I missed this good news when it came out on June 2, but a Travis County Grand Jury has declined to indict John Daub in the self-defense shooting death of a home intruder who turned out to be autistic.
And his blog, Stuff from Hsoi, is available again.
Hutto police Sergent Chris Kelly was was killed in the line of duty today after being run over by a suspect during a traffic stop. (The suspect is in custody.) Kelly was a USAF veteran, and left behind a wife and two children.
Police work is deeply necessary for civilized society, and occasi0onally very dangerous…
It’s now official: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is running for President.
He’s a solid conservative reformer, but I don’t see him getting a lot of traction is a field this crowded. I think he’s more realistically a Vice Presidential possibility this time around.
It’s been a while since I did a Texas vs. California update, so this is going to be a meaty one:
We suffer in California from a particular form of progressive immorality predicated on insular selfishness. The water supplies of Los Angeles and the Bay Area are still for a year longer in good shape, despite the four-year drought. Neither area is self-sufficient in water; their aquifers are marginal and only supply a fraction of their daily needs. Instead these megalopolises depend on intricate and expensive water transfer systems — from Northern California, from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and from the Colorado River — that bring water and life to quite unnatural habitats and thereby allow a MGM or Facebook to thrive in an arid landscape that otherwise would not support such commerce and population. Without them, Atherton would look like Porterville.
Quiet engineers in the shadows make it all work; the loud activists in the media seek to make it unwind. These transfers have sterling legal authority and first claims on mountain and northern state water. If Latinos in Lemon Cove are going without household water, Pyramid Lake on I-5 or Crystal Springs Reservoir on 280 are still full to the brim.
Why then do those who have access to water delivered in a most unnatural way seek to curtail supplies to others? In a word, because they are either ignorant of where their own water comes from or they have not a shred of concern for others less blessed, or both. We will confirm this ethical schizophrenia should a fifth year of drought ensue. Then even the most sacrosanct rights of transferred water will not be sufficient to accommodate the San Francisco and Los Angeles basins. Mass panic and outrage will probably follow, and no one will care a bit about the delta smelt, or a few hundred salmon artificially planted into the San Joaquin River watershed, or a spotted toad that holds up construction of an urgently needed reservoir.
The greens who pontificate about the need to return the San Joaquin watershed to its 19th-century ecosystem will become pariahs. When the taps run dry in Hillsborough and Bel-Air, very powerful people will demand water for their desert environs, which will in fact begin to return to the deserts that they always were as the thin veneer of civilization is scraped away.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Yeah, not so much this year… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Democrats won’t be able to launch partisan witch hunts against statewide Republican officeholders from the Travis County Prosecutor’s Office anymore, as Governor Greg Abbott has signed the bill stripping oversight of the statewide Public Integrity Unit from the Travis County prosecutor’s office
“Under House Bill 1690, the Public Integrity Unit would be shifted from Travis County to the Texas Rangers – part of the Department of Public Safety – which would take charge of investigating alleged corruption among public officials. District attorneys from the home county of the accused would prosecute the cases.”
Travis County Democrats in general, and District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg in particular, have only themselves to blame. Both Lehmberg and equally partisan predecessor Ronnie Earle have pursued vindictive and flat-out-fraudulent cases against Republican officeholders, from Rep. Tom Delay (accused of violating a law that hadn’t been enacted at the time, and whose conviction was overturned and converted into an outright acquittal) to Kay Bailey Hutchison.
But it was Rosemary Lehmberg’s actions that pretty much sealed the fate of the Public Integrity Unit. The video of following her DUI arrest (when she decided that rolling around Austin with an open bottle of vodka in the car and a blood alcohol level of .239 would just be a swell idea) lead to Governor Rick Perry demand for her to resign. When she refused, Perry carried through with his threat to veto funding for the Public Integrity Unit, at which point the Travis County prosecutor’s office indicted Perry for using his constitutionally enumerated veto powers.
If it hadn’t been for Lehmberg’s poor judgment and criminal activity, and and the grossly partisan overreach of herself and Earle, the legislature would never have felt compelled to act.
Given the sterling reputation of the Texas Rangers, the unit is now in far better hands, and the move to their oversight takes effects September 1.
At least that’s what Zero Hedge has taken away from the various news stories on Greece’s latest proposal to beat the looming end-of-month deadline for making the payment they owe to the IMF.
