Dan Patrick, Constitutional Carry, and the "Law Enforcement" industrial complex....

"For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life."
Galatians 6:8

There's a post we've been procrastinating about writing for a month, thankfully Lt. Governor Patrick forced the issue yesterday:

"On constitutional carry, I’ll say the same thing: I don’t know if the votes are there," Patrick told San Antonio host Trey Ware.

....

"I think with all the police violence today we have in our state ... law enforcement does not like the idea of anyone being able to walk down the street with a gun and they don’t know if they have a permit or not," Patrick said.

Let's unpack the phrase "law enforcement does not like" in the context of "I don't know if the votes are there."

Obviously, policing is an emotionally charged topic.  That was true before Dallas.  And it's even truer now.

Behind those emotional charges, however, lie a lot of politics.

And there's a gigantic difference between the courageous police officers who serve our communities, and the anti-taxpayer bureaucrats and lobbyists who allegedly represent "law enforcement" at the Capitol.

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We first noticed this phenomenon last session when we noticed various members of the 'law enforcement community' offered hysterical doomsday in the event various bills we considered rather modest were to pass.

Obviously, the rather inconsequential 'open carry' bill they passed last session was one such occasion.  Former Austin Police chief Art Acevedo (Sidenote: Boy is it satisfying to use the word 'former' in connection with Art Acevedo.) led the charge in over the top fearmongering.  But even more telling was the fact that nobody else in the so-called 'law enforcement community' told Acevedo to knock it off.

Even more telling was the "law enforcement" reaction to efforts to ban red-light cameras, when they argued that we were all totally going to die in car crashes if the state of Texas eliminated a municipal revenue generating swindle.

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The so-called "law enforcement community" can be further subdivided into two categories: The cop lobby [bad] and the district attorney lobby [EVIL].

The cop lobby consists of two major groups: Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas (CLEAT) [obnoxious] and the Texas Municipal Police Association (TMPA) [bad].

The district attorney lobby is led by the Texas District and County Attorney Association.  These guys first creeped us out at a TPPF discussion of civil asset forfeiture in 2014.  We can't get into details on their mendacity without burning sources, but suffice to say that legislators and their staff will occasionally tell stories off the record that would astonish you [hint: ask about the Death Penalty].

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So, what does this long winded discussion have to do with passing Constitutional Carry in the Texas Senate?!?

In the Texas Senate, there are 20 Republicans.  You need 19 votes (60%) to pass a bill.  And Kel Seliger is a RINO.

That brings us down to 19 votes.

Which brings us to Senator Joan Huffman:  On this issue, the only thing you need to know about her is that she's a former prosecutor.

Which brings you down to 18 votes.

Which means Constitutional Carry doesn't pass.

It's that simple.

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Bottom Line: Politics is a dirty business and Dan Patrick did us a favor by keying us into one of the subtler aspect of that dirtiness.

National events create new urgency over APD Body Camera policy

"Yet the righteous will hold to his way,
And he who has clean hands will be stronger and stronger."
Job 17:9

For obvious reasons, we haven't commented on last week's events in Baton Rouge, Minnesota, and Dallas.  Suffice to say that it's an awful situation and that we pray for justice, peace, and sanity to prevail.  That being said, those events illustrate the importance of an issue currently weaving it's way through the city bureaucracy.

Two months ago, the APD bureaucracy attempted to sneak a policy through council that would have allowed APD to withhold body camera footage at will.  This policy was to be accompanied by a $12 MILLION contract with a company with a terrible reputation.  Three weeks ago, council approved the contract but kicked the final public disclosure policy back to the bureaucracy for one final examination.

So the bad news is that the contract is a done deal, but the good news is that there's still an opportunity to craft a policy that can retain public confidence in the event that (God forbid) a tragedy similar to any of the events of last week occurs in Austin.

The APD bureaucracy, starting with Chief Acevedo, needs to recognize that heavy-handed stonewalling makes both officers and the general public less safe.

The relationship between APD and the community isn't as bad as some other places, but it isn't great either.  Our fervent prayer is to avoid this type of incident in Austin.  Nevertheless, prudence suggests preparing for the worst.

And the only way to be prepared in the event, God forbid, that the worst happens is to lay a foundation of transparency now.

As we said following the last council meeting: "Council will rue this day whenever the inevitable dispute between an officer and a citizen provokes outrage that this policy proves insufficient to quell."

Body Camera FIASCO illustrates #ATXCharter reform necessity....

