Archive for the ‘Austin’ Category
Wednesday, December 17th, 2014
Time for another Texas vs. California update:
California’s unfunded health care obligations for retired employees hits $72 billion. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Meanwhile, the state comptroller says that California’s unfunded pension liabilities has hit $198 billion. (Ditto.)
California may extend benefits to illegal aliens taking advantage of Obama’s amnesty.
Speaking of which, both California and Texas are on the hook for providing education for illegal alien children. “Today, those figures are $14.4 billion for California and $8.5 billion for the Lone Star state.”
California will go broke if it doesn’t adopt pension reform.
Lessons for California from Texas’ boom.
Costa Mesa police union tries to pin false DUI charge on City Councilman. Hilarity ensues. (Hat tip: Dwight.) And what caused the police union to go after him? Pension reform.
Pension spiking widespread in Cosa Contra County. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
California’s high speed rail boondoggle won’t work with the current tracks.
Health industry software company vitaTrackr announces relocation of its headquarters from Baltimore to Austin.
Builders FirstSource announces expansion in San Antonio and Conroe.
Tags:amnesty, Austin, Border Controls, California, Conroe, Costa Mesa, Crime, Democrats, pension crisis, Texas, unions, Welfare State
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Texas, unions, Welfare State | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 11th, 2014
Veteran’s Day seems like a good time to have another gun and crime roundup. Includes some stuff held from before the election:
In case you missed it, Eric Holder’s Justice Department performed a 65,000 page Fast and Furious document drop on election eve.
The latest statistics on guns and crime shows that “the hypothesis of ‘more guns=more deaths’ cannot be true in the frame of reference of American society over the past 31 years.”
Anti-gun Democratic Missouri state Senator Jamilah Nasheed arrested for carrying 9mm while intoxicated. When Democrats say that average citizens can’t be trusted with guns, they seem to really be talking about themselves…
Six in ten Americans say that guns make a home safer. (Hat tip: Alphecca.)
Nine out of ten Americans support expanded gun purchase background checks–except for when they, you know, actually vote on them. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
The exception: Washington State, where Bloomberg outspent the NRA 10-1 to pass a ballot initiative that institutes additional complex and cumbersome background checks. And Bloomberg is going to try to roll the same model out in other states with ballot initiatives. (Hat tip: Shall Not Be Questioned.
Ways not to avoid police attention: Name yourself “Pazazu,” worship evil gods, and brag about buried skeletons in your yard.
What not to do after you’ve shot someone. (Hat tip: Tam.)
Three thugs try to rape man’s granddaughter. Result: one dead thug, two critically injured thugs.
Speaking of rapists who got what they deserved: Texas father who killed man raping his five year old will not face charges.
All other things being equal, you probably shouldn’t taunt police over your mugshot.
America’s oldest veteran is Richard Overton, a 108 year old Austinite who drinks whiskey and smokes cigars.
World’s Briefest Honeymoon.
If you can be thwarted by a can of bug spray, perhaps the thug life isn’t for you:
Tags:Austin, Crime, Democrats, Eric Holder, Fast and Furious, Guns, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Overton, Washington
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Guns | No Comments »
Friday, November 7th, 2014
A Friday LinkSwarm after a very eventful week…
So exactly when was it that the UK became the child rape capital of the Western world? First Rotherham, now Manchester.
Government of Burkina Faso falls. Evidently people there thought that 27 years of rule for President Blaise Compaore was more than enough…
Russia sends more tanks into Ukraine. Looks like we’ll dealing with the fallout of Obama’s “flexibility” for decades… (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty).
The Pakistani version of Axe Cop sounds a whole lot less entertaining than the American version.
DSCC head blames Obama for Senate loss.
The DSCC decides that they’ll stop pouring money down the rathole that is Mary Landrieu.
“Salon Writer Condemns Arithmetic As Racist.” Or how Jonathan Chait ruthlessly used his Mansplaining Male Math Privilege to oppress Jenny Kutner.
Because their attacks on Koch were so successful, Democrats double-down on stupid.
U.S. hits targets in Syria. Not ISIS, but “the Khorasan group.” For such a reportedly “small” group, we seem to be bombing them a lot…
Fatah and Hamas thoughtfully take a break from trying to kill Jews in order to blow each other up.
I’m shocked, shocked that there’s abuse and fraud in the “Obamaphone” program.
