Current Events

I'm surprised the local news outlets haven't picked this up: local conspiracy theorist and media star Alex Jones was busted in New York City for...well...being Alex Jones. Apparently Alex led a group of people who crashed the taping of Geraldo Rivera's TV show.

Says Geraldo At Large host Geraldo Rivera to the crowd, chanting "9/11 was an inside job" at the beginning of the show: "Get a life." ...

Mark Geragos [article does not identify who this person is] contends with a man with a loudspeaker, who was later arrested and identified as 33-year-old Alex Jones, prominent figure in the 9/11 Truth Movement. Jones was later charged with operating a bullhorn without a permit.

You can read the original article (and weep over the poor editing, if you are so inclined) here: Fox News' Rivera ridicules 9/11 Truth activists, man arrested on camera

I've just returned from a week in British Columbia, which served as my belated honeymoon. It was a wonderful trip, except for the bits that involved airports. Airline security is maddeningly stupid, and just seems to be getting worse.

When I think about the current climate of fear and stupidity, I end up, well, exasperated. I don't understand how we've allowed our country to be remade into that which we abhor.

While paying my wireless phone bill last weekend, I was irritated over the number of bogus fees that Sprint Nextel charges.

Apparently the State of Texas thinks so too. Attorney General Greg Abbot is suing Sprint Nextel over the bogus "Texas Margin Fee", which is just a way of Sprint passing on a cost of business that should be reflected in product price.

This is wonderful—except this $0.30 fee is a drop in the bucket compared to the other bogus fees, many mandated by the state. There is the $0.40 TIF fee, which the state continues to collect, even though the Texas Infrastructure Fund has long since been disbanded. And then there are the various USF fees, which have taken a laudable goal (universal telephone service for all households) and turned it into one of the worst corporate welfare programs for phone carriers.

All in all, there are about $3.00 of bogus fees on my $35.00 bill. The Texas Margin Fee is only a small part of the problem. Maybe somebody needs to sue the Texas legislature to get them to remove the bogus USF and TIF fees from our phone bills.

Last week, Lincoln Properties, the owner of the Northcross Mall and the developer who plans to put a record setting mega-box store in the middle of our neighborhood, announced a stand-down. They said that they would freeze further action so they could talk to the neighbors to resolve the problems.

Last Thursday evening the issue came before City Council. The neighbors packed the room, wall to wall, Lincoln Properties, however, was a no-show. Not much talking happened there, I guess.

Monday evening, the Crestview Neighborhood Association called a meeting, so the Northcross developers could meet with the neighbors. Once again, Lincoln Properties took a pass.

Tonight, the North Shoal Creek Neighborhood Association—my neighborhood association—held a general meeting with the Northcross developers scheduled to attend. And again, Lincoln Properties was nowhere to be found.

Is Lincoln Properties ever going to talk with anybody, or are they just trying to run out the clock? The empty chairs are not a sign of good faith.

I recently re-watched Doctor Strangelove with my wife. The movie introduces the idea of a doomsday device. Unfortunately, it all goes horribly wrong because the Russians never tell the United States that they have this weapon. The idea is that the doomsday device is a threat that hangs over everybody's head never used.

You may have heard that Wal-Mart is trying to build the biggest fucking retail store in Travis County in a residential neighborhood—my neighborhood. They have their site plan approvals, and they are telling everybody it's a done deal.

You may have heard they are trying to build a 24-hour Wal-Mart mega-center in my neighborhood. Have you also heard that at 219,000 square feet, it is to be the second largest retail store in central Texas? Ay caramba!

There is a group called Responsible Growth for Northcross that is working on this issue. Today, they rolled out a new web site. There is even a blog there. I'm helping with that. So, stop by and visit some time.

One recent night, I dropped into a local bar for a beer. There were two people there, one on either side of the bar. There was a pack of cigarettes sitting on the bar. The stench in the room told me that the pack had been opened recently. Or maybe there was a recent tobacco bonfire in the room.

Taken aback, I asked the bartender if there was smoking in there. The bartender mistook my query for a request to smoke, and said, "Sure, go ahead."

That's illegal in Austin. So, I thought I'd file a complaint.

Even if I stipulate that your right to satisfy your physical addiction trumps my right not to get cancer, this is still wrong. The law says "no smoking" and cheating isn't fair to the venues that stick by the rules.

I called the local Health and Human Services Department (972-5600) during business hours. I asked to file a complaint for a smoking ban violation. I was connected to some department, presumably the Environmental and Consumer Health Unit. They asked me for the name of the business, its address, the date and time of the occurrence, and what happened.

They also asked if I wanted to leave my name and telephone number. I asked if the information is confidential, and if it is subject to an open records request. They said they could not guarantee confidentiality, so I chose to make the complaint anonymously.

