Austin City Council resumes ECONOMIC DESTRUCTION WARPATH....

"And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Matthew 25:30

At last Thursday's meeting, council took two GROTESQUELY AWFUL actions that can only hurt our most vulnerable residents.

First, what started as a laudable effort to 'ban the box' went HORRIBLY awry:

The Austin City Council voted 8-2 Thursday night to pass the “fair chance hiring” ordinance championed by Council Member Greg Casar, which prevents companies from asking applicants to check a box on a job application if they have a criminal history. Council Members Don Zimmerman and Ellen Troxclair voted no, while Council Member Sheri Gallo was absent from the meeting.

The ordinance applies to employers with at least 15 workers. Those companies may refuse to hire a person based on his or her criminal history only after considering the “nature and gravity” of the offense, the length of time that has passed since the offense and the scope of the job the person wants.

....

Roberta Schwartz, a vice president with Goodwill Central Texas, said the nonprofit objected to the ordinance — even though Goodwill hires employees with criminal records. It could be “devastating” for applicants to go through a long hiring process, get a conditional job offer and then be turned away because of a former offense, Schwartz said.

“That’s the kind of thing that makes you just throw your hands up and say, ‘I might as well just go back to jail,’” said Schwartz, who said she has a criminal record.

Council Member Don Zimmerman said there are other private employers in Austin who, like Goodwill, have chosen to move background checks later in the hiring process.

“They’re already doing it without mandates. They say … we object to the mandates,” Zimmerman said.

The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce estimated the measure could affect at least 5,000 local businesses. Jose Carrillo, the chamber’s vice president of regional business advocacy, urged the council to delay action and to consider allowing a background check after an initial interview, which he said is the practice in Seattle and San Francisco.

Council Member Ellen Troxclair asked Casar if he would consider that change, but Casar declined.

In other words, it's still ok to not hire someone with a criminal background, but now council is making a potential employer string the applicant along for days (if not weeks) rather than allowing them to be direct.  People with criminal backgrounds will still have trouble finding work, but now employers will have to go through a burdensome and costly process to reach that decision.  This is the worst of all possible worlds.

Fortunately Matt Rinaldi noticed, and we will support any efforts he takes in this area next session:

Austin City Council passes an ordinance effectively requiring private businesses to interview criminals. Looks like we will have more municipal overreach to address next legislative session.
Posted by Matt Rinaldi on Tuesday, March 29, 2016

The awfulness didn't stop there:

City subcontractors – such as airport food vendors and construction workers – will now be paid $13.03 an hour after City Council extended the city’s living wage requirements on Thursday to everyone working on a city contract.

Two ordinances that closed the loophole that left subcontractors out of previously passed living wage requirements passed on 8-2 votes, with Council members Ellen Troxclair and Don Zimmerman opposed and Sheri Gallo absent.

....

The ordinance was one of several proposed by Council Member Greg Casar meant to address employment in Austin. After hearing from Gutierrez – who was flanked at the podium by supporters – Casar said the measures particularly would help the “working-class community” in his own District 4.

Of course, the end result is $0 per hour when politicians price jobs out of existence.

But it gets better; while it doesn't come directly from Council, a city board has just invented "wage waivers":

Capital Metro Gives Developer a “Wage Waiver,” (A New Breed of Fee Waiver)

Capital Metro and the Endeavor Real Estate Group negotiated a deal for the construction of the 10-acre Plaza Saltillo development downtown. When the dust settled after Tuesday night’s board meeting, the developer walked away winning their original offer of $11.39 per hour minimum wage for the workers. And yet the workers won also, because they will be getting paid $13.03 per hour. That’s because Capital Metro agreed to “share” part of the difference with money that would otherwise belong to the taxpayers. The shared portion will be 50% of the wage increase The net taxpayer loss is estimated to be $1.05 million.

....

The worst thing about this first “wage waiver” is the dangerous precedent. $1.05 million is “only a little bit of money” out of a big contract. But what about the next contract and the one after that? Every developer that goes into a construction and lease deal will want the same thing. Think about the massive complex of buildings being planned for the land owned by Central Health. What we witnessed this week was the opening of Pandora’s Box.

