What Grinds my Gears

In the blog post "Austin: Where 150 pounds is equal to 2000 pounds", Lenitie Carter discusses the problems that plague cycling in Austin.  It appears that her main argument is why the law requiring cyclists to ride on the road with motor vehicles instead of the side-walk is no good.  She references to some cyclist laws and provides anecdotal evidence to support them.

One of her arguments was in regards to the law that requires motor vehicles to provide a 3 to 6 foot buffer and how useless it is.  An example she gives to back up her reasoning is when a cyclist cut her off while she was going 40 mph and how the buffer law didn't help.  While I would agree with her that the buffer law doesn't help in that situation, I also question as to whether or not it was meant to help in that situation.  People break rules of the road all the time, be it as a cyclist or a motorist.  People breaking the rules don't necessarily negate the effectiveness of the rule when followed properly.  What was the law meant to help with?  That may be up for debate, but I think it was meant to keep vehicles from passing cyclists to closely or tail-gating them.  Both those situations could easily cause serious accidents and even death.

Later, she questions Austin's cyclist friendly culture and whether it makes sense for cyclists to be taking up the road, slowing down traffic.  First off, I don't think Austin is exactly as friendly to cyclists as she states.  I have ridden all over Austin, and it can be very challenging to find routes that aren't going to get me killed.  A lot of roads in Austin are without shoulders or even side-walks, forcing cyclists to brave traffic.  Is it fair that I may be slowing traffic?  Maybe, maybe not, but sometimes there are no other options.

She makes a note about the law requiring cyclists to follow the same rules of the road as motorists and then proceeds to state that she's seen cyclists breaking these laws.  I honestly don't know what her point here was.  Was she making an argument that since people break the laws that the laws are useless?  Again, motorists break the laws too, how does that negate the importance of the laws?

There are multiple references to the weight ratio between a cyclist and a vehicle.  Her argument seems to be that in a collision a vehicle will always win and that is reason enough to get cyclists off the road.  While I understand that argument, I don't necessarily believe it's the weight ratio that she's concerned about, otherwise she would have problems with motorcycles, mopeds, and semis, all of which have varying magnitudes of weight ratio to an SUV with similar outcomes.  I think it's the speed that is her real issue and the inconvenience she incurs because of it.

In conclusion, I agree that the current laws or even new laws aren't going to make cycling any safer.  Infrastructure is the only real answer to safety concerns.  It would also help with alleviating the inconvenience that motorists feel when getting stuck behind cyclists.  More bike lanes/trails around the city would help tremendously. Of course, then you get into the another debate on who is going to pay for that infrastructure.

Doing What it Takes to Pretend You’re Not in Texas

In case you haven’t heard, Texas is in a drought, and it’s a pretty bad one.  Droughts in themselves are nothing new to Texas, but there are some experts who believe that we are headed into a very long drought period, possibly hundreds of years.  This could lead to desertification, where Texas is made even more desert like than it already is.  Keeping all this in mind, it is essential that we put in place water use guidelines that will help us face this challenge together as a community.  Currently, Lake Travis and Buchanan are reaching record lows and these lakes supply Austin and surrounding areas with drinking water.  In order to assure this precious resource is conserved the City of Austin has put in place water restrictions to keep people from wasting water.

If you’ve ever had the chance to drive around some of the more affluent neighborhoods in Austin, you’ll notice how amazing a lot of their yards look.  You can safely assume that they are pushing their watering privileges to the max.  But for a lot of these home owners that just isn’t enough.  They want their lush vegetation, vibrant green lawns, pools, and whatever else they think will help them keep up with the Joneses.

To get around the water restrictions there has been a recent surge in homes having wells installed on their property for the sole purpose of having the freedom to water whenever they desire.  The City can’t stop them or even keep track of them, since the permit required to install a well is a state permit.   These wells can cost upwards of $30,000 dollars and are tapping into the Barton Creek watershed north of the river.  The watershed south of the river is protected from drilling, requiring a permit.  In my opinion this needs to happen north of the river, as well.

Water is becoming a very important and seemingly scarce natural resource that we need to do our best to preserve.  With the population of Texas growing so fast, water is going to become even scarcer. It’s time people accept the fact that we are living in a climate that is trending towards dry, desert like patterns and we can’t be wasting water.  In order to do this the first thing that will need to happen is for the local government to take control of people who think they can dump thousands of gallons of water onto their lawns.

Protest the Protests!

