Posts Tagged ‘Steve Adler’
Thursday, April 29th, 2021
Two days from now, Austin voters will go to the polls to decide the fate of reinstating the camping ban, along with a number of other proposals. (Cheat sheet: Vote for Proposition B and against everything else.) So here’s an update on Austin news in advance of the election.
Austin crime has exploded, and it’s all due to the feckless actions of leftwing politicians:
Three members of the Austin City Council (AKA local control/city government) politicians are guilty of promoting the crime-enabling policies not unique to Austin. Mayor Steve Adler, Greg Casar, and Natasha Harper-Madison are the main culprits who expedited this radical shift away from public safety. Mayor Steve Adler has shown a careless lack of leadership on the issue, most notably during the Summer 2020 city-wide riots. Greg Casar has used the issue to push his Marxist values. Natasha Harper-Madison has exploited the safety of Austin citizens in order to promote her racism and perpetual victim ideologies. History will judge the actions of these three local partisan politicians poorly. How long are Austin citizens going to continue to sit back while these three continue their radical progressive experiment to the detriment of the city?
Austin was one of the most sought-after, safest cities, but in 2020, there was an increase in murders by 50% from the previous year. Currently in 2021, there have been a whopping 21 murders to date. Austin is well on its way to breaking last year’s record number of murders.
Also, this is a pretty sobering chart:
Paul Martin on factors driving crime increases in Austin:
First, our police department is losing officers. The latest information can be found here, but here’s a summary for the TL;DR crowd:
Last year, the Austin Police Department lost about eleven officers per month through resignations and retirements. In the first four months of this fiscal year, the police department has already lost an average of fifteen officers per month. The department will have more than seventy-five vacancies by the end of January, in addition to positions previously cut from the budget.
(emphasis original)
Fewer officers in a city with a growing population means fewer officers per citizen. This means increased response times for even high priority calls. Increased response times mean less policing and thus less deterrence to crime.
The second component to this is the new policy in the Travis County District Attorney’s office under which the D.A. “will present all use-of-force cases [of law enforcement] to grand juries that involve deaths or serious injuries.” In other words, any time a citizen is injured during an arrest, the arresting officer runs the risk of being subjected to the grand jury process. The concern here is that officers will be less likely to use force moving forward. Violent criminals know this, and they know the officer will be reluctant to use force to take them into custody.
Matt Mackowiak makes the case for reinstating the camping ban:
1) The homeless community has exploded, from around 2,500 to what I estimate to be 5,000 now, although according to Austonia a report commissioned by consultants for the city recently put the estimate at 10,000.
2) Homeless fires are on track to double last year’s all-time record (to 503), endangering homeless Austinites and their personal property and our courageous firefighters.
3) City parks are being destroyed all over the city, despite the fact that the camping ordinance specifically exempts parks from legal camping.
4) Every single major highway intersection is worse today, and this is especially visible on Hwy. 183 and Hwy. 71, as well as on IH-35.
5) Public safety in Austin is at the worst I can ever remember (I arrived in Austin in 1984), with our homicide rate set to double this year (after last year’s all-time record), and regular violent attacks by homeless individuals happening almost daily at this point. A quick review of the Citizen app will cause you to lose sleep at night.
6) Public health in our city is far worse today than it would be without the ordinance, as the city had no plan for the human and physical waste created by camping, and we regularly see human feces, drug needles and other waste at encampments across the city.
7) Tourism has taken a direct hit. Major hotels are losing conferences, visitors are shocked to see what’s become of Austin, and the related economic effect on the hospitality and service industries has been profound.
Austin’s homeless policies have made the problem worse:
What is happening in Austin is nothing short of a humanitarian crisis. It threatens the health and safety of the community, and in particular of those struggling with homelessness.
According to pre-COVID-19 data released in late March by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the number of Austin’s unsheltered population—those who live in makeshift tents around the city—has risen a staggering 93% since 2016.
The Austin metro area represents 7% of the overall population of Texas, but about 25% of Texas’ unsheltered population today resides on its streets today.
Snip.
It is important to understand the origin of Austin’s homelessness surge. In 2013, HUD rolled out a one-size-fits-all homelessness policy, called Housing First, with spotty evidence of efficacy. Their “solution” to homelessness? Provide life-long, “no strings attached” housing—no requirement of sobriety, no work requirement, no requirement to access services to change the behaviors that led to homelessness. Austin’s elected officials took the bait—hook, line, and sinker.
HUD promised the Housing First approach would end homelessness in a decade. Instead, it resulted in an over 16% increase across the nation, including a 21% increase in the “unsheltered” population—ironically, the population for which this approach was originally designed.
Because Austin elected officials chose to follow HUD down an uncharted rabbit hole, Austin has experienced the same disastrous results, indeed the same disastrous results California has seen since it adopted Housing First in 2016—a stunning 37% increase in homelessness.
