick the panel of questioners. Allow any news organization that wishes to broadcast it.”
Feminism is “a War Against Human Nature aimed at using the coercive power of government to bring about an androgynous ‘equality’ that ignores the actual differences between men and women. Feminism is a totalitarian movement to destroy civilization as we know it — and feminists say so themselves.”