Posts Tagged ‘Midway’

Ken Paxton To 130 “Cities”: No Tax Increases For You!

Saturday, May 16th, 2026

The Texas legislature passed new financial transparency requirements, but a whole lot of municipalities have been slow on the ball to comply, so Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is bringing the wood.

Attorney General Ken Paxton is moving to block more than 130 Texas cities from hiking property taxes this year, accusing them of breaking a new state transparency law.

The word “cities” is more than a stretch here, as a lot of the municipalities here are pretty tiny.

Senate Bill 1851, passed in 2025, prohibits cities that don’t meet financial audit and disclosure requirements from raising property taxes above the no‑new‑revenue rate. The no‑new‑revenue rate is designed to collect roughly the same amount of property tax revenue from existing properties as the previous year, preventing hidden tax hikes caused by rising appraisals.

According to Paxton’s office, the action follows an investigation launched last month when he demanded financial-statement and audit records from more than 1,000 municipalities to check whether they were complying with SB 1851.

Cities that failed to meet the law’s reporting standards for the new fiscal year were flagged as noncompliant.

Paxton has now sent formal letters to those cities, notifying them that they are barred from adopting property tax rates higher than the no‑new‑revenue rate and are subject to enforcement provisions and penalties under the statute.

Snip.

Paxton framed the move as a stand for taxpayers against local governments that want to raise taxes without following the rules.

“I will not allow cities to unlawfully raise taxes on hardworking Texans. That is why I took aggressive action against over 130 Texas cities to hold them accountable and ensure they comply with state law,” Paxton said in a statement. He added that cities “cannot fail to abide by state audit requirements without consequences,” and vowed his office will keep enforcing state law “to protect taxpayers across the state.”

The list of cities that received letters is long and spans every corner of Texas, from small rural towns to mid‑sized communities and coastal municipalities.

The list includes Alpine, Aspermont, Baird, Balch Springs, Balmorhea, Bedias, Berryville, Big Spring, Bishop, Blooming Grove, Blue Mound, Briarcliff, Brookside Village, Buffalo Gap, Calvert, Cameron, Campbell, Centerville, Chico, Chireno, Clarksville, Clear Lake Shores, Combine, Corrigan, Crane, Cross Timber, Crowell, Crystal City, Cuero, Dalhart, Danbury, De Leon, Eagle Lake, Elkhart, Eureka, Eustace, Fairfield, Farwell, Flatonia, Franklin, Fritch, Fulton, Gordon, Grandfalls, Gregory, Groesbeck, Groom, Hale Center, Hamilton, Hearne, Hempstead, Higgins, Hillcrest Village, Horizon City, Howardwick, Howe, Huntington, Industry, Ingleside On the Bay, Jewett, Jonestown, Keene, Kemah, Kenedy, Kerens, Kermit, Lamesa, Livingston, Lott, Lumberton, Manvel, Marquez, McCamey, Megargel, Menard, Mertzon, Mexia, Miami, Midway, Miles, Mount Enterprise, Natalia, New Home, New Waverly, Newcastle, Oyster Creek, Paducah, Panorama Village, Pelican Bay, Pleak Village, Plum Grove, Port Lavaca, Quanah, Red Lick, Redwater, Rockdale, Rocksprings, Roma, Rusk, San Elizario, San Felipe, San Perlita, Seabrook, Shepherd, Smiley, Snyder, Somerville, Southmayd, Spring Branch, Spur, Sterling City, Stinnett, Sunray, Surfside Beach, Taft, Tehuacana, Texas City, Texline, Three Rivers, Tiki Island, Tom Bean, Tool, Turkey, Valley Mills, Valley View, Victoria, Weslaco, Weston Lakes, Wharton, Wickett, Wimberley, Wolfe City, Woodloch, Yantis, and Yoakum.

Some of these are, in fact, cities. Victoria and Texas City both have over 50,000 people, and the finance departments there should have been on the ball. But some of these are barely towns. Megargel has a population of 174. Tiki Island (yes, a real place) is a village of some 1,100 people just off I-45 on the inland side of Galveston Bay.

Different Tiki Island

I’m in favor of limiting tax increases, and the municipalities here should get on the ball for the sake of transparency. But I suspect some of the smaller towns here just need to hire a part-time accountant to fill out the forms.

Also, this article provided a great stress test to see how many tags I can add to Word Press at one time…

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Posted in Budget, Texas | No Comments »

World War II In The Pacific: Logistics 1, Spirit 0

Saturday, September 13th, 2025

The Pacific campaign of World War II is often presented as uniquely tough for the Americans that fought there. But it was absolutely deadly for Imperial Japanese Navy seaman and aviators. Here are a couple of videos that say why.