Could the Austin police department animal units be defunded?
Austin’s Reimagining Public Safety Task Force recommended in a work session Wednesday the idea of doing away with several police units in the next budget cycle. It suggests reallocating the money for other needs.
Two of the units one workgroup focused on are those that involve animals — APD’s Mounted Patrol and K9 Units.
“There are many tools police have. These happen to be very costly,” said Kathy Mitchell, chair of the workgroup that made the recommendations.
The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force estimates that APD’s Mounted Patrol and K9 units collectively cost the city nearly $5.5 million a year.
The real reason, of course is that the hard-left “Reimagining Public Safety Task Force” hates the police and wants to free up that money for left-wing crony graft. Plus they hate those units because they’re effective and provide good publicity for APD. Plus the mounted police are particularly good at breaking up riots before they start, which the #antifa/#BlackLivesMatter loving Austin left all but encourages.
Austin criminals are getting bolder:
Austin city government may finally be letting APD graduate a cadet class, but they’re changing training to “increase community engagement and involve citizen groups in the cadet training process,” which I’m pretty sure are codewords for cramming leftwing indoctrination into the curriculum.
More evidence of what Adler and the city council have brought to Austin:
It looks like conventions are returning post Mao Tse Lung, but a lot fewer groups want to have their conventions in Austin now that it’s turned into bumsville:
Speaking of conventions: Austin voters properly kicked leftwing City Councilman Jimmy Flannigan to the curb in 2020. Surprise! Right after his defeat, Flannigan landed a cushy $140,000 job with “Austin Convention Enterprises, or ACE, [a] public facilities corporation that was created by the city to own, finance and operate the downtown Hilton.” Evidently once you’re a corrupt leftwing insider, you get cushy sinicures carved out for you to keep you on the government teat no matter what voters think… (Hat tip: Adam Loewy.)
Steve Adler, liar:
Lots of Austin restaurants are bailing on downtown:
“In downtown, we depend on foot traffic and vehicle traffic driven primarily by visitors, hotel guests, conventioneers and locals who want to bar hop,” [B.D. Riley’s Irish Pub] co-owner Steve Basile said. “There was no path that we could draw that was anywhere more optimistic than 10 or 12 months of financial loss before downtown began to see the things that made downtown what it was pre-pandemic.”
Convention-less. Festival-less. Tourism-less. In downtown Austin, the pandemic has taken the regular menu of revenue drivers off the table, and the public health risks now attached to large, in-person gatherings and out-of-town travel have placed a particular burden on small businesses in the city’s central business district bound by Lamar Boulevard, I-35, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Lady Bird Lake.
The drain has made the math especially difficult for restaurants and bars, where bottom lines also depend on a now-dissipated office workforce, and smaller real estate footprints exacerbate the impact of social distancing rules. According to Community Impact Newspaper’s tracking of business closures, at least 10 locally owned restaurants and bars have permanently pulled out of downtown since August but, like B.D. Riley’s, have maintained business operations in other parts of the city. Their reasons signal a pessimism about the pace of recovery in the city’s center.
Proposition E wants to move to ranked voting (which is illegal under Texas law anyway). Here’s why it’s a bad idea.
Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell speaks out against the Wilco homeless hotel”
A montage of Adler’s Austin:
First-hand evidence of sex trafficking among the Adlervilles, and how no government entity would help:
Truth:
Some numbers:
Your city government in action: “Nobody knew how to restore power at Ullrich Water Treatment Plant during the freeze.”
On a normal day, Ullrich Water Treatment Plant produces roughly half of Austin’s drinkable water and is crucial to keeping the city’s water system functioning.
State regulations require the plant to either have access to a backup power source or a substantial amount of water reserves in case the plant sees an unexpected shutdown. Ullrich has both.
So when a tree limb fell on an electric line leading to a substation that powered Austin’s largest water treatment plant on Feb. 17, backups should have snapped into place to keep power running and water production churning.
But there was a problem: Nobody on site knew how to operate a 52-year-old gear switch that would have restored power to the plant.
And so Ullrich Water Treatment Plant went dark for three hours in the middle of the worst winter storm to strike Central Texas in decades. It cut off roughly half of the city’s potable water production and deepened the winter weather crisis that at that moment had thousands shivering without electricity in their homes.
Hey, remember Mellow Johnny’s, the Austin bike shop that announced they would no longer sell bikes to APD? Well, guess which bike shop was recently burglarized?
