Texas Jeff

This conversation has never happened: "Bro, you going to the game this weekend?" "Not sure man, who are they playing?" "It's the Tech game" "Tech? I'm in...." No way they give away 1/6th of their non-conference games to play in Lubbock.

Yes, but you don't have to convert the entire amount. You can pick how much you want to convert to Roth. You can convert more next year if you wish, or not. I see the benefits of Roth conversions as allowing you to pick today's marginal tax rate for income rather than some unknown future rate, and allowing you to shelter more wealth in a Roth IRA than you have in a regular IRA. You end up with the same number of dollars in a Roth that you had in the regular IRA, but it's now taxed and any future income is tax free. You can also dial in your income to exactly what you want it to be, which may allow you to maximize the benefit of a lower tax bracket without getting into higher brackets.

Volunteered to be a truck driver and jeep mechanic at age 18 during WWII. Only female royal to have served in the military.

Hmm, check out the info here: https://www.houstonisd.org/Page/129737 That page is specific to one Houston high school, but it has a phone number to the school transfer dept for all of HISD. Or https://www.houstonisd.org/domain/54200 specific to middle schools. You may not be able to get the kid into a specific school without doing something like renting an apartment in the attendance zone for the school, but you may be able to find a place somewhere in HISD for a transfer.

Don't really know ISDs in that area, but: Alief accepts transfers: https://www.aliefisd.net/loe Stafford had a window to transfer, maybe you could beg your way in: https://www.staffordmsd.org/become-a-spartan/non-resident-student-transfer Spring Branch has a transfer window: https://www.springbranchisd.com/studentsfamilies/choice-program/about-the-transfer-process Bottom line is they want the bucks and an empty seat does them no good.

Does your district accept transfers? Districts with extra space want transfers because the money follows the kid.

Texas wins 37-21 and goes on to dominate college football for a decade. Hey, it could happen... Ewers 314 yds

oops, forgot that one. You are correct!

When was the last time the #1 team visited DKR? U of H was #3 in 1990. Nebraska was #3 in 1999. I found a 1953 game vs #3 Baylor. Looking at Wikipedia, it might have been a 1950 game vs SMU. Texas won 23-20.

This was my first game in the stadium in about 10 years; kids activities took up my weekends but I'm now an empty nester. The student section was great and the crowd was great overall, especially early in the game for a lightweight opponent. The club music after every play on defense wears you down to the point where you're just sitting there hoping we get the ball back or the other team scores. It sucks any organic life out of the stadium. I'll go to a few games a year with the stadium like this but don't want to take the Jumbotron beating for every game, so TV it will be. Also, don't mess with Texas people. Is it that hard to pick up your beer cans and water bottles on the way out and put them in a recycling bin? The stadium was trashed after the game and someone else has to clean up all of the crap. One minute of looking around you and carrying your stuff out would save some other folks a huge amount of work. I walked up towards the Posse after the game and saw discarded beer cans the whole way. We have an awesome 98 year old stadium that has changed with the times and a beautiful campus with nice shady spots under fantastic old oak trees. Clean up your stuff!

The law is clearly not limited to just one poster, right? And it gives the school district no discretion to choose which posters to display and which ones not to display? Text of the law: https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/87R/billtext/html/SB00797I.htm Here's the chuckleheads accepting the original posters a few weeks ago, complete with photo op in the middle of a board meeting (Item 4): https://carrollisdtx.swagit.com/play/08162022-550 Also, if "a sign" in the law means "one sign", then the Patriot mobile donated signs are illegal, because the law specifies that signs must have "a representation of the state flag", which would mean "one representation of the state flag" ... and the Patriot mobile signs have two depictions of the state flag.

All things gameday parking are here: https://texassports.com/sports/2016/5/4/parking.aspx Looks like there are some ADA parking options by Disch-Falk, with a shuttle over to the stadium. I've always parked somewhere north of campus and walked. Not being stuck in a garage after the game is a huge advantage. CapMetro runs high frequency buses down Guadalupe every 15 minutes, if you live close to one of those routes. I've never ridden one but folks do take these to the Austin FC games.

I think they are dependent on what happens to Del Valle. Here's their district sorted by enrollment: Lake Travis 3680.5 Del Valle 3578 Westlake 2842 Bowie 2830.5 Akins 2642.5 Hays Johnson 2474 Dripping Springs 2335 Austin High 2381 Anderson 2232 If Del Valle makes the playoffs, Westlake gets the easier path. It's a crazy system. Westlake will crush everyone in their district except LT, but there is a chance they would be a "smaller" school in the playoffs. If LT wants to screw Westlake, they will build that second high school and then manage enrollment at LT to always be Westlake minus one.

