Texas Jeff
Legacy Members-
Posts
1453 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Downloads
Recruiting - 2020
2019-2020 Football Season
Football
Entertainment
Sports
News and Business
Cloak Room
Transfer Portal
Recruiting
Events
Everything posted by Texas Jeff
-
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.
-
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.
-
Austin City Government - Circus of the Insane
Texas Jeff replied to skittlebrau's topic in Daily Texan
This will be Proposition B on the November ballot. Here are some articles and news reports talking about the petition and the convention center: https://www.kut.org/post/pac-files-petition-put-austin-convention-center-expansion-public-vote https://communityimpact.com/austin/central-austin/city-county/2019/07/26/petition-proposing-austin-convention-center-expansion-be-put-to-public-vote-heads-to-city-council/ https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2019-07-19/to-expand-the-convention-center-or-not/ The petition states what city code would change if passed: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6191474/Convention-Center-Petition.pdf Ultimately, the text in the petition is what you are voting for or against. The city council wishes to raise the Hotel Occupancy Tax and use the money to improve the convention center. They want to tear down the current convention center and replace it with a new $1.2 billion convention center. The city believes that money spent on the convention center will attract additional convention business, thus generating more economic activity for the city. This is part of a package called the "Downtown Puzzle" that includes changes to the Palm School and Rainey Street districts. The petitioners want to limit the percentage of the tax that can be spent on the convention center and require voter approval for any change to the convention center that costs more than $20 million. They want to reserve part of the tax for other cultural activities. They want voter approval for major convention center changes. The city council could have passed it once the petition was valid, but they did not. Petitions don't get to the voters unless the city council fails to adopt them, so the city council is likely to always oppose any petition that comes to a vote. Here is an article showing what the new convention center might be. The city council selected "Scenario 5", which is a complete rebuild: https://communityimpact.com/austin/central-austin/city-county/2019/03/29/new-austin-convention-center-expansion-report-envisions-the-venues-place-in-a-modernizing-downtown/ Here is the design document from UT describing "Scenario 5" (start at page 162): https://issuu.com/utsoa/docs/frameworks_for_placemaking_utsoacsd?e=2095123/68762342 The city council is responsible for drafting the ballot language for the petition. Here is the ballot language they created for this issue: "Shall an ordinance be adopted that limits, beyond existing limits in state statute and city ordinance, the use of Austin’s Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue, including the amount of Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue that may be used to construct, operate, maintain, or promote the Austin Convention Center requires any private third-party entity managing such funds to comply with open meetings and public information laws applicable to the city; and requires voter approval for Convention Center improvements or expansions of more than $20,000,000 at an election for which the city must pay." If you vote for Proposition B, you are voting to limit the percentage of the HOT tax that can go to the convention center and you are requiring the city to get voter approval before they spend more than $20 million on the convention center. You want a check on city council's power to allocate the HOT tax and you want to vote on major convention center expansions. You are voting to change city code as specified in the petition. If you vote against Proposition B, you are voting to allow the city council to determine the best hotel tax percentage to be spent on the convention center and you are giving them the power to replace the current convention center without a vote, at a cost of $1.2 billion. You believe they are doing the best thing for the city based on the data available. You are voting for no change to city code. You are not voting for or against a new convention center. You will not pay the hotel tax unless you stay at an Austin hotel. There is another wrinkle not related to this petition. Travis County is preparing to call for an election to also raise the HOT tax to improve the Travis County Expo Center. The city council and Travis County are racing to increase the hotel tax, so that each could claim the revenue for their desired projects. City council's action to raise the hotel tax will deny Travis County the ability to also raise the tax, for hotels that are located in Austin. I think I got all that right, but I encourage everyone to read about it on their own before voting for or against... -
Donald brings so much more energy to fanning the flames than putting out the fires. Four of the top ten mass murders in the US since 1949 have occurred on his watch.