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

We've been intermittently watching the APD body camera process; we concur with this statement from TAG in its entirety:

Austin's Public Safety Commission addressed transparency and privacy issues on Tuesday.

APD Body Camera Policy development is a corrupt process. Last night, the Public Safety Commission discussed the APD Body Camera policyand asked our coalition partner, Matt Simpson of the ACLU, to testify.  Below is the email sent to each of the members of the Public Safety Commission. For more information on the continuing conversation around body cameras in Austin, check out the Austin Body Cameras website. To the members of the Public Safety Commission, I wanted to share my experience as a stakeholder participating in the discussions with APD and other community stakeholders to develop a policy on the Austin Police Department Body Camera Policy. I am currently on the Steering Committee for Texans for Accountable Government.  TAG believes  "that power should be rested in the nearest locality.  Our local representatives are much more accountable to us than are those over a thousand miles away in the District of Columbia." -- TAG website.   But that accountability only happens when members of the community get involved. It's clear from the most recent draft of the APD Body Camera Policy that APD does not want accountability. The city council, by approving the TASER contract at the June 23 meeting, gave a stamp of approval for a corrupt process. Here's what should be the process: APD comes to the city council-- our elected and therefore accountable representatives-- with a request to adopt body cameras.  The community stakeholders and APD come together to develop a policy to determine how the cameras will be used and how the footage will be released.  From the policy, the stakeholders and APD agree on a list of hardware and software specifications for the RFP. What happened instead is that the city council had no framework for determining whether or not $17 million was a reasonable price to pay for what TASER was offering. Now we are supposed to craft a policy after the equipment has been purchased.  It is clear from the most recent draft and from comments made during our meetings that APD is free to ignore our requests for drafting the policy.  They haven't blatantly ignored us, but the language in the most recent draft does present a very different tone than what we discussed in our meetings. I ask that the Public Safety Commission keep a close eye on the process for APD to adopt new technology.  I'm sure Matt Simpson of the ACLU laid out the concerns from the community stakeholders-- our elected and appointed officials must insist on due diligence from city employees so that we are not ignored. Thank you, Carly Rose Jackson Steering Committee, Texans for Accountable Government

Bottom Line: It's bad enough that council (with the notable exception of Don Zimmerman) abdicated what little oversight they had over this process; it's even worse that both the contract and the policy were developed in the bowels of the bureaucracy in the first place.

Notes on Yesterday's #ATXCouncil Meeting....

"There are many plans in a man’s heart,
Nevertheless the Lord’s counsel—that will stand."
Proverbs 19:21

[Author's Note: The full agenda for the meeting can be viewed here.]

We attended a substantial chuck of yesterday's uber-marathon Council meeting (14 hours and counting when we left at midnight; ultimately 16 hours).  Our thoughts are in the order events occurred.  For those only interested in the transportation bond, that discussion is at the end:

• Item 79: They actually approved approximately $275k per year to build 2 luxury public bathrooms on street corners downtown.  This despite the fact that every downtown hotel already has bathrooms that any member of the public can use as long as they don't make a scene while doing so.  Kathie Tovo justified this project on the grounds that the homeless would relieve themselves on the street if the city didn't provide facilities.  Passed 8-2-1 with Zimmerman and Troxclair voting Nay and Gallo abstaining.  We can't prove it at this point, but we strongly suspect someone's getting paid.
  
  In addition, during later public testimony over the bond package, a female firefigher testified that there are numerous fire stations around Austin that don't even have male and female bathrooms despite the fact that a previous council moved seventeen years ago to provide them; for council to move forward with taxpayer funded luxury bathrooms at a time when city owned firestations have been waiting almost two decades for sufficient facilities seems...odd.

• Item 56: The ball appears to be slowly moving forward on APD's plan to buy license plate readers to scan citizens' vehicles.  We're not a lawyer, and we haven't reviewed the relevant jurisprudence, but this strikes us as one of the most blatant violations of the fourth amendment we've ever seen.  Making matters worse, the vendor will be allowed to keep data from license plate scans as long as it "has commercial value."  So it's both unconstitutional and a special interest boondoggle.  In addition, one of the members of the public who testified in opposition raised concerns over whether such a proposal would turn APD into "mobile debt collectors" for things like traffic tickets.  Thankfully, they at least dropped the civil asset forfeiture component.  Council voted 6-5 (Zimmerman, Troxclair, Casar, Houston, Garza, and Kitchen voting AYE) in favor of Zimmerman's amendment to restrict APD from "executing" the contract and merely allow them to negotiate it.  This will be back in front of council in August.

