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Texas Jeff

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Everything posted by Texas Jeff

  1. Regarding the new WH ballroom, here's what a 90,000 sq ft footprint looks like: For those unfamiliar with the White House, the Old Executive Office building is on the left and the Treasury Department is on the right. The White House is in the middle and the West Wing is just to the left of the White House. The new ballroom footprint is the yellow square to the right of the White House. The square is almost 90,000 sq ft according to Google Earth. This assumes a one-story building. If they are planning multiple stories, obviously the building footprint would be smaller. Here's a similar 90,000 sq ft shape in DKR, for reference:
  2. The show "Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman" was fantastic for our kids. Very watchable for kids and parents. Each show focused on some topic that was good to learn about in a game show format.
  3. The Statesman has an article out about how city leaders are spending your taxpayer dollars on lunches and parties, among other things: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2025/07/30/austin-leaders-used-taxpayer-funds-for-sweetgreen-solo-lunches-steak-dinners-and-upgraded-flights/85435323007/ City Manager Broadnax has spent $3,300 on lunch. His office has spent $4,700 on retirement parties, one example being a $1,700 lunch at Chuy's. He makes $448,000 per year. He can afford his own lunch. The city has purchased meals at III Forks and paid for retreats at the Headliners Club. CM Ryan Alter has spent $1,700 on lunch and has had paid for 14 meals for his staff, one of which was a $775 holiday dinner. The German government gave Leslie Pool $1,200 for an airline ticket, but she upgraded the ticket to business class at city expense for an additional $6,000. She also sent two staffers to Brazil using business class tickets at a cost of $20,000. One council member spent $0 on city-paid lunches and paid for staff birthdays out of her own pocket: Mackenzie Kelly. City policy states that "It is never appropriate to use City funds to pay for employee meals or food on a regular basis."
  4. Dems need to learn to protest with a little New Zealand flair:
  5. Good luck with your search ... I'm not sure the person you seek is out there, or if they are they are probably an actuary working for a firm that is charging big bucks for their services. You might try some online forums like this place, but for finances. I've visited early-retirement.org and used firecalc in addition to creating my own spreadsheets, but firecalc is not going to help with your Roth analysis.
  6. Some thoughts -- you probably know about a lot of this already: First, if you have a choice now between a Roth 401(k) and a traditional 401(k), and you have the cash to max it out, you can effectively save more for retirement via the Roth than via the traditional 401(k). That's important for young folks who are just getting started and may have a lower tax rate now than in their prime earning years -- or who just want to max out what they can now and let the dollars work for them for 3-4 decades before they need them. There are a few considerations I can think about for the person that has a traditional IRA now, is approaching retirement and is thinking about how to convert it or spend it. Here are a few: Roth conversions help you smooth out your income during retirement without actually withdrawing the money from a tax-deferred account. For example, if you are still in the 15% marginal tax bracket and you are OK paying that rate on your taxes, you can do an end-of-year Roth conversion to max out the bracket. You can fully take advantage of every dollar available to you in the bracket and have your income be exactly what you want it to be. Having a regular IRA is going to require mandatory distributions at some point, although the age is going up and will eventually be 75. You want to have *some* income if you are lucky to still be on the planet at that point, so it's nice to have some traditional IRA assets to tap. If you live long enough, the IRS is going to want a bigger and bigger percentage each year. If you are really lucky and have a huge IRA, you can end up losing control of your tax bracket and paying a lot. Roth conversions before this happens can help prevent the runaway IRA. This is a very nice problem to have ... but conversions can play a role in controlling your tax bracket late in life. Folks with regular IRAs are allowed to contribute money directly to charity from their IRA starting at 70 1/2. This is called a qualified charitable distribution or QCD. If you have a charity you care about and you are getting close to that age, you can give money and be guaranteed to never pay tax on your traditional IRA donation. That's something you can't do with Roth IRAs, since they have already been taxed. If you are thinking about passing down IRAs to your kids, inherited traditional and Roth IRAs both allow you to take the money out over 10 years. But the traditional distributions will count as income for your kids, and may affect their tax planning. And the kids have to take required distributions based on their ages. For the Roth IRA, assuming your kids don't need the money, they can wait the full 10 years and then just yank it out of the account, letting it earn tax-free money for 10 years. Again, this is a great problem to have. And lastly, think about where you might want to retire. If you are sitting on 100% in Roth IRAs, you probably don't care what the state's property tax rate is. All of your assets are post-tax, so you can move where you want. If you are in 100% traditional IRAs, you might have a hard time justifying a move to a place like California because you will be paying California state income tax on money you earned elsewhere. Conversely, if you earned all of your money in California and want to retire to texas, maybe traditional IRA is the best choice because you won't pay California income tax on that money (I think!) and then after you move you'll pay no state income tax on conversions or distributions. IMHO, the Roth IRA with the ability to convert and the step up of capital gains tax at death are two of the biggest giveaways in the history of the tax code. Might as well learn how to use them... I am not a lawyer or an accountant, but I do have a mix of traditional and Roth IRAs.
