Happy April Fools day! No tricks here, just the usual Friday LinkSwarm:
(Screen shot has been included because the article has been edited and no notice made of the deleted error.)
LinkSwarm for April 1, 2016
April 1st, 2016Texas vs. California Update for March 31, 2016
March 31st, 2016Lots of Texas vs. California linky goodness, much of it via Jack Dean at Pension Tsunami, who’s been emailing me links of significant interest.
As last week’s US Census Bureau population estimates indicated, the story of population growth between 2014 and 2015 was largely about Texas, as it has been for the decade starting 2010 (See: “Texas Keeps Getting Bigger” The New Metropolitan Area Estimates). The same is largely true with respect to population trends in the nation’s largest counties, with The Lone Star state dominating both in the population growth and domestic migration among 135 counties with more than 500,000 population.
Snip.
Houston, which is the fastest growing major metropolitan area (over 1 million population) in the nation includes the two fastest growing large counties. Fort Bend County added 4.29 percent to its population between 2014 and 2015 and now has 716,000 residents. Montgomery County grew 3.57 percent to 538,000. In addition to these two suburban Houston counties, Harris County, the core County ranked 16th in growth, adding 2.03 percent to its population and exceeding 4.5 million population.
Dallas-Fort Worth, the second fastest-growing major metropolitan area has two counties among the top 20. The third fastest-growing county is Denton (located north of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport), which added 3.42 percent to its population over the past year and now has 781,000 residents. Collin County, to the north of Dallas County, grew 3.17 percent and now stands at 914,000 residents. Its current growth rate would put Collin County over 1 million population by the 2020 census.
Travis County, with its county seat of Austin, grew 2.22 percent to 1,177,000 and ranked 12th. Bexar County, centered on San Antonio grew 2.01 percent and ranks 17th.
Overall, Texas had four of the five fastest growing large counties, and seven of the top twenty. California had none. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
- “A now has by far the nation’s highest state income tax rate. We are 34% higher than 2nd place Oregon, and a heck of a lot higher than all the rest”
- “CA has the highest state sales tax rate in the nation. 7.5% (does not include local sales taxes).”
- “California in 2015 ranked 14th highest in per capita property taxes (including commercial) – the only major tax where we are not in the worst ten states. But the 2014 average CA single-family residence (SFR) property tax is the 8th highest state in the nation. Indeed, the median CA homeowner property tax bill is 93% higher than the average for the other 49 states.”
- “California has a nasty anti-small business $800 minimum corporate income tax, even if no profit is earned, and even for many nonprofits. Next highest state is Rhode Island at $500 (only for “C” corporations). 3rd is Delaware at $175. Most states are at zero.”
- “California’s 2015 ‘business tax climate’ ranks 3rd worst in the nation – behind New York and anchor-clanker New Jersey. In addition, CA has a lock on the worst rank in the Small Business Tax Index – a whopping 8.3% worse than 2nd worst state.”
- “The American Tort Reform Foundation in 2015 again ranks CA the ‘worst state judicial hellhole’ in U.S. – the most anti-business.”
- “CA public school teachers the 3rd highest paid in the nation. CA students rank 48th in math achievement, 49th in reading.”
- “California’s real poverty rate (the new census bureau standard adjusted for COL) is easily the worst in the nation at 23.4%. We are 57.3% higher than the average for the other 49 states.”
- “Of 100 U.S. real estate markets, in 2013 CA contained by far the least affordable middle class housing market (San Francisco). PLUS the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th.”
It’s like a whole bunch of Texas vs. California roundup statistics all in one big green ball of fail. Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
CKE Restaurants CEO Andy Puzder told the Wall Street Journal in 2013, “California is not interested in having businesses grow.”
The article points out that many factors, including local building regulations, make one community less desirable than another for businesses.
For example, it takes 60 days in Texas, 63 in Shanghai, and 125 in Novosibirsk, Russia for one of CKE’s restaurants to get a building permit after signing a lease. But in Los Angeles, Ca. it takes a whopping 285 days.
Puzder added, “I can open up a restaurant faster on Karl Marx Prospect in Siberia than on Carl Karcher Boulevard in California.” The street in California is ironically named for the restaurant chain’s founder.
California’s labor regulations may also play a role in a company’s desire to seek alternative locations. In that same interview with WSJ, Puzder said his company had spent $20 million in the state over the past eight years on damages and attorney fees related to class-action lawsuits.
(Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Legendary Nazi Commando Otto Skorzeny Was Secretly a Hitman for Mossad
March 30th, 2016This is a pretty amazing story:
On September 11, 1962, a German scientist vanished. The basic facts were simple: Heinz Krug had been at his office, and he never came home.
The only other salient detail known to police in Munich was that Krug commuted to Cairo frequently. He was one of dozens of Nazi rocket experts who had been hired by Egypt to develop advanced weapons for that country.
HaBoker, a now defunct Israeli newspaper, surprisingly claimed to have the explanation: The Egyptians kidnapped Krug to prevent him from doing business with Israel.
But that somewhat clumsy leak was an attempt by Israel to divert investigators from digging too deeply into the case — not that they ever would have found the 49-year-old scientist.
We can now report — based on interviews with former Mossad officers and with Israelis who have access to the Mossad’s archived secrets from half a century ago — that Krug was murdered as part of an Israeli espionage plot to intimidate the German scientists working for Egypt.
Moreover, the most astounding revelation is the Mossad agent who fired the fatal gunshots: Otto Skorzeny, one of the Israeli spy agency’s most valuable assets, was a former lieutenant colonel in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS and one of Adolf Hitler’s personal favorites among the party’s commando leaders. The Führer, in fact, awarded Skorzeny the army’s most prestigious medal, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, for leading the rescue operation that plucked his friend Benito Mussolini out from the hands of his captors.
Skorzeny really was that scary a badass, and late in the war many allies feared that he would be leading “werewolf” guerrilla forces against the occupation of Germany, which never really materialized.
You can read more about him here, though that site might possibly be out on the fringe (in more ways than one).
Scott Walker Endorses Ted Cruz
March 29th, 2016This won’t hurt Ted Cruz’s chances:
Washington (CNN)Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker formally endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday, saying he is “a strong new leader” and “constitutional conservative.”
“After all these years of the Obama-Clinton failures, it’s time we elect a strong new leader and I’ve chosen to endorse Ted Cruz,” Walker told conservative radio host Charlie Sykes on Newsradio 620 WTMJ Tuesday.
If you asked me in 2015 who I think had the best chance of winning the Republican nomination, I would have said it was Walker, given how how handily he beat the unions in the Wisconsin recall. Shows you how much I know…
Hillary’s Email Scandal: Worse Than You Thought
March 29th, 2016The Washington Post has a long piece up on how Hillary Clinton’s private email server scandal unfolded. Though quite restrained by the standards of the blogsphere, it paints a devastating portrait of Clinton and her aides not only blithely unconcerned about security, but plotting to bypass security and accountability from the get-go:
Hillary Clinton began preparing to use the private basement server after President Obama picked her to be his secretary of state in November 2008. The system was already in place. It had been set up for former president Bill Clinton, who used it for personal and Clinton Foundation business.
On Jan. 13, 2009, a longtime aide to Bill Clinton registered a private email domain for Hillary Clinton, clintonemail.com, that would allow her to send and receive email through the server.
Snip.
They were aware of a speech delivered by Joel F. Brenner, then chief of counterintelligence at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, on Feb. 24 at a hotel in Vienna, Va., a State Department document shows. Brenner urged his audience to consider what could have happened to them during a visit to the recent Beijing Olympics.
“Your phone or BlackBerry could have been tagged, tracked, monitored and exploited between your disembarking the airplane and reaching the taxi stand at the airport,” Brenner said. “And when you emailed back home, some or all of the malware may have migrated to your home server. This is not hypothetical.”
At the time, Clinton had just returned from an official trip that took her to China and elsewhere in Asia. She was embarking on another foray to the Middle East and Europe. She took her BlackBerry with her.
Snip.
Few could have known it, but the email system operated in those first two months without the standard encryption generally used on the Internet to protect communication, according to an independent analysis that Venafi Inc., a cybersecurity firm that specializes in the encryption process, took upon itself to publish on its website after the scandal broke.
Not until March 29, 2009 — two months after Clinton began using it — did the server receive a “digital certificate” that protected communication over the Internet through encryption, according to Venafi’s analysis.
It is unknown whether the system had some other way to encrypt the email traffic at the time. Without encryption — a process that scrambles communication for anyone without the correct key — email, attachments and passwords are transmitted in plain text.
“That means that anyone could have accessed it. Anyone,” Kevin Bocek, vice president of threat intelligence at Venafi, told The Post.