First up: 91% casualty rates.

  • “91%. That’s how many Japanese carrier crew members were dead by August 1945. Not casualties, dead. For every 100 men who served on Japanese carriers, nine survived the war.”
  • “The Imperial Navy started with 10 fleet carriers. They ended with zero.”
  • “The Japanese started war with the best carrier pilots in the world. Each one had over 800 hours of flight training. By 1944, new pilots got less than 50 hours. Why? Because Japan made a fatal decision. They never rotated experienced pilots home to train replacements. Every veteran stayed in combat until they died. And they all died.”
  • “Here’s the brutal arithmetic. At Midway, Japan lost four carriers and 322 aircraft. But here’s what destroyed them. They lost 110 veteran pilots. Each one had over two years of training. Japan produced 200 new pilots per month. America produced 2,500.”
  • “The carriers themselves were death traps by design. Japanese damage control doctrine was offensive spirit overcomes material weakness. They literally didn’t train damage control.”
  • “American carriers had firefighting schools. Japanese carriers had buckets.”
  • “When the Taiho was hit by one torpedo, the crew didn’t know to turn off ventilation. Aviation fuel vapors spread through the ship. Six hours later, one spark turned the entire carrier into a 27,000 ton bomb.”
  • “A survivor from the Shokaku described it. ‘The American dive bombers came from the sun. Three bombs. That’s all. Three bombs and 20 minutes later, our carrier was gone. 1,360 men. The water was on fire. Those who escaped the ship burned in the ocean.'”
  • “Japanese carriers packed aircraft everywhere. In the hangers, on deck, in the passages. The Akagi carried 91 planes in space designed for 60. When one bomb penetrated to the hanger, it didn’t destroy one plane. It destroyed 20. The chain reaction of exploding aircraft turned carriers into crematoriums.”
  • “The real killer was Japanese carrier doctrine. They armed and fueled aircraft in enclosed hangers. Americans did it on deck. One bomb in a Japanese hanger meant every plane exploded in a confined space. At Midway, the Kaga took four bombs. 711 dead in 9 minutes. The survivors said the hangar deck turned into a blast furnace fed by aviation fuel.”
  • “Japanese carriers had no radar-directed anti-aircraft guns until 1944. They aimed manually at 400 mph aircraft. Hit probability: 2%. American carriers with radar directed guns 18%. That’s not combat, that’s mathematical suicide.”
  • “After losing four carriers at Midway, Japan had six fleet carriers left. In the next two years, they built seven more. America built 90.”
  • “Japan launched one new carrier in 1944. America launched 19.”
  • “The Japanese were fighting industrial capacity with human spirit. Spirit lost.”
  • “The pilot training collapse was even worse. By 1944, American pilots got 300 hours of training, including 100 hours in operational aircraft. Japanese pilots got 30 hours total, mostly in gliders to save fuel. They couldn’t land on carriers in calm seas, much less combat.”
  • “At the Philippine Sea, the Great Mariana’s Turkey shoot, Japan lost three carriers and 400 aircraft. But here’s the devastating part. They lost 450 pilots. Only 43 were rescued. America lost 29 aircraft. The kill ratio was 13 to 1. That’s not a battle. It’s an execution.”
  • “A captured Japanese naval officer admitted, ‘We knew after Midway. We knew we couldn’t replace the pilots. Every carrier operation after that was a suicide mission. We just didn’t call them that yet.'”
  • “The Shinano tells the whole story. The largest carrier ever built, 72,000 tons, sunk on her maiden voyage by four torpedoes from one submarine. 1,435 dead. The crew didn’t know how to use damage control equipment. They had watertight doors that they didn’t close. The pride of the Japanese Navy sank because nobody taught the crew basic damage control.”
  • “By 1945, Japan was using converted battleships and cruise ships as carriers. The pilots couldn’t actually land on them. They were one-way launch platforms for kamikaze attacks. The crew’s job was to sail to launching range and die. Survival wasn’t part of the mission profile.”
  • “The last operational Japanese carrier, the Amagi, was destroyed at anchor by American aircraft. The crew was still aboard, waiting for aircraft that would never come. Pilots who didn’t exist for a war already lost.”
  • “Japan started with 3,500 trained carrier pilots. By war’s end, 112 were alive. The carriers that revolutionized naval warfare became steel coffins for 25,000 sailors who believed offensive spirit could overcome mathematical reality.”
  • “The Japanese carrier fleet didn’t lose the war. It committed industrial sepukuku, taking 91% of its men with it.”