  7. Two small fighter jets. I saw them when the noise was still coming from downtown but the jets were already over Camp Mabry. They were moving.
  8. Just to review, the executive branch does not make law. Most of the executive orders you hear about just set "policy", which can simply mean the executive order reads like an opinion piece and then vaguely instructs departments to work on memos, reports and such. I'm sure some of it has an impact but a lot of it is bluster. Here's the text of the executive order on college sports: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/saving-college-sports/ For example, here's section 5 of the order: The Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and the Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison shall consult the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and other appropriate organizations of American athletes about safeguarding the integral role and competitive advantage that American collegiate athletics provide in developing athletes to represent our Nation in international athletic competitions. A bit of a word salad...
  9. FDR: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" JFK: "Ask not what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" GWB: "I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." DJT: "What is the deal with college athletes getting paid so much?"
  10. Our kid wanted to be in college band so it was a consideration for all of the schools we visited. Washington - had a great band program from what we saw, very much like Texas. Cal - not a great of a band program but obviously a very good school. The band is student run and not well financed. We didn't visit but we had a friend whose kid tried the Cal band and did not have a good experience. UTSA has a large band program if he ends up there. I can't comment on CU, Oregon, UCLA or UCSB. I did research by looking at YouTube videos and we visited a few band programs during campus visits.
  11. Longhorn Band chances depend on what instrument he plays. Some instruments take almost all the folks that show up for the band week before school, some make significant cuts. It is based on space available in the section and how many people try out. If he does not make LHB in year one, there are other options like Pep Band (which is the basketball/volleyball/whatever else band), along with other wind ensembles and orchestras. If that does happen, please encourage him to try something just to stay in a musical group and maybe try out again in a future year. College band is a great experience, and it is very different than being in a Texas high school marching band. Very social. Not competitive. No band parents required, the kids and directors do all of the work.
  12. CAP program details: https://admissions.utexas.edu/apply/alternative-pathways-to-enrollment/cap/ You appear to be correct, but read the fine print. You have to complete 30 hours at the CAP school, so you may not want to claim AP credit because you need to take 30 hours off of a specific set of courses. Some coordination may be required to ensure that you can pick 30 hours off the list.
  13. About Trump's health... Older folks go through three phases of decline. They have the "go-go" years, when most have stopped working and are physically fine and they can vacation where and when they want to. They transition to the "slow-go" years, where they have some medical or cognitive issues, but they can still travel near their home, meet with friends, and enjoy being social. And eventually they end up in the "no-go" years, where they mostly go to medical appointments and stay at home. We saw Biden move from "go-go" to "slow-go". Trump is now going through that transition, although he probably doesn't accept that he's in physical decline. Biden and Reagan had a staff and a family to lean on. Trump does not have that. He's an old man with one of the most stressful jobs on the planet, and he's mostly alone. HIs health is going to decline, first with small things like what we are seeing now, but years 3-4 are going to be rough.
  14. I'd like to point out that Waymo in 2025 now covers the entire area that Project Connect's rail system may cover in 2035.
  15. I believe the rice farmers' supply is interruptible, meaning that LCRA can turn them off in times of drought. Not sure when we qualify as no longer in a drought. LCRA just finished and filled a new reservoir downstream from Austin, the Arbuckle Reservoir, which is 90,000 acre-feet of new storage. By comparison, LT is around 1,100,000 acre-feet when full, and a lot more when flooded.