Given lots of time, sure. Project Connect is eventually (like 2040-ish, IMHO) going right next to campus. You'll be able to get from the IM fields to the courthouse in maybe 20 mins without a car. I'm not sure if any campus around the state will be in the middle of a better transit system once the rail system is built. Either UT is going to buy land and box out high tech or high tech is going to move in and put pressure on UT. UT could buy up west campus or land around these stops to eventually create housing or more campus buildings. UT still owns the Muny campus, which was originally donated to be used for education. Someone is eventually going to buy and develop the Austin State School off of 35th. The area between 15th and MLK south of campus is mostly state office buildings and parking for state office buildings. Do we need that to be state office buildings? Low paying jobs in a super expensive area of town? The state could gradually move out and give UT some room for expansion, but I doubt they will. Lots of students are arriving on campus as freshman with 20-30 hours of AP credit. UT isn't teaching as many of the fundamental core classes as they were decades ago. It's hard to get upper division classes but there are fewer large lecture classes. I think UT won't expand because they are happy as is. They get to choose from the best students around the state. Lots of students are showing up as academic sophomores. They get a high ranking and an easy to educate population, who are likely to help out with research. And sending some students to other UT schools helps those schools get better. Also, LONG term, like 2050-2100, the population of the US and Texas is going to peak and then start declining. Once it starts down, it won't stop. You are going to see this in the next ten years as the number of kids in the US of college age drops. Super long term, we won't need as many colleges.

I did not know that there were that many Cracker Barrels in Texas...

In Austin, here are some themes I have heard: 1. Many of them chose teaching to help children climb the ladder. There are a ton of things they have to do that do not involve teaching that consume time. This forces many of them to cover teaching during the day and fit the other stuff in after hours. They spend a lot more time at school than they though they would. Eventually the extra hours wear down their desire to help children. 2. They all knew the pay would be bad, but in this era of high inflation they are losing ground. They are getting 2% pay raises when inflation is running at 8%. They are having a hard time finding any place to live. How long would you live in a one-bedroom apartment 20 miles from the place you teach? Gas, commuting, rising rents are all eating in to their pay. 3. Kids lost a lot of ground during the pandemic. Last year, kids were not used to being around other people and their social skills had atrophied. This caused conflicts at school, but this is fading over time. Many of the skills that the kids should have learned during the COVID year are missing, but the kids were pushed along anyway. This makes current skills that build on those harder to teach. Think about teaching kids precalculus when they are missing algebra 1 skills. You can't stop and re-teach algebra 1, you just forge ahead. 4. As crazy as this sounds, the HVAC often does not work. Imagine working in a building that might be 91 degrees on one day and 57 on the next. I wish I was making up those numbers but those are directly from my wife's classroom last year, on two adjacent days. Parking lot lights are broken, bathrooms are broken, doors are broken, desks are broken, and so on. In Austin, that's why the 2022 bond is so important. Fix stuff to make teachers happier in their classrooms. 5. The Uvalde tragedy showed teachers that an 18 year old can easily get weapons and when the shooting starts the police will do nothing. If you hear pop, pop, pop ... run! Or ... leave teaching. Mostly I think they feel over worked and under respected. A bunch of teachers have reached the breaking point and sense that a better life is not on the way, so they are choosing to do something else.

If you would like to do something good for Austin ISD, please vote for the bond in November. It's a really big number, probably the biggest bond that Austin ISD has ever considered. Because of the way tax rates work, your AISD tax rate is going down this year, because home values went up. This bond raises the rate of money going to build buildings by 1 penny, while the overall tax rate will be dropping about 5 pennies even with this bond. A penny of tax on a $500,000 house is $50 per year. I've been in a number of Austin ISD schools over the last ten years and most of the ones I visited are in poor condition. Everyone thinks that their side of town is getting ignored and things *must* be better on the other side of town, but the reality is that most of the buildings suck. Austin let their schools deteriorate for a generation and we can now either make major investments or just let them rot. This bond is the second in a series of bonds intended to repair the entire district over a 25 year period that started in 2017. This one focuses more money on rebuilding schools in the "eastern crescent" for the most economically disadvantaged, but improvements are slated for other parts of town as well. All buildings are getting critical repairs to things like HVAC that may fail in the next five years. Almost all AISD buildings need help, but this bond will make a big dent in what is needed and keep the district on track to be fully repaired in a generation. New buildings require less maintenance than old buildings, and less maintenance means more money for teacher salaries. All of the bond money stays in Austin and it will go towards giving teachers and students a better experience. None of it goes towards Robin Hood. The bond is not perfect, but all bonds are works of committees and no one group is ever going to get all that they wanted. If you vote for the bond, you are giving teachers a better place to work with modern facilities. You are giving AISD an edge in recruiting teachers. You are giving a lot of economically disadvantaged kids a brand new school. And it's one big step towards eventually repairing the entire district. If it fails, we'll be back in the same situation a few years from now with even older, more broken buildings. I don't feel that we can do anything about Robin Hood or how much it takes from Austin ISD, but we can at least vote to say we value our schools and our teachers and our kids, even if we can't do much to pay teachers more.

