Just a shame. One less Biden voter, I guess. Leftism is a terrible disease.
Another Vaxhole Bites The Dust.
Author: admin
Ryan Ward and Stacey Ybarra Talk In Circles On Lampasas Radio. Rhonda Witcher Actually Puts Them On The Spot. Ward Fails Badly.
Wow. What a find! Go to the link and start watching at the 3:43 mark.
After listening to this interview, I have to wonder if old Rhonda Witcher reads this blog, because she asked pretty much EVERYTHING I have asked about this “Business Pork” and made the same points I make repeatedly about the labor force not being there to support such a project.
Good job, Rhonda! You did the first valuable interview of your life at age 102.
Assistant to the City Manager Ryan Ward was on there in place of Finley (another sign that Finley is handing over the reins this year) and our new Economic Development Director Stacey Ybarra joined him. Between the two of them, they talked in circles spewed many buzzwords, and basically gave zero information on the entire park.
First let’s hear Ryan Ward’s bullshit:
Rhonda Witcher: “Well, the can of worms you get when you come here to Lampasas is the Business Park out on 183…the City has had that a long time…put a lot of money into it…it’s been built – has anybody come yet? Are there any renters?“
Ryan Ward: “That’s a great question! I can give you an update on that! Mandy did a great job…it is about 99% complete…the legwork that Mandy had done…there are several businesses that were waiting on the City of Lampasas to complete that… so once the electric is complete, we hope to get folks, uh, moving in as soon as possible, you know, some of these businesses that are really interested in being out there”
Great non-answer, asswipe! Rhonda asked if there were any renters and you just babbled a whole pile of bullshit without giving an answer. SHOCKINGLY, Rhonda didn’t take that for an answer, and pressed him AGAIN….
Rhonda Witcher: “But SPECIFICALLY, are any tire-kickers, ha-ha-ha, or anyone out there looking??”
Ryan Ward: “You know, uh, that would be a good question for, uh, our manager, Finley deGraffenreid….he worked real close with Mandy…that piece of it I didn’t work on it with Mandy…the interested parties…and…a lot of those things are kinda kept, nondisclosure…until they make their mind up…but yeah, I don’t have any of that information, I wish I did, to share”
Ah yes – pawn it off on Mandy (who is long gone) and Finley (who isn’t there and will ALSO be retiring soon! Pass the buck – classic bureaucrat move
I am shocked! The Big Wigs refusing to tell us who all these prospects are! Ward is completely full of shit here. The City ALREADY spilled their five prospects to me less than a year ago (Lawson, Pho-Licious,Legacy Awning, Nextlink and Eco-Turd). Since that is now public knowledge, why doesn’t Ward list one of those companies for Rhonda??? We KNOW that Pho-Licious is gone – are all the rest gone too???
Rhonda is STILL undeterred! He keeps at it. He turns to Stacey Ybarra and asks “what do you think about that?”
Stacey Ybarra: “I think it’s a great opportunity…at this moment in time…to be able to attract businesses, you need shovel-ready sites…you need those types of sites to be able to bring big businesses…it’s just about getting it completed and doing the legwork to bring them here, they will come…it just may take a tiny bit of time…but that’s what I’m here for….and making sure the money was worth the while. It is my number-one priority.…
Lots of talking in circles and lot of cliches in there. Also lots of misinformation. Stacey is new here, so I can forgive her for not knowing that the Business Pork Project has ALREADY been shovel ready for OVER SEVEN YEARS!!! And they have NOT come – despite many on City council telling us that landing a big business was imminent!
[Rhonda STILL keeps at it. Bravo Rhonda. Ward and Ybarra expected to sit there and babble more vague bullshit but you held their feet to the fire. Witcher asks for specifics AGAIN!]
Rhonda: “Hmmm…ok…how do you do that? You know…how do you go out and find, uh, businesses that want to move here?”
Stacey Ybarra: “That’s part of economic development…there’s a lot of different strategies…you have to continually reach out…it’s about staying the in know…what leads are out there and keeping your ear to the ground…and also cold-calling…”
A lot of strategies? Continually reach out? Cold calling??? No, no, no, no sweetheart. We have been told REPEATEDLY over the last TWENTY YEARS that “the Governor’s office calls us WEEKLY with RFIs (requests for information)“. That was told to us by EVERY economic developer and City manager since that idiot Mike Talbot back in 2004.
Talbert told us last February (when she pilfered $971,000 from the City) that the LEDC was turning businesses away, because the Business Pork wasn’t up to snuff!
Not ONCE did Ybarra say “The Governor’s office calls us weekly with RFIs”!! Not ONCE. Which just reinforces my belief that that line was never anything but a huge lie.
