Hard to say, due to the current laws on 'camping' in Austin, the police and other services have been hands off on the homeless.

It bears noting that more people are born here than left, even when you subtract deaths the population is still growing. Note, there's a housing shortage of near 4 million according to them, if California was the failed state they pretend it is, there would be a housing glut.

It also bears noting that with all the "anti business" regulations California remains the fifth largest economy in the world. Note how many billionaires that made their fortunes here are in the exodus crowd, California produces billionaires like a product.

I lost count how many times they mentioned Austin as a main destination, but I know Texans, and especially Austonians, HATE Californians and for decades have complained that Californians have ruined Austin, over regulated everything, and made it nearly uninhabitable. It also bears mention that one reason the state went dark and dry is they privatized their utilities with little oversight and predictably those companies deferred repairs and upkeep. That's pretty bad for business....so is the less skilled and educated workforce.

Don't let these dishonest people fool you, San Francisco is not representative of the state, and using it as a measure of housing costs is as dishonest as can be.

I noticed, most people leaving make under $100000 per year and can expect to make less where ever they go, while most moving here make over $100000 a year and can expect their earnings to rise.

This piece was incredibly biased.

Not really the first, but the most ridiculous in quite a while.

Some democrats don’t care about sensible gun laws. Some do want little more than actual background checks for all sales, like me. I don’t want violent felons to have easy access to them, nor people with active charges for kidnapping, murder, stalking, terrorism, etc. I don’t see any need for a public registry, although a closed/non public registry would make tracking firearms found after being used in a crime easier, as well as removing guns from people deemed a threat due to real, diagnosed mental defect or disease. This bill was insanely lax in defining what qualifies there, one of many things that made it not just bad, but horrific....and doa.

It’s odd, my brother, who lives in Austin too, says the same thing. He loves to blame ex-Californians for crazy laws, but most of the laws and regulations he complains about don’t exist here. I guess we got rid of our nuts? Thanks for taking them off our hands!

I’ll watch it later when the wife’s asleep.

It's just the first salvo. The underlaying message is the same. Democrats don't care about sensible gun laws, they just want to make it very hard, very expensive, and very punitive for people to own modern firearms of any type.

Thanks to people moving from liberal states, Texas is purple now. Living in Austin, the ultimate far left stronghold, has made me immune to being surprised when a Texas politician submits crazy bills.

In any case, give it a watch. Brandon is funny even when he is upset.

Yeah, I can only say for certain what has happened here. Most doctors that run private practices and are rated well slowly started transitioning to either a service that charges a large amount of money per patient per year, in addition to insurance, or they simply posted on their website they no longer accept insurance. They call it direct primary care, like you pay a fee per month.

https://reason.com/video/doctors-direct-primary-care/

My doctor joined a concierge service called MDVIP. I just checked and he lowered his rates to 1,800 per year per patient. Whether you go or not. He was a great doctor, but I refuse to pay 3600 per year for my wife and me to see a doctor. Not when they will bill our insurance as well for any actual visits/treatments.

Instead we had to switch to Austin Regional Clinic, who has an amazing lab and bloodwork team, but the doctor situation is as I mentioned before. There is no feeling that I have a personal doctor. Usually they schedule me with whichever one is available or a PA. Every time I have to re-list what meds I am on and what existing conditions I have because they don't remember. You would think they could look at a chart, but they are so busy every time. It's like sex in high school, in, out, and thanks for coming.

We've tried some others, even a few private practices, but none have been up to par. All of them seem to be super busy and have trimmed their staff to the bone.

If the ACA isn't changed or doesn't go away, I don't see it getting any better.

Here in Austin, when Covid isn't around, you can go downtown to the campus area and see almost everyone jaywalking. I've even come close to hitting a few idiots that had their face buried in their phone and stepped out almost in front of me while I was doing 30.

Like you said, it's never enforced unless the cops want to either send a message or want an excuse to do a 'stop and search'.