Tags:arson, Austin, Austin City Council, Austin Police Department, Bill Gravell, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Elections, fraud, Greg Casar, homeless, Jimmy Flannigan, Jose Garza, Matt Mackowiak, Mellow Johnny's, Natasha Harper-Madison, Paul Martin, police, Steve Adler, Steve Basile, Ullrich Water Treatment Plant, waste, Williamson County
Posted in Austin, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Waste and Fraud | 12 Comments »
Sunday, April 25th, 2021
It’s obvious that the current Austin City Council hates the Austin Police Department, and will do anything they think the can get away with to strip it of money and power. The most recent example: They’re stripping 911 funding from the police to hand it over to a newly created department:
In continuing to restructure the Austin Police Department, the City Council on Thursday voted to move 911 communications and several other services out of police control and into other city departments.
The total funding to be transferred out of the Police Department’s budget will be about $33.3 million — much of it due to 284.5 full-time positions moving to other city departments.
The decision builds on the council’s work during last year’s budget process when it cut or reallocated $150 million from the Police Department’s budget — one-third of the entire budget. The money removed Thursday came from funds that were set aside to explore shifting roles assigned to police to other city departments.
Why strip money from a functioning 911 dispatch system? Obviously, because the current employees support the police department, and lack of control over it means it can’t be staffed with leftwing cronies, making it much harder to rake off the graft and embezzlement. The “efficiencies” the Austin City Council claims the move to an “Emergency Communications Department” will bring is efficiently siphoning taxpayer money from the causes for which it is earmarked and into the hands of the hard left. But don’t think the crazy stops there:
Thursday’s vote followed a presentation earlier in the week from a community task force assembled by City Manager Spencer Cronk’s office to consider ways to improve public safety.
The recommendations included removing various line items in the Police Department’s budget and investing them in low-income communities through things such as health care access, food, housing and sex worker outreach services.
Some of the more extreme recommendations came from a four-person working group over patrol and surveillance. They included removing all deadly firearms from police officers and putting an end to new cadet classes. By eliminating neighborhood-based policing, the working group said the city would save $210 million that could be reinvested in communities of color.
“Any City Council member who supports that should be fired,” [Austin Police Association President Ken] Casady said. “It’s crazy town. Just by reading this one recommendation this committee has lost all credibility.”
Removing firearms from police and giving money to whores: Your Austin City Council at work.
Tags:911, Austin, Austin City Council, Austin Police Department, Crime, Democrats, fraud, police, Spencer Cronk, Steve Adler
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Waste and Fraud | 7 Comments »
Saturday, April 3rd, 2021
Another wondrous side benefit of all the drug-addled transients Mayor Steve Adler and the Austin City Council have lured to the city is the fires they’ve started in their trash-strewn camps. This week saw three separate homeless camp fires, one of which engulfed a historic building:
Three fires broke out at Austin homeless camps over the span of 24 hours. One of those fires spread and burned the historic Buford Tower in Downtown Austin.
The Austin Fire Department said they believe the blaze was arson and are looking for a suspect. AFD said the Thursday night fire started at a nearby homeless camp and drifted to the historic tower.
Friday, city crews were washing away the ashes left behind. No injuries were reported. AFD said the damage was mostly on the outside of the building and windows.
“I lost everything, my entire life,” said Richard Bryant, who lives at the homeless camp. “My sleeping bag, my clothes, my blanket, everything.”
Bryant lives in a now-melted tent at the homeless camp where AFD said the blaze started.
Hours after the April 1 fire broke out at the Buford Tower – a bell tower and landmark that used to serve as a drill tower for the Austin Fire Department – firefighters responded to a separate fire at the State homeless camp on the Bastrop Highway. Damage was reported at four units at the homeless camp, but there were no reported injuries.
Since the insane decision to repeal the camping ban, Austin hasn’t suffered a really dry summer. Drought conditions and sprawling camps of drug addicts cooking smack among dried-out underbrush is a recipe for disaster.
Mayor Steve Adler regurgitated the same bromides he offers up any time his pet transients trash another part of Austin: Taxpayers need to give the Austin City Council more money to fix the problems they created.
Consider this yet another reason to reinstate the homeless camping ban on May 1st.
Tags:arson, Austin, Austin City Council, Crime, homeless, Steve Adler
Posted in Austin, Crime | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, March 16th, 2021
So tremendous is Austin City Council stupidity that the Texas legislature is considering a statewide camping ban:
In a not-so-subtle broadside against its capital city, the Texas legislature will consider legislation to ban camping in public places and creating a criminal offense for violation of it.
Austin’s national renown for its live music has been all but supplanted by the notoriety for its homeless situation — featuring a nebulous inverse relationship between music venues still operating and tent encampments dotting the roadside.
The city’s camping and laying ordinance rescission of July 2019 created an impassioned reaction from Austin citizens across the political spectrum. But the city council has remained largely resolute behind its policy.
Reinstatement of the camping ban will appear before voters in May, but it will effectively become a formality if state Republicans have their way.
