I guess maybe Austin is still part of Texas after all
There’s a lot of news every day, much of it depressing. There’s the usual “Trump is going to kill us all” type of thing. There’s the “Biden is a great healer” variety, often coupled with the latest leftist appointment he’s made or the latest hypocritical move of Pelosi’s. There’s lockdown after lockdown. There are various people on the right railing against the latest thing the GOP has done, which at the moment is to help pass a COVID relief bill. There’s Barr dashing whatever remained of hopes that he might appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden.
And then there’s this good news from the super-blue city of Austin:
In a stunning upset, Republican Mackenzie Kelly defeated Democrat incumbent Jimmy Flannigan in Austin’s District 6 [City Council] runoff Tuesday. Kelly ran on a platform that includes restoring police department funding and ending the city’s permissive homeless camping ordinance. She won with 52% to Flannigan’s 48%, a margin of just about 700 votes overall.
Kelly’s win, and Republican Jennifer Virden’s near-win in District 10, may signal a major shift in Austin voters’ thinking. The Democrat-dominated city was already up in arms over the homeless camping ordinance, which allows homeless people to camp just about anywhere they want all over the city (except city hall) since the council passed it unanimously in the summer of 2019…
Then the pandemic struck, and Mayor Steve Adler took an authoritarian approach that has, among other things, badly damaged the city’s once-vibrant live music scene (and his own credibility). #SaveOurStages became a force in the city because Adler and the city council’s policies are harming one of Austin’s trademarks, destroying many residents’ ability to make a living at all.
Then the riots struck, and the Austin city council sprinted without thinking at all toward defunding its already short-staffed police department. The city council sliced about $140 to $150 million, about a third, from that budget. The mayor and city council never considered the likely consequences on crime rates or the city’s living and business climates. They just did what the radical activists told them to do. Crime soared. The city council has shown no signs of caring about it.
Logic would dictate that of course the citizens of Austin would turn on the leftist City Council members. But such logic hasn’t been a dominant characteristic of the reaction of many blue cities to similarly disastrous policies put in place their leftist rulers – and I use the word “rulers” purposely.
It has been stunning to watch the people tasked with running a city do everything in their power to destroy that city (short of taking torches to it and burning it down themselves) in the name of righteousness (or self-righteousness). But we’ve gotten used to it, haven’t we?
Adler has, apparently, apologized, for his “lapse in judgement” in ordering (having himself flown via private plane to Mexico on vacation) the inhabitants of Austin to stay at home, but he and all the other blue-state mayors and governors who have repeatedly failed to abide by their own idiotic mandates fully deserve to be called “Corona-fascists”, the harsh term often applied to them from the right. As for Barr, the less said, the better.
Don’t hold your breath, Neo. How Travis, Williamson and Hays counties voted in the 2020 presidential election.
Here’s a breakdown of the 2020 Travis County results with 100% of precincts reporting:
Joe Biden: 72%
Donald J. Trump: 27%
2016 margin: 39 points
2020 margin” 45 points.
Austin is still the blueberry in the tomato soup.
Gringo:
Oh, I know.
But I have also noticed that it’s often the case that on the local level people are more conservative than on the national level.
Logic would dictate that of course the citizens of Austin would turn on the leftist City Council members.
No… The leftist mentality accepts no self blame or such introspection, to do that would be to admit they were wrong in choosing those people in the first place, and so, they can’t turn on them. Their perfect choices are only made imperfect through some imagined but unseen perfidy, accident, lack of money, conspiracy, and on and on… anything will do just so long as it doesn’t lead back to the responsibility of the one who made the choice.
Gringo:
1. Did Travis, Williamson and Hays counties allow mail-in voting?
2. Did they allow ballot harvesting?
3. Did they “shut down” in the middle of ballot counting and send the observers home?
4. Did they use Dominion voting machines?
The best news out of Austin today is that Gov. Greg Abbott may put the Texas DPS (state police) in charge of the City of Austin’s police department. The better news that I’m hoping for is that the state legislature will pass an act that puts Austin under state jurisdiction, governed by a state-appointed commission rather than the lefties who now dominate Austin’s politics. BTW, I live in Austin and pay its exorbitant property taxes, not enough of which go for policing or for the maintenance of the city’s terrible streets. So, my hopes are deeply personal.
