Texas Jeff

Legal question: If Georgia elects Walker, can they trade him to Minnesota for twenty other Senators?

I went through grand jury selection in January. Everyone showed up in zoom and they checked attendance. We all had a number assigned which was maybe 1-100 or so. The judge asked us if anyone wanted to be excused and maybe 60 zoom hands were raised. We went through all of that one by one and some people had legit excuses and some were hilarious. One guy said he was a big cheese at the Texas Lottery and serving for a few hours a few times a week would jeopardize the Texas Lottery. It was at that moment that I remembered Texas has a lottery. Once all of the excused folks were gone, they took a short break, came back and announced the winners. No questioning of the candidates other than "do you have a reason not to do this?" Lots of winners from the early numbers and a few more scattered from later numbers -- this was probably done to "balance" the jury so that different groups had representation, but that's just a guess. If you weren't picked (and I was not), the judge said thanks for your service and that was that. It was three hours on zoom listening to some people with real hardships and some people that just wanted out.

Unrestricted access to firearms has led us to a point where one disturbed young person can obtain enough firepower to simply erase a roomful of people in minutes. This should not be possible. Uvalde's "well regulated militia" arrived within minutes with more people and guns that the perp, but cowardly refused to take action. This isn't just a today thing ... Whitman happened 50 years ago but now we have cameras showing us what this looks like. Imagine what it looked like in the room. Early on, the video has pop-ups every few seconds that say "audio has been muted to remove sounds of children screaming". That is horrible. So stop it already. Rapid fire weapons should NOT be available to the public. Clearly the police are afraid of one person with such a weapon and their response is to do nothing or run away. From children trapped in a room. Even after an hour of getting reinforcements, you see police running away when the shooting starts at the end. Horrible. I was always wary of the need for school ISD police departments. I'm now convinced that they have no value and should be disbanded. Give money to the teachers or just put in enough doors so that kids can run for their lives. Every school has a few kids that are a little outside the envelope and *could* take a turn towards school shooter. A lot of times, teachers and students see this happening and know who these kids are years before they act out. We should be trying to help these kids earlier in life and make darn sure that they are kept far far away from guns and ammo.

No one is going to use that Travis Heights station. There is zero density there. To the north, there is one street and then the lake. There are a few residential streets to the south, but the road leading south goes up a hill. It's a very suburban-ish neighborhood. They are putting a station there because it's a wide spot in Riverside drive.

The little munchkins have time on their side, and plenty of it. If money doubles every 7 years or so, they might have 6 or 7 doubling periods until they need the money. Even if they eek out 5 doubling periods accounting for inflation, that's still $32 in future bucks for every $1 invested today. If you invest in a Roth, all of that money is tax free and they get to choose when in later life to withdraw it -- after reaching certain ages. Money invested prior to age 30 has a much larger impact than money saved after that. Plus, your kids have the advantage of watching that account grow during their 20's, when they are like to just blow their newly found income. Watching that growth can have a big impact on their desire to save while they're young, when it matters most.

Your wife's friends Edward Jones husband is all about getting your money under his management so that he can take a slice each year, or upfront, or both. Run away... 529's are easy. Pick a state (we picked Utah, does not have to be your state). Pick an asset allocation ... basically conservative/moderate/aggressive. Invest and forget about it until they are approaching college age. The best part about the 529 was that it was there when our kids headed to college. We didn't suddenly have another payment to make, we just started pushing the withdrawal button on the 529 website.