"TMZ reported that 21-year-old Austin Addison, was charged with harassment, disorderly conduct and criminal mischief."

Uhh... which of those covers the slap? Did they miss the slap?

Edit: And the problem is the nuggets were too spicy?!?! Show me the BK menu item that's legitimately actually spicy. Seriously, if it exists I want to know about it, as fast food "spicy" is generally barely medium heat.

Edit2: Another video indicated that the actual problem was this dude didn't get the right number of nuggets. This makes more sense to me, as he references robbery.

Update: I was very sick for about 10 days. May or may not have been CV19, but I won't know until we get antibody tests here. Wife got sick but not as bad. Doctor told us not to come in unless we couldn't breathe.

Once I started feeling better, things were crazy around Austin so I didn't get online. Was planning on posting soon, but I just broke my wrist/radius in fall yesterday. I can only type with my non dominant hand and controlling my mouse is nigh impossible. In a cast now for 3-4 weeks. I hope all of you are safe and well. See you soon I hope.

Yup. On Sunday night. Hehe. I remember this viral video in Austin Powers 3 movie in a local theater too!

I know the big pickup in the opening scene was my stepmom's. She was an extra when they were filming in Austin.

I went to Austin's Alamo Draft House theater to see *related=https://videosift.com/video/Holy-Weapon-Final-Battle-Scene

in the 90's, among other insanity they played a preview for God of Gamblers then, it looked great.

In the mid 70's, my grandfather would wake me up at 3am on full moon nights to go hunt nutria at the family ranch on lake Austin with .22s. Find the two glowing spots in the water and aim right between them. We didn't collect tails, just kept score. He almost always won, but I was 5+-. Mostly I just spotted them for him.
I know the damage they can cause, I wish eradication was a possibility, but I think people will be gone before they are. Tenacious little bastards.

I disagree that there is net benefit from illegal immigrants.

Yes, they do pay taxes. They do not collect retirement benefits.

They also tend to not pay for medical insurance and their jobs do not provide it (for the most part). Generally when they have medical issue, they either go to a free clinic that is there for poor people or they go to a non private hospital emergency room. They cannot be turned away. This cost gets passed on to people paying for their insurance and hospital costs because Hospitals hike up insurance costs to make up the difference. It also causes massive delays at the ER, making it harder for them to deal with people really needing emergency care.

They do utilize public schooling without paying similar amounts of costs. For example, here in Austin, most of the areas that are predominantly Hispanic do not have to pay the same level of property and school taxes as I do. I don't even have kids, but if I lived in East Austin, my taxes would be significantly lower. It has led to East Austin starting to have a Gentrification problem as people/businesses move their to exploit the lower taxes.

Many illegal immigrants carry the minimum or no insurance. My wife's car was totaled some years ago, almost killing her, by an illegal immigrant who had no insurance. We had to use our insurance for her treatment and for the replacement of her vehicle. The man who hit her disappeared.

They utilize fake id and ssid to get welfare benefits. They do get caught now and then, but they flee the area and get new info.

They also do get married to citizens and then, if they get divorced, they flee to avoid child support/alimony. I know of at least 3 friends/acquaintances that had this happen in the last 10 years.

I don't think they are more likely to commit crime than anyone else, but they are more likely to flee the country if caught.

The money they do earn is, in many cases, spent at local ethnic shops that usually are also owned by illegal immigrants. It has become so prevalent that many local stores have tried to modify how they are setup to attract illegal immigrants.

It has been shown that they save and send money out of the US, many times doing their best to avoid any custom duties that would be attached to larger sums.

Because they are violating the law and crossing the border, we spend a massive fuckton of money trying to stop them. This is probably the largest outlay of cost and the one everyone feels, even people living outside of a state affected by illegal immigration.

To be fair, maybe I am getting a skewed picture as I live in a city that has basically said "Fuck the laws, ya'll c'mon in and live here!"

Honestly, if we aren't going to stop them or deport them, then just fucking give them legal status so they are treated like everyone else. At least then they can be hounded by bill collectors too.