    • Second: The power of ice cream. Japanese POWs saw what Japan was up against. Instead of being tortured to death as their commanders had led them to believe, their captors provided them with more food than Japanese officers ate.

  • “He held a tray loaded with more food than his entire squadron had shared in three days. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes swimming in butter, green beans, white bread, apple pie, and a glass of cold milk.”
  • “The American sailor behind the serving line, irritated by the delay, gestured impatiently at the ice cream station. You want chocolate or vanilla? The question made no sense. Ice cream didn’t exist on warships. Ice cream required refrigeration that combat vessels couldn’t spare. Yet here, on America’s most battle hardened carrier, enemy prisoners were being offered a choice of frozen desserts.”
  • “That moment his understanding of the war, of America, of everything began to crumble. Across the Pacific War, approximately 35,000 Japanese military personnel would experience American naval captivity and witness abundance that shattered everything they believed about their enemy’s weakness.”
  • “They discovered carriers where enlisted sailors ate better than Japanese admirals, where machinery produced fresh water from seawater in unlimited quantities.”
  • “These encounters with American naval logistics would demolish the spiritual foundations of Japanese military ideology more thoroughly than any defeat in battle.”
  • “While Japanese sailors subsisted on rice balls and pickled vegetables, American crews consumed 4,100 calories daily of varied fresh foods.
  • “While Japanese carriers hand-pumped aviation fuel, American ships automated everything.”
  • “Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, mastermind of Pearl Harbor, who later became a Christian minister in America, documented his 1945 rescue experience aboard the USS Missouri.” They gave him coffee with cream and sugar and apologized for being out of donuts “while Japanese forces were eating leather belts.”
  • “The Imperial Japanese Navy’s own reports captured after the war showed that by 1944, enlisted sailors received approximately 1,400 calories daily.”
  • “Vitamin deficiency was endemic. Beri beri, scurvy, and night blindness plagued crews.”
  • “Japanese prisoners watched American damage control parties, exhausted from fighting fires and flooding, receive ice cream sundaes as battle rations. The cognitive dissonance was overwhelming. Their nation, fighting for its existence, couldn’t provide basic nutrition to forces. The enemy, supposedly decadent and weak, gave ice cream to sailors during combat.”
  • “The laundry facilities stunned Japanese prisoners accustomed to washing clothes in seawater. American carriers had industrial washing machines, dryers, and pressing equipment. Enlisted sailors received clean uniforms twice weekly.”
  • “The evaporators on USS Enterprise could produce 140,000 gallons of fresh water daily. More than the entire Japanese carrier force could produce combined.”
  • “Japanese naval medicine focused on returning wounded to duty regardless of condition. American sick bays treated enemies with the same advanced care as their own sailors. Operating theaters on carriers had X-ray machines, blood banks, surgical equipment matching shore hospitals. Antibiotics, particularly penicillin seemed like magic to Japanese medical personnel who watched infected wounds heal in days instead of killing in weeks.”
  • “Japanese ships limped back to homeland ports for any significant repair. American vessels fixed themselves while underway. Floating dry docks, repair ships, and carrier machine shops could manufacture replacement parts, rebuild engines, and fabricate entirely new equipment. USS Enterprises machine shop could produce any part smaller than an airplane engine.
  • “The welding shop operated continuously.The electrical shop rewired systems while the ship fought.”
  • “When kamikaze attacks intensified in 1945, Japanese pilots who survived crashes witnessed American damage control superiority firsthand. Ryuji Nagatsuka, rescued after his damaged Zero ditched near USS Randolph, watched the carrier’s crew repair kamikaze damage while conducting flight operations. They had foam that stopped fires instantly. Pumps that removed water faster than it entered. Metal plates that sealed holes while we watched. Teams worked with choreographed precision. No shouting, no confusion.They fixed in hours what would have sunk Japanese carriers.”
  • But always they get back to the food: “Bakeries produced 15,000 loaves of bread daily. Butcher shops processed whole beef carcasses stored in freezers larger than Japanese submarines. Ice machines produced tons of ice daily for food preservation and drinks. The galley on USS Enterprise used more electricity than entire Japanese destroyers.”
  • “Seaman First Class Hiroshi Nakamura, imprisoned aboard USS Saratoga, wrote in a hidden diary, ‘The Americans celebrated their Christmas while we attacked them. Every sailor received presents from organizations at home. Cigarettes, candy, books, razors. The mess hall was decorated with paper and lights. They sang songs and played music. They were happy. We were starving and dying for the emperor while our enemies celebrated with abundance. This was when I knew Japan had already lost.”

    • The takeaway: Logistics wins wars.

