I think I’ve mentioned a time or two that I live in Austin, the only Texas city that rips its hair out trying to compete with San Francisco, Seattle and Portland for a progressive gold star. Terms like sustainable, eco-friendly, green, inclusive, alternative energy, earth conscious, global warming, recycling, zero impact, light rail and bike lanes all feature large in my city’s vocabulary.
Austin hates plastic, cars, freeways, bottled water, cars, disposable grocery bags, domestic beer, cars, roads wide enough to drive on without hitting a biker in the aforementioned bike lanes, nice places for children such as aquariums, water parks, zoos, museums and, of course, cars. Unless they’re British Minis or hybrids, those are cool. On second thought, I’m fairly convinced they despise children almost as much as cars.
The F1 racing track is a done deal, construction is well underway 30 miles southeast of Austin and Texas taxpayers will be subsidizing the project to the tune of $25M every single year it’s in business. No one is quite sure why the taxpayers are being squeezed, considering the owners are billionaires and the economic impact is questionable at best, so let’s just call it a Texas Stimulus Package.
As the major potential beneficiary of the F1 track’s much touted financial spill over, Austin stuck its long, nebby, green nose into the negotiations and strong armed a mighty rack of environmental concessions from the owners.
Keep in mind that my city is run by delusional idiots, so I won’t be at all offended if you get to chuckling while perusing their inane victory list over the dirty race car polluters.
The tentative six-page environmental agreement totals 54 numbered points and 12 subpoints. They include:
• Limiting parking at the track to 25,000 spots.
• Providing shuttles and off-site parking in Austin for the rest of the 100,000 or so spectators.
• Hiring whichever private shuttle service creates the least air pollution.
• Providing showers at the track for spectators who bicycle to the race.
• Powering at least half the facility’s operations through a combination of solar panels, wind turbines or the city’s GreenChoice program, which uses renewable energy but is more expensive than the city’s standard rate.
• Planting drought-tolerant shrubs.
• Making at least 5 acres that sit in a flood plain available for a community garden.
• Collaborating with the University of Texas’ Austin Technology Incubator and other academic institutions to create a research center for environmentally friendly racing.
• Raising $5 million to fund the research.
• Installing low-flow toilets.
• Hosting races for electric cars.
• Hiring minority contractors.
• Hiring locally.
Via our birdcage liner paper known as The Statesman.
• Limiting parking at the track to 25,000 spots.
• Providing shuttles and off-site parking in Austin for the rest of the 100,000 or so spectators.
• Hiring whichever private shuttle service creates the least air pollution.
Hey, look at me. I’m an environmentally conscious city planner. Watch me put these guys to shame…
• Limiting parking at the track to
25,000100,000 spots.• Providing shuttles and off-site parking in Austin for the rest of the
100,00025,000 or so spectators.• Hiring whichever private shuttle service creates the least air pollution.
Now, was that so hard? Or is there something obvious that I’m missing here…a couple dozen prairie dog holes, or rattlesnake nests, that are somehow more sacred? I mean, help me out here…I thought the name of the game was reducing air pollution, something about fossil fuels…etc.?
You left out the score of locally sourced (75% illegal aliens) building the track and the sad fact that drunk European bicyclers would be dead by the time they reached Ben White Boulevard (2.3 miles from Sixth Street) in our atrocious heat.
Not to mention anybody who wants to grow vegetables in that part of Texas already owns acreage devoted to agriculture and the sad fact that low flow toilets won’t swallow buckets of inebriated Euro vomit.
I wonder if the showers will be available to heat stroked race fans?
Electric race cars…zoom, zoom, zoom.
Oh, I can go through it with a fine tooth comb if you want me to.
What exactly is this nonsense about environmentally friendly racing? What does $5m worth of research buy you in that effort? What’s so environmentally friendly about minority contractors? Are some races greener than others?
And finally, how can you race electric cars, if no one gives a flying fig how fast an electric car can go?
The list goes on and on…bicycling to the race track, that’s like something out of Family Guy. Ooh, lookit me! I’m being environmentally conscious, riding my bicycle to the race track…gah…I feel your pain, Sacramento wishes it was something else, too. San Francisco must feel honored with all these cities wanting to be just like it. With its urine and feces in the streets and sidewalks, yeah, such a worthy model of emulation.
I’d love if you went through it with a fine tooth comb, that would make for a fun analysis, Morgan.
On a serious note, before everyone gets all happily caustic over Austin’s idiocy, clean air, water and land are items I think all conservative minded people care deeply about. We just happen to think measures like these don’t truly address real issues of conservancy, good stewardship and pollution control.
Austin and Texas taxpayers will be subsidizing the project to the tune of $25M every single year it’s in business
I repeat myself again: I hate subsidizing millionaires in sports.