Rhonda then brings up ANOTHER great point of mine next:
Rhonda: “I wonder…does Lampasas have the labor…for these businesses“
Ward then piles on the shit BIG time and blabbers a big bowl of diarrhea word salad and cliches and bullshit:
Ryan Ward: “You know, that’s kind of an interesting thought…we have to reach further out…you hope you can find enough work force…to hire more staff…and that’s always the first priority…not only that there is housing…how are we developing those housing communities? But the growth is coming here…”
Oh, is the growth coming here? No shit! Then why have we been subsidizing all of these housing developments if “they are coming” anyways, you morons? Talbert (as mayor), Williamson, Monroe and the rest have given away hundreds of thousands of dollars to developers over the last couple years. Instead, they should be assessing impact fees to pay for the water, sewer, police and all the rest we will now need more of.
Talbert and the rest always tell us this will all “grow the tax base”. So fucking what? Will our taxes go DOWN? No, they will not. You can bet your ass on that.
So the bottom line? No, we don’t have any prospects for the park – despite 20 years and seven million dollars and lying to you for YEARS that “we get weekly requests for information”. No, we don’t have the labor force to fill any jobs we might get. Oh but don’t worry, we’ll subsidize rich developers like Deorald Finney for houses that would be built anyways and we’ll ship people in from Cove and Austin, if need be.
So at the end of the day, there will be more traffic, more crowding, more houses cramming in on 1/4 acre lots, and your taxes will not ever go down. In fact, you’ll be paying more as we have to now blow millions more on water and waste water.
So tell me again why this is a good thing? Sounds like dog shit to me.
Jabs, Jabs, Jabs…
Hideous Socialist Pig Thinks She Knows What Price of Eggs, Bread and Rent SHOULD Be.
Today I learned about a socialist pig named Nina Turner. She thinks she knows what the price of everything should be better than the free market does. Fellow socialist Clayton Tucker clearly agrees.
I wonder why Clayton doesn’t bring some eggs to market. After all, he claims to be a farmer AND a rancher. Surely he can help alleviate this egg shortage by producing some eggs! That’s how the economy works, after all. If prices are SO HIGH, then you should be trying to sell them to make a buck, increase supply and bring prices back down. It’s called the Invisible Hand – even people WITHOUT $80,000 college degrees understand this….
Nina Turner has never been a farmer, or raised chickens, or worked construction, or been a landlord. Nina Turner has spent her entire life in politics, activism, and being a history professor at a small, joke college. You just KNOW she works super hard and is a productive citizen because she posts on Twitter 27 times per day, every day….
Ah yes. Activist. State senator. All-around parasite. Creating ZERO eggs, crops, housing or anything else somebody might actually want and which would increase the supply of these things – and thus, reduce the price.
It must REALLY suck to be THAT hideous AND also that stupid. Boy did she get the short end of the stick.
This woman has literally NEVER worked in the real world. Not once. Not doing ANYTHING, let along swinging a hammer or planting crops or raising chickens – activities that would alleviate the “high prices” of all these things.
Her salary from 2017 (the only year I could find) to be a joke of a professor in a joke subject at a community college was $97,000…SIX years ago. I guarantee you it is closer to $110,000 now. I also guarantee you she didn’t teach shit during Covid and still got a full paycheck. Probably dragged out her return to “teaching” for another year by whimpering about “the pandemic” too, because she seems like that type. But I bet she ate plenty of eggs during those years.
Her net worth is listed “between $1 million and $5 million” – from being a politician. What a complete piece of shit.
In another tweet, she shows us the poor farm worker who has a shitty life and doesn’t get paid enough. Yet she ALSO complains that food prices are too high. So which is it, you dunce?? You want to pay farm workers more or you want the price of your food to be lower?
Yes…let’s pay Veronica $40 per hour…so then the price of celery will be ten times higher and Nina the activist can bitch about the high price of that, too! Nina doesn’t understand how these two things are related, because Nina is a moron who couldn’t find her asshole with a funnel.
She foolishly thinks she can have both – because she is a (a) college professor who (b) teaches history and (c) female, to boot. So she has no grasp of math or logic or reason at all.
Hey Nina? Why don’t YOU start a farm and pay all the workers $40 per hour? You’d have all the labor you want! What’s stopping you? It’s just dirt and seeds, right? The sun and rain do all the work. It’s all so easy!
Dumb twat.
You know what would help lower food prices? Lower prices for fertilizer and diesel – two HUGE inputs into the food growing process. BOTH of those inputs have skyrocketed in price thanks to socialist greentards…like Nina herself.
The cost of bread and eggs hasn’t changed. A gram of gold will always buy the same amount of eggs and bread. The value of the dollar has changed and that’s the problem. Too many BidenBucks floating around.
You can thank all the libtards who screamed for “free money” a couple of years ago to “stimulate the economy” for the current mess. Libtards like Bruce Haywood….
Yes, it’s just “money from the government”, you fat buffoon. Just whip it up and hand it out! Trillion more BidenBucks chasing the exact same amount of eggs and housing. I’m sure there will be no side effects. Moron.
The Wind Doesn’t Always Blow…But When It Does, It Sometimes Blows Up Pinwheels…
No one’s been killed or injured — yet — but a rash of wind turbine failures is jarring a key cornerstone of the green energy movement, according to a new Bloomberg report.
