Wow.…and that doesn’t include the fat bennies either (roughly $30,000 if history is any guide). Total cost to the taxpayer? Over $115,000
I’m pretty sure that’s MORE than Mandy Walsh made [page 96] AFTER she had been here five years already AND went to school for more training to get a bunch of letters after her name.
It’s also very fat consideringthere isn’t really any objective way to know if she is “doing a good job” at “directing the development” here!
I mean, if the guy who fixes water mains or downed power lines fucks up, you’ll know about it pretty fast when the line explodes again or the power doesn’t work. That guy is also called out of his nice warm bed plenty of times to fix those messes in shitty weather or the middle of the night.
Something tells me Stacey won’t have to do any of that for HER $85,000 – which is probably TWICE the money that poor guy who does REAL work makes!
But when it comes to the Nerf job of “Economic Development Director”? Oh yeah – let’s shoot for six figures for someone who has NEVER held that position before! Sounds like a good idea!
I’d respond to THAT by saying: “maybe we don’t need anyone to “direct” our economic development in the first place. Let the free market do the job”.
Ah…sweet victory! Trousdale FINALLY faced reality and jacked his offered wage in Houston from $13/hr (which I said would never do the trick) up to $15/hr (which is getting closer, but still behind the curve).
Finally, Joe bit the tit and raised his offer from $13 to $15 yesterday! Lampasshole for the win!
I find it hilarious that Wal-Mart (which we already have here) is paying MORE than PhoLicious (who the LEDC tried to lure into their Business Pork with subsidies). Wal-Mart has a lot more than one position at the store, too.
Just more proof that the LEDC is utterly incapable of seeing economic reality and accepting that their Business Pork will NEVER have any kind of ROI. It was all just a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.
P.S. I’m not saying I’m a genius who can see the future a year down the road, but I’m not NOT saying that either. Here is what I said almost a YEAR ago about why PhoLicious wasn’t a viable Business Pork prospect:
#3 They don’t really employ anyone right now. I think it’s just the two of them doing everything themselves. Maybe have another body or two at $15/hr to put the kits together, but we are not talking a huge amount of jobs here. Certainly not enough to justify $7.1 million dollars in land, roads, electricity, water, etc that the Business Pork has committed to.
So now the story is that it’s no big deal that Biden let a Chinese spy balloon float across the entire U.S. without shooting it down because the same thing happened under Trump? LOL. Does anybody believe that shit?
Why didn’t we hear about it then? Well, there was an “awareness gap” of course! If that story is true (it isn’t) then a bunch of people need to be brought up on treason charges and executed – because that is REAL treason, not the fake treason the J6 Committee seems obsessed with.
You don’t keep shit like that from the Commander in Chief, whether you like him or not.
People often ask how being Woke hurts the military, and the answer is that it soaks up time and resources that would be spent on addressing real problems like “domain awareness gaps.”
If I train for 10 hours a day to kill you and you train for five hours a day to kill me but use the other five hours to gay the place up and learn about braiding hair, you’re gonna die when we finally meet.
Time is finite.
An absolute pussy in a mask AND visor inspires mockery – not respect.
How does he arrive at this number? Well, he pulls it out of his ass, of course. Oh, and he “used to be a teacher and struggled to make ends meet”, so whatever he tells us is gospel and cannot be questioned…because WE unwashed masses are not teachers.
This may shock you to hear, but I am 100% fine with this plan. However, there are going to be a few strings attached:
#1 – Teachers will now work a full year, just like the rest of us. This “summers off” bullshit is an anachronistic holdover from 150 years ago when kids were needed in the fields because most of the population were farmers. That is no longer the case, so school will now be full time. We can break the year into 4 quarters, and you can get a week break between those quarters, but that’s it.
There is no reason to have $20 million dollar facilities sitting unused for 1/4 of the year.
#2 – Taxpayers will not pay one penny more for this plan – EVER. You will get the money a few different ways:
#2a – You will get rid of the dead wood paper pushers called “administration”. Over the last 30 or 40 years, “administrators” have grown roughly FIVE TIMES faster than the student population. If anything, there should be FAR LESS paper pushers today than there were in the 1970s, thanks to the Internet and computers making each worker more efficient.