From the troika’s perspective, breaking Greece and forcing PM Alexis Tsipras to concede to pension cuts and a VAT hike is paramount, and not necessarily because anyone believes these measures will put the perpetually indebted periphery country on a sustainable fiscal path, but because of the message such concessions would send to Syriza sympathizers in Spain and Portugal. In short, the troika cannot set a precedent of allowing debtor nations to obtain austerity concessions by threatening to expose the euro as dissoluble.
But the Eurocrats are claiming there’s still work to do.
The pension changes are evidently types of “austerity” that let Greek PM Alexis Tsipras claim he didn’t actually cut pensions:
Under the proposal submitted to eurozone ministers, the Greek government would raise just under €2.7 billion in extra revenue this year, followed by a further €5.2 billion in 2016.
The blueprint, which will now be assessed by Greece’s creditors ahead of a second meeting of finance ministers on Wednesday and an EU leader’s summit the following day, includes concessions that go far beyond previous offers made by the left-wing Syriza government.
Greece’s main concession is on pensions, long regarded as the major sticking point by its creditors, where it has unveiled plans to make almost €2.5 billion in savings.
Having vowed not to reduce state pensions during his successful election campaign in January, Tsipras’ government has proposed to raise €645 million over the next two years by increasing health contributions to 5 percent. Other savings will come from restricting early retirement and increasing state pension contributions.
Greece has also agreed to raise the retirement age to 67 by 2025.
The pension savings are equivalent to 0.37 percent and 1.05 percent of GDP in 2015 and 2016, moving closer to, but still below the 1 percent each year demanded by the eurozone.
On top of these savings, a regime of government payments to the poorest pensioners – known as Ekas – will be replaced in 2020. Public spending on pensions currently amounts to 16 percent of Greece’s GDP.
The fact that more than 2/3rds of the savings are back-loaded into 2016 suggests we’ll end up doing this same dance sometime next year. Greece may have (finally) agreed to enough reform that, if implemented (a big if) would at least keep it afloat until next year. But until they stop racking up debt to keep funding their welfare state, more economic pain inevitably lies ahead…
Put this in the category of news that didn’t make the news.
You may recall mention of two sales tax holiday bills working their way through the legislature.
The good news is that SB904, the emergency/preparation bill, was signed by Governor Abbott on June 15. While the law itself takes effect on September 1, the first day of the actual sales tax holiday for the enumerated emergency prep items is the last weekend in April, which in 2016 will be April 23-24. At the very least, consider it a good weekend to stock up on batteries.
As to why no news outlet seems to have even mentioned this fact in passing, I couldn’t tell you.
The bad news is that it appears both HB 849 and SB 228 died in committee before the end of the legislative session. Since no special session is currently planned, it seems unlikely there will be a hunting and guns sales tax holiday any time in the next two years.
The economic collapse of Greece is unfolding pretty much exactly as observers predicted it would: “Greek banks have imposed an unofficial ceiling of €3,000 on walk-in withdrawals, the commercial banker added.”
More capital controls are most likely coming, especially since bank runs have meant that Greek banks “will soon exhaust eligible assets they can pledge to the Bank of Greece for cash under the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) scheme.” The ECB backstopping of Greeek banks has been extended for today only. And today’s Eurozone talks have already broken off.
Despite that, Greece’s feckless ruling Syriza Party is still insisting on ignoring reality: “I repeat: The deal will either be compatible with the basic lines of Syriza’s election manifesto, or there will be no deal.”
Translation: “Europe must continue to throw money down the rat-hole of our bankrupt welfare state, or else!” What the “or else” might be when the country is already too bankrupt to pay pensions and keeps the lights on remains a mystery. The problem with holding a gun to your own head is that eventually someone will call your bluff.
Greece is finally finished with the “gradually” phase of their bankruptcy and is now in the “suddenly” phase…
Even though this whiteboard animation is from 2012, it’s still mostly accurate.
My only quibbles would be:
But it gets the big picture right, namely how out-of-control debt destroys nations…
The bank runs have started in Greece. Why the Greek peeople would even keep their money in banks, having the example of Cyprus’s bank “bail-ins” before them, would keep any but the most minimal amout of cash in a Greek bank is a mystery.
Given that Greek banks are insolvent without the European Central Bank’s backstop, one wonders why Greek PM Alexis Tsipras thinks he can continue to bluff the EU caving on reform demands. It’s tough to bluff when you have no hole cards…
There’s talk of a “new” Greek proposal, which could mean Tsipras and Syriza are finally coming to their senses and giving in to EU demands, or it could be just another smokescreen. I mean, we’ve only seen about a dozen “new” Greek proposals this year that didn’t offer meaningful reform. What’s one more?
Stay tuned…