Tommy Williams' Sham Transportation "Hearing"

With transportation funding legislation having now failed three times this year (during the general session and two special sessions), one might think the 83rd Texas Legislature would solicit greater citizen input during their FOURTH attempt.

Nope.

According to the Texas Tribune:

After Dewhurst referred the bills to the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate recessed so the committee could briefly meet at the desk of Senate Finance Chairman Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands. In less than 3 minutes, the committee held a hearing on both bills. Nichols briefly explained both measures and Williams, surrounded by a small, standing group of Senators, legislative staffers and reporters, asked if there was any "public testimony." There was not. The committee then voted both bills to the Senate floor 10-1, with state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, voting no. [Emphasis ours]

 In other words, even after this transportation nonsense has failed three times, Republicans in the Texas Legislature are still trying to force it through without outside input; kudos to Senator Patrick for voting against this insult to the public.

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Agenda 21 and Rising Cost of Living

This morning, we read this piece from Stanley Kurtz:

A year ago, I published Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. There I described the president’s second-term plan to press a transformative “regionalist” agenda on the country. Early but unmistakable signs indicate that Obama’s regionalist push is well underway.

....

The new HUD rule is really about changing the way Americans live. It is part of a broader suite of initiatives designed to block suburban development, press Americans into hyper-dense cities, and force us out of our cars. Government-mandated ethnic and racial diversification plays a role in this scheme, yet the broader goal is forced “economic integration.” The ultimate vision is to make all neighborhoods more or less alike, turning traditional cities into ultra-dense Manhattans, while making suburbs look more like cities do now. In this centrally-planned utopia, steadily increasing numbers will live cheek-by-jowl in “stack and pack” high-rises close to public transportation, while automobiles fall into relative disuse.

....

[discussing one such example in the San Francisco Bay Area]

In effect, by preventing the development of new suburbs, and reducing traditional single-family home development in existing suburbs, Plan Bay Area will squeeze 30 years worth of in-migrating population into a few small urban enclaves, and force most new businesses into the same tight quarters. The result will be a steep increase in the Bay Area’s already out-of-control housing prices. This will hit the poor and middle class the hardest. [emphasis ours]

 This got us thinking about some of our recent efforts locally and at the state level.  One common denominator all this crap shares is that the policies we're fighting increase cost of living.  That's true whether the proposed policies emanate from your local city council, Washington, or the United Nations.

And that's how you fight it.  Americans are too apathetic to learn about some obscure policy coming out of the U.N.  But if you tell them "project 'x' is going to cost you $300 per year, project 'y' is going to cost you $500, and project 'z' is going to cost you $200" then they'll care about that tangible $1000.

Cost of living is a tangible mechanism to fight land-use central planning, whether the central planners are your local city council, the United Nations, or anyone in between.

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Josh Charles: On Righteous vs. Evil Money

"Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord,But a just weight is His delight."
 Proverbs 11:1

 A fantastic (if verbose) piece from Josh Charles on the Biblical Origins of Sound Money:

The subject of money is far too vast to cover in one blog post, and certainly so when the goal is to expand on principles found both in the Bible, and the writings of the American Founders.  But this Proverb, far from teaching us about long-lost ancient methods of money counting is in fact teaching us about a fundamental principle of money in general, and one which in the 21st century world we have completely forgotten, and which doesn’t even play a role in our banking system any longer: money has an objective value, not the value one man or a small group of men arbitrarily places on it.  In other words, it has an “objective” value because the society, or the market, have agreed on a set value for a set denomination of coin.  In the early days of the United States, this was accomplished by defining a “dollar” as a set amount of gold or silver, an amount that did not change, and which, if altered, could legally result in the death penalty.  So objective money has a value that is the same today as yesterday, and tomorrow it will be the same as today.  “But God never said an ounce of gold was worth a certain amount of money?”  You are correct, but He did say that the concept of money is something which, when put in the “scales” could be measured in truth and justice.  In other words, the God of this universe has said He loves honest money, and money can only be honest when its value is known, accepted, and not secretly altered for private gain.  Honest money, at the end of the day, is inseparable from honest labor, honest business, and an honest society.

So in the ancient days, what would people do with this money and the scales used to measure it to make them “false”?  Well, many things, but for our purposes, I will highlight the two most important ones.  First, the person having his coins weighed could do what is called “coin-clipping,” by which he would clip just a small portion of the coins off (meant to be imperceptible to the one weighing the coins), and then take all the clippings, melt them down, and have “more” of the precious metal.  In other words, it would be like someone hopping on their computer, and printing more dollar bills without anyone ever knowing.  The officials of the Roman Empire famously did this in order to “add” to the treasury of Rome (although the people eventually caught on to their schemes, and the economic results were disastrous).  While it no longer matters (because our coins are no longer made of precious metals as they used to be), you will notice a series of ridges on the edge of our coins.  These ridges were put in place to avoid coin-clipping, so that if the coin was clipped, it would be immediately obvious.  Second, the person who had the scale could alter it in such a way as to make the supposed weight of the coins in question less than they in fact were, thus increasing the amount of coins that the person needed to give him (to enrich himself, or the government on behalf of whom he was collecting the coins).  Is any of this beginning to sound familiar?

....

This turn of events is not only a lie, but it is a spit in the face of justice, for more than any other, it deprives by ever encroaching degrees, and with ever increasing ferocity, the working man and woman’s ability to earn an honest and secure living for their families.  Those who have the least recourse for their financial woes are those who are most at the mercy of such a corrupt system.  We as Christians need to know what God’s Word says on this subject, and we as Americans need to know what our Founders said about it as well.