My commentary is on the blog post “Blog #5 Texas State and Local Government”.  This blog’s driving point seems to be a concern that protesters fail to engage their critical thinking skills before engaging in protests at the capital and that they are just being riled up by media coverage.  The author does not provide their name, but from their profile information I find that they consider themselves a staunch conservative and are studying Agriculture at Texas A&M.

I found his commentary level headed and reasonable, with little to no inflammatory language.  He seems to have a genuine concern for his topic, and quite frankly I agree with almost all of his post.  I would say his target audience is probably conservatives, but I can see almost anybody from any stance agreeing with him.  The only blatant political leaning was in the example he used where he specifically targeted people opposing the bill.  From what I can remember, there were protesters from both sides of the debate that were there protesting, and to single one out as being more ignorant of the topic than the other is shortsighted.

One of the underlying tones of the post that I found a tad naive is the thought that these kinds of protests are something new.   I would argue that if you take the time to look back on history you’ll see that this is anything but out of the ordinary and that our lack of protests in recent years is actually what is out of the ordinary and in fact more worrying.  I was personally ecstatic that people finally felt impassioned enough to get off their couches and go make them selves heard.  I wish more people would get this involved on topics other than the few that the media decides to cover.  Even if they are not that knowledgeable to begin with, the act of being involved will often times produce self education.

The Cost to Stay on Top

     Texas Republicans have had it pretty easy for the last decade.   With no Democrat being elected into a state-wide office since 1994 there has been little to no road blocks for them getting their way.  Of course, this can’t go on forever, can it?  The rising minority population and influx of out of state immigration into Texas’ urban areas makes me think that this period of Republican power is coming to an eventual end.  In the last few years I have noticed what I consider to be unscrupulous acts being performed to keep this rising tide of possible Democrat votes from reaching a critical mass.

At the Federal level the stakes surrounding the immigration reform would have huge impacts on the political landscape of Texas.   If it ever actually happens then it could streamline the path for immigrants to gain citizenship into the United States.  This huge influx of low to middle income minority families would probably result in a lot more votes going to the Democrats.   Republicans in general have a vested interest in keeping this from happening, considering Texas supplies 32 legislators to the U.S. Congress, a rise in Democrat representatives could tip the scale in the House.  It is no wonder why immigration reform has had such tough opposition.

     One of the unscrupulous tactics I have seen is Texas Republicans trying to gerrymander districts in a way to under represent minorities and the poor.  The proposal for the redistricting was given to the District Court of DC, which is one of the ways that southern states affected by the Voting Rights Act can get redistricting approved, instead of going the more common route of seeking approval from the Department of Justice.  Republicans considered going through the Department of Justice a waste of time, thinking that the Obama administration would just ax anything proposed, regardless.  The redistricting plans submitted were subsequently denied, with the District Court of DC stating that the new districts were negatively effecting minority representation.

     Another tactic Republicans are trying is to pass voter ID requirements for voting.  The rights of Texans being able to vote without an ID use to be protected by the VotingRights Act, the same act that prevented the gerrymandering.  Yet recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for a weakening of the Act, specifically the part that requires states accused of prior voting discrimination to get Federal approval for any change in the way they hold elections.  This has had the effect of Texas trying to pass a law that would require voters to have a government issued ID before they can vote.  Most people agree that this would have a negative impact on Democrat votes, since it would mainly affect poor, elderly, and working class people, who tend to vote Democrat.

     It will be interesting to see if Texas passes a voter ID law, but even more interesting is what new tactics Republicans will come up with next to reduce the impact of Democrat votes.   Maybe they will even consider coming back toward the center to attract borderline Democrats who are turned off by the extremism currently engulfing our capital.  I wouldn't mind that happening, at all.

Apparently, Pro-Choice equals Big Government

For this assignment I ended up reading a blog entry on Empower Texans.  The blog entry is titled "Sarah Davis’ Misguided View of Government".  I would not recommend this blog for reading and I'll explain why, but first a little about the author, Dustin Matocha.

According to the short bio at the end of the blog, "Dustin Matocha is the Social Media Coordinator for Empower Texans and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility".  Browsing through his other contributions to that site show that Mr. Matocha has strong libertarian view points, though it doesn't say what his political leanings are.  I would say that his intended audience, especially for this specific post, are religious conservatives based off of the content of the post being about abortion and big government.

The post is an attack on Rep. Sarah Davis of Houston.  Rep. Davis is one of only two Texas House Republicans who voted against the recent abortion bill H.B. 2.  Mr. Matocha decides to interpret her stance against the bill as a sign that she is against life and for big government.  He goes about backing up this belief by showing a "partial list of votes cast by Rep. Davis".  This list is a collection of amendments to current bills with an description of what they entailed, by Matocha.  A few of the amendments were apparently so horrid that he decided to bold face them.  I clicked on the links he provided to see if his descriptions of these amendments were as bad as he described them.  What I found curdled my blood, so brace  yourselves, amendments tell you nothing useful about the actual bill!  So I went and looked up a few of the bills in question.