Cap’n Rusty:
1. Did Travis, Williamson and Hays counties allow mail-in voting?
No. In TX, you need to give a reason to vote absentee.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/these-states-allow-mail-in-voting/ar-BB189xyo
2. Did they allow ballot harvesting?
That’s California. That’s not Texas.
3. Did they “shut down” in the middle of ballot counting and send the observers home?
No. Travis County’s overwhelming Democrat victory was assured during early voting. Check out the link. No need for midnight movers.
4. Did they use Dominion voting machines?
No.Texas Dominion Voting Systems testing and rejection, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: tested three times, System failures were evident in both software and hardware.
Austin and Travis County have long been liberal Democrat strongholds. Practically forever. 🙂 Think state employees and UT-Austin employees and students. Austin’s Jake Pickle, who served in the House of Representatives from 1963-1995, was one of only 8 Democrats in the South to vote for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. ( Texas Hill Country Germans were a thorn in the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. As far as “cultural appropriation” goes, Tejanos “appropriated” accordions and polka from Czech and German immigrants to Texas.)
Artfldgr:
I wrote “logic would dictate.” Leftist “logic,” is, of course, very different.
The other possibly good news is an active group planning to begin a recall of the obnoxious new County DA in Los Angeles.
Gringo,
Wow! Thanks for that. I always thought it was an amazing coincidence that Tejano music had a polka beat and often featured accordion. I didn’t realize they borrowed it from the folks in the Texas Hill country.
I thought maybe it came from a Spanish folk music style.
Gringo:
Thanks for the info. It’s kind of what I figured. But those should be the types of questions we ask any time a Democrat wins any election, any place, from here on out.
My daughter lives in Austin. Both her and her husband work in real-estate business. They do fairly well financially. They place the blame on Mayer Adler and want him gone. Mostly they are concernced with rising homeless problem, traffic problem and taxes. They refuse to place any blame on democratic party and continue to vote for dems.
All I tell her is … “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
She tells me I’m the crazy one. But daddy still loves his baby girl.
Neo, not to be quibbling here, but “stunning” doesn’t seem to be the word. I’ve dealt with lefties since getting involved with various organizations in college more than fifty years ago.
Nothing is, or was, beyond them in terms of what we would call evil. Because, once an entity was on the Other Side, morality and justice did not apply. Not. At. All. It was only a matter of means.
And, if the business got out of hand, the unlooked-for victims became, retroactively, on The Other Side and deserved what was coming to them.
Hence what has been called the left’s Tourette’s litany of accusations; “racist”, “fascist”, “homophobe”, etc. You may be the most inoffensive person imaginable running a small shoe store and if BLM burns you out, you were a racist all along.
And they are so righteous that likely consequences aren’t. Anybody who suggests that defunding the cops will have negative consequences will be lucky to escape a city council meeting uninjured.
More crime? That’s the fault of society for forcing people to rob and beat others and objecting to that starts the litany. And even worrying about your own safety comes from a place of privilege so you can forget asking for help.
It seems harsh, or something, but expecting these people to think rationally is not useful.
To fortify the mix, they also love unaccountable power over others.
They probably didn’t plan what happened to Austin, although it’s possible some of the string-pullers found them easy marks for what the string-puller wanted.
But there will be no learning, and, given the results of the election, not much among voters, either.
I knew some folks who went to grad school in Austin. I swear, if one of them tripped and hurt himself, it would be because Newton was a fascist white man who hated people and invented gravity or something. That a person should be forced… FORCED…to watch where he was walking…… Maybe a slight exaggeration. Slight.
It’s only “stunning” if you think they have rational thought processes.
Austin is the SF of Texas. Austin would be a small spot on the map if it were not home to the Longhorns of UT and incidentally the state capitol, and there is also a sizeable techie population thanks principally to Donald Dell. Techies always know they are smarter and better than everyone else.