In my mid-50's and I was a toddler in the 60's, so I missed that. Amazingly, I only missed school segregation by 10 years. Seems crazy now .. by the time I was in elementary school no one talked about it. I started paying attention to the world around the end of the Ford administration. I knew Nixon was bad and Ford looked clumsy. People around me genuinely supported Carter and, four years later, were pretty enthusiastic about Reagan. The same people. It was OK to switch your vote. There wasn't much of a divide and no one talked about red or blue states. Everyone hated the Soviet Union and were kinda afraid of getting nuked. The Supreme Court seemed to be the place to go when America needed rights expanded. We studied landmark cases in school and the common theme seemed to be expansion of liberty and freedom and rights to groups that the founders would have never conceived of, but now in the "modern" 70's and 80's the Supremes were wiser and could stretch the Constitution to cover those people. At least that's what it looked like to me. The country was getting a lot cleaner, thanks to the EPA. People used to throw trash in the street. Street corners had piles of cigarette butts and soda cans. Within a few years, I remember trash going way down. Trash cans all said "Pitch in!" and kids would run around finding trash for the trash can. Big cities were filled with smog. No one spent a minute on a web site, or on a phone, or tweeting stuff. We didn't even have cable. We thought the microwave was a miracle invention. Suddenly we had VCRs and cordless phones. Every new invention was attributed to the success of the space program. I think, at least in the 70's and 80's, we all had a big common enemy that could kill us anytime they wanted. Strangely, that may have kept us together. I saw the Berlin Wall fall on TV and just could not believe it .... here comes worldwide peace! Not... I think the country started splitting shortly after the USSR broke up and it's gotten worse over time. I don't think the country is really that split. I think if you have a flat on a roadside at night you're still likely to get help from a stranger. But I do think that the people that ARE the dividers have figured out how to get power and most of us are watching them duke it out.

Last night was my first time picking up at ABIA post-COVID. What an experience... My wife's flight was two hours delayed, so I pulled into the cell phone lot at fifteen minutes 'till midnight. The place was packed. I was lucky to find a parking spot. The cell phone lot has bloomed into a gas station, a convenience store, and a Whataburger with a drive through. The gas pumps were packed and the Whataburger drive through was backed up into the main lot, blocking traffic. Who decides to head out to the airport for some midnight burgers? Five minutes after I parked, an 18-wheeler pulled into the cell phone lot and completely screwed up the traffic. WTF? I had questions for the driver like why are you picking someone up at the airport in a giant truck, but a small mob of blocked in drivers convinced the dude to leave, which he did once the Whataburger drive-through line gave him a chance. Got a text from my wife 30 minutes after she had landed saying that she had her bag and was waiting at post E. I texted "Is it crowded where you are?" and she replied "It is more crowded elsewhere." which is information but not exactly what I wanted to know. I replied "OMW". I started the car, weaved around the Whataburger drive through, drove around the gas pumps, tried to exit the cell phone lot and hit standstill traffic before I could even get onto the loop around the terminal. It's fifteen minutes after midnight and the airport is gridlocked. Why? I called my wife and use my best Puddy voice and said "Babe, you gotta get upstairs to Departures. If you don't we will need to find a place for breakfast on the way home." I waited two minutes, which was easy to do because my traffic lane was not moving. I changed lanes to Departures and had two completely empty lanes to choose from and a mostly empty curbside area to pick up my wife. If you head to the airport, beware the cell phone lot and the Arrivals area. Picking up at Departures can save you about an hour. However, if you need midnight Whataburger, a tank of gas and a bag of Fritos, they are ready to serve.

Everyone please vote. It may not matter, but vote anyway. I doubt anyone reading this fails to vote. It may not matter because our system favors one party for two and half branches of government. The senate is split 50/50 but Democratic senators represent more people than Republican senators. The system allows the president to win while losing the popular election. The president appoints justices and the Senate confirms them, creating justices that are not at the center of our population. Shenanigans in the Senate, plus RBG's attempt to outlive the Trump administration, have led us to the point where the Supreme Court has views that are out of step with the majority of the population. More voting in large blue states isn't going to help that. If Texas can become a swing state ... maybe that helps. A controlling minority can move us forward as a society, even if the majority disagree. The minority can also crap all over the majority. Right now they're crapping.

