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Austin controversies

Austin controversies Coronavirus

Modeling panic in Austin

September 1, 2020

We do not have the data science skills to answer a question that troubles us, to wit the extent to which epidemiological models have over-estimated risk of Covid-19 and thereby influenced suppressionist responses from politicians. We can, however, peek at a couple of proximate examples and ask a few questions.

In Austin, the celebrated University of Texas epidemiologists have effectively driven the local policy response to the pandemic, because what politician in this town can say “I don’t believe everything UT scientists say?” Not gonna happen, no way, no how. We do not always, or even frequently, agree with Austin’s Mayor Steve Adler, but our unqualified commitment to intellectual honesty compels us to feel his pain. In this “we believe science and definitely Hook ’em” town, Adler’s got to do what the UT epidemiologists recommend whether or not he privately worries that they might be wrong.

The main page for the UT projections is here. Anybody can scroll around and look at current projections for cases, hospitalizations, and deaths from Covid-19 over time. There also seems to be the archived data necessary to see past projections, but that requires the aforementioned data science skills we do not have in our otherwise vast armamentarium.

We do, however, have a few examples of historical predictions that make us worry that the UT disease forecasters have pushed Mayor Adler and Texas Governor Abbott toward pandemic response policies that were and are more restrictive than necessary or healthy.

On March 24 the team at UT presented this report to the Austin City Council and other learned local officials. On page four one finds a summary of the forecast for the key metrics we were all worried about in late March lined up with the policy response:

The “Austin-Round Rock MCA” includes Travis, Williamson, Hays, Caldwell, and Bastrop counties in central Texas. As of August 17, the aggregate deaths attributed to Covid-19 in those counties over five months was 581 (link) out of a population of roughly 2.2 million (for those of you keeping track at home, that is roughly 9 days of all-cause deaths for a typical US population of 2.2 million). Given that the death estimates in the bottom row of the table above are median projections at various levels of social distancing since March 23, one might conclude that the five counties in question have done a rather extraordinary job of social distancing, having reduced aggregate human interaction by between 75% and 90%.

Then again, one might be an idiot.

We do not believe that outside of a few highly compliant affluent neighborhoods in Austin itself the regional population has reduced its interaction by anything close to 75%, much less 90%, in the last five months. Any late-spring tour of Williamson County (“Wilco” is the second largest in the metro area with more than 500,000 residents) revealed virtually no mask game until the mandate and very little regard for the hazards of the disease or the case counts over which the media obsess. This is not just our impression, but the observation of our astute scientist daughter, who lives in Wilco and has been known to vent to her father on the topic.

Then there is Austin proper. Beginning in late May and for weeks thereafter, Austin hosted massive public demonstrations, which were masked up but not much distanced and naturally flowed in to the reopened bars. Grabbing a few beers after screaming at cops in 95 degrees is, actually, completely understandable and predictable. We were there. We saw no end of cute young people with neo-Marxist signs and colorful hair packing in to our favorite craft breweries after (actually) mostly peaceful demonstrations.

And never mind the insouciant youth in the parks. Egads.

Yet we are to believe that Austin and its environs have been 75-90% socially distant?

Not a chance on God’s green earth.

Now, you might say we should cut the UT team a break, insofar as nobody knew much about SARS-CoV-2 in the third week of March. Fair enough. So how has the UT team done more recently?

On August 10, we captured UT’s death projections for the State of Texas on August 31.

As of August 10, the UT epidemiologists projected that 23,460 Texans will have died from Covid-19 by August 31, within a range of 20,665 to 26,726.

Oops.

To be completely fair, the actual August 31 number will probably rise by 100-200 as the death certificates for the last few days trickle in, but UT still will have overshot its three week forecast for Texas by 80%.

What about more recently? We also grabbed an August 18 screenshot.

Once the UT team got within a two week window, they did hit the forecast range. Giving them full credit for late death certificates they hoisted their chin above “Min Projected” 12,602 deaths. We cannot resist noting, however, that the UT scientists gave themselves a massive 64% difference between that the high end of their range (20,672) and the low end (12,602) a mere 13 days out. Plenty of us dashboard doomscrollers could have hit the side of that barn without all that UT computing power.

Believe science, indeed.

Now, notwithstanding the fun we have had with this post, the serious point is not to castigate these epidemiologists or epidemiologists in general. No doubt they are working hard to improve their forecasts, and indeed they are contributing importantly to the policy debate. However, the demands from the media and the political left to “believe science” ought not actually mean “believe models.” Because many models, including the models much relied upon to inform pandemic response policies, are wildly wrong even when developed by the actual best people.