  16. The NY Times has an article out discussing DOGE cuts that directly affected the weather forecasting for the area, sorry if this is behind a paywall. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/us/politics/texas-floods-warnings-vacancies.html?smid=url-share Here's a snippet from the article tying Trump's DOGE "early retirement" effort to the removal of the "warning coordination" meterologist in San Antonio, the office responsible for the area around the camp: The National Weather Service’s San Angelo office, which is responsible for some of the areas hit hardest by Friday’s flooding, was missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster and meteorologist in charge, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents Weather Service workers. The Weather Service’s nearby San Antonio office, which covers other areas hit by the floods, also had significant vacancies, including a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer, Mr. Fahy said. Staff members in those positions are meant to work with local emergency managers to plan for floods, including when and how to warn local residents and help them evacuate. That office’s warning coordination meteorologist left on April 30, after taking the early retirement package the Trump administration used to reduce the number of federal employees, according to a person with knowledge of his departure. Later in the article: Under the Trump administration, the Weather Service, like other federal agencies, has been pushed to reduce its number of employees. By this spring, through layoffs and retirements, the Weather Service had lost nearly 600 people from a work force that until recently was as large as 4,000. The flooding was certainly an extreme event. A fully staffed office probably would not have prevented tragedy. But maybe it would have. Maybe a "warning coordination meteorologist" would have helped local officials realize they needed a checklist or system in place to help these RV parks or camps in harms way, as summer approached. Maybe not. But firing the person and firing staff systemwide helped ensure warnings did not reach those in need. Little cracks in our systems are now in place all over America, thanks to Trump and Elon and DOGE, who are making America great again.
  17. Big Sandy Creek near Jonestown is up 4 ft in the last 30 mins. The flow is 10x higher than it was 30 mins ago.
  18. I visited the National Archives in May. Very cool. Takes about an hour with a timed ticket. I am amazed that the common folk can get that close to the real founding docs. However, it would kinda not be America if everyone couldn't go take a look for themselves. If you would like to check it out from home, the Archives has a great website with document scans and articles about the docs. The website has smaller versions that you can click on or larger ones you can download. The actual documents are pretty faded, although the Constitution is in better shape than the Declaration and the Bill of Rights. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs The scans on that site look almost exactly like what I saw in person on display. I was looking at the scans before I went and I saw a handprint in the corner of the Declaration. Sure enough, when I got there, you could see the handprint.
  19. Lake LBJ has gone up about a foot and a half over the last hour. Looks like the first water has made it about that far.
  20. Within minutes of yesterday's bill passage, I received a propaganda email from the Social Security Administration, the text was the same as their post here. I'm not sure why I got it. I'm not due for benefits for a long time. I did request a social security statement of past wages and an estimate of future benefits a few years ago, the thing they used to send in the mail. The email talks about how the bill "ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits". Well, currently about 64% of seniors already don't pay tax on SS benefits. So about 25% of seniors may get a new tax benefit in the form of an increased deduction. The email also says "The new law includes a provision that eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries, providing relief to individuals and couples. Additionally, it provides an enhanced deduction for taxpayers aged 65 and older, ensuring that retirees can keep more of what they have earned." I'm reading the bill and I don't think the first sentence is true. The second sentence is true, they provided a new $6000 exemption for those over 65 that qualify. The second sentence (the deduction) is what they are claiming provides the first sentence (elimination of SS tax). They are stating it twice as if they were separate benefits. The new $6000 deduction expires in four year and is phased out for above certain income levels ($75,000 for individuals, $150,000 for couples). It's unclear to me if you have to itemize to get the deduction or if it is more like an exemption. Had they NOT included this section in the bill, the $4000 personal exemption would have come back for everyone below the exemption phaseout income level, which was $250k-$300k in 2015 depending on your filing status. Seniors are going to read this email and think that Trump eliminated tax on Social Security. It will be used as a rallying cry in the mid-terms. No such thing happened. One in four seniors may get a new benefit, and had the government done nothing at all then most of us would have gotten a benefit. And the administration is pushing out misleading information presented as official government communications. This is Trump's America.
  21. Evidently a woman accidentally shot herself in the hand yesterday in the produce section of the Mueller HEB. She allegedly had a gun in her purse and she reached in and whammo. Out of all the HEBs in Texas, I would have never guessed that the Mueller location would see a self-shootout.
  22. Most likely. I've never watched an entire car race at any level and I thought it was great. It is a movie made to be seen in a theater. It would be cool at home but it looks great on a big screen with great sound. Doesn't have to be IMAX, but it's a reason to get out of your house. They visit a lot of F1 tracks, and of course they are different, which adds some beauty and variety to the film.
  23. American Hustle. I enjoyed the story. Amy Adams was a braless wonder.... I wanted to see the story behind this scene that someone recut to be the Texas welcome party to the SEC:
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