I, and the many other Americans I speak for, and the voices in my head (who I also speak for) demand to know:
Why has the Obama Administration not taken decisive action to resolve the Iowahawk hostage crisis, which is now in day 175?
Does the administration want people to believe they can’t spare even one AC-130 set to “frappe”?
The American people want answers, Mister President!
Lawrence threw me a nice backlink yesterday, pointing out that Bloomberg’s tobacco proposals will just put money in the pockets of organized crime.
But surely there’s hope for NYC? Surely they’ve learned and will elect someone unlike Bloomberg?
Nope. The NYT profiles Joseph J. Lhota, deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani and censorious asshat.
Hahahhahaha. Bloomberg, champion of free speech. Unless it is about guns. Or tobacco. Or soda. Or food.
Obit watch: James Herbert, noted British horror novelist.
Great idea. Why don’t we have it?
One word: Intuit.
This doesn’t come as a great shock to me, but I stopped using Intuit products years ago: TurboTax was DRM infested, and the Mac versions of Quicken became steaming piles of crap. I haven’t seen anything that would make me want to go back to using an Intuit product again, ever.
My sister and her family (who I love dearly) gave me this shirt
I was wearing it this afternoon when I went to REI, as I also planned to wear it to the blogmeet as a recognition signal. Anyway, I’m standing in the checkout line at REI, not even thinking about the shirt, when one of the clerks looks at me…
…and says, “Hey! I have that shirt at home!”
Not what I expected at REI, but between that and clerks at B&N who want to discuss how GD dumb the proposed assault weapons ban is, I believe that word is: Winning!
Jessie Jackson, Jr. has been charged with…
Yes, this is just an indictment; he hasn’t been convicted yet, but all the reporting I’ve seen is stating the indictment was the first step towards a plea deal, and Jackson does plan to plead guilty to at least some of the charges.
The allegations include:
According to the WP, while the co-conspirator was not named, “the description makes clear that [Mrs. Jackson] was the co-conspirator”. She hasn’t been charged in this case, but:
The reporting I’ve seen provides some additional context for Jackson Jr.’s spending. This wasn’t “I needed to pay the house payment, so I took money out of campaign funds” spending:
I remember reading the stories that Jackson Jr. was absent from Congress and out of touch, and the eventual announcements he was being treated for depression, but I did not associate those with an on-going criminal investigation:
I have written previously about the activities of the Austin Public Safety Commission, an appointed “advisory body to the city council on all budgetary and policy matters concerning public safety, including matters related to the Austin Police Department, the Austin Fire Department, and the Austin/Travis County Emergency Medical Services Department.”
The Public Safety Commission, it should be noted, is different from the Greater Austin Crime Commission, which has engaged in gun buybacks in the past.
I call that point out because the Public Safety Commission issued a series of “recommendations” to the city council yesterday. As reported in the Statesman, APSC recommends:
It is perhaps also worth noting that former mayor Will Wynn and current mayor Lee Leffingwell are members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and that Wynn is one of the members of that group who has been convicted of a criminal offense.
The more I hear out of these people, the better a recall election sounds.
Obit watch: former mayor of New York City, and former judge on “The People’s Court”, Edward Koch.
For those who don’t understand the reference: as a member of Congress, Koch lobbied for increased aid to New York City during the 1970s, when the city was broke. President Ford turned down the city, leading to a famous NY Daily News headline:
There were long lines and crowds at the gun show, according to the Statesman.
(Before today, I’ve never had to wait in line to get into a gun show, except maybe the one time I went with Borepatch and we had to wait for the doors to open. It took me about 40 minutes in line to get into the show; I got there around 10:30 AM. Two friends of mine got there later and reported the wait was much the same, even at 1 PM.)
Edited to add: Lawrence was there as well; here’s his report.
Today’s Austin Police Department suspension is brought to you by former Sergeant William Lefebvre.
Chief Acevedo says “That tactic was not justified or objectively reasonable and (he) failed to report it in a timely manner”.
Okay. What does “failed to report in a timely manner” mean?
Former sergeant Lefebvre will be suspended for 60 days (“The memo didn’t say whether Lefebvre will be paid during the suspension.”) and has agreed to a demotion to corporal detective. Post suspension, he will be “on probation” for a year. “If he commits a similar act of misconduct, he would be indefinitely suspended without the right to appeal.”
It sounds like this was a negotiated deal with the city, and that Lefebvre will not be appealing his discipline. However, the Statesman does not explicitly state this.
I’ve written previously about the pot growers of Mendocino County. Today’s LAT reports on a new development.
Mendocino County set up a program to register medical marijuana growers:
The DEA raided the first person who registered.
In spite of this, the county intended to continue registering growers:
The county is now fighting the subpoenas. Three things about this:
Meanwhile, in local news: Austin has a moderately successful chains of bars known as “Little Woodrow’s”. The owners want to put a new location at 5425 Burnet, but they need a zoning change first. Here’s 5425 Burnet on Google Maps:
This is a stretch of road I’m fairly familiar with; there’s not much along there except strip centers and stand-alone businesses. As the Statesman notes, there’s a mixed-use apartment/shopping development (with a parking garage) right across the street, which Little Woodrow’s hopes to cater to. There’s two bars close by that I can think of: Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon, mentioned in the article, which is also famous for chicken (stuff) bingo, and Billy’s on Burnet (which does very good hamburgers and has limited parking).
Anyway, the point is: the usual suspects – the Brentwood and Allandale neighborhood associations – are all butthurt over this, claiming there won’t be enough parking, the bar would be too noisy, yadda yadda. In spite of their opposition, “the opponents are short by roughly half the number of signatures needed on a petition that would require six of seven council members to approve the rezoning”. They had two votes against in a preliminary vote: Laura Morrison and Kathie Tovo.