 Read the whole thing here.

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Blue Dot Blues: Austin vs. Texas

Blue Dot Blues has a great piece on the symbiotic cultural relationship between Austin and the rest of Texas:

Conservative Texans outside Austin have this reaction to Austin conservatives – “Really?  You must have your work cut out for you.”  And when they see an Austinite with tattoos and piercings and dyed hair, outsiders shake their heads and lament about Austin’s weirdness.  It’s more or less the opposite reaction that liberals outside Texas have.  And you know what, both sides are wrong about Austin, because both sides assume that Austin is politically and culturally radical and “different” from the rest of Texas.  After seven years here, and nearly twenty as a Texan, I think the reality is that Austin couldn’t exist anywhere but Texas.  It is left-leaning and it is less a melting pot than a chunky stew, but it’s essentially Texan, a place where cowboy boots coexist with flip-flops, where country music is as hardcore as rock (and Austin is more of a country music city than Dallas or Houston these days). It is really hard to quantify, what “Texan” is, when trying to explain it to people who haven’t experienced it.

Austin has a reputation, prides itself on, being “weird,” and it’s a reputation earned long before hippies took up residence south of the river.  Consider that the original name was “Waterloo,” a name famous even then for what happened to Napoleon when he reached the original.  Not exactly a warm, welcoming name!  This entire area, stretching into the Hill Country, has attracted people who didn’t “fit in” wherever they came from for nearly two centuries.   And Austin has always been a collegiate town, at least since Reconstruction.  Texas itself is a state for misfits, and Austin as the capital city exemplifies that.  It started out that way and remains so today.  It isn’t any wonder Texas attracts people at the rate of 1000 a day, largely other Americans who are finding they can’t keep swimming in the current elsewhere.

Why is Austin more palatable – “totally different” – to liberals?  I submit that it isn’t so much the politics as the culture, which is something Heather Wilhelm talks about in her article.  Culturally, Austin is quite different than most of the state – more casual, more diverse.  But it’s still Texan in flavor, which is probably why some liberals are completely turned off after they experience it for longer than SXSW. 

 Cahnman's Musings has always found tales of Austin's liberalism, much like Mark Twain's death, to be greatly exaggerated.  Having grown up in New York City, and having lived in and around Los Angeles for five years, we know the left.  The Austin crowd has never cut it.

Having lived in Austin for almost six years, we've always found the culture to be Lone Star drinking hipster slacker douche bags an apolitical form of libertarianism.  The problem is that those libertarian-leaners don't vote.  The local progressive mafia, by contrast, gets their people out.

The government of Austin and Travis County has never reflected the truth of its inhabitants.  City council elections haven't hit 10% turnout in two decades.  There is a good chance that will change next year.

Besides, bastions of progressivism don't defeat school bonds....

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Joe Straus planning a 2015 tax increase?!?

So says David Dewhurst:

.@DavidHDewhurst says Straus has told senators he wants a transpo crisis in 2015 to increase pressure for taxes #mysa #hounews #txlege
— Peggy Fikac (@pfikac) July 29, 2013

In today's San Antonio Express-News, Peggy Fikac details Straus' approach:

“Legislators know that Texas needs a much more comprehensive approach to funding our growing state's growing transportation needs, and another 30-day special session will not change that,” Straus said. “Until members are free to consider real options, beyond simply shuffling taxes from one purpose to another, we will not find a responsible solution to this issue.”

 Of course, with this being Joe Straus, one should always be cautious with any talk of "real options."

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BREAKING NEWS: Transportation Funding Likely Dead for Second Special Session

Cahnman's Musings briefly swung by the Texas Capitol an hour ago.  We had seen on Facebook that the House was scheduled to vote on HJR 2 around five.  We arrived immediately following the conclusion of the vote.

A conservative Representative informed us of the result.  Because SJR 2 would enable a Constitutional Amendment it needed 100 votes to pass.  It only got 84.

We asked this Representative if he thought transportation funding could still rear it's ugly head before the session ends tomorrow at midnite.

"Not unless they can come up with sixteen votes" was his reply "and that ain't gonna happen."

In the extremely likely event of a third special session, conservatives must shift the focus to spending.  The reason this transportation deal hasn't passed yet is because voters don't trust the Republicans on spending.  Republicans need to earn back the credibility they frittered away during the general session if they want voters to trust them with more of their money.

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Update: Despite openly carrying water for the big spenders (pun intended), KXAN has more....

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Freedomworks announces John Cornyn protests across Texas

From Freedomworks' Grassroots director:

John Cornyn  left from Senator Lee’s fight to Defund ObamaCare. 

Cornyn should be doing everything he can to fight Obama’s health care takeover. Yet pressure from Mitch McConnell made him squirm, and Cornyn abandoned Senator Lee.\ 

We need to find out why he refuses to stand with Mike Lee and do everything he can to protect Texas from ObamaCare. 

Will you join activists from across the Lonestar State as we pay a visit to John Cornyn’s district offices? 

Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul are doing everything possible to stop ObamaCare from being implemented. Yet the GOP Establishment is working to stop them. 

John Cornyn is standing with the Republican elites instead of Texas. And you deserve to know why. 

Texans need answers on why their Senator is standing with the Republican Establishment instead of Texas. Join me and other activists as we visit his district offices to find out why.

You can find Senator Cornyn office locations here.

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