I have told this story many times on here, but our little grade school (1st through 8th) had 30 students per classroom for 240 students. We had ONE secretary with her mimeograph machine and ONE principal. That was it. Don’t tell me it can’t be done.
#2c – All the superintendents and assistant superintendents will be paid the same as teachers. If teachers are the most important people, then guys like “Doctor” Chane Rascoe who teaches ZERO kids will not make $170,000 plus bennies anymore. He will make $70,000 also. Don’t like it? Quit.
#3 – Class size will be 30 students…and they will all sit in desks facing forward. From my first day of 1st grade (1976) all the way to my last day of high school (1988) we sat at DESKS, and there were 30 of us. None of this “collaborative learning” with tables horseshit – that is for kindergarteners. My teachers easily handled 30 students because there was discipline. That needs to be brought back.
#4 – There will be cameras in every room live-streaming classes for any parent to look in on at any time. If you are paid $70,000 by the taxpayers, you are accountable to the taxpayers. Don’t like it? Quit. Which brings us to #5…
#5 – Stop crying to get rid of standardized testing. If you want the “big bucks”, there is going to be accountability. That means standardized testing to see if you are doing your jobs correctly. Don’t like it? Quit. Speaking of crying…
#6 – No more crying about “we spend time out of class grading papers and making lesson plans”. Guess what? PLENTY of other professions take work home and deal with bullshit after hours. It’s called life. Grow up and get used to it.
#7 – Shitty teachers will be fired asap. If you are dangling $70,000 out there, you are going to get some smart people in there who wouldn’t otherwise be there. That means there won’t be room for shitty teachers anymore, so be careful what you wish for.
For instance, I’d give Cathy “Pork Chop” Kuehne her walking papers the moment I saw her make THREE basic grammar errors on a public Facebook post. If you are too dumb to know how to pluralize “STORY”, then you shouldn’t be teaching. Bye bye. No crying about it either.
#8 – Not a single goddamned smart phone allowed anywhere near a class. If I had my way, they’d be banned until you are 18 years old anyways. Maybe we put two free pay phones out at the front of the school and you can call mommy from those if you absolutely have to. We got by in school without smart phones – these kids can too.
#9 – In the interest of discipline being brought back, we are going to be a LOT faster to expel the troublemakers. No more endless detentions and suspensions. Schools are spending about $12,000 per year for you to be there. If you don’t appreciate it and keep causing problems for the kids who DO want to be there, you’ll be expelled permanently a lot faster than you are now. Then you can go out in the real world and work at Wal-Mart or dig ditches. But the days of giving kids 15 chances are over. Teachers don’t need that shit.
Well, that’s about it! You teachers still want that $70,000 per year salary?? The ball is in your court!
The greenies’ dream of “clean” (except for millions of dead birds) energy from wind farms is dying in the face of the poor economics (even with tax subsidies) and unreliable technology. The big players in constructing wind turbines are facing massive losses and write-downs and cancelling big offshore wind projects. Brace yourself for demands for even more subsides to the failing industry.
The green energy subsidiary of German electrical equipment giant Siemens just reported Thursday that it lost nearly a billion dollars in the last quarter. Via Fox News (Hat tip: Beege Welborn, Hot Air):
Global green energy company Siemens Gamesa reported Thursday that it had lost a staggering $967 million during the three-month period from between October to December.
The Germany-based company, which dubs itself as “the global leader in offshore power generation,” noted the wind industry has faced various unfavorable pressures leading to negative growth in recent months and years, in its earnings report for the first quarter of fiscal year 2023 released Thursday morning. The company added that governments would need to further assist the industry to ensure future positive growth.
“The negative development in our service business underscores that we have much work ahead of us to stabilize our business and return to profitability,” Siemens Gamesa CEO Jochen Eickholt said in a statement.
“The beginning of fiscal year 2023 saw a further increase in global wind demand prospects for the next ten years, but further governmental action is needed to close the gap between ambitious targets and actual installations,” the company added in its release.
The translation of “further government action” is increased subsidies, beyond those already offered in the misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act,” which mostly subsidizes green energy. Think Solyndra-like loan guarantees beyond those already available.
The big problem for Siemens and other makers (see below) is equipment failure and the need to lay out huge warranty expenditures. Reuters:
One fundamental problem with wind energy (aside from the meager amount of power delivered compared to coal and natural gas fired generators) is the variability of the wind.