(On a completely unrelated note: anyone got any experience organizing recall elections?)
Hey, we’re converging ever closer to doing these on Tuesday again. Frankly, we just forgot last night, and were tied up most of the day today.
Anyway, this week’s TMQ after the jump…
The county is going to honor the existing contract, which is for nine more shows at the Travis County Exposition and Heritage Center.
“I take very seriously the idea of abiding by the law.” That’s a quote for you. But:
…she would like to see gun shows require background checks for all purchases.
That’s nice, Commissioner Eckhardt. I’d like a freaking pony.
That’s the closest the Statesman has come to getting it right in their reporting on this subject.
The county will also meet with the gun show operator, Saxet Gun Shows, about the matter.
So probably if Saxet comes back for a contract renewal, the commissioners will pressure them to agree on a “no sales except through a FFL” provision.
Awesome! Since the county staffers are going to bring “any other proposed events at the Expo Center with ‘unusually high safety risks’ for commissioners’ approval”, I suggest they start with the Republic of Texas biker rally. I mean no offense to Jay G. or any of my other motorcycle riding friends out there: I don’t ride myself right now, but I love you guys. But if we’re talking about “unusually high safety risks”, there were at least three deaths during last year’s ROT rally, and another three the year before. I’d think that qualifies.
Anyway, we’ve won the battle, but the war isn’t over yet. You need to be contacting your Congressperson. I’ve added pages with contact information for the Texas Senate and House delegations. The lovely and talented Erin Palette has pointed out Ruger’s automated letter generator, so you can even do it with a couple of clicks of the bunny. If you have time, though, I recommend you hand compose and either fax or email your rep; most of the sites I visited while I was pulling that list together warned that physical mail is delayed up to two weeks. Anthrax, don’t you know?
If you live outside of Texas, or don’t know who your people are: find your House member here. Find your senators here.
However, the paper is also reporting that at least two of the commissioners are “backing away” from supporting the measure:
Before we give props to Eckhart and Daugherty, they are also quoted as supporting “background checks for anyone buying a gun at a gun show”. Oddly enough, so is Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson. I suspect that Daugherty and Patterson are just misinformed, not malicious; I’m not sure about Eckhardt.
In any case, now is not the time to back off. Keep those cards, letters, and faxes coming in, people. Contact information for all of the commissioners is right here.
A little more than a year ago, I noted the saga of the Turner-Roberts Recreation Center in east Austin: built in 2008, developed structural problems in 2009, closed in 2011 while the city considered how to fix those problems.
Estimates at the time were $2.7 million and seven months to repair, or 10 months and $4.1 million for a tear-down and rebuild.
Today’s Statesman updates the story:
The city is going to pay $3 million of that cost. The rest will be picked up by the three companies that designed and built the center.
All told, the city will have spent $8.6 million on the building.
The city has also spent another $3.1 million to open a “9,100-square-foot ‘multi-purpose facility; next door that contains a gathering space, restrooms and a kitchen — similar to a rec center.”
I noted above that the three firms involved in design and construction are paying $3.4 million of the cost. That’s based on a settlement between those firms and the city, which didn’t require that the firms admit fault:
And where’s the city’s share of the money coming from?
Those bonds were also used to pay for the new multi-purpose facility.
Something stinks here, and I don’t think it is the trash I need to take out. (Just to be safe, though, I’m going to do that anyway.)
Edited to add: Well, that’s settled. It wasn’t the trash.
Austin Rifle Club sent out an email late last night stating that the Travis County Commissioners Court was considering the gun show ban today. I didn’t see that email until this morning, otherwise I would have considered going down to report.
According to the Statesman, the commissioners “discussed” the proposal, and heard testimony from residents, but did not take a vote. So you still have time to contact them.
So Judge Biscoe thinks gun shows are a threat to public safety, but not one that we need to act on immediately? One that can wait “three or four months”? Option two is that Judge Biscoe is a political hack who wants to be seen as “doing something” when he’s really doing nothing. But that can’t be true: political hackery on the commissioners court? Why, that’s unheard of! (Option three is that Judge Biscoe figures things will blow over in “three or four months”, we can return to the current status quo, and voters will forget his actions. My message to Judge Biscoe: “He’d seen how ‘civilized’ men behaved. He never forgot and he never forgave.”)
And, again, I’ll make the points that:
The Statesman does not give a breakdown of how many people spoke at the meeting, nor does it give any indication how many supported or opposed the measure.
And, once again, I’ll mention that Judge Biscoe is wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong! Here’s some legal precedent from the 5th Circuit for you, Judge Biscoe. The tl;dr version: the city of Houston tried something similar and ended up paying $50,000+ in legal fees to a gun show operator.
Keep that in mind. The opposition managed to get 200 people to support their illegal proposal. I think we can do much better.
Edited to add: Forgot something else I was going to mention: I updated the .CSV files of the county commissioners and the city council members with fax numbers, just in case anyone finds that useful. Someone yesterday (and I forget who it was) made the comment that they can ignore emails, but they have to answer the phone and they have to put paper in the fax machine. I am slightly dubious about the latter, what with modern technology and all, but the fax numbers are there if you can use them.
Edited to add 2: Updated story from the Statesman:
You don’t say?
And edited to add again: by way of Lawrence over at Battleswarm, ““If Austin or Travis Co. try to ban gun shows they better be ready for a double-barreled lawsuit.” Click through to find out who said that. Hint: it wasn’t someone who runs gun shows. Hint 2: it was someone who can unleash hell on the city and county.