-
The cost of living in San Jose is somewhere between 30-100% higher than Austin, depending on what data you pick. Silicon Valley is full. Austin is a cheaper near-shore alternative. Companies can put jobs here and pay people less, and Austin is affordable for those people in those jobs. Silicon Valley will continue to put jobs here until the cost of dealing with the distance is higher than the cost of putting a bunch of people in California, or until some other Silicon Valley-like place is cheaper than Austin or until an economic disaster reduces the tech population. Many Bay Area companies have some charitable fund. Employees can donate to charities and get a match. Many of those donations go to organizations that the employee's children are in, like a school or church non-profit, because that's where the employees donate. Most of them have some local charity drives, like helping with Meals on Wheels, park cleanup or collecting school supplies for a low-scoring school. These are often seen as site wide team-building exercises. In my opinion, the tech companies mostly want to put more 22-35 year old tech workers in cheaper, yet "cool enough" locations, with reasonable access to the home office. There are some that are headquartered here that care more, but the ones HQ'ed elsewhere mostly want to reduce their costs as they expand their company.
-
I would be willing to listen to actual data on who these riders are, what options they have for transit, where they work, etc. There is a park and ride near the Leander station. During the day, is it full of cars or empty? Could these folks live closer to work or did they move to Leander to trade a longer commute for "better" schools? I suspect many of them drive to the park and ride and get on the train to go downtown, rather than drive downtown, but I could be wrong. There is lots of empty land around that station. We have some employers (for example, the state of Texas) that can build offices anywhere. Could they build on land near the station rather than asking folks to get on a train for a long trip downtown? Could we have a train system where most people take it for just a few stops rather than coast to coast from Leander to downtown, maybe by building some new, high density office and residential developments in Robinson Ranch? You are correct that we should accept that these projects will initially operate at a loss (and probably will always operate at some loss). I voted for the Red Line because I thought it was a reasonably low cost way of trying rail transit in Austin. After a number of years, I don't see a plan to ever significantly reduce the cost.
-
Either way works for me... If it costs more to have people living close to the job site and the business is willing to pick up that cost by paying employees more, that's great. If the business wants to save money by moving to where the people are, that's great. But right now we are subsidizing the cost of having low cost housing in one area and higher paying jobs in another area.
-
Crazy idea: Move those 472 jobs to Leander, where the people who have the jobs live. What is the point of having everyone get up every day, move halfway across the county, sit for eight hours, and then move back to where they started?
-
This is only a tuition thing ... there are other costs. Here are typical expenses for an undergraduate year at UT, for a Texas resident, for two semesters: Tuition: $10,100 - $11,600 Room and Board: About $10,000 for housing and food. First year dorms are probably a lot cheaper than second year off campus housing at Texas. Miscellaneous Expenses: About $6000 per year according to UT. So even with zero tuition a student still needs about $16,000 per year to go to Texas. Free tuition is a major discount but not 100% of costs. Parents are weird about this stuff. I have seen parents trumpet the idea that their kid got a $100k four-year scholarship to a school that costs $200k in tuition over four years, and I have seen parents brag about their "full ride" kid who is really getting full tuition, but paying for everything else. They love the idea of getting a discount or getting something for free but often don't look at the total cost of the degree.
-
Well, we've been doing the college tour this summer and seen UT, Texas A&M, and UTD. Looking only at STEM majors, I would say that any of those schools is going to put out a decent undergrad. The UT system is now publishing actual outcomes (salaries) for their graduates by major and campus, and UTD and UT are comparable. Texas A&M is publishing outcomes to some degree but it's hard to compare directly. Texas and Texas A&M have a "college feel" that is still pretty thin at UTD, but UTD is trying. UTD focuses on getting you an education, an internship and a job offer and on into grad school or a corporate job with as little student debt as possible. Before our tour, I never realized the small-town great advantage Texas A&M has. Few students are from College Station, so everyone is forced to live on campus or in an apartment. A lack of commuter students really helps the on-campus vibe. Texas has all of the west campus high-rise construction and students are packed into a dense neighborhood. Lot of folks live just blocks away from each other. Different ideas, but both help create a great environment. Simple things like planting shade trees, having more students on-campus or really close, and closing off parts of campus to auto traffic really make a campus feel more comfortable. If you haven't been to UT in a while, Speedway is now a pedestrian walkway and it feels totally different to walk through campus than it did in the 80's. Campus is no longer covered in grackle shit... Long term, the UT system should extend the free college idea to all of their campuses and put money into making their campus look and feel great for students.
