Patrick Beach at the Austin-American Statesman ran an article on the current fight for an inch: Regulation, Legislation and Fun You Can’t Have with Texas Beer: the patchwork of Texas’ beer laws satisfies almost no one.
My summary of it: beer distributers are engaging in anti-Texas behavior. Texas legislators are weak and willing to bow to the political will of the distributors.
But you’re welcome to read the article yourself if you don’t like my interpretation.
My first exposure to the Sun City development north of Austin was via billboards in Austin in the mid 80s. They were really selling it up: lots of billboards.
Of course, at the time, there was a Steven Van Zant protest song of the same name. I recall it protesting some gambling city being run for whites only in an Apartheid environment.
(Ahh, the 80s, the decade of tepid protest songs: “We are the world, we are the children,…” what are we protesting? But, I digress.)
Anyway, I thought it was a quite unfortunate choice of names for this new development, and they still had time to change it. Well, they didn’t. And now it’s active senior haven: Sun City, Georgetown, Texas.
But more specifically, it will soon be my dad and step-mom’s new residence. They’re selling the Big Ol’ House in Canyon Lake, and moving to a reasonable sized, two-person residence in Georgetown.
So, good luck to them in the move and the hecticness of selling and buying a place. And I hope to get over there soon to check it out.
Did you contact your Representative yesterday? Excellent! Today, we are contacting our state Senator…
The Texas State Legislature has once again convened (for the 81st time), and there is another attempt to pass a minor, simple, and obvious bill that will set right the current inability of small brewers to sell their product from their breweries – a right that was restored to the craft vintners of the state in 2005.
Whenever this bill arises, it is usually killed in committee, thanks to big money distributors (Eagle among them). See I Love Beer for more information on what you can do, and please contact your state senator! The more light that shines on an issue, the harder it is for a legislative committee to keep it from seeing the house floor.
Open Letter:
Representative Gallego,
The Texas State Legislature has once again convened (for the 81st time), and there is another attempt to pass a minor, simple, and obvious bill that will set right the current inability of small brewers to sell their product from their breweries – a right restored to craft vintners of the state in 2005.
Whenever this bill arises, it is usually killed in committee, thanks to big money distributors (Eagle among them). See I Love Beer for more information, and please contact your state representative! The more light that shines on an issue, the harder it is for a legislative committee to keep it from seeing the house floor.
Open Letter:
Continue reading
Center Point Energy’s web site is stupid for not providing me the ability to schedule a payment. They send me the bill two weeks in advance and I can either “pay now” or try to remember to pay closer to the date, forget about it, pay late, get reported for late payments, get dinged on my credit score …
One thing they do have is this nifty histogram of my natural gas usage. I lost my water heater in June, and that was the only thing using gas. I didn’t much notice it at the time, but I was paying something for a small leak that bloomed into a massive leak one friday night in August.
My very leaky house peaks at heater usage in December and January obviously.
Gas Usage Histogram
And if you’d like to see what that costs me, here in Houston, here’s that data… Continue reading
Flickr Logo
Um, I was getting free Flickr Pro from AT&T? When did that happen?
Anyway, it will be expiring on November 8, 2009. I guess we’re redefining “about to”. I also guess that right after I paid for the Pro account I somehow got a free pro account?
Anyway, I fully expect to get another email 10 months from now reminding me that it’s actually about to expire.