    Also: Never underestimate the power of ice cream…

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    Posted in Military, video | 16 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for June 7, 2024

    Friday, June 7th, 2024

    All those “new jobs” created in the Biden Recession have gone to illegal aliens, two Trump court cases appear to be in the process of derailment, more Hunter Biden shenanigans come to light, a whole lot of anniversaries this week, and a chance to own the Ark of the Covenant! It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • This should make even more people with Joe Biden’s illegal open border policy: “All Jobs In The Past Year Have Gone To Illegal Aliens.”

    The first Wall Street analyst daring to point out that the employment emperor is naked, is Standard Chartered’s global head of macro, Steve Englander who in a note titled simply enough “Immigration leading to labor-market surge” [writes] that according to his estimates “undocumented immigrants account for half of job growth in FY24 so far” (the actual number is far higher but we understand his initial conservatism), and adds that “asylum seekers and humanitarian parolees explain the surge in undocumented immigrants” before concluding that the continued rise in EAD approvals likely will extend strong employment growth in 2024. In other words, “strong employment growth” for American citizens, always was and remains a fabulation, and the only job growth in the US is for illegals, who will work for below minimum wage, which also explains why inflation hasn’t spiked in the past year as millions of illegals were hired.

  • Does a mistrial loom in the Trump kangaroo court case? Seems like a juror celebrating a guilty verdict before the trial was over on Facebook is yet another reason to throw out the conviction…
  • Speaking kangaroo Trump prosecutions, the Georgia Court of Appeals has ordered that case halted until the Fani Willis conflict of interest issue is resolved.
  • In other court news, in Hunter Biden’s defense just blew up.

    Hunter’s defense, carefully crafted by attorney Abbe Lowell during his opening statement on Tuesday, was blown up by the testimony of an ex-girlfriend and ex-wife who described the extent of Hunter’s crack-cocaine usage around the time he purchased a firearm in October 2018 — and by the salesman who sold Hunter the gun he allegedly lied in order to purchase.

    Hunter is facing two federal charges related to his allegedly lying about his drug addiction on a gun-purchase background-check form and he faces a third charge for allegedly possessing the firearm while addicted to crack cocaine. Hunter pleaded not guilty to the charges last year and faces up to 25 years in prison.

    Most of the day was taken up by testimony from Hunter Biden’s ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan, a woman who dated Biden from roughly December 2017 to November 2018, despite being half his age at the time.

    Prosector Leo Wise conducted a lengthy direct examination of Kestan accompanied by pictures from her cellphone to corroborate her recollection of events.

    Wise and Kestan seemed to get into a rhythm throughout the direct examination, as Kestan recalled large events and small details from her time with Hunter Biden. Kestan remembered exact dates and named the various hotels they stayed at during their time together.

    Each time Kestan described an experience with Hunter Biden, Wise asked her if Hunter Biden smoked crack at their hotel or Airbnb, and Kestan always replied affirmatively.

    “Every 20 minutes or so,” Kestan said of Hunter Biden’s crack habit during one of the hotel stays. She noted that he smoked crack less frequently in public, and she never noticed a change in his demeanor when he smoked.

    Wise shared photos from Kestan’s cellphone showing drug paraphernalia scatted around the bathrooms and tables of their lodgings. One of the images appeared to show Biden in a hotel bathtub holding a crack pipe in the wee hours of the morning. When Wise showed the images, Kestan easily pointed out the drug paraphernalia and explained to the courtroom how the various materials were used to cook and consume crack.

    Biden allowed Kestan to withdraw cash from his account when he needed to spend it on drugs, she recounted. Kestan stated the names of drug dealers and described the drug transactions she saw at the hotels and other locations.

    Kestan’s testimony and the images allowed Wise to establish that Hunter was smoking crack in September 2018, following his late August rehab stint in Malibu, Calif. She said Biden smoked crack every 20 minutes at a Malibu house he rented, and she did not remember Biden discussing his rehab stint during her time at the house in September 2018.

    Wise closed the direct examination by introducing a lengthy text message Biden sent her in December 2018 lamenting how he would always be a drug addict and his attempts to get sober failed.

    And this is “the smartest guy” Joe Biden knows…

  • Also from Hunter’s weapons case, he was caught on tape bragging about how he could score crack in Timbuktu. Which is a neat trick, since it’s an Islamic majority city in Mali, Africa, and is currently under siege by Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, a jihadist organization which has incorporated elements formally loyal to both al Qaeda and the Islamic State. To be fair to the crackhead, he apparently said this before the siege was imposed last year…
  • Also, I would like to apologize to readers for not knowing about the siege and doing at least a LinkSwarm post to it. So much news, so little time..
  • “Seven Indicted in Houston Public Corruption Scheme.”

