Monthly Archives: January 2014

(Community Matters) Toured Seaholm yesterday – love the way they’ve opened up the Power Plant to let in light while preserving the architecture wonder. Super progress on the Traders Joe and residential high rise sites too.

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(Community Matters) Charles Long Exhibit at The Contemporary Austin @ the Jones Center. Attended last night’s opening. Interesting & provocative – need to go back. Enjoyed running into Becky & John Beaver, Dan Bullock & Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Louis Grachos and other friends.

(Community Matters) Enjoyed attending Wednesday evening reception Lynn & Tommie Meredith hosted for Wendy donors to hear from her campaign manager, Karin Johanson, as well as her co-chairs Aimee Boone & Kirk Rudy plus friends like Adrienne Donato. Julie Blakslee & John Spong, Jeannie & Mickey Klein, Steve Adler & Diane Land, Patsy Wood and many other Wendy supporters on hand too. $12.2mm raised from over 70,000 donors and they are still out gunned financially 3:1 – important to remember they started less than 4 months ago outgunned 20:1. We heard the numbers, a little about the strategy, the probabilities are up from the start – still a climb but doable.

(Community Matters) Had a root canal yesterday. It wasn’t painful, and I liked learning how it works. Dr. Doughty a bit freaked about all the pics – said no one had ever taken pictures before.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work. He drilled and picked down as far as he would but still didn’t find the canal. Now I have to see an oral surgeon about coming from bottom up through the jaw – ughh

pics below the jump not so graphic but more detail than most care to share.

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(Community Matters) Beyond beautiful wedding, befitting two beautiful young friends. What a special night celebrating Alex Winkelman and Adam Zeplain at Brazos Hall. Alex’s mom & dad are two very dear friends, Suzanne & Marc Winkelman.

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(Community Matters) I’m not optimistic that U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia will rule for equality in DeLeon v. Perry case – one of the three Texas marriage equality challenges.  Judge Garcia is vying for a 5th Circuit seat with the backing of Senators Cornyn and Cruz.

Am pleased that Judge Sparks refused Attorney General Abbott’s request to consolidate the three pending cases – Towleroad.

(Community Matters) Favorite line: “All the most successful social ventures are led by a charismatic super-geniuses backed by a friend who is a billionaire.” David Erickson, San Francisco Federal Reserve.

Very successful conference. Kudos to the committee members, including several dear friends: Lisa Davis, Carol Thompson, Roy Alston, Nick Ashburn, Melanie Audette, Jordana Barton, Peter Berliner, Claire England, Rebecca Gonzales, Michael Kellerman, Chelsea McCullough, Terri Preston, Tracey Reichanadter, Teo Tijerina and Margo Weisz.

(Community Matters)  What was the war on poverty? What programs did it include? Why did it start when it did? How long did it last? Did it reduce poverty, actually? Why don’t people think it reduced poverty? What more could we be doing now to fight poverty? What more could we be doing now to fight poverty? Washington Post

The 1962 publication of Michael Harrington’s “The Other America,” an expose which demonstrated that poverty in America was far more prevalent than commonly assumed, focused public debate on the issue, as did Dwight MacDonald’s 13,000-word review essay on the book in The New Yorker.

A recent study from economists at Columbia broke down changes in poverty before and after the government gets involved in the form of taxes and transfers, and found that, when you take government intervention into account, poverty is down considerably from 1967 to 2012, from 26 percent to 16 percent. In 2012, food stamps (since renamed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) alone kept 4 million people out of poverty,

Largely because people rely on the official poverty rate, which is a horrendously flawed measure, which excludes income received from major anti-poverty programs like food stamps or the EITC. It also fails to take into account expenses such as child care and out-of-pocket medical spending. If you look at the traditional rate — which, I’m not even kidding, is based on the affordability of food for a family of three in 1963/4, with no adjustments except for inflation since then — it looks like poverty has stagnated rather than fallen.

Hat Tip: Huffington Post

(Community Matters) Terrific article on what they mean, their history and current challenges. 

(Community Matters) And so the series end – definitely part of the (if not THE) gay canon. The new book ends Armistead Maupin’s literary tradition begun in 1978 as a newspaper serial, The Tales of the City. Love, love, love these books – they were an oasis in my 20s and 30s.

The Days of Anna Madrigal will reportedly follow the title character, a 92-year-old, trans woman, as she travels to Burning Man.

Hat Tip: Towelroad

(Community Matters) So we haven’t completely convinced Steve to run, but I’d say he’s 99% there. He’s asked if I’d be his campaign treasurer if he agrees to run, and I have said yes.

Why Steve? This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Every single person currently announced and/or expected to run is a friend. Everyone of them have been important and good contributors to Austin. And, this next term for Austin City Council is an inflection point for the future of our city.

What we need today is the collective vision and wisdom of all Austin’s constituencies – not an Armageddon meltdown as we have our usual romp ’em stomp ’ems but a thoughtful, deliberate, fair coming together of competing visions. We live in the greatest city exactly because we’ve battled competing visions and come to consensus (consensus might be a bit nicely slanted but at least somewhere in the middle). Our communities of color have been underrepresented in the past; I’m pleased we’re absolutely at the table today and have strong voices. We don’t have the luxury of another 20 years to reach a consensus about how we’re handling growth, transportation, education, economic development. We need leadership that brings us together and teases out the best from all of us.

Steve has a unique way of being, skills set, vision and gift for building bridges that I know will help 10 council members elected in various and distinct districts rise above those individual district interests to act in the best interests of the greater Austin, while continuing to forcefully represent the interests of their constituencies.

Whether in his law practice, the three sessions and six years he spent working in the state legislature – especially on public education, for $50/month, serving as the board chair for Ballet Austin, as the board chair for the Anti-Defamation League in Austin and now on its international board and executive committee, on the board of GenAustin (he’s the dad of 3 smart, successful young women), as a member of the founding board and now the board chair for the Texas Tribune . . . Steve has always been a transformative, visionary, thoughtful and inclusive leader. He hasn’t aspired to be an elected official, but he has always worked to help make Austin one of the great cities in the world, one that values what we have – our people, our environment, our economic opportunity – and what we can be for our citizens, especially our children. Given the unique next term in Austin’s chapter, he’s being called so all Austin constituencies have a voice and so that we will make the right decisions and take action so we love Austin in the future as much as we love Austin today.

(Community Matters) Senator Rubio is declaring President Johnson’s War on Poverty a failure – let’s look at the evidence. Among seniors, the rate of poverty has fallen from 30% to 9%; among children, it feel from nearly 25% to 15% before concerted and consistent attacks on federal programs by Republicans beginning in the mid 70s.

I usually attribute good intentions to politicians even when I don’t agree – assume I just don’t understand their perspective. However, such bold lies in the face of overwhelming evidence leaves me puzzled as to any good intentions.