You make valid and reasonable points. I would be OK paying these folks more if they had a recent track record of making good decisions, or if there was some slate of kick ass candidates out there waiting to run but saying they will not because of the pay. There is not "Moneyball" of politics. As a taxpayer, how do I know that I am paying more and getting more value for my money, versus just giving more money for the same bad outcomes? How do we identify talented folks to run our city and is compensation what is holding them back? Personally, I could not make it through one city council meeting without losing it. They start in the morning, spend all day recognizing scout troops, folks who are retiring, having lunch, having dinner, etc and then they talk about the stuff that really matters at 2am. Front load important stuff when people are fresh. Limit meetings to a max of 4 hours, which is about as long as any reasonable person can take it. If I was in charge, here's what I would focus on: * Prior to turning dirt, Project Connect would have to demonstrate how the zoning was going to change around every train stop so that each one would eventually look like West Campus. Each stop should have all buildings with office, retail and housing so that each super-expensive stop would be sure to be busy. Just putting a line on paper with stops without changing what is around it is going to create an under-used transit system. * We would get serious about developing Robinson Ranch, with frequent red line stops between a few stations throughout the property. The land is already zoned for density but nothing is being done to exploit the zoning. Those two things would take the pressure off of existing neighborhoods and use the transit we are building. People are not using what we have now. * We would hire the two Bobs to come in and wreck shop. I suspect there are tons of employees doing not that much and tons of other needs elsewhere that are not getting met. But momentum has probably kept things just where they are. Optimize it or at least convince me that we are efficient. * I would figure out how to open all of the neighborhood pools and consider building some swim centers for year round use. It's hot out there and we are fat. Time to swim. * I would use housing bonds to build places specifically for teachers and teaching staff, or reduce their property expenses, or figure out how to make their lives easier. The state isn't helping the Austin area retain teachers. Classes are being taught by subs. We are importing already educated high-tech talent but not focusing on the young talent that is growing up here. The city isn't directly responsible for education but they could be helping make it easier for teachers to compete with high tech folks for housing. Most of all I would try to build consensus on the big stuff. I think this is where Adler has failed. He thinks he knows the "right" answer, but not everyone agrees with him. So he tries to force it and pisses people off. Groups fight with each other and not much gets done, or the thing that does get done has weak support or is under-utilized.

Just checked another nearby city. Round Rock pays their mayor $1000 per month and city council members make $750 per month. Perhaps we could get those guys.... Pflugerville pays their city council zero dollars. Dallas - $60k per council member. Houston - $3,600 per year, less than what Austin pays each council member in car allowance. San Antonio - was roughly $46,000 per year in 2015. Fort Worth asked for voter approval in May to raise the mayor to $100k and city council members to $75k, and the voters said no. I don't think the Austin thing is a voter approved pay raise, but I could be wrong. They had $20 million "left over" in the budget so they are considering raises for themselves. It looks like Austin, at a current pay rate of $83,158 plus $5k for a car, may already be the highest paid big city council in Texas.

According to the Statesman, city council members are proposing to give themselves a 40% raise. Anyone here ever vote to raise your pay by 40%?

Can't believe I used to park there for the low low price of a C permit. I could only dream about parking in the one luxurious garage on campus. Enrollment since then has grown so much ... like a total of about 0% over decades.

I checked that site against my tax receipt for last year and it was accurate to the penny. IMHO, the "no new revenue" number is designed to make you mad. You think "oh, that's the base from last year" but that number does not include anything for inflation. They then show you the proposed rate and it's higher and folks get mad. Taxes go to pay teachers, police, fire, EMS and it's reasonable that they would get raises to at least keep up with inflation. My wife is teaching and she's getting a sweet 2% bump, so with 8% inflation she and her fellow teachers are really making about 5% less than they did last year.

Decided to watch Poseidon, the 2006 remake of The Poseidon Adventure. Quit halfway through. Do not watch this movie. I almost always make it to the end of movies, even bad ones, but this one sucked. Made 2012 look like a study in reasonable plot development. I would have continued watching if, just once, Richard Dreyfuss would have said "I was in Jaws goddamit, what am I doing in this piece of crap?"

Has UT done anything to recognize Martinez, Crum and McCoy? Martinez's story is pretty amazing. I always thought he was responding to the scene with the intent of confronting the shooter. But in reality he called in to see if he could help and they sent him to campus to work traffic. Here's an excerpt from https://towerhistory.org/profiles/ray-martinez/