The Post piece is well worth reading, even if it avoids the conclusion already drawn by everyone not already a Hillary Clinton backer: She set up a private server to avoid legal accountability while doing back-channel deals with foreign powers that directly benefited herself, the Clinton Foundation (but I repeat myself), her friends and cronies.
Then there’s this: “Because Clinton did not use desktop computers, she relied on her personal BlackBerry.” Wait, a high ranking government official in the 21st century “doesn’t use personal computers”? Who is she, your grandmother that complains she can’t play solitaire because you closed the games directory on Windows 95?
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
.50 BMG vs. Peeps
March 27th, 2016Enjoy this traditional Easter offering of a .50 BMG round vs. a long row of Peeps. It’s hardly a fair fight…
Bomb Blast Targeting Christians in Lahore Pakistan Kills 56
March 27th, 2016Another day, another Jihad suicide bombing:
An explosion ripped through a crowded Pakistan park where Christians were celebrating Easter on Sunday, killing at least 56 people, officials told AFP.
About 150 people were injured when a suicide bomber detonated explosives in the parking area of Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park in the eastern city of Lahore, officials told Reuters.
The explosion reportedly occurred just outside the exit gate and near rides for children.
A police superintendent told Reuters most of the dead were women and children.
The Pakistani ISI has supported jihad as an instrument of state policy since at least the creation of the Taliban. It’s tempting to call the increasing number of in-country jihad attacks as blow-back, except I’m not entirely sure how much (if any) the ISI and their deep state allies really care about the deaths of Pakistani Christians…
That “Cruz Adultery” Story is Ludicrous
March 25th, 2016It looks like someone in Donald Trump’s orbit fed the National Enquirer a Ted Cruz adultery story originally peddled by Marco Rubio allies.
The story is pretty much laughable, not only for the fact that it’s deeply out of character, but also that it strikes me as logistically impossible.
Has no one ever seen Ted Cruz work on the campaign trail? The man’s a campaigning machine with a grueling schedule that would kill lesser mortals. When the hell is Cruz supposed to find time to have an affair? When on earth is he supposed to find time for one mistress, let alone five?
It’s almost as ludicrous a theory as Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls never being shot dead and secretly collaborating on a comeback album with Joe Biden.
Edited to add: Texas Monthly editor Erica Grieder finds the story as ludicrous as I do.
48 More Waco Bikers Indicted
March 25th, 2016Another update on the aftermath of the Waco shootout:
A Texas grand jury indicted 48 more bikers Wednesday in connection with a May 2015 shootout outside a Twin Peaks restaurant that left nine dead, bringing the total number of people facing felony charges to 154.
Prosecutors in Waco announced that all the bikers indicted are charged with engaging in organized criminal activity, meaning they’re accused of being complicit in the shooting that also left 20 people injured. They face 15 years to life in prison if convicted.
McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna won indictments against 106 other bikers in November. In a statement Wednesday, he did not rule out more indictments in what he called “an ongoing investigation.”
Six of the 48 people newly indicted have not been arrested, and their indictments remain under seal. But Reyna and the McLennan County district clerk’s office confirmed they were facing the same charge as other bikers. A spokeswoman for Reyna did not respond to a question about whether the grand jury declined to indict in any cases presented.
Reyna has been harshly criticized by attorneys who say he’s prosecuting dozens of bikers who were at the restaurant only for a peaceful gathering of motorcycle clubs.
Snip.
Prosecutors have not indicted anyone specifically for murder in the nine deaths. The organized criminal activity charge incorporates allegations that every person indicted was responsible for the deaths and injuries that ensued in the gunfire.
Dallas attorney Don Tittle said Wednesday’s indictments appeared to center on bikers who weren’t members of the two major clubs present — the Bandidos and the Cossacks — but rather part of smaller “support clubs.” Dozens of Bandidos and Cossacks have already been indicted.
DA Reyna seems to be working on the novel (to America, anyway) theory of “collective guilt,” that if he can just get a grand jury to indict every member of every motorcycle club present at Twin Peaks that day merely for being in a motorcycle club, that will make up for his inability to charge any individual with murder.
That’s not going to fly. Quantity is absolutely no substitute for quality in the criminal justice system. Ten months after the Twin Peaks shootout, public officials seem no closer to determining who killed who that day, and what role law enforcement overreaction and incompetence played in those deaths.