Austin functions as a human magnet: my best friend’s very able daughter went to UT-A, got into drugs and booze, which are so common there (like SF!), now has a young son fathered by a drunk, but no marriage, no work, and no income. Will she come home? NO. So her enabling family sends money.
Austin will not change, Neo. We are not talking rural TX here! Ain’t gonna happen.
Rufus T. Firefly saida at 8:14:
“I always thought it was an amazing coincidence that Tejano music had a polka beat and often featured accordion. “
It goes much deeper than that. There are still Germanic, Czech and Polish enclaves throughout Texas – I’ve worked in some small rural communities where the old-timers had thick German accents (it was the first language they learned) even though they’re native Texans. And down in ‘The Valley’ (lower Rio Grande), which is like a third country – not quite Texas, not quite Mexico – you’ll be out in the middle of nowhere and see names on mailboxes like “Juan Garcia Hofstettler” and so forth. It can be really interesting eating in the small cantinas there.
The election of Republican Mackenzie Kelly may well turn out to be a historical anomaly. Now that democrats know that they can get away with massive and blatant electoral fraud its just a matter of time till sane representatives at every level are either absent altogether or a completely ineffective minority for reasons of ‘optics’, which may be the case already as she’s just one vote.
Art has the right of it. It’s always a case of “if only we’d had the right person or “if only Stalin had known!”
Gringo,
“2. Did they allow ballot harvesting?:
“That’s California. That’s not Texas.”
Yet…
Richard Aubrey,
“Nothing is, or was, beyond them in terms of what we would call evil. Because, once an entity was on the Other Side, morality and justice did not apply. Not. At. All. It was only a matter of means.”
When the end justifies any and all means, then the embrace of Dostoevsky’s “If there is no God, then everything is permitted.” is in force, in which case they can do no evil in pursuit of their ideology.
“It seems harsh, or something, but expecting these people to think rationally is not useful.”
Irrational people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness within of course the restriction of not imposing upon the rights of other people.
Irrational people do NOT have the right to vote or to participate in governance nor the right to run for public office or work in a regulatory organization. Irrational people do not have a right to be in the military, police or medical professions.
Those on the left accuse we on the right of irrationality, put to the lie when they refuse to engage in factual and reasoned debate. Their refusal to do so demonstrates an inability to think rationally for if they could do so, they could not continue to invest themselves in irrational ideologies whose death toll is more than 150 million and rising…
Sooner or later ‘the inmates’ are going to force the use of force against them. As by definition, irrational people are not open to reasoned persuasion.
Cicero:
Where did you get the idea I think Austin will change? That’s certainly not what I wrote.
The author of the linked article may think it, but I do not.
Austin at least in my life time has never been representative of Texas as a whole. In the late 60’s a movement which I’ll call the Hippy movement and Austin was prime to accept all that wanted to live the lifestyle. Think San Francisco on a small scale at the time. If you identified with the movement Austin was the dream place to be. You couldn’t get there fastest enough. Now after a generation of people that moved there … living the dream … THEY are running the place. Those people infiltrated every job available when they finally realized they had to work to live there … but the dream never changed. Today Austin is reaping the fruits of all THEY created.
Yes business over time has moved there too. But if you look closely at the businesses moving to Austin today it’s not exactly what you might think. It’s not in the “Austin city limits.” Much of it is in the outlying areas. Close enough that Austin can claim credit for the business. Why? Mayer Adler imposed 25% tax increase on property taxes to fund his the expansion of roads and infrastructure, etc. That is why my daughter wants him gone. It’s getting in her pocket book being in the real-estate business! He’s part of the defund the police movement. Another thing that will have negative effect.
Given Austin’s direction today another 10 years and they will be a San Francisco clone. The dream will become the nightmare!
There’s a slogan of … “Make Austin Weird” … and they finally have.
Austin is not Texas it’s an island in the middle of Texas.