Two bills to explicitly ban public camping statewide have been filed. Rep. Giovanni Capriglione’s (R-Southlake)House Bill 1925 and Sens. Dawn Buckingham (R-Lakeway), Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), and Charles Schwertner’s (R-Georgetown)Senate Bill 987.
“A person commits an offense,” the identical bills read, “if the person intentionally or knowingly camps in a public place without the consent of the officer or agency having the legal duty or authority to manage the public place.”
It establishes a Class C misdemeanor for violation of the law, which is a fine-only charge.
The bill carves out the ability of a state agency to establish designated camping areas, like Camp R.A.T.T. located near the Highway 183-Ben White Boulevard intersection.
It would also explicitly prohibit contradictory local orders, stating, “A local entity may not adopt or enforce a policy under which the entity prohibits or discourages the enforcement of any public camping ban.”
If this passes and makes it to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk, I would fully expect him to sign it:
Hopefully both this and the May 1st ballot initiative will both pass. (Did you notice that Texas Supreme Court forced a minor change in the ballot wording?)
Only the Austin City Council and their hard-left enablers think lifting the camping ban has been anything but a disaster for Austin:
In other Austin homeless news:
Nine days ago, a fire in a homeless camp damaged a Ben White to I-35 flyover.
A lawsuit has been filed to stop the NW Austin homeless hotel sale:
A lawsuit has been filed against the City of Austin in an attempt to stop the sale of the Candlewood Suites hotel, which the City intends to convert into a supportive housing facility for Austinites experiencing homelessness.
Lawyer and Hampton Inn and Homewood Suites CFO Rupal Chaudhari said her “Chaudhari Partnership” business filed the suit on Thursday, seeking injunctive relief, monetary relief and a declaratory judgment preventing the finalized purchase “without proper notice and compensation for the loss of value of its properties and easement.”
“The City has engaged in a regulatory taking, constitutional due process violations and is in violation of deed restrictions on an easement jointly held with Chaudhari Partnership,” Chaudhari said in a release.
Candlewood Suites is located near State Highway 45 and U.S. 183 in Austin and partially in Williamson County. It is adjacent to Chaudhari’s business.
Williamson County leaders have said they were caught off guard when they learned the Austin City Council was even considering buying Candlewood Suites to house the homeless at the end of January.
Commissioners asked Austin councilmembers to delay the purchase and vote by six months so they could have more time to work with Austin leaders and discuss the matter.
But on Feb. 4, the Austin City Council bought Candlewood Suites for up to $9.5 million, making it the fourth hotel Austin plans to use to house the homeless. The City is now in a 90-day due diligence period.
In addition to Thursday’s lawsuit, Williamson County commissioners gave the green light to their general counsel to start interviewing law firms last month, propelling the county toward a lawsuit against the City of Austin, including the potential involvement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
“Negotiating in secret, never engaging citizens and taxpayers until the deal is essentially complete, disregarding community feedback and taking a pre-determined vote – that is not how any trustworthy City or organization operates,” Chaudhari said. “Their behavior and current process is more than unprofessional – it’s irredeemable.”
Maintaining public order to secure the life, liberty and property of citizens is one of the first duties of government. The Austin City Council and Mayor Steve Adler have not only ignored this duty in repealing the camping ban in 2019, they’ve actually gone out of their way to subvert it. It’s high time both Austin citizens and the legislature reign in their madness.
Tags:Austin, Austin City Council, Candlewood Suites, Charles Schwertner, Dawn Buckingham, Giovanni Capriglione, homeless, I-35, Paul Bettencourt, Rupal Chaudhari, Steve Adler, Texas
Posted in Austin, Texas | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021
Ever since Mayor Steve Adler and the Austin City Council repealed the public camping ban in 2019, Austin overpasses (and significant parts of the rest of the city) have been filled with drug-addicted transients trashing the place. Rep. Bryan Slaton has filed a bill to memorialize the fact:
A new bill filed in the Texas House would designate the stretch of I-35 in downtown Austin from 4th Street to 11th Street “Steve Adler Public Restroom Highway” — after the city’s incumbent mayor.
Rep. Bryan Slaton (R-Royse City), the author of the bill, told The Texan, “Liberal legacies deserve to be recognized. Since the legislature has made it clear it intends to rename some highways and bridges this session, I think it’s imperative that we start with a highway that truly recognizes the contributions of Mayor Adler.”
“Texans who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it, and with renaming the highway we will ensure that citizens of the Texas capital never forget the legacy of failed liberal policies.”
Since its recission in July of 2019, Austin’s camping and laying policy has exacerbated its developing homeless problem. Tents and makeshift forts cropped up across the city, dotting its boulevards and crowding its underpasses.
Months after the new policy’s establishment, Austin’s unsheltered homeless population grew by 45 percent while its sheltered population decreased by 11 percent.