It changes both intensity (speed) and direction unpredictably. Incredible stresses are placed on the generators, blades, and transmissions (akin to a car’s drive train) when the wind abruptly changes speed or direction. In order to get a meaningful amount of power, the blades have to be BIG, which is why the towers of major wind farms are very tall). But long blades spinning rapidly can have the tips break the sound barrier, and the stresses on the materials used in the blades (often carbon fiber because the blades have to be light weight) are intense. And changeable rapidly.
As a result, the order books of the major manufacturers are drying up.
As Beege Wellborn reports, another major player, General Electric, is also facing losses and is cutting back:
Here in the U.S., General Electric was humming along in its financials except…*sad trombone*…when it got to their turbine business. Ooo, they took a hit, too. Really fugly numbers.
…The company’s renewable energy business has been facing challenges due to inflation and supply chain pressures. The unit reported a loss of $2.2 billion in 2022.
GE is reducing global headcount at the onshore wind unit by about 20% as part of a plan to restructure and resize the business.
What a surprise. Look who GE is counting on to save the windy day! Tax credit bailout.
…Culp said the onshore business is expected to get a boost following the restoration of the tax credit for wind projects.
At least one major project faces abandonment, as Wellborn points out:
In an interesting turn of events in New Hampshire, a company contracted with the state for an offshore wind farm is embroiled in a major tussle with the state’s department of utilities. Avangrid has told the state they can’t afford to move forward, so “we’re not building it anymore.”
The developer behind the largest single offshore wind farm in the state’s pipeline on Thursday filed a formal notice of appeal to contest the Department of Public Utilities’ approval of contracts that the developer agreed to but says will no longer allow its project to be financed or built.
The DPU last month determined that the contracts, which the wind developers and utility companies agreed to in May, “are in the public interest” and approved them over the developer’s objections. Commonwealth Wind parent company Avangrid has said for months that increases in commodity prices, rising interest rates and supply shortages mean that its 1,200 megawatt renewable energy project “cannot be financed and built” under the terms of those power purchase agreements (PPAs).
With wind power, Kenny Roger’s song provides wise advice. “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.” It’s time to walk away from wind power subsidies.
It is beyond the time to end subsidies for wind power. Not only has atmospheric CO2 risen without serious consequence, the doomsaying models proven consistently wrong, but the financial thumb on the scale via subsidies has encouraged development of a technology that is still immature, if it ever will be viable.
Man, the list of shit that people “should get for free” just grows by the day!
I see idiots on the news and social media with a new one every day.
Here is a new one! People shouldn’t have their power turned off just because they don’t pay their bills, yo! That ain’t fair! Say what? Get a job and pay your bills? What are you, a racist?!?
“Energy justice” now? Fuck you.
I don’t know who Selah Goodson Bell is, but I guarantee you that he/she has never done an honest day’s work in their entire life.
After you secure your free electricity for life, you can then demand free medical care….
Go work as a nurse for free, then. Otherwise….fuck off.
Yeah ok…70% of this country is obese (which they did to themselves) but I should have to pay for all their medical care stemming from zero exercise and a life of fast food. Sounds fair to me!
Then you get your “free” education – which isn’t actually an education, but rather a piece of paper SAYING you are educated. Huge difference. And 95% of the time, it isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. Which is why these morons can’t find a job after racking up $200k in debt.
I could almost get behind forcing the taxpayer to pay for some kid’s education if the kid were smart, poor, hard-working and was getting a degree in engineering or chemistry or something else useful….oh wait, they already have that. It’s called an “academic scholarship”.
Tough shit. You should have been a plumber. Pay up and shut up, fucko
But those trillions are actually paying for morons to party for four years, get a “degree” in some horseshit like “Political Science”, “International Relations” or “Gender Theory”. Then they walk out even dumber than they were when they walked in and they are unemployable in any capacity except “ranting socialist moron holding a sign” – like THIS example here:
So you signed an agreement to trade money for a “great education” and the Biden economy is BOOMING, so why can’t you repay the loan you AGREED TO? Because “I don’t wanna” isn’t good enough, shit birds.