    On Friday, Mayor John Whitmire and outgoing Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced seven people have been indicted for 14 public corruption felonies ranging from abuse of official capacity to tampering with evidence. The charges are related to a scheme surrounding the City of Houston’s water repair contracts.

    Patrece Lee, the lead defendant, and a former city employee, had access to $80 million of city funds for emergency waterline repair.

    In the Summer and Fall of 2022, Lee was in a position to recommend vendors for contracts with the City of Houston public works department to repair the water lines. Lee allegedly made agreements with companies to have them hire her as a “consultant” to receive a kickback in exchange for expedited payments and bigger contracts. She also targeted less experienced companies and offered her services to help them “get paid faster, or to get bigger and better contracts in the future” as well.

    Lee allegedly received roughly $320,000 in payments from that scheme and then steered contracts to a company owned by her brother, allowing them to be paid more than $400,000 of which she immediately transferred $380,000 to her own company. The total amount she stole from the city was $700,000.

    “The cooperation that we’ve received from this administration stands in stark contrast to the last seven years,” said Ogg.

    The issue was uncovered during Mayor Sylvester Turner’s administration. However, he planned to have it handled as an internal civil or administrative matter rather than refer it to the district attorney for criminal prosecution.

    If Kim Ogg would actually go after government corruption (and real criminals) while she’s a lame duck DA, that would be a nice silver lining to the clouds of Houston/Harris County’s soft on crime Democratic leadership.

  • Methodist Church loses one million congregants in a single day.
  • The Houston conman who pretended to be a rabbi. “The man accused of spending $15,000 on a dead woman’s credit card has a long history of fraud, according to police, court records and his family. Police say Dustin Mitchell, who goes by Dustin Cohen, posed as a Rabbi, lawyer and possibly a cop to defraud people. They also say they think he spray-painted anti-semitic vandalism on his own truck.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Ukrainian drone hits Novoshakhtinsk Oil Refinery. Again. And this time they hit the distillation tower.
  • Modi’s BJP party loses an absolute majority in Indian elections.
  • Evidently the Chinese are paying the Houthis protection money for safe passage.
  • “Anti-Israel Protesters Arrested at Stanford after Breaking into President’s Office, Injuring Officer.” Throw the book at them.
  • ConocoPhillips purchases Marathon Oil for $22.5 billion.
  • “California fish taco chain Rubio’s Coastal Grill files for bankruptcy after minimum wage law cripples business.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Closer to home, it looks like central Texas locations for Red Lobster are now in danger of closing. (Hat tip: Also Dwight.)
  • Thieves in California are planting hidden cameras to case homes.
  • Swatter sentenced.
  • Beware of “Title Pirates” selling land they don’t own.”
  • Some Texas locales are using automatic license plate readers. Seems like there are some big privacy and due process concerns.
  • Complain about Hamas sexual violence in Canada? Enjoy your pink slip.
  • Critical Drinker confirms that The Acolyte is the idiotic woke garbage we all knew it would be.
  • More signs of Hollywood’s severe downturn: five Alamo Drafthouse location in north Texas have closed and the franchise partner has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
  • Everyone Draw Mohammed winner Bosch Fawstin was let go from his position at the Freedom Center, so if you ever wanted to buy any of his stuff, now would be a good time.
  • A lot of notable anniversaries this week. It was the 80th anniversary of D-Day…
  • …the 82nd anniversary of the Battle of Midway…
  • …the 50th anniversary of 10 Cent Beer Night…
  • …and the 20th anniversary of Killdozer. The event, not the great Theodore Sturgeon short story or the medicore TV movie made from it.
  • Speaking of D-Day, Biden just plagiarized Reagan’s speech.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • And did Biden drop a load in his pants at the Normandy commemoration?
  • Yotta: “Oh, did we say we’re a savings app? Actually, we’ve decided to become a casino app.”
  • China’s tallest waterfall is fed by pipes.
  • Crazy British inventor Colin Furze has ridden on a wall of death and built a drift trike. So now he’s riding a drift trike on a wall of death.
  • How Hitler’s cloak ended up being worn by a housewife in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
  • Who wouldn’t like to own the actual Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark? Though it might have brought more money before Disney decided to ruin the franchise…
  • “No Foul Called After Caitlin Clark Crushed By Anvil.”
  • 10 New ‘Star Wars’ Characters Coming To Disney+. Including C-3PLGBTQ, Admiral Allahu Akbar and Jar Jar Kinks…

    The Internet was way ahead of the curve on this one.

  • Surrogate Mom Level: Grand Master.

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    Posted in Democrats, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 7 Comments »