Posts Tagged ‘Paul Martin’

Ready For Another Deep Freeze, Austin?

Wednesday, January 21st, 2026

It’s no secret that central Texas doesn’t handle snow and ice nearly as well as cities in northern climes. Snowpocalypse and Arborgeddon shut everything here down hard.

According to the National Weather Service, another freezing storm is due in on Saturday. The high during the day looks to be 34°F, with a 90% chance of precipitation, and the low that night is currently forecast as 18°F. That’s a recipe for icy roads, possible power loss, and the entire city shutting down.

The good news is that you have two days to prepare for it. Wednesday is a good day to lay in supplies, as you can expect the usual shortages of bread and milk on Friday. You might want to lay in extra ready-to-eat items (crackers, beef jerky, etc.) in case of power loss if you don’t already have any on hand.

Paul Martin has a cold weather checklist that’s more geared toward his setup, but at a minimum you want to:

  1. Lay in food supplies.
  2. Lay in some matches and candles if you might need them.
  3. Ditto firewood if you have a functioning fireplace.
  4. Get refills for any necessary meds you’re low on.
  5. Gas up your car.
  6. Have some cash on hand, just in case credit card machines and/or ATMs are down. (With so many cyber outages in recent years, this is just good advice in general.)
  7. Start making extra ice cubes to preserve refrigerated or frozen foods if power outages extend past the thaw.
  8. Put covers on your exterior faucets.
  9. Get your plants and pets inside.
  10. If you have the time and tools, trim any tree limbs over your roof. During Arborgeddon, these gathered ice and snapped.
  11. Power up any rechargeable batteries or devices, including power stations, flashlights and phones.
  12. Get fuel if you have portable heating devices (and keep safety and carbon monoxide in mind if using those indoors).
  13. If you have one, gas up and/or recharge your chainsaw.
  14. If you have a refrigerator with a water dispenser/ice maker on an exterior wall, drain and shut the water line to that if possible. Lots of people don’t think about that when prepping for cold weather.
  15. If you have any regular weekend chores, you might want to do them ahead of schedule on Friday, especially if they require power (i.e., washing clothes or dishes).
  16. When the freeze hits, open sink cabinets so warm air circulates on less insulated pipes on your outer walls.

Paul Martin’s after action report on the 2021 storm is also useful.

With two plus days to go, those of you with Amazon Prime can order a lot of stuff and have it at your home before he freeze hits. Here are some specific prep items for cold weather:

  • Faucet Covers. That link goes to the black padded version, but these plastic ones are bigger if you need that.
  • O’Keeffe’s Working Hands cream: I walk my dogs 2-3 times a day pretty much every single day of the year, and I found my hands getting cracked and raw in the cold, even through gloves. O’Keeffe’s Working Hands fixed the problem. I frequently give this stuff out as Christmas gifts.
  • Carmex lip balm. A small, cheap jar that solves the chapped lips problem in winter.
  • Kerasal Intensive Foot Repair for cracked and painful feet. Podiatrist recommended! Full review here. For more foot pain relief, you can also use Eucerin Intensive Repair Foot Creme, which is a bit cheaper per ounce.
  • De-icing spray. You can stand there for 15 minutes ineffectually scraping your frozen windows like William H. Macy in Fargo, or you can keep a bottle of this in your trunk.
  • Gas And Water Emergency Shut Off Tool. The Orbit 26097 provides a water shutoff valve, a gas shutoff valve, manhole cover lift tool, and a rubberized grip. If a pipe bursts during the cold, you’ll need one of these to shut the water off.
  • Sawyer Products Water Filtration System: At least one of Austin’s previous ice storms featured a water department failure and resulting boil notice, and the Sawyer system is Good Enough to get you through such events, even if it is a slight pain to fill and squeeze the bag enough times for my dogs and I to drink (but still less of a pain that boiling water and waiting for it to cool).
  • Snow Melt: If you have concrete sidewalks, pathways or driveways, this stuff gets good reviews and is supposedly more pet friendly than straight road salt.

    • Here are some specific items to prepare for blackouts:

  • Everyone needs flashlights. This Goreit flashlight seems bright, cheap, and gets pretty good reviews. The highest rated flashlight on Amazon is the Streamlight 75458 Stinger DS, which is fairly pricey. I assume it’s brighter and with a longer life, and maybe you have a use case that justifies the cost. And if you have flashlights, chances are you’ll also need…
  • Batteries. D-Cells are still used in a lot of things, and you’re going to want, at a minimum, enough to reload every flashlight twice, which should get you through a couple of evenings of power outages. Check your flashlights every six months. This is one of those items that you might very well find cheaper at Sam’s.
  • 12 pack LED Tea Lights. This is a strange one. These mimic flickering candlelight, and I bought them for Halloween decorations, for which they worked well enough. I think they’re just bright enough and cheap enough for a few use cases around the house in an extended power outage. You can probably (just barely) read with them by holding them right next to the page, but I think they would be most useful for providing acceptable light in places like bathrooms, at the top and bottom of dark stairways, on dining tables, etc.