I think we are in for the weirdest housing bubble of my life. Rates were low, housing shot up, lots of people with unrealized gains that they thought would be tax-free income with a chance for more. The more house you bought, the more you could make. Now rates are up and those same people could never afford to now buy they house they just bought. Demand will sink and prices will fall. Maybe not a crash, but enough to wipe out some equity for a while. People will be stuck in their current homes. They may make enough to pay the 2.5% mortgage on their million dollar home but not enough to sell it at a 100k loss and move into a 700K home with a 6% mortgage. Those folks are going to sit tight. We may get into a situation where there still are not a lot of homes on the market because not many can afford to move.

So that UT can control the cost of housing for kids once they move out of the dorm. I have a kid living at 2400 Nueces right now, an apartment owned by UT. It’s not super fancy but I know that UT is going to lease to students and they are going to charge less than the free market would. Eventually the private dorms and the folks that build the tall buildings are going to figure out that they can rent places or sell condos to 20 somethings that want to be around younger folks but have six figure salaries and work downtown. The train is going to make the commute from west campus really easy for those folks.

No more cars on the Drag ... the plan is trains and buses only between the former Dirty's location and the MLK/Drag intersection. I think they plan to route car traffic down Nueces, which will become a two way street. I saw a drawing which had the tunnel entrance right around Dobie, which means you'll be able to get on a train on the Drag and take tunnels all the way to South Congress. That's pretty cool if you are a pedestrian at the Co-op and you want to suddenly travel to South Congress. Most students are just walking from West Campus to campus and back. Car travel north/south on the remaining open streets will be pretty brutal, which I think is the main idea. UT should be buying up everything they can in west campus and building student housing. I think that entire area is going to gentrify like crazy with folks that work downtown but want to live near campus. Students are going to be pushed out.

Send in Willie.

LL

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They are replacing all of the water pipes in my neighborhood. Our current pipes were installed in the late 1940s and they would break 2-3 times per year, pouring water into the street. My neighbor had designed water catching containers with pumps to redirect the water into his yard during these events. It's just taking forever to do it. They've been planning this for at least three years and the streets will need to be resurfaced after they finish. The breaks and leaks were so bad that I'm a little worried for the trees after they fix the problem. It will be nice to no longer have crews digging up yards at midnight to stop a leak.

Here is what I think I know of this as an AISD parent -- please confirm with your counselor: Austin ISD class rank is a function of best grades in core classes. Electives do not matter for class rank. The core classes are English/Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies plus two years of languages other than English. I used to think it was top four in every core subject, but this document says it's four English/Math/Science, three for Social Studies, two for languages other than English . As an example, let's make up some math grades for a kid and assume the top four grades count: Algebra 1 (Honors): 91 - weighted class - 8th grade Geometry (Regular): 95 - non-weighted - 9th grade Algebra 2: (Honors): 93 - weighted - 10th grade Pre-calc: (Honors): 87 - weighted - 11th grade Calculus AB (Honors): 90 - weighted - 12th grade What is the lowest grade on that board? It's Geometry ... the non-weighted class. The other classes get a 10 point bump. Grades get converted to a 4.0 scale (5.0 scale for honors), so those grades look like this for class rank purposes: Algebra 1 (Honors): 4.1 - weighted class - 8th grade Geometry (Regular): 3.5 - non-weighted - 9th grade Algebra 2: (Honors): 4.3 - weighted - 10th grade Pre-calc: (Honors): 3.7 - weighted - 11th grade Calculus AB (Honors): 4.0 - weighted - 12th grade In this example, the first four grades would be used to calculate the math portion at the end of the 11th grade. In the 12th grade, that Calculus score replaces the Geometry score. Class rank for college admissions (Texas top ten percent, for example), is determined at the end of the junior year. So this kid would have received a GPA bump during their senior year -- which might have mattered for final class rank -- but not for top 10% rankings for college purposes. Electives don't matter for calculating the class rank GPA, but they are included in the overall GPA. There are also weighted and unweighted electives. You can take an elective pass/fail, but only if it is NOT needed for graduation credit. You need a certain number of electives to graduate, so you have to take some as numeric grades. You can take the others pass/fail if you wish. A weighted elective where your kid is going to receive a high grade is going to help your overall GPA quite a bit. If your kid is making really high grades, a non-weighted non-pass/fail course can reduce their overall GPA, but it won't matter for class rankings.

