Quick Pre-Default Greece Update

June 15th, 2015

It looks like the rest of Europe has finally wised up to the fact that Alexis Tsipras has been playing them for chumps. It should be obvious to everyone now that Tsipras and his far-left Syriza party have no intention of reforming Greece’s bloated welfare state, they just wanted to pretend to as long as the rest of Europe was willing to underwrite it in exchange for pretending to reform. But lately even the pretense of reform has become intolerable. They want debt forgiveness and Europe to continue paying their bills, and they’re not going to budge until they get it, or until they totally destroy the Greek economy. You know, whichever.

Europe seems to finally have said “Enough!”

Other Greek links:

  • Might the European Central Bank impose capital controls on Greece (ala Cyprus) to force a change in the Greek government? Since the Greek banking system only exists at the mercy of ECB-backstopping, this could very well be the easiest way out of the crisis for everyone (even, weirdly, Tsipras and Syriza, who will still be able to claim they never gave in to Troika demands…)
  • “The latest Greek negotiating strategy is to demand a ransom to desist threatening suicide. Such blackmail might work for a suicide bomber. But Greece is just holding a gun to its own head — and Europe does not need to care very much if it pulls the trigger.”
  • “For the creditors, the test of whether Mr. Tsipras really wants Greece to remain in the eurozone comes down to a simple question: Is Syriza willing or able to reform Greece’s public sector?” Syriza wants to reform Greece’s public sector the way O. J. Simpson wants to find the real killers.
  • Gameplanning Greek outcomes. (Warning: Autoplaying video. Up yours, Bloomberg.)

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    Posted in Budget, Foreign Policy, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Gov. Abbott Signs Open and Campus Carry Bills

    June 13th, 2015

    This afternoon, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the Open Carry and Campus Carry bills into law at Red’s Indoor Range in Pflugerville. (I can tell you from experience that it’s hard enough to get a shooting lane at Red’s even when the governor isn’t there.)

    Note that as per the actual text of the open carry bill, open carry for CHL holders goes into effect January 1, 2016. I’ve seen various commentators cite a date of September 1st, but that’s just the date for various Texas agencies to have administrative plans in place for complying with the new regulations. So don’t go wearing your holsters in public on September 1st, or you’re likely to receive a very rude awakening…

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    Posted in Austin, Guns, Texas | No Comments »

    Kroll Report Whitewashed Low LSAT Scores at UT Law

    June 12th, 2015

    Remember the Kroll Report, the look into the University of Texas’ system of preferential admissions for unqualified friends and relatives of the well-connected? The one that showed UT Regent Wallace Hall was right and his critics were wrong?

    Now it turns out that the Kroll report whitewashed some aspects of the UT scandal, namely how low the LSAT scores were for some of those well-connected applicants:

    “Of 6,155 admitted applicants from 2010 to 2014, only four were admitted with an LSAT score below 150,” Kroll reported. Also, “During the time period reviewed, we found only two applicants who were admitted with both an undergraduate GPA below 3.0 and LSAT score below 155; however, both applicants belonged to an under-represented minority group and had valuable public sector experience before applying to law school.”

    Actually, Kroll found dozens of students with LSAT scores below 150, and even found three students admitted during the Powers years with scores in the 130s.

    Snip.

    It’s impossible to say now exactly how many underqualified students were admitted, as UT redacted the tallies. We can say that in 2004, UT Law admitted at least one person with each of the following scores: 137, 140, 141, 144, 147, 148 and 149.

    In 2005, UT Law admitted at least one person with each of the following scores: 137, 140, 141, 143, 144, 147, 148 and 149.

    In 2006, the low scores recorded were 137, 141, 143, 146, 147, 148 and 149.

    So who ordered the Kroll to spike its findings?

    “Vice Chancellor Dan Sharphorn oversaw the report. He reports directly to Chancellor Bill McRaven.”