Matocha states that Davis "Favored increasing taxes on small manufacturers at the behest of big business".  The amendment link provided describes some small changes to H.B. 3536. The subject of which is, "Imposing fees on sales of certain tobacco products".  The bill is an attempt to level the playing field in the tobacco market, by imposing a tax on manufacturers who weren't around or a part of the states' tobacco settlement agreement.  So the small manufacturers that Matocha is talking about are small tobacco manufacturers who have an unfair market advantage.  According to the bill, 48 other states already have something similar in place.

Matocha states that Davis "Favored creating unconstitutional requirements on political speech while exempting labor unions from the new rules".  The amendment is in regards to S.B. 346.  This bill would force non-profits who are not defined as political committees to report any political expenditures or contributions made.  It does in fact single out labor unions as being exempt, but does not go into why they are, so I cannot really comment on that.  In essence this is a bill aimed at political finance transparency.

I looked up some more, but I don't want to ramble on.  Needless to say, Mr. Matocha's writing is the same kind of politically inflammatory rhetoric you would expect from someone like Bill O'Reilly.  Not to mention the whole post was just a straw-man for what really bothers him, the fact that a Republican might possibly be pro-choice, or anti-life, depending on what side your on.  I also found a statement given by Davis that of the people in her constituency that called her office, 80 to 85 percent wanted her to vote against the bill.  Personally, I applaud Rep. Davis.

Hey Abbott!!

It's official.  Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is going to attempt the fill the vacuum left by Governor Rick Perry's Hair.  Not that I'm surprised by this announcement, nor is anyone else for that matter.  I just finished reading a commentary about Mr. Abbott in the Austin Chronicle by Richard Whittaker titled, "If You Liked Rick Perry, You'll Love Greg Abbott".  You should read it.  It's entertaining if anything.  

Mr. Whittaker has been writing for The Austin Chronicle since 2006 and has 3,483 articles there as of 4:15PM July 19th.  I couldn’t find a biography on Mr. Whittaker, but I would gather from his writing and the publication that he writes for that he is a Liberal Democrat with a highly secular viewpoint.  The article targets exactly this type of audience by using inflammatory wording such as "extremist", "fundamentalist", and "attack" in regards to AG Abbot's religious fervor while in office.  He doesn’t resort to outright name calling, but it is pretty close.

The goal in this commentary is obviously to paint Greg Abbott as a right-wing religious nut job who he thinks would be a horrible governor.  He does this by going through a list of hot topic issues that the AG has either lead or been a part of.  These topics are clearly picked for his target audience.  In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any topic in his list that would go over well with his readers.  This seems a little unfair to me, as I find it hard to believe that there is not at least one thing that Mr. Abbot has done that his readers would find ok.   But I guess if you’re trying to persuade people to not like someone, you don’t exactly talk about their good points.

Some of the main talking points in the commentary are Abbott’s propensity to sue the federal government, push to integrate religion into government, and his actions against gay rights and abortion.  He does a fairly good job at providing links to his claims, although the links are to other articles within the Austin Chronicle.  It would have been nice if there was at least one outside reference, but I understand trying to keep consumers on the site you work for.  This doesn’t nullify their validity though, as they are all claims that can easily be checked.

I personally agree with a lot of what Mr. Whittaker states, in that it would be nice to have what I believe to be a more level headed leader as governor.  Greg Abbott is way to far to the right for my taste.

Vetoes Abound

Today I read a news article from the Austin American Statesman titled, "Perry issues vetoes of legislation".  This article describes a list of vetoes that Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, vetoed recently.  The list of legislation that was vetoed ranges from a bill that would have limited sugary drinks in schools to legislation that would have required certain non-profit groups to disclose their donors.  Being that I'm a little less conservative than Governor Perry, some of the vetoes that he issued really annoyed me, but I have to say that nearly all of them were right in line with his political standing.  The only one that seemed dubious to me was the funding cut to the budget that was obviously aimed at District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, who was recently charged with drunk driving.  I cannot say that I approve of political maneuvering such as that, especially when it is not his money to be playing with.  Considering that the power to veto legislation is one of the most direct powers of being Governor, I feel it is important to know how our Governor of Texas is wielding this power.  It also gives you a pretty good idea of what kind of legislation you might expect to get passed into law.