“Kelly’s win, and Republican Jennifer Virden’s near-win in District 10, may signal a major shift in Austin voters’ thinking.” – Neo
“Think state employees and UT-Austin employees and students.” – Gringo
I suspect that the drop in on-site students plays a large part in these results.
The Town-Gown distinction isn’t very big in Austin (jack gives the story), but it does exist.
I got my MA at UT (political science) in 1976, and there were still a few conservatives in the college student body and faculty, but they were already very much outnumbered on the left.
In retrospect, although I enjoyed my two years there and had expected to become an Ivory Tower resident myself, it’s a good thing I went to Utah and became a computer programmer instead.
If conservatives were smart (stay with me here) they would do some “community organizing” and pay a ton of homeless to camp outside the mayor’s, council members’, journalists’ and UT faculty members’ houses and neighborhoods. Use Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals against them.
I expect Salt Lake City, Utah to turn (if it has not already) into another Austin. Anytime you have a State Capitol with it’s civil servants and university you can expect neo-Stalinism.
My daughter and I went to Austin last month to check out the newly-opened Diaso store – it’s a sort of Japanese Dollar Tree and actually rather nice. We’ll not go back to Austin again. It was awful, all the homeless encampments along the grass verges by major roads, and downtown Austin is unspeakable. It used to be rather edgy, but nice, for things like the Pecan Festival, and the Texas Book Festival.
I wrote rather extensively about the Germans in the Hill Country, in my various historical novels. There was a huge influx of German settlers in the mid 1840s and 50s, to the point where Gillespie and Kendall Counties were almost exclusively German speaking, up until right after WWI. German-language schools, churches, newspapers – singing societies and all. They were abolitionists and Unionists during the civil war, which made for a whole mini civil-war in the Hill Country.
https://www.amazon.com/Celia-D.-Hayes/e/B002BM1QHG/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
Aggie,
I was working in Mexico and on my drive to work there was always a tall, compared to the local population, very white, compared to the local population, man selling cheese in the median at a certain intersection. The man changed from day to day, but always looked similar and always wore denim overalls in the hot, Mexican sun. My co-workers at the office said the cheese was good and referred to it as, “Mennonita.”
That’s when I learned there was a settlement of Mennonites that have lived in the area, and continued their ways, since fleeing America to avoid conscription.
“The mayor and city council never considered the likely consequences on crime rates or the city’s living and business climates. ”
Of course they know the consequences of their policies!!!
They just do not care; that is the MO of the left.
Are we to believe the Mayor of Portland, OR. does not know what’s going on?
DeBlasio in NYC??
The Mayor of Seattle??
Leftists are motivated by ideology ; they do not care at all about anything or anybody. In extreme cases – historically speaking – they have no qualms about engaging in mass exterminations if it supports their cause; attainment of absolute power.
Also note that those leftist Governors, Mayors or City Council members of Austin, Portland, NYC, Seattle, Chicago, etc., they have absolutely no skin in the game. They will keep getting their salaries, they are protected by the police they supposedly despise , and if voted out of office, so what. They will get a pension for life and will easily find a job in “public service” working for some other leftist politician or political cause.
They literally have it made. They earn their keep by destroying the lives of others.
That is the leftist mind set and that is why they are so dangerous and need to be permanently removed from the living.
NW Austin is the high-priced spreads out in the hills. They may like the “Keep Austin Weird” vibe, but they’re no more interested than Beverly Hills is in letting their homes be devoured by crime and homeless camps. On the other hand, they’re not going to start embracing conservative politics, either, just Dem-lite.
Neo, I simply agreed with you, though you did suggest hope in the election of a single non-Hippie there..
Austin will not improve.
But it may whither after I’m gone, as San Fran presently is. Where will Pelosi go?
It has been stunning to watch the people tasked with running a city do everything in their power to destroy that city (short of taking torches to it and burning it down themselves) in the name of righteousness (or self-righteousness). But we’ve gotten used to it, haven’t we?
About 2/3 of the people on the Minneapolis City Council have spent their entire adult work life as NGO functionaries, elected officials, and patronage beneficiaries. About 2/3 have no children. Two are extreme sexual deviants. These are not people well-grounded in the warp-and-woof of everyday life.