And shortly after its inception, the city faced a 14 percent violent crime increase involving homeless individuals whether as victims, suspects, or both.
The policy came to a head last summer when a literal trash flood washed through a neighborhood, flooding back yards with garbage, needles, and feces.
By and large, the city council and its mayor have maintained stubborn support for the policy that allows anyone to camp or lay on any public property — notably excepting Austin City Hall.
Austin residents will get a chance to vote on reinstating the camping ban on May 1st.
Tags:Austin, Austin City Council, Bryan Slaton, Democrats, homeless, Steve Adler, Texas
Posted in Austin, Democrats, Texas | 4 Comments »
Thursday, February 4th, 2021
A tiny bit of good news in a sea of gloom: The petition to restore the camping ban has been garnered enough signatures to be placed on the May 1 ballot:
A group’s petition to reinstate Austin’s camping ban will appear on the May ballot after the city clerk certified enough signatures.
The Office of the City Clerk confirmed Thursday the petition submitted by Save Austin Now met the minimum requirement of 20,000 verified signatures to put it before voters. This is the second time Save Austin Now has attempted to bring this issue to the ballot, the first time they gathered signatures during the summer of 2020, the city’s analysis indicated the group did not gather enough valid signatures to do so.
A city spokesperson told KXAN that the City Council will now have to decide whether to adopt the ordinance changes as written in the petition, or call an election for May 1. The council has until Feb. 12 to make this decision, and there is expected to be a special meeting to discuss these issues on Feb. 9.
Up to this point, Save Austin Now has identified as an educational nonprofit and is led by Matt Mackowiak (the chair of the Republican Party for Travis County) and Cleo Petricek, who has been vocal about her opposition to the city’s recent policies related to homelessness. The Save Austin Now website notes its leadership includes Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday, president of UT safety group SafeHorns Joell McNew, and former Austin City Council Member Ora Houston. Now that this measure will be going before voters, Save Austin Now will have to register as a Political Action Committee with the city to handle activities for the election.
It’s good that they finally got enough signatures to exceed the threshold of fraud.
An Austin City Council who respected common sense and the will of citizens would go ahead and reinstate the camping ban, so that will never happen. Instead expect a vicious campaign from Mayor Steve Adler, Austin City Councilman Greg Casar and the other advocates of the Homeless Industrial Complex to smear those backing reinstatement of the ban as “white supremacists” (the reflexive go-to smear for the hard left in 2021) and wanting homeless people to die.
Tags:Austin, Greg Casar, homeless, Joell McNew, Ken Casaday, Matt Mackowiak, Ora Houston, Save Austin Now, Steve Adler, Texas
Posted in Austin, Texas | 3 Comments »
Sunday, January 17th, 2021
Austin news has been accumulating in heaps in drifts like trash strewn from a homeless encampment in a public park. So let’s grab a shovel:
First up: the case of the missing $6 million:
More than $6 million in taxpayer money flowed to Austin nonprofits affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but taxpayers might never learn the identities of the organizations that got the money or get a chance to dig into their stated need for assistance.
Citing a little-known state law that government transparency experts are only now learning exists, the city has refused to turn over a list of the 365 nonprofits that were granted the funds.
The $6 million was funneled through the city from the federal government and distributed out of the Austin Nonprofit and Civic Health Organizations Relief fund, more commonly known as the ANCHOR fund.
On Oct. 19, the American-Statesman requested a list from the city of the fund’s award recipients. On Nov. 16, the city denied the newspaper’s request, saying in a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that it thought the information was exempt from public disclosure and requested that Paxton’s office affirm that determination.
The law invoked by the city’s legal department, House Bill 3175, went on the books after the 2019 Texas legislative session.
Filed by state Rep. Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont, the bill made confidential the name and other identifying information of individuals and businesses that apply for state or federal disaster recovery funds. The definition of disaster, as spelled out in the law, includes such things as floods, earthquakes and hostile military action. It also includes epidemics, such as the COVID-19 crisis.
The disclosure of federal relief dollars is not exempted from public records if the money is awarded by the federal government. For example, news organizations, including the Statesman, have obtained through public records the names of businesses that received financial assistance through the federal Paycheck Protection Program.
But under the new state law, Austin was able to withhold the identities of businesses that received assistance from the ANCHOR fund because the money, although originally from the federal government, went to the city before it was distributed to the nonprofits.
I just naturally assume the money was handed out as graft to members of the Homeless Industrial Complex, Greg Casar’s leftwing cronies, and various antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riot instigators (I’m sure there’s a lot of overlap between those categories).
Speaking of the homeless, Austin’s homeless situation continues to get even more out-of-hand. “It’s not uncommon to walk out the door and find a pile of human feces on the patio behind us.”
A close, personal look at the problem:
If you live in Austin, you have until tomorrow (Monday, January 18) to sign the petition to reinstate the homeless camping ban. Go here to sign the petition.