Models of anything, unleavened with judgment forged in honest and open debate, are not “science” at all. Unfortunately, we have of late had very little honest and open debate, and that is a huge problem.

Austin controversies Austin politics Coronavirus Yellow Journalism

Atrocious reporting, Austin edition

May 14, 2020

“Atrocious” is perhaps a bit strong, but headlines don’t count, right? Is that not one of the defenses erected by “journalism” fan-boys to protect click-baiting sensationalism by the media?

We saw two very locavore Austin stories in the last day that got our goat. First, Austin broadcaster KUT reported that “Austin Public Health’s Preliminary Data Shows Construction One Of Top Industries For COVID-19 Cases.” The inside baseball here is that Austin’s mayor, Steve Adler, banned construction, except for “affordable housing,” in his first shelter-in-place order. We derided Adler’s order in this regard, and were delighted when the Governor Abbott big-footed it a few days later.

Among the happy few on Austin’s political right, word spread that the city, irritated as it was to have been stomped on by the State of Texas, started testing the workers at construction sites in the hope of finding a hot mess of cases, all of which leads back to the KUT story, which reports vaguely, to wit:

Austin Public Health officials say they’re still crunching the numbers, but their investigations so far show construction joins long-term care facilities, health care and grocery stores as the industries hit hardest locally by COVID-19. The officials say they are still working to determine exactly how many cases have originated and spread from construction sites.

Never mind that this strikes us as the flimsiest reed upon which to hang the construction industry. The article and its redoubtable author, Jennifer Stayton, does not appear to say, or even ask, whether any of those construction workers, or their families, are among the minuscule number of people in Central Texas actually hospitalized with the Covid. Why not? If they don’t end up in the hospital, then who cares? Or did we not hear the number because construction workers, who are outside working hard under the Texas sun all day, are young, fit, not fat, and have strong lungs and plenty of Vitamin D circulating in their systems? Is it possible that not one of them have ended up in our hospitals?

Yes, it is possible. That would, in fact, be the single most relevant question. But neither Ms. Slayton nor the Austin public health bureaucracy is ‘fessing up, or even recording that the question was asked and not answered.

Then there is this sub-headline from Austin Patch: “2 weeks after Abbott directed the state economy to reopen, 7 more in Travis County have died and the illness count grows by 117 in 2 days.” Yeah, well, if you believe the WHO, which people who gun for Texas Governor Greg Abbott are oriented to do, “[a]mong patients who have died, the time from symptom onset to outcome ranges from 2-8 weeks.” So, yeah, Abbott’s reopening order had nothing to do with most, if not all, of those deaths.

It would be so refreshing if reporters, especially local reporters, would spend a few minutes with the search engine of their choice before throwing gasoline on the social fire.

Austin controversies

Prop 1 fallout: The Austin fuzz crack down on the working folk

June 21, 2016

More or less the entire world knows that Austin imposed such onerous regulations on Uber and Lyft that they withdrew from the city rather than suffer under the burden. Since taxis are too expensive for many people, generally suck, and in any case are in short supply in Austin because the local politicians have so decreed, a massive black market — a fleet of “gypsy cabs,” to those of us of a certain age and incorrectness — has emerged. More than 30,000 people (as of early June) have joined a Facebook group and arrange for entirely unregulated rides off the grid, thereby vitiating the disingenuos “safety” rationale put forth by the “progressives” on the Austin city council.

Well, apparently the Austin Police Department has decided, or been instructed, to put its jackboots down on the necks of the now illegal — or, because it is Austin, perhaps “undocumented” — drivers trying to recover some of the income they lost.

The city of Austin is using sting operations to crack down on drivers working for unlicensed ride-hailing companies, issue fines and seize cars, authorities told the American-Statesman on Tuesday.

The cars of four drivers for Arcade City, a peer-to-peer service that connects passengers with drivers through its Facebook page, were impounded Friday after the city’s Transportation Department conducted a sting.

Yeah, don’t issue a ticket to these poor slobs. Impound their freaking cars so they cannot get to any other job, either. That’ll fix ’em just right.

Addendum: Here’s an interesting post with a lot more detail around the illegal ridesharing cooperatives. The significant safety issues compared to Uber and Lyft ought to make anybody realize how much safety the established companies imposed by the operation of the apps.