In addition to national and statewide outbreaks of sanity, there was even an outbreak in Austin, where voters defeated a proposal to expand Capitol Metro’s toy trains.
Tags:2014 Election, Austin, Blaise Compaore, Burkina Faso, Democrats, Elections, Fatah, feminism, fraud, Gaza, Hamas, Jihad, Jonathan Chait, Koch Brothers, Manchester, Media, Military, Pakistan, Rotherham, Russia, sex offender, Texas, UK, Ukraine, waste, Wendy Davis
Posted in Austin, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Monday, November 3rd, 2014
Election day is tomorrow! Now would be a good time to locate your voter registration card…
Democrats come up with a brilliant new strategy to get their voters to the polls: threaten them. And yes, that letter did actually come from the New York Democratic Party. “Nice voter you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it…”
Wendy Davis’ campaign may doom Battleground Texas efforts by alienating Hispanics.
“On Tuesday, it is all but inevitable that Greg Abbott’s campaign and Texas voters are going to beat Wendy Davis like a circus monkey.” I think this line is deeply unfair to circuses who treat their monkeys humanely…
Yet another area the Wendy Davis campaign isn’t strong in: math. Namely, their bragging that Democratic early voting was up from 2010 was false: “Hours later, the organization had to remove that memo from its website, after it became clear that Battleground Texas was using inaccurately low tallies from 2010.”
“Joni Ernst has charged to achieve a 7-point lead over Democrat Bruce Braley in a new Iowa Poll, which buoys the GOP’s hope that an Iowa victory will be the tipping point to a Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate.”
Speaking of Ernst, Tom Harkin has a unique pitch to vote against her: “Oh yeah, I’d totally bang that, but you shouldn’t vote for her because (R) and stuff.” Of course, I’m paraphrasing here…
Mary Landrieu says she’s unpopular because her Louisiana constituents are lousy, stinking sexist bigots. I’m sure they’ll enjoy hearing that…
The Charlotte Observer memory holes story on her family’s illegal graft. Reporting the news must rank considerably behind “Protecting Democrats” on The Charlotte Observer’s priority list…
Travis County GOP Guide to City Council candidates.
Travis County GOP on AISD, ACC, RRISD, etc. candidates.
More Travis County race information.
If you need additional reasons to vote against the latest rail boondoggle, here’s footage of the rally against it.
And here’s Holly Hansen’s rundown of RRISD races again.
Tags:2014 Election, 2014 Governor's Race, ACC, Austin, Austin City Council, Austin ISD, Democrats, Elections, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, Republicans, Round Rock ISD, Texas, Wendy Davis
Posted in Austin, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Thursday, October 30th, 2014
From the Austin legal beat, Antonio Buehler was found not guilty of refusing to obey a police officer’s instructions while filming an arrest on January 1st, 2012.
Chalk up another small but real win for the right to monitor government employees doing their work in public.
Tags:Austin, Crime, First Amendment, police, Texas
Posted in Austin, Crime, Texas | No Comments »
Monday, October 20th, 2014
I was at a writer’s workshop this weekend, so it’s slow going getting back into the swing of things:
Early voting in Texas starts today. Find your polling place here.
ObamaCare is failing to control costs.
Sure, it’s screwed over the many people who have lost their policies or seen their rates skyrocket, but besides Democratic Party functionaries, is there anyone who is happy with ObamaCare? Why yes, there is: Insurance companies
Department of Defense hid discovery of chemical weapons in Iraq. In other words: Bush was right, and his critics were wrong…
Looks like U.S. air power is finally making a difference in Kobane.
On the other hand: “U.S. Humanitarian Aid Going to ISIS: Not only are foodstuffs, medical supplies—even clinics—going to ISIS, the distribution networks are paying ISIS ‘taxes’ and putting ISIS people on their payrolls.” Let’s not do that…
A sign of how deadly Ebola is: “That Science article written by 58 medical professionals tracing the emergence of Ebola—5 of them died from Ebola before it was published.” (Hat tip: Jerry Pournelle via Instapundit.)
The Democratic talking points that “Republican budget cuts” helped create the Ebola outbreak are such obvious lies that the Washington Post gave it four Pinocchios.