There’s also a petition drive to recall various City Council members who reinstated the homeless ban. But you have to live in their respective districts to sign the petition.
I know you’re going to be shocked, shocked to find out that the City of Austin give preferential treatment to leftwing businessesin the form of property tax breaks…including one for Mayor Steve Adler’s own law firm.
Matt Mackowiak and Brad Johnson discuss the Austin homeless problem.
As the cherry on top, the City of Austin’s Stage 5 Wuhan coronavirus restrictions are still in effect through February 16…
Tags:ANCHOR fund, Austin, Brad Johnson, Crime, Democrats, drugs, fraud, Greg Casar, homeless, Joe Deshotel, Ken Paxton, Matt Mackowiak, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Steve Adler, Taxes, Texas
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 3 Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2021
In our last installment of As The Lockdown Turns, Austin Mayor Steve Adler had tried to order Austin bars and restaurants to close at 10:30 PM for drinking and dining over the New Year’s Weekend. This, in turn, was was overturned by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who notef that his own executive orders precluded this. Adler then appealed to District Judge Amy Clark Meachum, who denied the injunction sought by the state, and Travis County Judge Andy Brown stated “My priority during this pandemic is to protect the health and safety of our community.” As opposed to, you know, actually ruling on the law.
The state, in turn, appealed that decision to the Texas Supreme Court, which, in turn, just issued a rare New Year’s Day ruling which also told Adler to get stuffed:
IN RE STATE OF TEXAS; 3rd Court of Appeals District (03-20-00619-CV)
Without hearing oral argument, and having considered “Defendants Travis County and City of Austin’s Joint Response in Opposition to Plaintiff’s Application for Temporary Injunction,” we conditionally grant the petition for writ of mandamus and direct the court of appeals to issue relief under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 29.3, instanter, enjoining enforcement of Travis County’s County Judge Order 2020-24 and the Mayor of the City of Austin’s Order No. 20201229-24 pending final resolution of the appeal. Our writ will issue only if the court of appeals does not comply.
Strangely, the Texas Constitution does not allow elected Democrats to change laws because they really feel strongly about them…
Tags:Amy Clark Meachum, Austin, Greg Abbott, Steve Adler, Texas, Texas Supreme Court, Travis County, Wuhan
Posted in Austin, Democrats, Regulation, Texas | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 30th, 2020
Because he just hadn’t done enough to bankrupt Austin restaurants and bars, Mayor Steve Adler decreed that would not be allowed to stay open past 10:30 PM on New Year’s Eve:
NOW THEREFORE, I, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF AUSTIN, PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORITY VESTED BY TEXAS GOVERNMENT CODE CHAPTER 418, HEREBY ORDER,EFFECTIVE AS OF 10:30 P.M. ON DECEMBER 31, 2020, AND CONTINUING THROUGH 6:00 A.M. ON JANUARY 3,2021 THAT IN THE CITY OF AUSTIN:
MODIFIED OPERATIONS FOR DINE-IN SERVICES
SECTION 1. That the findings and recitations set out in the preamble to this ORDER are found to be true and correct and they are here by adopted and made a part hereof for all purposes.
SECTION 2. Modified Operations for Dine-In Food and Beverage Services. Because the wearing of a face covering and physical distancing is not possible while individuals are seated together and dining, thereby increasing the risk of spreading the COVID-19 virus, a business must end indoor and outdoor dine-in food and beverage service at 10:30 P.M. but may continue to operate after 10:30 P.M. using drive-thru, curbside pick-up,take-out,or delivery service. Dine-in food and beverage service may resume beginning at 6:00 A.M.
(All “WHEREAS”es and criminal penalties snipped, because it’s a PDF and all the letters run together into one giant German compound word, and it was a big enough pain reinserting the spaces into the excerpt above.)
The reaction from Texas Governor Greg Abbott was swift:
Hopefully this clarification about the limits of local government regulation will keep Adler from driving a few more establishments bankrupt…
Tags:Austin, coronavirus, Greg Abbott, Regulation, Steve Adler, Texas, Wuhan
Posted in Austin, Regulation, Texas | 5 Comments »
Friday, December 25th, 2020
Welcome to a special Christmas day LinkSwarm! And by “special,” I mean “because Christmas falls on Friday.”
Explosion rocks downtown Nashville. “Around 6:30 a.m., police received a call for a suspicious RV with no tags parked across from the Davidson County courthouse. As officers arrived, the RV exploded, blowing out the windows of nearby buildings and leaving extensive damage.” They’re calling it an “intentional act.” Maybe, especially across the street from a courthouse. But it could still be a meth lab cooking off. As always, remember that much of the early reporting around such events are usually wrong.