    Ongoing lawsuits by Watchdog.org and a Dallas Morning News columnist may succeed in getting past UT’s stonewalling (“In response to a public records request, UT last week produced a key 24,536-page document from the Kroll files, with every last page redacted.”) to cast some light on the subject.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

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    Posted in Austin, Texas, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »

    IMF Gives Up on Greece

    June 11th, 2015

    The IMF just said to Greece “Screw you guys, I’m going home.” (Note: For the full effect, you have to say the preceding in the voice of Eric Cartman.)

    The International Monetary Fund said it was halting bailout talks with Greece in a stark signal of its exasperation about a lack of progress toward a deal needed to avert a Greek default, as European leaders suggested the negotiations were nearing their endgame without an agreement in sight.

    And keep in mind that these are transnational bureaucrats whose entire job description is long, drawn-out economic negotiations. And they’ve finally had enough of talking to Greece.

    That’s not the fat lady warming up, that’s the fat lady striding boldly on stage and waiting for the cue to open her mouth.

    The Greek debt crisis was always going to come to a bad end. The least bad alternative was introducing real austerity when the crisis hit, paring back their welfare state, reforming their economy, and living within their means for several years until their economy started growing again.

    But by electing the far-left Syriza party, Greece has ended up opting for a far worse fate: They’re going to end up absolutely broke, absolutely in debt, and they won’t even be able to fund the day-to-day operations of their bloated welfare state. Unless the Greek parliament can somehow force a snap election and replace Alexis Tsipras’s lying, farcical government with one actually capable of recognizing reality, Greece is in for a level of economic pain that’s going to make the Great Depression look like a picnic…

    (Hat tip: Zero Hedge.)

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    Posted in Budget, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Marco Rubio’s Home = 3 Months Clinton Summer Rental

    June 11th, 2015

    A lot of blogdom has been talking about The New York Times‘s laughable hit pieces on Marco Rubio, in which they reveal that Rubio paid $550,000 for a home in West Miami (“The house, among the more expensive in West Miami, stood out from the aging homes nearby: It includes an in-ground pool, a handsome brick driveway, meticulously manicured shrubs and oversize windows.”)

    The Times also slammed Rubio for spending $80,000 on a “luxury speedboat” that actually turned out to be a run-of-the-mill fishing boat.

    Hot Air notes that his house is 2,700 square feet, which is precisely 12 square feet larger than my own Williamson County home in suburban Austin. I don’t have a pool, and I paid a whole lot less ($171,000) than Rubio, but that’s the difference between buying just off the floor of the Dotcom bust in Austin (2004), and buying near the peak of Miami’s real estate boom in 2005. It also takes a lot of damn gall for The New York Times to cluck over $550,000 for a 2,700 square feet home, when that amount would barely buy you a 800 square foot shoebox in Manhattan (if you’re lucky).

    Of course, it’s instructive to compare Rubio’s home with Hillary Clinton’s:

    Even more stunning: Bill and Hillary Clinton spent $200,000 a month for a summer vacation rental house in the Hamptons. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of spending $200,000 a month on your summer rental. And not in an exotic locale like Bali or Fiji, but the Hamptons. Why? So you can rub your nouveau riche in the faces of the all the old money? That’s pretty much “lighting your cigar with $100 bills” rich.

    But I guess you’re not so picky about money when your entire lifestyle is underwritten by foreign dictators writing checks to your foundation.

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Media Watch | No Comments »

    Round Rock Bass Pro Shop Opened Today

    June 10th, 2015

    Today at 6 PM was the grand opening for the new Bass Pro Shop in Round Rock. People who have shopped there assure me that this is a Really Big Deal.

    At first glance the gun prices don’t look great to me, but maybe I can pick up some decent cargo shorts…

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    Posted in Austin, Guns | No Comments »

    “Come on America. Nobody has free speech any more. Why should you?”

    June 10th, 2015

    Pat Condell on that pesky First Amendment that keep oppressing progressives by hurting their precious feelings.

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    Posted in Social Justice Warriors, video | No Comments »

    “Those Who Count the Votes Decide Everything”

    June 9th, 2015

    Hey, remember how Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were collectively the largest donor to the Clinton Foundation?