I expect Salt Lake City, Utah to turn (if it has not already) into another Austin. Anytime you have a State Capitol with it’s civil servants and university you can expect neo-Stalinism.
About 1/3 of Utah’s population lives in greater Salt Lake City. If the staffing of the Utah state government resembles New York’s (I’m betting they’re more circumspect with public expenditure), that would translate into north of 4,000 headquarters employees and south of 5,000 field employees. A population of 9,000 state employees and their families amounts to about 20,000 people, or less than 3% of the population in that block of settlement. The University of Utah has about 33,000 students who are resident shy of 60% of the year. A public institution of that enrollment might have 8,500 employees. So, we have the equivalent of 20,000 students residing year-round to which we add 8,500 employees and 10,000 dependents of employees. So, the uni constituency and the state employee constituency sum to 58,000 people, which is about 6% of those living in the city or the tract suburbs around it.
There are some things Utah will never live down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18LZMMHLJ4A
It has been stunning to watch the people tasked with running a city do everything in their power to destroy that city (short of taking torches to it and burning it down themselves) in the name of righteousness (or self-righteousness). But we’ve gotten used to it, haven’t we?
Wait, is this about New York City? Because it sure applies. Not to mention about a dozen other big blue hells. There’s a lot of anger at DeBlasio and Cuomo here in NYC, and a strong moderate conservative could probably stand a chance in the next mayoral race (the way Giuliani came in after Dinkins in ’94), but there doesn’t seem to be anyone interested just yet.
Sgt. Mom:
That is sad to hear about Austin. Sad, but unsurprising. I think if I were to go back and visit a lot of cities I know – Seattle, for example – I’d find the vision bleak.
Informed by growing up in the Detroit area, I can predict the destruction from the riots is not temporary, thinking of Minneapolis in particular. How many of the destroyed buildings and businesses will be replaced within a year or two of the Soros/Antifa/Democrat/CCP orchestrated riots?
Decay will only accelerate as people move away from the lawlessness and incompetent city government. Once pleasant neighborhoods will become uninhabitable and it will last for decades without the kind of revolutionary about face that Rudy Giuliani delivered to New York in the 1990s. If Austin nips it in the bud, that is a good sign.
Matthew M :
Indications that Austin has nipped it in the bud, thanks in part to deployment of state troopers. DuckDuckGo: riots stopped in Austin.
DuckDuckGo: active duty sergeant kills armed protester in Austin. The sergeant was stationed at Fort Hood, 60 miles away, and told police he was in Austin earning money by an online taxi service
That’s not going to happen, neither in Minneapolis nor in Portland nor Seattle.
More encouraging protest reaction from Austin: black motorist confronts white BLM protesters blocking highway in Austin.
Rufus T. Firefly
More musical surprises.
1) The Tejano music that borrowed from the Czech and German immigrants, migrated across the border. Mexico’s Norteño music -literally Northern music- also uses the polka and accordion.
2) Galicia and Austurias provinces in northwest Spain have a folk music that reflects their Celtic origins. From Scotland to Spain. Galicia bagpipes.Galicia – the cradle of dictators- such as Francisco Franco and the father of Fidel Castro. Franco and Fidel got along pretty well. (ironically, Galicians hated Franco, due to his policies against Gallego- their language.)
Oh my goodness, I have lived in one of those German Hill Country towns a bit South and West of Austin in the Hill Country, we still have a German Town Band with members of the original families going back to the 1850’s, an ongoing Gun Club going back to 1864 where the records were kept in German until the 1930’s and German was the language in the school system until the 1920’s. San Antonio to the South of us was mostly German in the early 1900’s with a lot of Anglo and some Hispanic not so much now. Today we have a wonderful mix of folk in our part of Texas and we also have a large influx of others, folks with money, moving in fast and I hope we can keep a mostly conservative mix when it comes time to vote. When a town triples in size in 15 years and then, with a whole lot more living in gated communities within the county, things will change, but right now we have a great thriving, growing, community and I do have hope for our local Texas future.