Jump to content

Texas Jeff

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    1300
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Texas Jeff

  1. I plan to vote no on Austin Prop A and yes on Austin Prop B. I predict neither will win. The city council turned both of these petitions into word salad for the ballot that makes it impossible to understand what you're voting for or against. The wording is designed to convince you to vote against it. At some point a citizen proposition needs to make it past this city council or we need to give up on the idea that we have actual citizen petitions. For example, here's the wording that was used to create the 10-1 council, pretty easy to understand: Shall the city charter be amended to provide for the election of council members from 10 geographical single-member districts, with the mayor to be elected from the city at large, and to provide for an independent citizens redistricting commission? The city council is now asking you to vote on this Prop B wording: Shall an ordinance be adopted that prioritizes the use of Austin's Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue by continuing the City practice to spend 15% of the Austin Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue on cultural arts and 15% on historic preservation, limiting the City's spending to construct, operate, maintain, or promote the Austin Convention Center to 34% of Austin's Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue, and requiring all remaining Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue to support and enhance Austin's Cultural Tourism Industry to the potential exclusion of other allowable uses under the Tax code; and requires the City to obtain voter approval and public oversight for convention-center improvement and expansion costing more than $20,000,000? If you want to limit hotel tax used for the convention center to 34% of the HOT and require voter approval for an expansion that exceeds $20,000,000, then vote for Prop B. If you are OK with not requiring those limits, then vote against it. This is coming up now because the city is proposing to demolish the existing convention center and build a $1,200,000,000 larger replacement in the same area of town, on a bigger footprint, as part of an overall redo of that area.
  2. Alumni Band would love to have that empty wedge on the north side or sit just south of LHB in the student general admission section...
  3. Et tu, Lindsey?
  4. Add in the payroll tax and things flatten out quite a bit. For federal income tax, the top 1% pay an average rate of about 27%, the top 10% pay an average rate of about 21%, the top 25% pay an average rate of about 18%. A minimum wage worker will pay around 15% in payroll tax, if you include the employer and employee portion. Those top 25% folks pay payroll tax too, but the social security portion rolls off after the limit, which really decreases their marginal tax rates.
  5. Texas Jeff