-
He gave us the 22 class size limit in elementary school and no-pass, no-play. In 1984, I remember him talking about Texas' amazing collection of high school football palaces and our need to focus more on education and less on extracurriculars. We have come a long way ... those 1984 era stadiums look like crap compared to what we have today! My Eagle Scout award came with a note of congratulations from Perot. I heard he paid for all of the awards for Texas Eagle Scouts, but I'm not sure if that's true.
-
He stole this speech from Bill and Ted...
-
There's an eclipse going on this afternoon in Chile. If you're there right now, look outside! If not, you can watch various livestreams, some are shown here: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/7/2/20678735/solar-eclipse-2019-south-america-live-stream-how-to-watch-start-time-nasa In 2024, the eclipse is coming to Texas ... but today is Chile's day in the sun, then not in the sun, then back in the sun...
-
Man, I'm happy to be early Gen X at this point. Too young to be stuck at home addicted to Fox News, too old to be stuck on my phone with pressure to maintain a constant online presence. I know I got gifts from low tuition, a rising stock market, emerging technology jobs, and a relative lack of warfare from 1975 through 2000. However, student debt does not happen accidentally. People sign up for it. We need to tell folks the implications of borrowing money for school before they do it. Here is what you are going to borrow, here is the job you will get if you pass your classes, here is the chance of getting that job and here is what it pays and how long it will take you to pay off the debt. Everyone should see that before they receive the money. Also, today's students have a ton of options to learn on their own, for free. You can go through all of the math most people would ever need on Khan Academy, watch crazy amounts of free lectures, learn on YouTube, whatever. It has never been easier to learn for free, if you are motivated. My high school had exactly 5 computers for 2400 kids. No dial up connections, bring your own floppy if you wanted to save something. Everyone in my kid's high school has a Chromebook with free Wifi access to an Internet that is the largest repository of information ever created. Almost all have a personal phone they can use to call or message almost anyone anywhere for no cost other than the monthly fee for the device. They have cheap access to more music than they could listen to in a lifetime. It has never been easier to collaborate. My high school offered one AP class. Today, kids may graduate with 8-10 AP classes and a big start towards a degree. There are "early college" high schools that guide kids through associates degrees by the time they graduate high school. Bill Gates had to sell software by creating software, floppy disks, manuals, getting distribution, having inventory. Today, a smart kid can write an app or create something on the web for almost no upfront costs with no inventory. The path to success is there, but the spoils for this generation are likely to be more narrowly distributed. Some will get through college in three years, start an online something and be flush with cash by 30. Others will spend $250k on a degree for a job that pays $40k and wake up at 30 wondering what the heck happened. I wish we did a better job of explaining this to 18 year olds, so they could see the future impact of their choices.
-
Did the current vendor completely fill out all of the paperwork and just fail to sign it? If so, the intent to renew was there. Why would reasonable person who has been on that property for 70 years file for an extension, but decide not to sign the form? Couldn't anyone at the city just say "Hey, you forgot to sign this and we are going to ignore this if you don't sign this". It seems like an oversight and once the mistake was made, it seems like the city used the error to make sure another vendor got the job.
-
It's a little confusing, here is the ordinance before it went to the council, I'm not sure if any text was changed in the meeting. The changes only apply to areas that are NOT designated by the City of Austin as camping areas but ARE considered public areas. It relates to camping in non-camping areas. Parks (aka Zilker Park) are considered public areas. "Public area" means any outdoor area to which the public has access, but streets, highways, parks, parking lots, alleys, pedestrian ways, or common areas of schools, hospitals, apartments, office buildings, transport facilities or shops are specifically called out as "public areas". Under the old rules, you could not camp in a public area that was not a camping area at all. Under the new rules, a person can't camp in a public area if they are are "materially endangering the health or safety of another person or of themselves" or are "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly rendering impassable or impeding the reasonable use of a public area making usage of such area unreasonably inconvenient or hazardous." If you are not doing one of those two things, you can camp. Also, you must be notified of your violating by a police officer in writing before you are in violation, unless there is some immediate danger to someone's health or safety. No police officer present to write a notice, no violation... Now, both of those clauses are kinda up for interpretation. So, yep you can probably camp in Zilker so long as you stay within the bounds of those two clauses. Or, pick your favorite school or office building and go for it. Has to be outdoors, so you can camp outside the library but not in the stacks.