Speaking of Ebola…
“Having Jimmy Carter out-hawk you is like having Joe Biden attack you for being verbally undisciplined…Doing nothing about the Islamic State was Obama’s foreign policy until the domestic political situation made his foreign policy untenable.”
Another Democratic Senate candidates refuses to say she voted for Obama. Hey, remember when all those Republican senate candidates refused to say whether they voted for Reagan? Me neither.
So just how much did Kay Hagan’s family get from a USDA energy program? USDA: We’re not going to tell you.
Democrats bringing in Marc Ellis is pretty much a sign they know they’re already breaking the law.
Tom Harkin is not pissing his campaign contributions down Bruce Braley’s rathole of a campaign.
Why should blacks turn out for the Democratic Party?
Real rape vs. “rape culture”:
Why Ezra Klein supports “An Enabling Act for the Salem Rape Culture Trials.”
Then Klein doubled down on stupid, proving how deeply over his head he’s in. Again.
FIRE‘s VP also takes a wack at Klein’s stupidity.
Is there any doubt that, under these new kangaroo court procedures, the innocent Duke lacrosse players would have been expelled labeled sex offenders? I suspect that for Social justice Warriors, this outcome isn’t a bug, but a feature…
MoveOn.org has a “Get the money out of politics” ad contest. Unexpected conservative landslide ensues.
World’s least shocking news: New York Times reporters follow liberal Twitter feeds almost exclusively. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The #GamerGate Hate Hoax. But it’s not like Robert Stacy McCain knows anything about online death threats…
Has PETA reminded us what insane lunatics they are recently? Well, they’re complaining about Google View using a camel.
ISIS kills ISIS.
Is your religion approved by the City of Houston, comrade?
All about the man recreating the 1918 flu strain that killed 40 million people
Remembering Aitazaz Hassan Bangash, whose sacrifice saved hundred from a suicide bomber in Pakistan.
This looks like it could be an interesting book.
Holly Hansen has the rundown on Round Rock ISD board candidates.
SXSW would like to to keep the peasants from exercising their annoying freedoms during their festival. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
What every President drank.
Tags:#GamerGate, 2014 Election, Aitazaz Hassan Bangash, Archer, Austin, black, Books, Bruce Braley, Democrats, Duke lacrosse case, Ebola, Elections, feminism, Holly Hansen, Houston, Iraq, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jihad, Jimmy Carter, Jonah Goldberg, Kay Hagan, Marc Ellis, Military, MoveOn.org, Natalie Tennant, New York Times, Pakistan, PETA, Round Rock ISD, Steve Crowder, Syria, Texas, Tom Harkin, video
Posted in Austin, Democrats, Elections, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Texas | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 15th, 2014
Via Dwight comes word that alternative weekly the San Francisco Bay Guardian has ceased publication. Alternative weeklies used to have a market niche as carrier mediums of left-wing opinion, music gig listings and porn ads. The Internet has taken over the music and porn listings, and the left-wing opinion market is glutted not only online, but with MSNBC, New York Times, CNN, NBC, CBS, Washington Post, NPR, etc.
But if you can’t make money with an alternative weekly in San Francisco, where can you? (And keep in mind that this was after they received a settlement from rival SF Weekly.)
Well, probably Austin. At least as long as you have an enormous, money-making music festival attached to it…
(Flashback: “I missed the Bay Guardian’s coverage of their investor’s indictment on child prostitution charges.”)
Tags:California, Democrats, Media Watch, San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Guardian
Posted in Austin, Democrats, Media Watch | 2 Comments »
Thursday, October 2nd, 2014
Will Franklin of WILLisms put up an interesting link on his Twitter feed: A PDF of Texas relocation data from the Texas Association of Realtors.
There’s lots of interesting information to be gleaned:
The 2014 Texas Relocation Report shows that Texas continues to be a national leader in relocation activity and a sought- after location for households moving out of state.
According to the report, Texas gained more out-of-state residents than any other state in 2013, with 584,034 people moving to Texas from out of state. A majority of these residents originated from California (66,318), followed by Florida (32,619), Oklahoma (29,169), Louisiana (29,042), and Illinois (28,900).
Texas ranked third in the nation for number of residents moving out of state in 2013 (409,977), coming in behind California (581,689) and Florida (423,995) and topping New York (401,440), and Illinois (304,674). Like with incoming residents, a majority of the residents who moved out of state moved to California (32,290), followed by Oklahoma (27,391), Florida (24,226), Colorado (23,490), and Louisiana (21,747).