    SNL 45

    From the Oct 12 show, SNL's pitch for a movie telling the origin story of Oscar the Grouch:
  6. During Watergate, the Justice Dept considered the possibility that the Nixon might try to pardon himself. They answered no, he couldn't, but it really has never been tried. So the President can probably pardon anyone except the President. If the Trump trusts Pence, Trump could use the 25th amendment to write a letter saying he's not OK that temporarily hands over power to Pence ... this is sometimes done when the President has to undergo a medical procedure. Pence could then pardon Trump. A now pardoned Trump could then retake power by writing a second letter saying that he's OK now.
  7. Trump has tossed Rick under the bus, saying it was Rick's idea to have the Ukraine call Here is a purported quote from Trump. Trump here is talking about the call to Ukraine where he asked for a favor relating to the Bidens: C'mon Donald...
  8. I remember the Rams from my childhood like this, seems like they could match it pretty well at the time:
  9. The Austin High band will be offering ACL parking at Austin High this Saturday for $40 per car. You can park in the west teacher lot or the east student lot. All funds will be used to support the band students. For those that do not know, Austin High is on the north shore of the lake, across from ACL. To get to Austin High, exit Cesar Chavez from Mopac and take the first right as you approach downtown. To get to the festival from Austin High, walk down to the pedestrian bridge under Mopac, cross the lake, and then walk back to the festival site.
  10. BTW, for anyone new to Texas admissions, there are really three buckets for UT admission. Top 6% takes about 75% of the spots, out of state gets no more than 10% of the spots, and all of the other spots are Texas kids who were not top 6%. There are about 9,000 spots. So you are really competing for admission spots against the other people in your bucket. If you are top 6% you are in. Admission to a major is different and I don't know how or if they manage how many from each bucket get into each major. A portion of the incoming class does not get into a major right away. Instead, they start in the School of Undergraduate Studies and apply for a transfer to a major after they have the basic core classes complete. The others are enrolled in another college or school and have a major from the beginning.
  11. That's above the 75th percentile for UT, so 1450 seems like a good chance. Math is not as competitive as Computer Science or Biology.
  12. I think this is exactly what will happen ... so long as McConnell wants Trump to run for a second term. Either McConnell is going to try to delay and delay so that no trial is held, or at some point he is going to decide that his best chance of keeping power is to flip on Trump and go with Pence. If that happens, it will happen pretty fast as senate members jump off the train. Flipping on Trump would create a wide open 2020 Republican primary and allow all of the R's who flipped to say that they had taken the moral high ground. Within a month of Trump's removal, Cruz and Rubio would be back in the 2020 mix, along with 15 other R's who want to be president. This benefits Fox News by attracting millions of eyeballs during the trial and during a contested 2020 primary. If Fox turns on Trump, Trump's approval rating will tank and McConnell will allow a trial.
  13. It'd be a lot cooler if he did.
  14. You can see the quote in context here: http://austintx.swagit.com/play/09182019-1665/0/ Starting around 2:14:10 minutes into the video (4:35 pm on the video clock) She was speaking in support of the council's original path, urging the council to hold firm on their current path.
  15. Seriously, why would a private investor go for this? Southwest Airlines has a market cap of around $30 billion today. Before 2016, Southwest was worth much less than that. What is the pitch? You invest $14 billion which probably becomes $28 billion once you start building the thing and you end up with a route that serves two locations that are also served by Megabus ($15 a ride), Southwest ($120 a ride if you plan a bit ahead) and your own car.
  16. Will there be any loops? Will it run through any abandoned mines? Asking for a friend...
  17. Alumni band marches up there without complaint. Well, without any complaints that can't be fixed by ibuprofen:
  18. That person has six children, is a single head of household, and makes $9 per hour. That is going to be a rough life. I'm not sure what I would do in that situation. I would probably try to get my kids to work as soon as they were old enough to increase the family income and find as cheap of a city to live in as possible.
  19. I think Travis is already there ... you can vote wherever you see the Vote Here / Vote Aqui sign.
  20. The Texas Election Code governs elections. It sets some things like voting days and hours and delegates some powers to county election clerks, for example number and locations of polling places. The code does have some rules specifying polling places (for example, having one in each voting precinct on Election Day) but the county election clerk has some power to determine places. Travis County elections are really well run. You can vote at any polling place. You can get an online customized ballot you can print and bring with you. In the last election they had a map showing which polling places had lines with a red/yellow/green stoplight indicator.
  21. The lines will suck because many of the usual straight ticket voters will discover that there is no longer straight ticket voting when they reach the booth. They are going to have to figure it out on the fly. I plan on voting on the Sunday between the first and second early voting weeks, always the lowest voter turnout day of the election.
  22. Large pieces of the upper deck fall off and TxDot's advice is to use the upper deck? Might be a nice time to check out Mopac or SH130.
  23. Technically anyone can administer the Oath of Office, so even Roberts is not needed. If you really want to worry about this, all of the envelopes with the state's votes in them are opened by the President of the Senate, aka Mike Pence. Pence could just not open the envelopes. That would be pretty much unconstitutional behavior but it would put a wrench in the process.
  24. I agree. The nice thing about electing a new president is that it does involve the old president ceding power. The house opens the ballots from the states and the winner is the president elect. The president elect take the oath of office from the chief justice and that is that. New president. After he leaves office, Trump will continue to tweet and continue to hold rallies and continue to be on TV as much as possible as long as he can. He will probably sell tickets and merch for the rallies. They will be more outrageous and offensive than they are now. He just won't be president.
×
×
  • Create New...