• Items 57/58: Unfortunately, council went ahead with their poorly conceived APD body camera policy and contract.  First things first, between the cameras and iphones being purchased to play the footage, we're talking about $17 MILLION.  Council went forward with using Taser (yes, THAT Taser) for the cameras at a cost of $12 million despite the fact that another vendor (Utility) was offering a technically superior product at a fraction of the price (Author's Note: We apologize, but we didn't write down the number of their asking price).
  
  Leslie Pool initially moved to postpone consideration of the contract to August, but she later pulled the motion after asking questions of APD.  Kathie Tovo called now a "time for action" following a "deliberative" process.  Keep in mind, they tried to ambush us with this contract 6 weeks ago.
  
  More troubling is the incomplete policy council pushed forward related to body camera footage.  While Kathy Mitchell of the Texas Criminal Justice coalition cited "incremental progress" in terms of allowing public greater access to body camera footage, there are still numerous hurdles to public access.  A representative from the Electronic Frontier Foundation urged caution because whatever policy adopted by council would subsequently become subject to typical governmental inertia; specifically, "we should be very careful about a cobbled together system."  Everybody supports police bodycameras, but there's no reason council couldn't have taken another month or two to get the policy right.  Council will rue this day whenever the inevitable dispute between an officer and a citizen provokes outrage that this policy proves insufficient to quell.
  
  Item 57 ($12 million for body cameras) passed 9-1-1 (Zimmerman voting Nay, Houston abstaining); Item 58 ($5 million for iphones) 7-3-1 (Zimmerman, Houston, and Pool voting Nay; Troxclair abstaining).

• "Special Called Meeting" -- Council also considered Ellen Troxclair's proposal to expand the city of Austin's homestead exemption to 14% from the current 6%.  For obscure legal reasons, this had to be considered as part of a "special called meeting" instead the regular agenda.  Council watered Troxclair's proposed 8% expansion (to 14%) all the way down to 2% (to 8%). We had actually left the meeting at this point so we missed the discussion, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out why the current council would water down a tax relief package.
  
  [Author's Note: Community Impact has more here.]

• Item 83: This was the discussion of the Transportation bond.  We left following public testimony, so we didn't see much of the discussion between council members.  Something eventually passed 8-3, but we aren't familiar with the details and will refrain from commenting further until we digest said details.
  
  That being said, we are going to re-iterate the concern we expressed in our public testimony and in our open letter to the mayor: Does the city bureaucracy have the capability to execute this plan in anything resembling a competent or timely manner?!?  $720 million is a lot of money, and this package has a lot of moving parts.  As the female firefighter testified, the city still hasn't been able to produce male and female bathrooms in fire-stations despite having promised to do so seventeen years ago.  If they can't deliver bathrooms, are they really capable of successfully executing a major transportation project?!?
  
  [Author's Note: The firefigher's testimony is at the 17:35 mark; our testimony is at 23:30]
  
  

The WORST campaign execution we've ever seen....

"Pride goes before destruction,
And a haughty spirit before a fall."
Proverbs 16:18

We've been biting our tongue on this for three weeks, but here goes: Ridesharing Works for Austin ran the worst, most tone-deaf, campaign we've seen in 25 years of following politics.

Where to begin?!?

• Political mail has it's place, but people don't appreciate multiple daily mailers starting over a month before election day.

• Sending notifications related to the election through the App is fine, but to receive political text messages to which you haven't consented is creepy.

• Don't claim people who don't support your campaign do; this applies doubly when the police chief in question isn't popular in the first place.

• Speaking of unpopular, making a former mayor who was essentially ridden out of town on a rail when he left office less than two years ago your most prominent campaign spokesperson probably won't go well.

• Don't bring in a bunch of dimwitted D.C. based rent-a-campaign types to run your field operation when there are local people (with a record of winning) who can do a much better job for a fraction of the cost.

• Speaking of your field operation, when homeless people start showing up to work as canvassers in large numbers, you should be worried.

• It's ok to spend enough to win, but when the amount of money you're spending becomes a major campaign story and the money is going to fund the type of overkill described above, you have a problem.

It's also worth pointing out that RWA's messaging SUCKED.  The opposition had a simple message: "stand up to corporate bullies."  We didn't agree with it, but that message was concise and effective.  RWA could have built their campaign around the fact that council's regulations would lead to higher prices and longer wait times with no benefit to public safety.  Instead, they oversold a disjointed collection of secondary concerns without a unifying principle.  When the media started picking apart those claims, they were done.  C'est la vie....