A full lunar eclipse is happening tonight, starting in about an hour. It will be partial for a while before full. This is a "blood red" eclipse. Skies are clear in Texas, just look up if you want to check it out. Try to sell your Aggie friends on the special sunglasses they'll need to protect their eyes from the moonlight.

The amount the school district collects in property tax is completely disconnected from the amount they get to keep ... sort of. Part of the collected taxes are "golden pennies" (about 8 cents) that the school district gets to keep, and these help pay teachers. Part of the tax is the "interest and sinking" fund (about 12 cents), which pays off AISD debt from school bonds. The rest of the tax, about 80 cents next year, is covered by Robin Hood. The property tax collected is simply the tax base times the tax rate. It has nothing to do with how many students are in the district. The money allocated for students is simply a state-provided formula times the amount of students in the district. It has nothing to do with how much property tax was collected. Change that formula and you can change Robin Hood. The amount of recapture AISD pays is just the first number minus the second number. If more money was collected than the state says AISD should keep, all of the excess goes to the state. If less money was collected, the state provides the rest. I don't fully understand why AISD does not lower the tax rate to the lowest possible number they can get away with, but the math works out to screw the district if they tried this. There are some complicated guardrails and formulas that ensure that property rich districts can't just lower their rates to the amount they would get from the state. Nothing in the funding formula addresses cost-of-living, which is obviously higher in Austin than elsewhere.

Step 1: Collect $1.18 million from all of us. Rent goes up by a little bit for everyone. Step 2: Give about $150k of that to a non-profit from California to administer the program. Similar to the amount we give Jimmy Flannigan every year. Step 3: Give the rest to about 80 families who can't afford to live in Austin at about $1000 per month for a year. Step 4: (A year from now) Stop the money train .... or renew the program for another million bucks for those 80 families. It's a universal basic income program but only for 80 families. Everyone else, including those that are struggling to make ends meet, pays into the system. After a year, the support is taken away and the folks receiving the money will be in the same unaffordable position they are in now. The city is fighting economics, picking some random winners that they can say they helped and costing the rest of us just a little bit. It's not a scalable program.

My wife’s AISD classroom topped out at 91 degrees in mid Sept. The district did nothing for a month, then brought in a refrigerator truck in mid Oct and fed it to the building with a giant tube. The next morning it was a cool 56 degrees in the classroom. They were able to open some windows to get it back into the mid 60s, and they used the windows as a quasi thermostat until the truck went away in December. The HVAC was declared repaired and life was ok … until a few weeks ago. Hot times are back and look to be here until the school year is over. That’s the condition of AISD schools.

Needs more vuvuzela...

SNL takes us back to 13th century England, to show us what it might have been like when some of Alito's quoted precedent was decided:

My wife is a teacher and Amazon gift cards are the easiest thing to use. Especially for her, since she just gives them to me and tells me to figure it out. The other gift cards are in a drawer and some are nice and some are to places we would never go, so we give those to parents and friends. We got a Cabo Bob's gift card this year after my wife mentioned it in class, which was pretty thoughtful since some kid was paying attention and remembered. Notes are the best ... although for teachers struggling with low pay perhaps gift cards and cash would be the best. The best note talks about what the kid liked about the class and what impact the class has had on the kid. We have a giant folder full of past notes. Most of the notes are basically nice and talk about what a great class it was. But occasionally we get a two or three pager from a kid who pours it out and talks about how the class changed their life and those are never thrown away.

eclipse simulator by location: https://eclipse2024.org/eclipse-simulator/2024/index.html Pick the place where you think you'll be and you can see what it's going to be like. You have to use the time sliders on the sim to get to the good part. Turn on the glare to get a more realistic picture of what you will see without eclipse glasses. The glasses will cut out most of the glare. It won't get as dark as the simulation shows, more of a twilight feel.