Community Matters

(Community Matters) Yesterday ACM announced a new name, The Thinkery at the Meredith Learning Lab – named in honor of Lynn Meredith for her extraordinary leadership and support. Kudos to my dear friend + Mike Nellis who’s an awesome ED.

The Thinkery is an evolution of Austin Children’s Museum opening at Mueller in December 2013. It’s Austin’s sparkling new home for “why” and “how.” A place where science and families play side by side. Where people connect with ideas by doing, making and experiencing. It’s a foundry for a new generation of innovators and creative problem solvers. And it’s a heck of a good time.

(Community Matters) Not to just keep posting NYTimes headlines . . . and, I hadn’t realized the sooner-than-expected housing recovery was Wall Street driven as institutions were purchasing 10s of thousands of homes.  That’s laudable and also gives some pause. Overall appears a good thing, even an innovative way to make money and help speed up recovery. I’m sure there’s downside and worries – hopefully less worry than appreciation.

(Community Matters) Groundbreaking innovation in pharmacology with promising early results fighting cancer. 

The drugs, still generally in early testing, work in an entirely new way, by unleashing the immune system to attack cancer cells much as it attacks bacteria. That could be an alternative to often-debilitating chemotherapy.

The new drugs work by disabling a brake on the immune system called the programmed death 1 receptor, or PD-1.

Much of the previous attempts at cancer immunotherapy have focused on the first problem — trying to train the immune system to recognize the tumor and attack it.

The PD-1 drugs tackle the second problem of immune system suppression. How many cancers this will work for is still unclear.

(Community Matters) This doesn’t bode well for King Abdullah II.

(Community Matters) No surprise to anyone who realizes Bush/Cheney intentionally manufactured these deficits with Nordquist’s advice on the two rounds of tax cuts. Whether through supply side or vodoo economics, they’ve long angled to shrink government and the Ayn Rand crowd (think Paul Ryan) to dismantle %/or substantially scale back social security and medicare.

Krugman: The Geezers Are All Right [re: Social Security} The risk is that we might, at some point in the future, have to cut benefits; to avoid this risk of future benefit cuts, we are supposed to act pre-emptively by…cutting future benefits. What problem, exactly, are we solving here?

The truth is that the long-term outlook for Social Security and Medicare, while not great, actually isn’t all that bad. It’s time to stop obsessing about how we’ll pay benefits to retirees in 2035 and focus instead on how we’re going to provide jobs to unemployed Americans in the here and now.

(Community Matters) There were nine violent hate crimes against the LGBT community in Manhattan last month, including the shooting death of a popular 32-year old known as the upbeat “mayor of Grand Central Terminal,” where he worked.

A fantastic letter from the Episcopal Bishop of New York condemning the 9 hate crimes in May and affirming the LGBT community as full & faithful members of the Episcopal Church – full inclusion and participation by the LGBT community including access to ordination, all diocesan & parochial leadership, and same sex marriage.

(Community Matters) I hadn’t read about his checkered past – claims of arson and car theft, a con man. Darrell Issa is the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee who took to Sunday’s airwaves claiming the White House directed IRS overreach against the Tea Party. Feels sorta like a loud homophobe, we almost always find out they are closet cases.

(Community Matters) I haven’t read the proposed ordinance referred to in AAS article: Austin might seek more from developers of downtown high-rises. And, when the City grants additional development rights (height, setback, zoning changes) there’s often a huge increase in the value of a particular property.

It doesn’t seem inappropriate to require a slither of this increase in value to accrue to the public, and of course we shouldn’t impose draconian costs or fees. Developers are always gonna complain about any assessment – who doesn’t try to minimize cost, maximize profit? Asking Austin citizens to forgo any fees associated with development bonuses sounds unreasonable.

Unless . . . well . . . maybe we ought to give developers an option. We could offer a choice, equity participation in lieu of upfront costs. If we grant development bonuses which increase the value of a project by 10, or 20%, then they grant us options so that we’ll be due 10% to 20% of any realized gains. That’ll help minimize upfront costs which “inhibit desired development.” Come to think of it, maybe we ought to 86 any fee or set aside development costs and just allow developers to share a slither of the increased value bonus with an equity option.

(Community Matters) I know this is ridiculous and not worthy of posting. As I was reading the story about China Winning from the war on Iraq, the following statement stood out:

Before the invasion, Iraq’s oil industry was sputtering, largely walled off from world markets by international sanctions against the government of Saddam Hussein, so his overthrow always carried the promise of renewed access to the country’s immense reserves.

reminded me of yesterday’s story about the neocons and how they followed the money, maybe overlooking threats in the Caspian Sea in order to access oil reserves on behalf of Big Oil.

I know, I know, conspiracy, alarmist and completely made up, just amplified by the financial ties from Halliburton to the vice president  – nevertheless,  a thought provoking coincidence of words.

(Community Matters) Enjoyed breakfast this morning (my 2nd today after the first at 7:30) with APD Officer JJ Schmidt. Officer Schmidt works in APD intelligence and offices with the Texas Department of Public Safety. He’s an Austinite from the age of 5, married to an Austin-born woman who happens to be the cousin of Brett Hurt.

We talked about the real threats against Austin public safety. Gotta remember we’re very near the border with a country overridden by drug cartels and on the corridor these drug cartels use – not to mention the capital of an important American city, even more important symbolically than our standing as 11th largest might suggest. We enjoy a relatively safe community – some of us more than others – and don’t often think about how many real threats are being monitored and disabled while we sleep, work and play.

JJ and I are gonna work on aspirational goals for entrepreneurial involvement in public safety, in supporting public safety, first responders. I’m thinking there are folks who want to see Austin as safe if not safer for their children and grandchildren. I don’t think it’ll be so without serious, innovative intervention.

I asked Officer Schmidt what three steps he’d prioritize to ensure public safety (didn’t really give him any time to think about this, but first thoughts:)

1. Involvement with kids in schools – interventions and gang prevention
2. Culture – making people in Austin more mindful of safety concerns
3. Support for public safety personnel and infrastructure

(Community Matters)  an updated summary of the Arab Spring from Politico Playbook.

GET SMART FAST – “Arab Spring-What Next-Glance: Key stress points in the Arab world” (AP) – “While the world’s attention is riveted to Syria’s civil war, there are other countries trying to cope with the convulsions of the Arab Spring that began nearly 2½ years ago. A look at some stress points in the Arab world beyond the battles in Syria:

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(Community Matters) Appears there might be a revival – opportunity for approval of the same sex marriage bill has been extended to August 31st and this means an opportunity for Gov Pat Quinn to call a special session.  Kudos to good friends working very hard on this in Springfield in Chicago. Illinois Observer