My understanding is that an inspector will visit the venue and if a violation is found they will work with the owner to bring them into compliance. Legal action occurs after repeated violations.

A lawsuit to overturn the ban was back in the news recently. The main claim is that bar owners want individuals, not businesses, responsible. The bar owners say that the rules are unclear as to what they need to do.

This is disingenuous. The bar owners are trying to manufacture a chasm of gray out of a split hair. Let's start here: when a patron asks, "Can I smoke?" just say, "No."

You don't say, "I don't care, it's your responsibility." And certainly not, "Sure, go ahead." The answer is simple: tell them the law says no. If you do that one simple step, then most of the uncertainty crumbles away.

So what if the person won't comply? For goodness sake, we are talking about bars here. What business (besides the Mafia) has more experience and ability to deal with uncompliant patrons?

The current complaint driven process is the right way to go about this. When I file a complaint, an inspector will investigate, and action will be taken if warranted. If I had to complain against an individual, I'd instead have to call 911 and summon an officer to make an arrest. The "smoking police" that live only in the rhetoric of the ban opponents would become a reality. If there is going to be a smoking ban, the way we are doing it makes sense.

I left the smoky bar and went down the street to another bar. A packed bar. One that enforces the smoking ordinance. Who knows, maybe someday soon, the smoking ban actually could turn out to be good for business.

Just finished watching When the Levees Broke, Spike Lee's documentary on Hurricane Katrina. I recommend it highly. I was surprised—and pleased—at how much Lee stayed out of the way and let the participants tell the story themselves. I think the documentary does a remarkable job capturing the scope of human suffering.

If I was to find fault, it's that Lee's documentary does not capture the scope of the physical devastation. You see the houses ripped off their foundations by the force of the waters. That doesn't capture the power of driving through the neighborhoods and seeing the destruction for miles on end. Or the awesome mountains of debris created in parks and medians as the city began to dig out. Or the eery, gray, lifeless moonscapes left behind immediately after the waters receded.

Here are three critically important things about the Katrina disaster that people may not realize:

This was an engineering disaster, not a natural disaster. At least, that's the case in New Orleans. The hurricane hit full force in Mississippi. What hit New Orleans was barely category one, and that was enough to breech the defective levee system. You cannot blame the current occupant of the White House for that. That's a failure of several decades of presidencies—and corrupt New Orleans politics.

Brownie was not the problem. Here is where you can blame the Bush administration. Michael Brown was a lousy administrator with bad political acumen, but he's not the one responsible for emasculating James Lee Witt's FEMA. According to Cooper and Block, Brown actually tried to do the right thing with FEMA. His bosses (Bush, Ridge, Chertoff) are the ones who destroyed our nation's ability to respond to natural disasters, by redirecting most resources not specifically earmarked for terror threats. They are the architects of our dysfunctional, imcompetent homeland security apparatus. Brown is an easy fall guy for the people really responsible for this tragedy.

The disaster continues. Spike Lee captured the situation six months out. Here we are a year later and it's still bad. My sister-in-law is still waiting for the insurance check to be released to pay for the tree that Katrina pushed through her roof. And she's one of the lucky ones.

You're doing a heck of a job, Bushie.

On page 15 of this week's Austin Chronicle, there is a photo of an anti-psychiatry rally. It's unfortunate they didn't assign a journalist to do some...you know...journalism. If so, they may have noticed an awful lot of connections between the protest group and the cult of Scientology.

I question the newsworthiness of the photo, but that's their call. They do, however, owe their readers the context and background. For instance, here is an article from an official cult publication that notes a Scientology "humanitarian award" that was conferred to protest spokesperson John Breeding.

Earlier this week I posted a blog entry about the strength of lobbyists in the Texas capital. I also implied a connection to the Telecom Deregulation bill that passed during last year's "school finance" special session.

Turns out the San Antonio Express News followed up the next day with the explicit point that SBC more or less bought their way into telecom reform. The article discusses how SBC (now AT&T) swarmed the capitol and got their way.

During the 2005 session, AT&T spent more than any other San Antonio-based entity to lobby state lawmakers. It dished out between $3.4 million and $7 million on contracts with 112 lobbyists, according to Texas Ethics Commission records.

There are 31 members of the Texas Senate and 150 of the House of Representatives, meaning lobbyists for AT&T and other SB 5 supporters — among them, fellow telecom Verizon Communications — nearly had a one-to-one ratio with legislators.

The thing is, it doesn't stop in Texas. AT&T is now going to the other statehouses and the federal government saying, "Look what Texas has done." That's a heck of a lot of bang for their lobbying investement.

The full article is here.