We could go on, but long story short congratulations to Ridesharing Works for Austin for giving Jeb Bush a run for his money (pun intended) in running the most bumbling, expensive, and inept campaign of 2016.

We hope your consultants got paid as well as Jeb's....

Guns, Rape, and Government Insiderdom....

"Diverse weights and diverse measures,
They are both alike, an abomination to the Lord."
Proverbs 20:10

Update: It's also worth pointing out that Marc Ott is the same City Manager who held a training session earlier this year on how to handle female bosses.

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Remember these comments from February?!?



And what, pray tell, is happening now?!?

Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo will remain in Austin with a 5 percent pay raise and a new separation agreement should he be fired, Acevedo and City Manager Marc Ott said Wednesday.

Acevedo said he had withdrawn from the San Antonio Police Department’s search for a new police chief. Last month, he had announced that he was one of that city’s five finalists for the job, for which San Antonio had recruited him, Acevedo said Wednesday.

Ott told the American-Statesman he offered Acevedo the retention package as an incentive for Acevedo to withdraw from the San Antonio pool.

Under the agreement, Acevedo’s pay will rise to about $216,000 and he would receive three months’ severance pay should he be fired. If Acevedo didn’t find new employment within three months, he would receive another three months in severance pay. Acevedo’s current salary is $206,086.

....

“We’ve got the Black Lives Matter movement here in Austin; there’s a support march coming up for a fallen police officer,” Acevedo said. “I really want to put energy into bridging the gap and doing the best we can not to fall short. With the current tone of this discussion in the country, I didn’t feel good leaving my community and my department at the height of this discussion at the local and national level.”

Ott said he and the chief have a good working relationship, which is one of the reasons he wanted to keep him in Austin.

“I think that, in many respects, he’s accomplished what many had hoped he would, in terms of bringing transparency to the department — the way they do things and why they do things the way they do,” Ott said. “I think he’s brought structured discipline and accountability that resonates with the community and the people they serve. I do think we still have work to do.”

So if you make an outrageous comment about rape in pursuit of an anti-Second Amendment agenda you get...A BIG RAISE!!!

By contrast, in 2012 a United States' Senate candidate in Missouri made a similarly asinine statement about rape, but drew a pro-Life conclusion and was subsequently drummed out of polite society.

Bottom Line: It's not a secret that government insiders reward their cronies.  Art Acevedo getting a big raise following horrific pro-rape comments is simply the latest example.  Still, shame on City Manager Marc Ott....

Book Review: Hands Off My Gun, by Dana Loesch

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,[a] against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand."
Ephesians 6:12-13

Did you know that Martin Luther King Jr. was denied a permit to own a handgun "as a result of gun control laws put into effect by white male Democrats" (146)?!?  Neither did we.  Then we read Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the plot to disarm America, Dana Loesch's cogent, succinct defense of the second amendment.

Loesch's 2014 release is one stop shopping for those who support the Second Amendment but don't have all the facts memorized.  While the entire book is worth reading, the most riveting chapters detail the degree to which anti-Second Amendment advocates hire private security, the ability of women to use firearms to protect themselves from rape, and the origins of gun control in the Jim Crow south.  Historically, disarming the target population has been a pre-condition for other attacks on civil liberties.

Loesch's zeal for the Second Amendment gained a sense of urgency in 2009 (7), when her family still lived in St. Louis.  That summer, during the first round of Tea Party protests, a man named Kenneth Gladney was beaten by Union Thugs outside of a Missouri congressman's town hall (8).  While the story made national headlines, for those of us outside St. Louis it faded into the background.  Loesch, however, was living it.  After the national media moved on, as she continued to cover the story locally, Loesch received threats and was followed around town (9).  Then, they threatened her children (10).  To understand's Dana Loesch's commitment to the Second Amendment, you have to understand that story.