The last time you wrote about this you said Perry’s virtues are running a tad thin. I couldn’t agree more.
I know you are impressed with Perry’s ability to win elections. Do you think the stink of deals like this will keep him from the Republican nomination?
There was also some talk of real estate transactions back in April. The smart money is selling now. I would bet on that.
This will not end well. Americans don’t really like F1. They talk about it a lot, but they don’t seem to want ot pay much for the privledge.
Mike, I think Perry stinks to high heaven. As Texans, we know how far in bed he’s climbed with donors and corporate interests. To tell you how far out of the GOP box I’m leaning, I was a Debra Medina supporter during the last governor’s race.
I am impressed with Rick’s political skills and I still believe he could pull the GOP nomination out of his hat if he decides to run. Most republican voters would dismiss his cozy nature with business interests as beneficial pro-enterprise activities.
Look, I lost faith in all political parties and most of their representatives two years ago. I’m kind of making my way in the dark at this point, but I’m not so blind that I can’t recognize what most people will still accept as a political saviour.
I think Perry might meet most of their needs.
Oh I know you don’t like Perry.
Like you I wonder if the typical voter views him as pro-market as opposed to cronyist he really is.
I don’t much care for either the typical voter or Perry.
Most people can’t conjugate crony capitalism, Mike.
When these clowns grabbed the subsidy, they had to know they were opening the process up for Austin. They could care less. Why would anyone who screws the taxpayer care if Austin screws the public?
True, James.
Most people can’t conjugate crony capitalism, Mike.
Yup. This is Barack Obama’s best shot at re-election. If the Republican establishment goes after the “pro-business” vote in an effort to win over weary, unemployed and underemployed Ohioans…and Pennsylvanians…and, maybe even, Californians…and then from some thin streak of perceived success, infers they can keep propping up this Marxist/capitalist hybrid.
I can tell you right now how the electorate will respond. Daphne’s completely in the right here. They’ll say “Lessee…do I want to subsidize a bunch of lazy goof-offs and druggies and jack-offs who have nothing because they think work is for suckers…or do I want to subsidize zillionaires. Easy decision, the druggies and the jack-offs win.”
They’ll make that call in about a fifth of a second. They won’t look back. They’ll vote hard left, and they’ll sleep like a baby that night. When the economy continues to sour, they’ll say “Look, I had to choose the lesser of two evils.” And in an odd little way, they’ll be right.
Looks like you’re catching my sense of cynical doom, Morgan.
Morgan, one more thing – Obama’s one of the biggest crony capitalist political whores around, so I guess if the voters choose him for one more run around the track they’ll be taking it up the bunghole from both sides of the entitlement fence.
It’s very much like screwing around on a spouse, Daphne.
Somehow, when the exact same thing is done by a guy who never took a stand against it, it seems relatively okay. At least He isn’t being a hypocrite. In fact, didn’t He tell Joe The Plumber “I just think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody”?
…it’s good for everybody”?
Except the middle and upper-middle class.
In other words, us.
See, the big deceit is really going on with the other part of that statement…”spread the wealth around”…evidently, government is the only thing that ever gets that done. When you leave the free market in charge, all the wealth goes to a privileged few, everyone else is living just like Oliver Twist or something.
BIG, hefty, large Oliver Twists…driving big cars…sucking down drinks from Starbucks that cost six bucks, taking their kids to see every crappy movie made from comic book characters, shelling out eighty bucks in one trip for soda and candy and popcorn, every whelp in the litter has new shoes and a cell phone. And the flatscreen at home nine feet across.
But they’re really hurting because Obama is only starting to get around to spreading the wealth around. Need more freebies! Gah, I hate moochers…there’s a reason why mommas used to lecture their kids about starving children in India & China.
Okay Morgan, I get the meme. No argument there.
But everything you’re talking about was mainstream kosher well before Obama took office.
We didn’t suddenly run into this financial ditch three years ago, it was a long time in the making from both a personal and bi-partisan political perspective.
The country has been financially negligent at home and in our government for a very long time.
Bush fiddled while his Rome burned.
Obama spread gasoline.
Actually, that’s not quite close enough to the truth. Bush fiddled while Rome burned…and then when invaders arrived to sack his city (or, rather, didn’t arrive, didn’t try to sack, built a bunch of make-believe weapons to sack it someday, or merely went through the motions), Bush bombed them to the stone age.
Obama went on a tour and bowed to the invading armies. And then flew back home and spread gasoline. And played golf.
The government’s committed annual disbursements exceed the greatest share of revenue it has EVER achieved in one fiscal year, by over a trillion dollars. You can’t go back to any one of the eight years in the old Bush administration, and say the same thing.
Failing to reach for the fire extinguisher…spreading gasoline. Both are bad, but there is a big difference between the two.