-
Almost everyone who is elected once will be reelected if they run again. I think they are limited to two terms. Conservatives fair poorly... The 2014 election resulted in 11 new council members. Since then every seat has been up again. In 2016, five seats were up. Don Zimmerman and Sheri Gallo lost, and 3 of 5 were reelected. Gallo actually won the initial election but lost in a runoff. Don is the only person to run again and lose in the initial election. In 2018, five seats were up plus the mayor. Ora Houston and Ellen Troxclair did not run again. Incumbents won the other four seats, including an unopposed Ann Kitchen. In the 11 elections held so far after the initial 10-1 council election, incumbents have 7 wins (one unopposed), 2 losses, and 2 did not run again. So if you have a freshly elected council rep and they are not conservative, get used to them ... they are not likely to lose a reelection bid.
-
You may have better luck promoting camping in Ramsey Park, close to Martin Middle School, the median of Barton Springs Road, and in front of City Hall. There are no city council members in Tarrytown or Clarksville.
-
Austin City Government - Circus of the Insane
Texas Jeff replied to skittlebrau's topic in Daily Texan
In Texas, is it possible for one part of a city to decide to split off and be an independent city, or join an adjacent city? West Lake Hills is adjacent to much of that lake property and they have a lower city tax rate than Austin. -
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in future years. The state is going to constrain the M&O growth by 2.5% per year by "compressing" tax rates (forcing them to go down so that the revenue does not go up by more than 2.5% per year). This is great for taxpayers but I suspect the growth in cost of education will be more than 2.5%, so the effect will be that every year the Robin Hood payments will get smaller and smaller. In theory, the state is going to step in to provide money to fill that gap. In reality, they really didn't provide a funding mechanism (a tax) to do that. They are OK for the next two years but beyond that who knows. I read one paper that said they could fill the gap by constraining state government spending elsewhere, but who knows if that will happen. If the state fails to provide funding, then non-Robin Hood districts will start to feel a pinch as Robin Hood funds drop. Robin Hood districts (wealthy) will be OK for a while, but tax rate compression may mean there are eventually no Robin Hood districts and their funding is also capped and reliant on the state to fill the gap. If school spending rises more than 2.5% per year, I think we are on a path to eventually eliminate Robin Hood. I could be wrong...
-
The formula is complex, but the basic concept is not hard to understand. Each school district raises funds to pay the employees and funds to build the buildings. There is a tax rate to pay the employees, called M&O, which is about the same for most districts. There is a tax rate to build the buildings, called I&S, which varies from district to district. For example, Austin's M&O rate is $1.079 with an I&S rate of $0.113, Del Valle's M&O rate is $1.04 with an I&S rate of $0.35. Put the M&O and the I&S numbers together and you have the tax rate for the school district. Multiply the tax rate by the taxable value of your home, divide by 100 and you get your annual school tax bill. The part for the buildings (I&S) goes up when your district passes bonds. They decide they need to build something, pitch the idea to you, hold an election, borrow money if the election passes, and figure out the tax rate based on how much money they need to pay back the loan, just like you would for a house payment. Del Valle's rate for this part is higher than Austin partially because the total value of everything in their district is lower than Austin and partially because they have been building stuff (borrowing money). For example, Del Valle has an indoor football practice facility and Austin ISD has, well, a bunch of grass and weeds. They do mow the weeds... All of the money for the buildings stays in the local school district. It is not part of Robin Hood (recapture). Recapture comes from the money to pay the staff. To pay staff, the state uses a formula to decide how much money is needed to educate the kids in that district. The formula is really complicated, but it's roughly so many dollars per kid per day. In theory, this tax rate is determined by your local district. In reality, most districts are stuck at the maximum rate they are allowed to charge, around $1.02 to $1.17. In each district, the money they collect for staff is the M&O rate times the total value of the property in the district. The state says the money they need is so many dollars per day per kid, using the complex formula. If the amount of money they collect is greater than what the