Austin controversies Austin politics Freedom ain't free

Austin “exports poverty”. Thank God.

June 2, 2016

Austin’s mayor, Stephen Adler, who had the best undergraduate education obtainable by man, is alleged to have said this:

We are not sure what it means to “export” poverty, but we are certain of this: It is better for a city to export poverty than to import it, all the more so if the city’s government spends money as if rapid growth will continue forever.

We rather like Mayor Adler notwithstanding our frequent policy disagreements, so we’re going to hope that he was taken out of context. Regardless, we will vote for politicians who vow to export poverty rather than import it, and you are nuts if you do otherwise.

Austin controversies

Liberal death match: Nau’s Enfield Drug and the Old Austin Neighborhood Association

May 31, 2016

Take a careful look at the once grand — OK, reasonably nice — and now profoundly dilapidated house below:

611 west lynn

Yes, Virginia, it is a dump, an eyesore, and a pox on the landscape. Yet the amateur preservationists at the Old West Austin Neighborhood Association, your Editor’s “own” neighborhood association, believe that the owners of this fire hazard should be deprived of the right to sell the valuable lot to a developer who might build something nice on it.

Because that would “change the character” of the neighborhood, itself a silly notion in a neighborhood that is a wonderful eclectic mix of new and old houses, apartment buildings, townhouses, and commercial buildings. The character of Old West Austin is its ever-changing diversity of architecture. Preservation for its own sake is not this neighborhood’s friend.

And, no, the house in question isn’t even “old” by the standards of much of the country, having originally gone up in 1890. The house is of no known historical or architectural significance.

Ordinarily, neighborhood busybodies destroy property rights without compunction simply because they can, but in this case there is a complicating consideration: It is owned by the same family that owns Nau’s Enfield Drug, an ancient and old school pharmacy with an actual soda fountain that everybody reveres and almost nobody patronizes. Nau’s is a genuine local landmark, having supported our neighborhood, which until quite recently was not so nice, since the 1930s. Sadly, Nau’s is now losing money, or making so little that it cannot sustain its owners (the Labay family), because much nicer places making much better food — yes, that must be said — have eroded the lunch counter trade, and other retailers, including HEB, chain pharmacies and convenience stores, have killed the rest of its business. Affluence has all but done in Nau’s, just as it has made the .62 acres underneath 611 West Lynn Street more valuable by an order of magnitude.

The neighborhood hanky-twisters purport both to love Nau’s, even if they don’t actually buy anything there, and to prefer the Labay family’s unairconditioned and collapsing house over literally anything else that might be built there. Since the sale of the latter is considered essential for the survival of the former (please do not ask us to explain that reasoning, we only report on the Austin liberal’s mind), this has put the Old Austin Neighborhood Association in to a defensive crouch. And, as everybody knows, an activist’s defensive crouch is comedy gold for normal people.

First up, one Rosemary Merriam, bold emphasis added:

“OWANA has long opposed the demolition of this house,” Rosemary Merriam, then the chair of the Old West Austin Neighborhood Association, told the Historic Landmark Commission on Jan. 25. “We think it has considerable historic value to our neighborhood, and we support the (city) staff’s recommendation that it be given historic status.

“I sympathize with the Labay family,” she said. “I understand the expense. We also pay taxes in our neighborhood, which are extraordinary.”

Ms. Merriam claimed the needed repairs are mostly cosmetic (something Labay disputes), and, she said, “I’ve never seen any attempts at major upkeep” on the house. Labay told the commission the family can’t afford the repairs.

Merriam knows not whereof she speaks. Or maybe she is being disingenuous. Your Editor has twice renovated — or underwritten the renovation of — old homes of roughly the same vintage (1870 and 1900), including one in Austin. It would cost at least $1 million to bring that house up to snuff, by which we mean to suitability for occupants willing to pay $1.5 million for the lot under it, the current appraised value. The house in question does not have air conditioning. This is Texas. When the hapless contractor rips off the walls to install HVAC, he will find that the wiring is dangerous, the plumbing is shot, and that raccoons have been living in the walls for seven years. It will be re-framed, rewired, and plumbed room by room, floor by floor. No doubt all of the windows will need to be replaced — we guess that expense alone would exceed all of the profits of Nau’s Enfield Drug for years. And we shudder to think what the bathrooms and kitchen will cost for a house that needs to be worth $2.5-$3 million when finished.
Point is, Ms. Merriam is either entirely ignorant of such things, or disingenuous. We suspect the latter. (And this rather brilliant letter to the Statesman agrees.)