Women's self-defense is one of the strongest motifs in the book.  As Loesch explains, firearms are "the ultimate equalizer for women" (140).  She details several examples where women have used firearms to prevent assault and, sadly, others where disarmed women were left to the mercy of their rapists.  Unfortunately, women's safety is unimportant to anti-Second Amendment politicans.  Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo's recent comments are a representative example:



Hands Off My Gun lists more facts than we can include in a seven-paragraph review.  Many of them were new to this author.  Examples include:

• The mother of the Sandy Hook shooter, Nancy Lanza, "had failed to properly and safely store her guns."  (29)

• "Three Sandy Hooks take place every month in Chicago, the progressive model for gun control." (39)

• All of the victims of the Columbine shooting "were killed within the first 15 minutes of the shooting." (109)

• That "anti-gun extremists don't even want our troops to carry on base, which has resulted in several massacres over the past few years on our military bases, twice at Fort Hood." (144)

• The anti-Second Amendment reasoning behind the Dred Scott decision. (152)

• The goal of taxing firearms ownership in the Jim Crow south "was a set of laws that made guns too expensive for black Southerners to afford." (157)

• During the revolution, "the patriots were armed from the start of the war with the British Brown Bess, which was the firearm of choice for the British Army." (168)

Our only beef with the book is that it fails to discuss abortion.  It's not a secret that some of the loudest anti-Second Amendment advocates, who hide behind "protecting children," are also some of the most rabidly pro-abortion.  Michael Bloomberg is a case in point.  Personally, we've always found this reprehensible.  That being said, we understand why it would not be considered germane to a discussion of the second amendment.

Citizens are responsible for their self-defense.  While law enforcement and the corrections system aid public safety (most of the time), they are inherently reactive.  Protection, by contrast, is proactive.  This is even more true for women.    Unfortunately, anti-Second Amendment Extremists have targeted our civil liberties.  Defending them requires us to be armed with truth.  Hands off My Gun, by Dana Loesch, is a fantastic place to start.

Acevedo's Rape Comments Provoke Backlash

"For I know your manifold transgressions
And your mighty sins:
Afflicting the just and taking bribes;
Diverting the poor from justice at the gate"
Amos 5:12

Dick:

MyFoxAustin | KTBC | Fox 7 Austin | News Weather Sports

Highlights:

• "I'm completely offended by it. Being a pregnant young adult myself, Art Acevedo wants me to be a victim and learn to just deal with it and overcome it instead of being able to use my own civil rights and self defense as a way to protect myself,"

#HookemJihad: Art Acevedo played like a fiddle

"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them."
Ephesians 5:11

Following last week's "Texas Muslim Day" kerfuffle, Austin police chief Art Acevedo held a press conference with local Islamic leaders to "condemn radicals in [the Islamic] Faith":

MyFoxAustin | KTBC | Fox 7 Austin | News Weather Sports

So far so good, who doesn't condemn Islamic radicals?!?

Where this gets interesting, however, is when you consider the local 'leaders' Acevedo invited:

It was a show of unity. Muna Hussaini with Nueces Mosque of Austin said they want the community to know they are regular people doing regular things like everyone else in Austin. Hussaini was joined Tuesday by others from Austin's Muslim community to condemn radicals who claim to be followers of the same faith.

[Author's Note: Emphasis added.]

And who, pray tell, founded the Nueces Street Mosque?!?

"The Mosque on Nueces St. was established in March 1977 by the Muslim Student Association at the University of Texas."

Furthermore, the UT-MSA's website reveals a joint event between the two organizations scheduled for next week:

The history of the MSA speaks from itself, as good friend of this website Erick Stackelbeck explained in 2011:



Next, let's take a look at the Imam of Nueces mosque:

And in which "parts of the world" did he study "for thirteen years"?!?

"He then traveled to Karachi, Pakistan, where he studied under some of the greatest living scholars of our time."

So he studied "under some of the greatest living scholars of our time in Karachi, Pakistan?!?  Gee, how reassuring.  But wait, it gets better....

"Puneet Madaan, a frequent commenter here on Money Jihad and no stranger to our readers, recently sent in a link about IjaraLoans.com, a Michigan-based sharia compliant lender.

After clicking on IjaraLoans.com’s online tool to “Chat With A Scholar”, Puneet noticed the name of their scholar is Sheikh Mohammed-Umer Esmail. He also found that Sheikh Mohammed-Umer Esmail has led prayers with UT Austin’s Muslim Student Association."

[Author's Note: This post is long enough without getting into a separate dissertation on Sharia compliant finance; suffice to say it's really, really bad news.]

Bottom Line: In a press conference called to 'rebuke' Islamic extremism, Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo invited a representative from a local mosque with ties to terrorist front groups whose Imam studied in Pakistan; way to go Chief....

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One final note: Cahnman's Musings would like to congratulate Fox 7, KEYE, and KXAN for missing this obvious angle in their reporting on yesterday's event.