state says they need, the district has to give the extra money to the state. If the amount of money they collect is less than what the district says they need, the state gives them extra money to fill the gap. The amount of money the school district has to pay the staff is decoupled from the amount of money they raise via taxes. Since there are two funds, one for the staff and one for the buildings, a poor school district can vote to build a football stadium or new school and also receive Robin Hood money from the state to pay their teachers. That is why you see things like a Jumbotron at the Seguin stadium, or a water park at a school district in the valley. There are limits to what they can borrow, but one part is separate from the other. When Austin ISD says they sent $500 million to the state for recapture, what they mean is that the money raised to pay the staff was $500 million more than what the state calculated that they actually needed to educate their students. Since they were over the limit, they have to send the excess money to the state. From 2002 to 2019, around $3.7 billion has been collected from Austin taxpayers and been diverted to to pay staff somewhere else. That, in a nutshell, is recapture.
-
I think they also plan to nuke the IH-35 upper deck. UT, toss in some bucks to cap your section and create a contiguous campus! if they do all of that work, many of the capitol view corridors along the east side of downtown will protect a view from a location that no longer exists. I say get rid of most of the CVCs, especially those that provide a view from a place that is gone. Keep the really iconic ones. The east side of downtown could use the height.
-
For many people, there is a big difference between early 70's and late 70's. I have seen it in my parents and my parents' friends. Somewhere around 75, plus or minus a few years, people tend to really slow down. They may still be engaged in life ... active, smart, intelligent, funny ... but their batteries are running out. Reagan was almost 78 at the end of his presidency and IMHO you could see him slipping at the end of his 2nd term. He was diagnosed with Alzheimers five years after leaving office. Only Ike, Trump and Reagan have been president after their 70th birthday.
-
Some kid from Lake Travis is attending Texas A&M. The kid wants to go home on the weekend to vote, because he forgot to update his registration to his college location. And the kid has three slacker LT friends who want to vote but also did not change their registration. So the original kid volunteers to drive all four home for the weekend, so that they can vote and spend the weekend at home. This original kid has to know to complete a form at the polling place saying that his friends could not enter the polling place on their own, which I'm guessing that once they get to the polling place, is not true. Let's say the kid does not complete the form, because he has no idea that such a thing would be illegal because why would someone make a law like that? The kid is now guilty of a crime punishable by a year in jail with a fine of $4000. LT parents are going to be pissed. Can you provide people with transportation not to the polling place but instead the KFC that is 300 ft from the polling place? After some killer KFC, can everyone walk to the polling place and vote? We don't have a lot of drive-in polling booths in Texas, at some point you have to park and walk. What are those limits? My car breaks down and I call an Uber to take my family of four to the polls. The driver has no idea that we are going to vote. He picks us up and drives us to a polling location. Now the guy has to go fill out a form inside the polling location because he unknowingly dropped us off to vote, or go to jail. A Cap Metro bus stops next to a polling location. Five people get off to vote. The bus driver does not complete the form because he is just a bus driver. Off to jail for that guy. C'mon Ted ... don't mess with voting. It's hard to believe that it would be legal to limit transportation if one of the outcomes might be that someone votes after you have provided the transportation.
-
How exactly would Trump just "stay in office"? Each state elects electors, they all fill out ballots, they send them to the House, the House opens them and counts them. If Trump loses there, then it's over. On Inauguration Day, the person who won shows up and takes the oath of office, and that person is the President. Trump's out at that point unless he's the one taking the oath of office. His stuff should be out on the lawn by sunset if he refuses to leave. How exactly do people see Trump just deciding not to give up power, and then staying? He could contest a very close election aka Bush/Gore in 2000, but once the electoral college has voted that should be it.
Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... COOKIE MONSTER!