Bozo_Casanova

Obviously WAY underneath his budget but I could not be happier with My Yildiz Sporting 30in and thanks to everyone who endorsed. Just an incredible value for under $800. I love it.

Hey @Handcruser can you call your guy at Battlehawk and see if they can hook me up with an “AK-47 Supreme?”

Oh, you were looking for me to tell you about some plans? There was the 2012 comprehensive plan, "Imagine Austin". Priority program #1 was to replace our city's broken and crippling land use code. That process has been started over three times since and is currently on hold, after two separate rewrites were killed by neighborhood cranks. As we sit here twelve years later it has taken 5 years longer to replace the code than it took to put humans on the moon with slide rules and graph paper. There was the 1962 highway plan, which included a massive innner city freeway network, on Riverside, 15th street, Lamar, 35th, and more There was the plan to make Loop 360 an actual loop There was the 2000 rail plan My favorite to think about is the 1985 Highway plan, which would have built a set of true, viable bypass loops around the central city, but alas was gutted by a coalition of environmentalists and community activists by land speculators who then used that pretext to build 130 too far east to do any good.

No. It's more like this: Years zero: Consensus develops that we have an issue on the horizon, council tasks staff and commissions to gather input and develop plans Year 1: Staff and commissions gather input and develop plans Year 2: NEIGHBORS FREAK OUT! Council backpedals, tasks commissions and staff to include neighborhood cranks in process Year 3-5: Staff tweaks plan while waiting out war of attrition between factions participating in the process Year 4: 1/3 of council is replaced, running on "changing the culture of city hall," and "including the voices of the neighborhoods." New council members appoint neighborhood cranks to key commissions Year 5: staff and city management bring compromise plans to council. Council passes on 1st reading, and schedule months of hearings to gather feedback. NEIGHBORS FREAK OUT! Council decides to start over, sends back to staff and commissions to gather input and develop plans Year 5: staff and commissions develop plans Year 6: NEIGHBORS FREAK OUT! Council backpedals, tasks commissions and staff to include neighborhood cranks in process Year 7-9: Staff tweaks plan while waiting out war of attrition between factions participating in the process Year 8: 1/3 of council is replaced, running on "changing the culture of city hall," and "including the voices of the neighborhoods." New council members appoint neighborhood cranks to key commissions Year 9: staff and city management bring compromise plans to council. Council passes on 1st reading, and schedule months of hearings to gather feedback. NEIGHBORS FREAK OUT! Council decides to start over, sends back to staff and commissions to gather input and develop plans eventually you find yourself in a bond year and whatever bullshit on the table at that moment winds up in front of the public, CHEAPSKATES FREAK OUT, and it's a coin flip from there repeat ad infinitum

You should look into it Why not? They pay for it and hire the people in charge.

We meaning the city of Austin not me personally. Are you asking why there’s a disconnect between the city’s professional staff and the council? Boy, that could fill volumes, but basically because the voters vote for assholes who throw staff and good work under the bus at the slightest controversy, and you reward them for it.

Respectfully - I can only imagine what knowledge sounds like to the ignorant. Let me say it again- we are world glass at planning- decades of very smart, well thought out and appropriately scaled highway plans, train plans, land use maps, the works. Then our voters and their chosen representatives kill them. That’s the story of how Austin squandered ridiculous natural advantages and doomed itself to gridlock over a 40 year period, because it’s probably too late to really fix anything.

The first Project Connect bond election failed in 2013. Then they passed a way overdue and relatively modest bond in 2020, just in time for the cost of everything to rise and interests rates to go up. Shit happens.

Of course it’s a nonstarter, that’s why nobody good will run for office. And around we go. Nah. Project connect was underfunded and too small to begin with, because Austin votes down a lot of bonds. Voters here are penny wise and pound foolish. With the exception of one where there’s a different dynamic involved, the entire council is pretty easy to get time with in Austin. But honestly it’s more important to talk to staff.

They 100% should. But separately.

All you super serious citizens and fans of good government, I bring you glad tidings: you can make Austin better with my three step plan! 1) go to city county chambers and demand they double their own pay, and an across the board 20% increase for all non-police/fire/ems employees, because the talent pool is shit as is. 2) go to bond hearings and demand they think bigger. If it doesn’t have 10 figures demand they get there. 3) pay attention - read the Austin Monitor and council minutes and get to know your council member and their staff. Literally call them on the phone and get an appointment about the topic of your choice. It really is that easy. bonus step: volunteer to serve on a board or commission and really get to know how a policy is made, eventually working up to a sovereign board or enterprise commission ZAP, PC, BofA, solid waste, utilities, etc. parks, public safety or bonds. Spend the next 10-15 years doing it. Then tell me whether you think the voters deserve better.

I don’t think it’s OK. I literally just called it terrible. But the world belongs to the people who show up and considering the terrible pay and utter contempt of the voting public I’m shocked it’s as good as it is. If you don’t like it go down to city hall and do something about it.

That includes Austin energy. Dallas and Houston’s budget don’t. But I’m sure Austin voters will eventually find a way to fuck that up too. Do you think I’m defending Austin’s leadership? I’m not. It’s terrible. But what I am saying is that the government and the leadership is better than the voters deserve.

Red ipsa loquitur You got 10-12 years to lay pipe. Good luck.

well you evidently missed the 2000 transportation bond, the 2013 school bond, the 2014 transportation bonds, etc et al. And then there’s the shit they don’t even put in front of you because you’re all too goddamn cheap and would reject it, and then there’s the shit they don’t even bring you because of the mediocrities you elect to office and the mouth breathers and hangers on they appoint, and then there’s the shit you would never vote for because most of you act like this is a fucking backwater rather than a world-class city and I think it’s because you that’s what you want. Dallas and Houston don’t have these problems because they’re too busy moaning how great it was in 1975. And that’s the irony. People who don’t know anything thinks we don’t plan, that’s not true. We build great plans. We just don’t execute them. You don’t want to meet the future, we want a Time Machine back to the day before you got here. no offense though. 😉

Counter subconscious espionage, if you will.

My 18 year old daughter was asking me if I knew about project 2025 because she saw a video on TikTok. STRAIGHT INTO MY VEINS Do they have a bar and grill like at Doral and does it share a menu?

Anybody want to tell him?

Once again the cheapest, most myopic, least forward leaning, most naive, foot-draggingest big city voters in Texas shocked to discover they underbuilt something and waited too long to move, and as usual, blame the help.

From Hope Hicks to Laura Loomer is quite a fall

Ballgame

They’re eating the dogs they’re eating the cats eat the cat eat the cat

I watched this live and it was glorious. “No beans!” shrieks white man who simmers English stout and brown sugar with expensive, marbled, steak cut beef to create his Very Authentic Market Square Texas Red.

I don’t like this