Overall, Texas had a net gain of out-of-state residents in 2013, with 138,057 more people moving into Texas than Texas residents moving out of state in 2013.
So roughly twice as many people moved from California to Texas as vice versa.
Other nuggets from the report:
Both Harris and Dallas counties had net negative outflows, though their surrounding counties more than made up for it in population growth.
Williamson county had the third largest net population inflow, with Hays fourth, behind Denton and Brazos counties, but well ahead of Travis. Indeed, Williamson’s population growth was three times that of Travis.
Despite that, Travis got more out-of-state migration inflow than Williamson, which I take to mean that Travis got more Californians and Williamson got more Texans fleeing The People’s Republic of Austin.
If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the report, it actually says most of Williamson’s in-state inflow came from Travis, but numbers of people moving from Williamson to Travis are so low they’re not even in the the top five. Indeed, more people moved to Walker County (home to Huntsville) than to Travis.
What does this mean politically? As Ace of Spades noted in their ginormous .PNG, conservative areas of the state are gaining population, while liberal strongholds are losing ground. The two largest liberal counties (Bexar and Travis) to gain population were outpaced by population growth in conservative Denton County alone.
Conclusion: Despite Democrats talking up demographic shifts, don’t expect Texas to turn blue anytime soon…
Tags:California, Dallas, Harris County, population, Travis County, Williamson County
Posted in Austin, Texas | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014
Been a while since I did a roundup on gun news and examples of criminal stupidity, so here it is:
Study shows that banning “assault weapons” has no effect on crime.
The Missouri House and Senate override the veto of Democratic governor Jay Nixon for expanded concealed carry.
California is evidently cooking up a whole new batch of unconstitutional gun laws. (A repeat from the latest Texas vs. California update, but it certainly fits here as well…)
The New Jersey Star-Ledger comes out for mandatory gun confiscation. Perhaps New Jersey gun owners should come up with a boycott of all Star-Ledger advertisers until the editorial board is replaced…. (Hat tip: Shall Not Be Questioned.)
A look at the crappy, unverified statistics used by the gun grabbers in Nevada. “The source links given by Nevadans for Background Checks do not lead to any independent research on gun background checks, but lead solely back to statements by a gun-control advocacy group that are unsupported and ignore conflicting evidence.” (Hat tip: Alphecca.)
One police officer’s advice on how police can rewin the public’s trust: End the militarization, wear cameras, and end the drug war (or at least the war on marijuana). (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Dear Pennsylvania State Police: Please note that there is no void when searching for a cop killer clause in the Bill of Rights.
The Brady Bunch is suing an ammo manufacturer for the crazy Colorado movie shooter? Really? “It does sound like a civil action that is a sure loser, brought in hopes of gaining publicity. That of course runs a big risk of getting hit with sanctions.” (Hat tip: Shall Not Be Questioned)
Homeowner’s rights against criminals: “It is called confinement. In the situation where someone has illegally come inside a person’s home or workplace, that person can hold the intruder by force until police get there.”
Broken Windows: How a tiny bit of criminality (things stolen from open garages) has escalated to home invasion in an Austin neighborhood. Close your garage doors and lock your doors and windows at night, people…
Break into a home, get shot. That’s the Houston way.
Speaking of Houston, gun sales there are off 18%.
Four Chicago gangbangers decide to execute a 9-year old boy. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
Speaking of murderers of 9-year olds, Texas executed Lisa Coleman on September 17.
Pro-tip: If you don’t want to be arrested, try not to smuggle “38 pounds of marijuana, two disassembled .40 caliber semi-automatic weapons and 350 pounds of ammunition” onto a plane at JFK airport.
Pro Tip: Don’t try to hold up a man with the gun you’re buying from him off Craigslist. Especially since it’s unloaded. (Hat tip: Sipsy Street.)
If you’re going to get drunk and go joyriding, try not to crash in the home of the medieval weapons enthusiast, which will help minimize your chances of being stabbed with a spear. (Hat tip: Sipsy Street.)
Tags:Austin, California, Crime, gun control, Guns, Houston, Media Watch, Nevada, New Jersey, New Jersey Star-Ledger, Pennsylvania, police, Texas
Posted in Austin, Crime, Guns, Media Watch, Texas | No Comments »