    Well, guess who’s going to be providing the technical infrastructure to tally vote totals for the Iowa Caucuses?

    On Friday, the state’s Democratic and Republican partiesannounced a new system that will be used to count the votes cast by Iowans during the complicated election process. Authorized precinct representatives will use new apps to report results to their party headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa’s capital, when the election takes place early next year.

    The system is powered by Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and was built by the tech giant in collaboration with its partner InterKnowlogy, which also made CNN’s Magic Wall election result reporting tool. It replaces a set-up that required precinct representatives to call into automated phone systems with no way of authenticating whether the person was authorized to do so and then record votes using their phone’s keypad. Representatives also mailed paper records to the party’s central office.

    If I were one of Hillary’s primary opponents, I’d think I’d want to look at that source code before trusting those tallies to be fair and accurate…

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections | No Comments »

    Waco Biker Shootout Follow-up 7

    June 8th, 2015

    Three weeks after the May 17th biker shootout, it’s still not clear who instigated the fight.

    Evidently at least 50 of those arrested have been released after their initial $1 million bail was reduced. Several hundred bikers also peacefully protested the mass arrests following the Twin Peaks shootout. Somehow bikers in Texas seem to have gotten the crazy notion in their head that “peaceful protest” doesn’t include looting local businesses…

    Members of different gangs give conflicting accounts of the shootout. Two bikers just released claim to be members of the Los Pirados motorcycle club, and claim it was the Cossacks, not the Bandidos, starting trouble. The piece also mentions three other motorcycle gangs or clubs present besides the Bandidos and Cossacks, including two (Sons of the South and American Legion Riders) that I hadn’t seen mentioned in previous reports. Combined with those listed from previous reports, that puts members of Bandidos, Coassacks, Scimitars, Vaqueros, Los Pirados, Leathernecks, Boozefighters, Sons of the South, American Legion Riders and Veterans on the scene of the shootout.

    Reason has been critical the police response to the shooting, especially since “more than 115 of the 170 people arrested in the aftermath of a motorcycle gang shootout outside a Central Texas restaurant have not been convicted of a crime in Texas.”

    A longish profile of the Bandidos, which offers conflicting accounts of their current level of criminality.

    On the one hand:

    “They tell you up front: ‘We live by our own rules. We have our own morals, code of ethics, and this is our world,’ ” said Carlos Canino, head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Los Angeles. He described the Bandidos as “a lot rougher” than the Hells Angels, but “not as outwardly sophisticated.”

    “They’ll fight at the drop of a hat,” he said of the Bandidos.

    Police contend the Bandidos have stayed involved in drug trafficking, prostitution and other crimes.

    On the other:

    Houston lawyer Kent Schaffer, who has represented Bandidos for more than 30 years, said there are more police officers indicted on felonies every year in the Houston area than Bandidos.

    He said current members are not like the men of the 1970s, “when they all had long hair, beards, missing teeth and tattoos – some of the older guys look that way, but most look like mainstream society.” They are engineers, oil field workers, computer programmers, he said, with college degrees, short hair and khaki pants.

    “Most of these people have respectable jobs, pay their taxes and don’t have felony records,” Schaffer said.

    “Most don’t have felony records” would seem to be damning with faint praise…

    Other relevant links:

  • Dutch police indicted 14 members of the Bandidos, seizing a number of weapons in the process, including five rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Now, I’m not an expert on Dutch firearms law, but I’m going to guess those are not legal in civilian hands…
  • The Republic of Texas biker rally, far and away the largest in Texas, is in Austin June 11 through 14. I’m betting the police presence will be even heavier than usual…

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    Posted in Crime, Texas | No Comments »

    Erdogan’s Islamist A.K.P. to Lose Majority?

    June 7th, 2015

    So say the tea leaves from early results. If it holds up, that would be pretty big (and good) news, especially since it would slow Erdogan’s attempts to fully Islamize Turkey, as well as thwart his attempt to change the constitution to give himself more power. The pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party is also on track to surpass the 10% voting threshold for representation, which is also good news.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »

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