Bottom Line: Kudos to Don Zimmerman and Ellen Troxclair for standing firm against this insanity (remember, this nonsense used to pass unanimously). They need re-enforcements.  In the meantime, however, congratulations to the council majority for making life more difficult for ex-cons and restricting economic opportunity for low-income Austinites while accomplishing NOTHING positive in return.

"Campus Carry" drives away ANOTHER LEFTIST Academic!!!

"Every one of the builders had his sword girded at his side as he built. And the one who sounded the trumpet was beside me."
Nehemiah 4:18

This is a feature, not a bug:

Siva Vaidhyanathan, a finalist for deanship of the Moody College of Communication, took himself out of the running in response to the University’s decision on campus carry.

Vaidhyanathan became one of several faculty members who has turned down or left UT at least in part due to the passage of Senate Bill 11, which allows anyone with a concealed handgun license (CHL) to carry their handgun on college campuses. Among these is architecture dean Frederick Steiner, who cited the new law among his reasons for leaving UT in an interview with the Texan earlier this month.

As a UT alumnus, Vaidhyanathan said working for the University would’ve been a “dream job” — but when President Fenves released his Feb. 17 statement on UT’s implementation of S.B. 11, Vaidhyanathan reconsidered. According to the statement, professors would be unable to ban guns from their classrooms. If put in a situation requiring him to discipline a professor for violating this rule, Vaidhyanathan said he’d be unwilling to make that call.

“I would have to side with the professor and therefore violate state law,” Vaidhyanathan said. “That would mean I’d be fired pretty quickly, I wasn’t going to put myself or my family in that situation.”

Along with concerns about students having firearms during heated class discussions, Vaidhyanathan said he thinks campus carry limits a professor’s autonomy.

....

Neuroscience professor Max Snodderly, a member of Gun Free UT, said that, beyond campus carry’s effect on faculty, he was frustrated at the government’s decision to pass the law in the face of collegiate opposition.

“It’s insulting behavior on the part of the legislature since they’ve been told by every academic constituency, ‘we don’t want it,’ and they do it anyway,” Snodderly said.

Read the whole thing here.

Bottom Line: While it's fun to watch these people lose their minds over such a minor issue, imagine how much better it would be if Team Straus hadn't watered down the bill last session....

PIO RENTERIA now facing MULTIPLE additional VIOLATIONS....

"Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye."
Matthew 7:5

"RULE 4: Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."
Saul Alinsky

Interesting:

The city’s Code Department has identified two violations at Austin City Council Member Sabino “Pio” Renteria’s home in East Austin, which the city said stemmed from a patio cover and a storage structure.

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The department mailed notices of violation to the property owners, Sabino Renteria and Lori Cervenak-Renteria, on March 16. The owners have 14 days to come into compliance, and, if they do, the case will be closed, Alvarado said.

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Coming into compliance for an unpermitted structure would mean obtaining a building permit, which requires a successful inspection, Alvarado said. As for the setback violations, the owners could move the storage structure or seek a variance from the city.

Failing to come into compliance could bring fines of up to $2,000 per day per violation.

....

Renteria also faces the ethics complaint filed last month by the owner of a vacation rental management company, who alleged Renteria should refrain from voting on new regulations for short-term rentals, as he has rented out the garage apartment in his backyard. The city’s Ethics Review Commission is slated to hear that complaint April 13.

Read the whole thing here.

Bottom Line: Considering that Pio Renteria didn't support Don Zimmerman's attempt to reign in code compliance last year, it's particularly satisfying to watch this hypocrite get nailed....

Reporting on the Parables....

Then He began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a place for the wine vat and built a tower. And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country."
Mark 12:1

Reprinted in full from ICR this morning:

This parable of the vineyard had an obvious meaning, for even “the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders” to whom He was speaking (Mark 11:27) “knew that he had spoken the parable against them” (Mark 12:12). The same parable and the events surrounding it are reported in Matthew 21:33-46 and Luke 20:9-16.