But even with their awesome $250,000 “education” in Queer Theory or International Relations, they STILL can’t manage to pay the rent, and so they go running back to mommy’s titty…
“Whaaaah! Rent is EXPESIVE and I’m too emotionally fragile to have a roommate or two! I need a spare bedroom as my “safe space” to go cry if somebody calls me a pussy, a retard or a fag! Those are hurtful words! Whaaaaah”
Of course, there are PLENTY of high-paying jobs out there…but you have to get up before 9am and sometimes you get doody or poopy on your hands. Boo hoo.
Why, RIGHT HERE in Lampasas there is an advertisement for Dude Who Fixes Highly Subsidized Shitty Pinwheels….
Do you think local unemployed socialist bum and lover of pinwheels Clayton Tucker will take this awesome job? I’ll bet you a MILLION DOLLARS that he won’t! That would disrupt his hobby of posting anti-capitalist and factually wrong bullshit bashing America all day long.
Imagine being so stupid you confuse MINIMUM wage with MANDATORY wage. Nobody pays $7.25, you idiot. NOBODY.
But Comrade Clayton needs to keep posting garbage like this as an excuse as to why he is still unemployed and living with mom. He ignores the high-paying pinwheel job and instead says “Mom, the minimum wage is $7.25 and I can’t possibly live on that. Now close the door so I can sit in your upstairs bedroom all day posting socialist horseshit!”
These two bullets collided in the battle of Gallipoli in 1915. The chances of this happening are 1 in 70 billion.
This is still more likely to happen than the $7,100,000.00 Business Pork project ever coming CLOSE to producing any kind of positive return on investment.
According to the Dispatch, nobody has thrown their hat in the ring yet to run for City council in May.
Unless you count Bob Goodart…which I don’t.
Goodart, you’ll recall, was thumped soundly last May by Davis Keele by a count of 360 to 135 (73% to 27%).
Goodart is now apparently back for more and challenging Randy “Speedbump” Clark for Place 2.
Bob is doing his best impersonation of a hyena by picking Place #2 to run for – seeking out the oldest and weakest councilmember to challenge. Goodart would have ZERO chance of beating Morris, Pearce or Monroe for their open seats.
Douchebag socialist tries to trade on family name. Fails badly.
As for the other open seats? I think Thelma Jean Monroe may step down and Cathy “Pork Chop” Keuhne may run for mayor – which would be a disaster. The last thing the town needs is a liberal, artsy-fartsy chick heading things up.
Don’t forget that Kuehne was a RABID Covid Cult loon for about two years (she put herself at risk EVERY DAY!)- which means she is incapable of critical thinking.
She was a HUGE supporter of Talbert pilfering $971,000 in “Covid relief” funds from the City for the Business Pork project last February. I believe her exact words were “I’ve been filled in on this, and I think it’s a win-win”
She is also a supporter of blowing almost $2 million on the Hostess House “facelift” currently in progress.
Furthermore, this “teacher” doesn’t even know how to spell at a fifth-grade level!
It’s WHOSE not WHO’S.
The plural of STORY is STORIES, not STORY’S.
Remember stuff like this when teachers like Kuehne cry that they aren’t paid enough. This is her mother tongue, for crying out loud! It’s embarrassing.
Strippers go to POLES. Voters go to the POLLS.
And don’t even get me stared on who the First Gentleman of Lampasas would be, if his wife were elected mayor….
Thank you to all the brilliant MEN who explore for oil and gas, who are clever and tough enough to get it out of the ground through miles of rock, who use complex chemistry and physics to refine it into useful products, who build and maintain the incredible machines and dynamos that spin day and night to produce power and heat for fat, lazy, greentard morons who sit comfortably in their house doing nothing but complaining.
Does not work at all – let alone outside in the cold. Sits in the comfort provided by oil and gas
Texas is using close to 60 gigawatts right this moment. Solar is kicking in only 1%. Wind is not doing much better (6%).
Solar producing 0.6 gigawatts right now.
Luckily, we have big, beautiful, gas-powered turbines to keep us warm and alive.
Clayton Tucker not even qualified to polish the brass on these incredible machines.
If I had my way, any person who has publicly championed pinwheels and solar as part of our grid system would have their power turned off this entire week. Then they would be deported to Venezuela with the word “Asshole” tattooed on their foreheads.
While pinwheels and solar vaporize tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, oil and gas get taxed to death. Tell me again, Comrade Clayton, how oil and gas are subsidized, you absolute moron.