Update: Assuming the message in this video is real, it does appear to be a premeditated act of which authorities were warned:
The UK and the EU have reached a Brexit deal:
The deal comes in just eight days short of the hard-Brexit deadline. Rather than erecting trade barriers to which some had resigned themselves, the two sides are looking toward a more cooperative than contentious relationship, reports the Wall Street Journal:
Under the terms of the accord, both sides will continue to trade free of tariffs but there will be significant new bureaucracy for importers and exporters. The free flow of workers between the two economies will end and trade in services will be much reduced. London’s vast financial center will no longer have guaranteed access to European markets.
The deal gives Britain significant freedom to depart from EU regulations and sign free-trade deals with countries like the U.S. But as the price for securing a deal without tariffs, the U.K. agreed that it wouldn’t seriously undercut EU standards on issues such as labor and the environment and would maintain similar constraints on the subsidizing of private industry.
The agreement must formally be ratified by the European and U.K. parliaments and signed off by EU leaders before the end of the year. Capitals have insisted they need proper time to comb through the text before approving it. Though their approval is likely, France has warned it could veto a deal if some of its key concerns, including access to British waters for its fishing fleet, aren’t met.
(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
President Donald Trump is right to call the $900 billion stimulus package a disgrace.
Here’s the short version: One main problem is that the 5,500-plus page legislative package was drafted behind closed doors by party leaders, then quickly unveiled hours before a vote.
As voices as disparate as Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash have pointed out, this meant that most members of Congress had to vote for or against the package before actually getting to read the legislation.
That’s right: Trillions of taxpayer dollars were doled out, and the members of Congress who voted for it don’t even know where much of it is going.
This bill pours hundreds of billions of dollars into preexisting stimulus programs that were rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, without meaningfully addressing any of the problems. You can expect more stimulus checks sent to dead people and more runaway fraud to plague the expanded unemployment benefits.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Tables Turned: Detroit Sues Black Lives Matter Group for ‘Civil Conspiracy’ to Riot and Attack Police.” The group in question is Black Lives Matter umbrella group Detroit Will Breathe. Discovery should be extremely interesting… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Andrew Cuomo hates ordinary people and non-bankrupt restaurants so much that he’s barred patrons of outdoor dining from using a restaurants restroom. Who does he think he is, Werner Erhard?
Andrew Yang is running for mayor of New York City. It would be very difficult indeed for Yang not to be a vast improvement over the burning Porta-Potty stuffed with dead clowns that is the De Blasio administration. As a moderate Democrat, I would expect Yang to be a better mayor than de Blasio or David Dinkins, but not as good as Rudy Giuliani or Ed Koch. I would expect a Yang mayoralty to be about on par with Bloomberg’s, with maybe more upside if he’s willing to shake up the corrupt status quo and not push his disasterous pet guaranteed income idea.
Another thing President Trump disrupted: stale, self-serving conventional wisdom about peace in the Middle East:
In an address to the UN Security Council on Monday during a monthly session on the Middle East, US Ambassador Kelly Craft asserted that President Donald Trump’s policies had “overturned” long-held views about diplomacy in the region.
“For decades, the prevailing assumption was that the world would only see normalized international relations with Israel following a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute,” Craft told the virtual meeting. “But we have proven this assumption wrong.”
She touted the Trump administration’s pursuit of “economic and cultural ties” between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which has led to normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Similar deals with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Oman, among others, could also be in the offing.
“All of us here should think long and hard about what else we may have missed or misinterpreted over the years.”
“UK: Muslim rape gang ringleader released back onto the streets 8 years into his 26-year term.”
“Demanding Silicon Valley Suppress ‘Hyper-Partisan Sites’ in Favor of ‘Mainstream News’ (The NYT) is a Fraud:
The most prolific activism demanding more Silicon Valley censorship is found in the nation’s largest news outlets: the media reporters of CNN, the “disinformation” unit of NBC News, and especially the tech reporters of The New York Times. That is where the most aggressive and sustained pro-internet-censorship campaigns are waged.
Due in part to a self-interested desire to re-establish their monopoly on discourse by crushing any independent or dissenting voices, and in part by a censorious and arrogant mindset which convinces them that only those of their worldview and pedigree have a right to be heard, they largely devote themselves to complaining that Facebook, Google and Twitter are not suppressing enough speech. It is hall-monitor tattletale whining masquerading as journalism: petulantly complaining that tech platforms are permitting speech that, in their view, ought instead be silenced.
Snip.
The conceit that outlets like The New York Times, CNN and NPR are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is one you would be eager to believe, or at least want to induce others to believe, if you were a tech reporter at The New York Times, furious and hurt that millions upon millions of people would rather hear other voices than your own, and simply do not trust what you tell them. Inducing Facebook to manipulate the algorithmic underbelly of social media to artificially force your content down the throats of citizens who prefer to avoid it, while rendering your critics’ speech invisible — all in the name of reducing “hyper-partisanship,” “divisiveness,” and “misinformation” — is of course a highly desirable outcome for mainstream outlets like the NYT.