But there is another question that has been raised about this parable, as well as all the other parables that have been reported in two or more different gospels. That is, if the Bible is inerrant in its very words as Jesus taught (e.g., Matthew 5:18; John 10:35), then why did the writers often vary in their reporting of the words of the parable?

It should be remembered, however, that Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic, whereas the written accounts were in Greek. Furthermore, two of the writers (Mark and Luke) were not present at the time, so would have to obtain their accounts from someone who was there (e.g., Luke 1:1-2). Flexibility in translation and reporting is always possible with different translators and different reporters.

The doctrine of divine inspiration of the Scriptures (2 Timothy 3:16), however, applies not to the process but to the result. The Spirit of God was free to use the writer’s own research, vocabulary, and style in reporting an event, so long as there were no factual errors or irrelevancies in the final result. In fact, such minor differences often give greater depth and credence to the reported event since they help in proving that the different writers were not in collusion but simply telling of a real event from different perspectives. HMM

Once again, Paxton backs HIGHER ED TRANSPARENCY!!!

"Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong."
1 Corinthians 16:13

Good to see:

Attorney General Ken Paxton has once again thrown his support behind University of Texas System Regent Wallace Hall’s efforts to receive records, including confidential student information, from an investigation into favoritism in admissions at the Austin campus. 

Paxton recently filed a brief asking the 3rd Court of Appeals to reinstate Hall’s lawsuit, which was thrown out by a Travis County judge in December, prompting an immediate appeal by Hall. Paxton also asked the appeals court to order UT to provide the records to Hall. 

“A regent’s access to university records must be absolute,” Paxton said in the friend-of-the-court brief filed last week but made public Tuesday.

Read the whole thing here.

Paxton: 1, Bulls**t: 0

"And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart."
Galatians 6:9

'Bout DADGUM Time:

A grand jury in Collin County has voted to take no action on its investigation into Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s role in a 2004 land deal involving the eventual site of the Collin County Appraisal District, special prosecutors and Paxton’s attorneys said today.

Defense attorney Bill Mateja of Polsinelli law firm in Dallas said that throughout the process, Paxton and his legal team were confident that the grand jury would take no action regarding the real estate transaction and would not refer the matter to the District Attorney’s Office.

“We would like to thank the special prosecutors for their diligence in reviewing all aspects of this matter and for reaching out to General Paxton to obtain his cooperation in their investigation,” Mateja said in a prepared statement.

In January, the grand jury confirmed an investigation into Paxton’s role as the member of a limited liability company that owned land eventually sold to the county for the appraisal district headquarters building.

Paxton and his attorneys have said that he had no part in the sale or a prior rezoning of the land to pave the way for the project.

Read the whole thing here.

Cook attempting to REPEAL FIRST AMENDMENT (Again!)

"They sharpen their tongues like a serpent;
The poison of asps is under their lips."
Psalm 140:3

We had intended to discuss this, but Watchdog beat us to the punch:

State Rep. Byron Cook, who came within 222 votes of being booted from office by his own party’s primary voters this month, is back at work on what has become his signature issue: regulating the political speech of Texans.

Cook told the Houston Chronicle that he’s planning to propose an amendment to the state Constitution that could threaten every political group in the state with penalties.

That’s not quite how he put it — the Chronicle paraphrases his idea as requiring “politically active nonprofits to reveal their donors.” However, Cook’s past efforts on this issue reach far beyond nonprofit corporations to affect the speech rights of informal groups of two or more people involved in just about anything that could be deemed “political.”

There’s little question that Cook is targeting Empower Texans, a conservative group that holds lawmakers accountable for votes to raise taxes or increase spending. Cook and his patron, Speaker Joe Straus, have been fighting Empower Texans for years.

The amendment would have almost no chance of becoming law. As chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, Cook could send a bill to the floor, but a constitutional amendment would need two-thirds support in both chambers before going to voters.

....

Gov. Greg Abbott referred to that ruling in a statement last year on Cook’s efforts to impose new speech regulations.

“As a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, I wrote that laws like that are unconstitutional and I based that decision on United States Supreme Court decisions,” he said.

Read the whole thing here.