Ms. Merriam is, however, an economic genius compared to this dude:

Alexander Shoghi, who is doing a substantial rehab work on an 1890 home across the street from the Labays’ vacant house, told the Historic Landmark Commission that allowing demolition of 611 West Lynn could “set a very dangerous precedent where a person can choose to not reinvest in one’s property, not maintain it to the point of it becoming uninhabitable and then eventually be able to sell it at a higher profit than would otherwise be available had they maintained it.”

Never mind that the trucks supporting this guy’s renovation — which we are certain has exceeded $1 million and probably $2 million — has been snarling morning traffic on West Lynn, your Editor’s regular commuting route, for at least the last year, that may be the most economically illiterate thing ever said by somebody who is not Bernie Sanders. It takes decades for a house to fall in to this level of disrepair. The economic value lost in that period would vastly exceed the upkeep, never mind the wear and tear on the people who have to manage the mess. People with once nice houses do not let them deteriorate to the point of collapse because they are long-term investors. They do so because they do not have the money to keep their house up. The argument that the Labay family let the house fall apart because they were hoping for a killing in real estate is so silly we’re surprised Milo Minderbinder didn’t think of it. And we know Shoghi is disingenuous, because he is a rich guy who used to work for Lehman Brothers. Investment bankers are first and foremost salesmen, and Shoghi is definitely selling in this case.

We have only the greatest sympathy for the Labay family. This is Texas, and ought to be a free country. They should be permitted to sell their property to a developer who will build a beautiful even if new home or homes on the land, whether or not they use the proceeds to keep Nau’s going. As for Old West Austin? We could do with fewer power-crazy control freaks.

Austin controversies

Austin and the “affordable housing” fraud

May 25, 2016

Your Editor has been very busy and hither and yon and such, and therefore away from, er, editing. We’re back, and we’ve noticed that “affordable housing” is again in the news in Austin. Or, more precisely, “mandates” that would impose on developers the requirement that they cough up some “affordable housing” in return for permission to build any housing. The motive, which will not achieve its desired result, is to fix the condition that “soaring rents have pushed poorer and minority residents out of the city.” Gentrification in this booming city with a history of segregation being a hot topic.

Let’s get a few things out of the way. Here are some basically irrefutable facts.

Austin has a sad history of segregation, not unlike most cities in the country.

The people who run Austin today had nothing to do with that sad history. Nor are they descendants of such people. Since most people in Austin are fairly recent transplants, few of the people here had anything to do with the old ugliness. They nonetheless feel guilty about it.

The consequence is that Austin’s blacks and Latinos have been concentrated in neighborhoods with historically cheap housing.

The city and its moderately liberal mayor boost the shit out of the city, promoting its coolness and its hot tech-centered economy.

The city has spent a fortune on amenities that appeal to affluent people such as your Editor, including endless “hike and bike” trails, redeveloped parks and event venues, mass transit initiatives, and so forth. This has caused property taxes to soar.

Austin has a very strong economy, with an unemployment rate so low that wages are rising rapidly, especially for “new class” types around the tech economy.

Austin is the fastest growing real city in the United States. Lots of people are moving here, because of the foregoing.

So, in other words, the city has been pursuing policies with the objective of attracting affluent people who can afford Austin. Those policies have been successful, and affluent people are moving here, further driving up the cost of already heavily taxed housing. Quite predictably, the slightly less affluent among the new transplants are buying up the less expensive housing in the historically black and Latino neighborhoods. The result is that the black population of Austin is declining.

This being considered lamentable, the city’s government — or a subset thereof — is hoping to create more “affordable” housing by imposing huge new costs on developers who propose to build… housing.

It is fairly well-established that affordable housing mandates do not actually work. See, for example, this study [Word file] of the many cities in California that have experimented with “inclusionary zoning.” Money shot (emphasis added):

Using panel data and a first difference model, we test how the policy affected the price and quantity of housing in California cities between 1980, 1990, and 2000. Under various specifications we find that cities adopting below-market housing mandates end up with higher prices and fewer homes. Between 1980 and 1990, cities imposing below-market housing mandates end up with 9 percent higher prices and 8 percent fewer homes overall. Between 1990 and 2000 cities imposing below-market housing mandates end up with 20 percent higher prices and 7 percent fewer homes overall. Consistent with Ellickson’s hypothesis, the program may not be about increasing the supply of housing or making it more affordable overall.