    • Here’s the Austin energy outage map, just in case. You might want to have that bookmarked on your phone.

    Remember that you can recharge your phone and other USB electronic devices from your car outlet if you have to.

    Hopefully ERCOT is better prepared this time around…

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    Posted in Austin | 5 Comments »

    Austin T Minus 2 Update

    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?

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    Posted in Austin, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Waste and Fraud | 12 Comments »

    Hunting/Emergency Prep Sales Tax Bills Currently in Texas Legislature

    Wednesday, May 13th, 2015

    There are at least two bills establishing sales tax holidays for firearms, hunting supplies (“ammunition, archery equipment, hunting blinds and stands, hunting decoys, firearm cleaning supplies, gun cases and gun safes, hunting optics, and hunting safety equipment”) and emergency preparation supplies working their way through the Texas legislature.

    House Bill 849 is the NRA-blessed bill that “establishes two state sales tax-free holidays for Texas sportsmen during the last weekend in August and October, before dove and deer seasons, respectively.”

    SB 904 would create a similar sales tax holiday in April on all the following items:

    (1) a portable generator used to provide light or communications or to preserve perishable food in the event of a power outage, the sales price of which is less than $3,000;
    (2) an item listed in this subdivision, the sales price of which is less than $300:
    (A) a storm protection device manufactured, rated, and marketed specifically to prevent damage to a glazed or non-glazed opening during a storm; or
    (B) an emergency or rescue ladder; or
    (3) an item listed in this subdivision, the sales price of which is less than $75:
    (A) a reusable or artificial ice product;
    (B) a portable, self-powered light source;
    (C) a gasoline or diesel fuel container;
    (D) a AAA cell, AA cell, C cell, D cell, 6 volt, or 9 volt battery, or a package containing more than one battery, other than an automobile or boat battery;
    (E) a nonelectric cooler or ice chest for food storage;
    (F) a tarpaulin or other flexible waterproof sheeting;
    (G) a ground anchor system or tie-down kit;
    (H) a mobile telephone battery or battery charger;
    (I) a portable self-powered radio, including a two-way radio or weatherband radio;
    (J) a fire extinguisher, smoke detector, or carbon monoxide detector;
    (K) a hatchet or axe;
    (L) a self-contained first aid kit; or
    (M) a nonelectric can opener.

    I reached out to Paul Martin, my CHL instructor and a guy who teaches an emergency preparation class every year, who’s been tracking the legislation closely, and he offered the following explanation of the various bills:

    SB 904 would make certain disaster supplies eligible for purchase sales tax-free during the last full weekend in April. The bill was not amended in the Senate, so if it passes cleanly in the house, it will be ready to go to the Governor for his signature. Three other states currently have emergency supplies sales tax holiday weekends. Until this year, Florida had one as well, but I don’t believe their legislature reauthorized it for this year.

    SB 228 is the identical Senate version of HB 849. These bills would create a sales tax holiday weekend for firearms and hunting supplies. In the bill, “hunting supplies” is defined as ammunition, archery equipment, hunting blinds and stands, hunting decoys, firearm cleaning supplies, gun cases and gun safes, hunting optics, and hunting safety equipment. Both SB 228 and HB 849 have been passed by the respective houses. I’ve not done the deep drill down to see if they are identical now, as both were amended during the process. If they are identical now, the bill can be presented for Gov. Abbott’s signature. If they aren’t, they will be sent to a conference committee to work out the details and then re-presented to both houses for a final vote. Louisiana has a firearms and hunting supplies sales tax-free weekend; there was anecdotal evidence provided during the Senate proceedings that Texans were going to Louisiana to take advantage of their sales tax holiday weekend.

    For a basis of comparison, the Senate voted out on third reading SB 228 creating a sales tax holiday weekend for hunting supplies. The bill passed on a 21-10 vote. The fiscal note on that bill shows a negative impact of 11.1M in the next two years, and 35M through 2020. When we say “negative impact,” we are saying that it will result in a loss of tax revenue to the state. SB 904 has a 2.25M negative impact through 2017, and 6M over the next 5 years.

    Both bills seem to enjoy broad support, so you might want to start drawing up your wish list…

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    Posted in Guns, Texas | 1 Comment »