The problem with this claim is that it’s a complete and utter fraud, one that is easily demonstrated as such. There are few sites more “hyper-partisan” than the three outlets which the NYT applauded Facebook for promoting. In the 2020 election, over 70 million Americans — close to half of the voting population — voted for Donald Trump, yet not one of them is employed by the op-ed page of the “non-partisan” New York Times and are almost never heard on NPR or CNN. That’s because those news outlets, by design, are pro-Democratic-Party organs, who speak overwhelmingly to Democratic readers and viewers.
It is hard to get more partisan than the news outlets which the NYT tech reporters, and apparently Facebook, consider to be the alternatives to “hyper-partisan” discourse. In April, Pew Research asked Americans which outlet is their primary source of news, and the polling firm found that the audiences of NPR, CNN and especially The New York Times are overwhelmingly Democrats, in some cases almost entirely so.
As Pew put it: “about nine-in-ten of those who name The New York Times (91%) and NPR (87%) as their main political news source identify as Democrats, with CNN at about eight-in-ten (79%).” These outlets speak to Democrats, are built for Democrats, and produce news content designed to be pleasing and affirming to Democrats — so they keep watching and buying. One can say many things about these news outlets, but the idea that they are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is the exact opposite of the truth: it is difficult to find more hyper-partisan organs than these.
Kurt Schlichter on our stupid establishment:
The Establishment decided that instead of having a vigorous debate and discussion over the safety and efficacy of these prophylactic potions, they would just short circuit the whole messy truth determination process that Western civilization has relied upon for a millennium – argument, debate, and eventually consensus after everything is fully and freely hashed-out – and move right to the Official Truth. All the smart set decided that the Official Truth would be that these vaccines were all perfect and necessary and that we needed to stamp out any hint of dissent lest people pause and think for themselves and thereby disrupt the plan by raising unapproved notions. And the tech overlords would do their part by ensuring that any info, ideas, or interplay that was not inline with the narrative would be suppressed.
It’s so much more efficient, you know, to tell people what they think than to take the time to convince them and refute counter-arguments.
Not everyone was foolish. It was very smart and good leadership for Mike Pence to take the shot in public in front of cameras. That a couple of tentacles didn’t sprout out of his clavicles was reassuring. That’s leadership, and that’s what our leaders should be doing. But most of our ruling class instead thinks that if they lie to us and suppress our debates and call us stupid enough, we’ll fall into line.
When has that worked for long?
A roundup of climate predictions for 2020 that were horribly wrong. Remember how snowfall would be a thing of the past?
Israel hits Syria again.
“US Army Hits Target 43 Miles Away With Long-Range Cannon.”
Rush Limbaugh signs off, possibly for the last time.
Austin restaurants and bars under Stage 5 Wuhan coronavirus restrictions again. Thanks a lot, China. And Mayor Adler.
Rand Paul presents the airing of the Festivus grievances:
Among Paul’s instances of waste were several health studies, including more than $36 million spent on studying why stress makes hair turn gray, more than $1 million spent studying whether people will eat ground-up bugs, and more than $3 million spent interviewing San Franciscans about their edible cannabis use.
As far as taxpayer dollars spent aiding other countries, $8.62 billion was spent in Afghanistan on counternarcotics efforts, more than $37 million was spent helping deal with truant Filipino youth, and more than $3 million was spent on sending Russians to American community colleges for a “gap year.”
Among funds spent on the environment, energy, and scientific research, more than $1 million was spent walking lizards on a treadmill, nearly $200,000 was spent studying how people cooperate while playing e-sport video games, and more than $2 million on developing a wearable headset to track eating behaviors.
The military had several particularly high expenditures this year that Paul listed as waste, including repurposing $1 billion in coronavirus response funds for unrelated acquisitions, more than $ 715 million in lost equipment designated for Syrians fighting ISIS, and $174 million on drones that were lost over Afghanistan.
Other eyebrow-raising expenses included more than $4 million spent on spraying alcoholic rats with bobcat urine, more than $10 million spent on would-be coronavirus test tubes that turned up as used soda bottles, and nearly $6 million spent building three bicycle storage facilities at Washington, D.C. Metro stations.
Titania McGrath, prophet of our times.
Man of the year: Jeffrey Toobin. “Toobin’s grip on the media was relentless. In 2002 he joined CNN and became the network’s chief legal analyst, a cocksure critic of Republicans…” (Hat tip: HashtagGriswold.)
Good idea:
Heh:
“Can I interest you in some propane? Or some propane explosions?”
How badly do you want a drink?
Oh the weather outside is frightful:
Christmas with the Sex Pistols.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
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