Our question is this: Are the liberal flower and chivalry of Austin unaware that their big ticket policies designed to appeal to affluent people have succeeded wildly in both driving up costs and attracting er, affluent people? Or — and this would be the only sane alternative explanation — are our “leaders” cynically dangling a counterproductive “affordable” housing mandate to deflect the rage of the anti-gentrification activists from the politicians and to the real estate developers?

With politicians, it is always hard to know whether “stupid” or “cynical” is the dominant consideration. Given our city council’s terrifyingly poor grip on economics and reflexive preference for more regulation rather than less, we lean toward stupidity.

But we could be wrong.

Austin controversies

Will Austin deregulate taxis to bring back Uber and Lyft?

May 11, 2016

While the righty-libertarian wing of the blogosphere is a-twitter mocking Austin for regulating Uber and Lyft out of town, the executive branch of the city government seems to be moving against the city council and the Democratic establishment. Today brings news of an “internal” memo, dated just days after the offending referendum, proposing deregulation of the taxi cartel to level the playing field with the ridesharing gig. This is good news, even if the city council does not go along, because it suggests intelligence in the actual management of the city of Austin.

Several things might be said about this idea.

First, literally the first sentence of the internal memo says that it is “an update on the effort … to provide a ‘level playing field'” for taxis, which is essentially an admission that the Austin ordinance was to protect a cartel in an industry that should die a reasonably abrupt death anyway (if ridesharing had existed before taxis, would anybody in their right mind start a taxi business that did not have a monopoly guarantee from government?).

Second, props to Mayor Stephen Adler for this maneuver. We have a new regard for his capacity to play the long game.

Third, all of this sad business might have been avoided if the city had followed the freaking brilliant advice in this letter to the editor of the Austin Statesman back on October 10:

The City Council’s proposals to burden Uber and Lyft with substantial new regulations, which may well drive them out of Austin or diminish services, are misguided. Thousands of Austinites provide these services safely, and hundreds of thousands use them. They work — and because there is real-time documentation of a specific rider getting into the car with a specific driver, the possibility of crime against one another is lower than using taxis, which have no evidence connecting driver and rider. If the problem is asymmetrical regulation with taxis, consider adopting Sarasota, Florida’s sensible solution, which is to deregulate both taxis and ride hailing. If the problem is revenue — and one gets the sense that ever-higher taxis are the real agenda here — consider a simple revenue-neutral tax that applies equally to both taxis and transportation networking companies. But do not drive out ride-hailing apps, which, as evidenced by demand, [are] solving a genuine transportation problem here in Austin.

People really need to listen to that guy.

Austin controversies

The sad message in the Uber app this morning, and the problem with fingerprinting

May 9, 2016

We’re sure we’re not the only person to have tried the Uber app this morning…

image

The question that remains unanswered in the post mortem: How far apart are the Austin city council and the ridesharing companies? Positions seem to have hardened in the political fight leading up to the vote against Proposition 1.

The question comes up, why do the ridesharing companies resist fingerprinting so much? In Texas, in what seems to be a very un-Texan attitude, you need to be fingerprinted for virtually any government permission, including, until very recently, to get a driver’s license. Many of the locals your Editor engages in his neighborhood coffee shop therefore do not understand the resistance.

The answer is that fingerprinting is a huge pain in the neck in many other states. In New Jersey, for example. Your Editor has the experience of driving 15 miles through local Trenton area traffic to a particular office of the state police, and then waiting around for a particular copper charged with the finger printing of corporate executives and other miscreants who need certified fingerprints to cough up to regulatory agencies in, say, Florida. If the Austin rules were imposed in Newark, far fewer people would get their act sufficiently together to qualify. So in many places, fingerprinting is a real barrier to entry with no obvious security benefit.

And never mind that Texans who love freedom should be calling for less fingerprinting in general, rather than more, if for no other reason than we ought not feed the data hungry security state more than absolutely necessary.

But we digress. Given the foregoing, what are the odds that Uber and Lyft can agree to fingerprinting in Austin without opening up similar fights in cities across the country? We speculate that they are unlikely to concede the point, and we further speculate that this city council is unlikely to give up its hard won victory. We therefore doubt that Uber and Lyft will be back in Austin soon, which will be a great loss for both customers and drivers, even if a windfall for the opponents of “corporate greed” and their allies, the three authorized taxi corporations and their tightly rationed number of cars.