The unwelcome trend of malfunctions — which includes both breakdowns and total structural collapses — is being witnessed in the United States and Europe alike. As this rare 2008 video of a collapse indicates, the phenomenon isn’t brand new, but insiders say the frequency is spiking.
Perhaps most disturbingly, recently-manufactured windmills are among latest string of casualties. “We’re seeing these failures happening in a shorter time frame on the newer turbines, and that’s quite concerning,” Fraser McLachlan, CEO of GCube Underwriting Ltd tells Bloomberg.
Last summer, a GE turbine that had been installed less than a year earlier buckled in half. Within a week, the same model notched another failure in Colorado.
The failures aren’t limited to a single manufacturer or model. The West’s three biggest manufacturers — GE, Vestas Wind Systems and Siemens are all facing hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs.
Bloomberg reports that Vestas, GE and Siemens Gamesa have all confirmed that pressure to quickly introduce more powerful turbines has led to the stumbles. In response, they’re slowing the pace of innovation.
“Rapid innovation strains manufacturing and the broader supply chain,” said GE CEO Larry Culp on an October earnings call. “It takes time to stabilize production and quality on these new products.”
The damage to bottom lines is already appearing: On Friday, Siemens lowered its forecasted 2023 earnings due to elevated warranty and maintenance costs associated with faulty Siemens Gamesa wind turbine components. GE took a half-billion-dollar charge in its third quarter for higher warranty and repair costs.
That financial damage to this green energy sector could be compounded in short order, as a higher frequency of claims is likely to prompt a hike in insurance premiums.
Of course, even when they’re not falling victim to desine flaws, wind turbines are always under steady attack by nature, with lightning strikes inflicting many casualties …and putting on quite a show on the way out.
Pinwheel Hit By Lightning in Texas
That isn’t the only trouble for windmills. After 7 whales washed up dead on New York and New Jersey beaches in a little over a month, environmentalist are pointing a finger at offshore wind farm development and demanding it be halted pending an investigation.
And to all you retards like Bruce Haywood and Clayton Tucker who say “oil and gas are highly subsidized”:
I hope everyone who pushes this idiocy onto the rest of us gets pancreatic cancer this year.
Didya Know? City Personnel NOT Required To Live in City
Did you know that City employees are NOT required to live within the City limits? It’s true!
Section 3.07: The city does not require its employees to live within the city limits, but city residency is encouraged. The city may require certain employees to reside within a reasonable work commuting range, as determined and approved by the city manager, particularly those employees who may be required to serve on standby duty.
Why do I bring this up? Well, it appears that our new Economic Development Director doesn’t exactly live here in town. In fact, it appears she may live in Cedar Park or north Austin! That’s quite a commute.
Now, normally I wouldn’t give a good crap WHERE she lives. But think about this delicious bit of irony:
The Lampasas Economic Development Corp has spent the last 20 years and over $7 MILLION dollars on their Business Pork project. Mandy Walsh (our previous EDD) was heavily involved in this project, and I assume Mrs. Ybarra will be as well.
The purpose of this Business Pork is to “bring high-paying jobs to Lampasas”, is it not? That’s what I’ve heard for the last 12 years. That’s what Misti Talbert said when she pilfered $971,000 from the City coffers last February for this project. We heard it from dozens of City council members and other assorted Big Wigs for 20 years now…
“Mrs. Monroe noted the Lampasas Economic Development Corp. is working with the business park south of town on U.S. Highway 183, and she said she hopes the site will attract good employers to Lampasas. [Council member TJ Monroe] – April 14, 2015
So for them to waste that many millions in a desperate attempt to BRING JOBS to this town, it stands to reason that there must be dozens, nay, HUNDREDS of highly-skilled Lampasans sitting around idly twiddling their thumbs just itching to work, right? There must be a mountain of workers and barely any jobs around here if the LEDC needs to spend $7 million on a Business Pork Project to “bring high-paying jobs” to Lampasas.
Not exactly, as it turns out.
Here we had ONE high-paying job out there for Economic Director for the last three months….and THEY COULDN’T EVEN FILL THAT locally! They had to cast their net ALL the way down to Cedar Park and Austin to fill that position!
The fact is, local businesses are STILL trying to fill positions and having trouble. There are STILL “help wanted” signs all over the place. If THEY can’t find workers, how is the fabled “good employer with high-paying jobs” going to find any workers?
I’ve brought this up repeatedly, but it falls on deaf ears. Talbert and City council just keep throwing good money after bad into the black hole known as the Business Park. The fact we couldn’t even find ONE person to fill the EDD position here proves I’m right.
Eco-Turd Owner Raising Cash?
You’ll recall that last year, Eco-Strong owner Mike Cour was THIS/CLOSE to dumping his entire 199-acre property for around $6 million – or roughly $30,000 per acre.
This is the SAME guy who wanted some free stuff from the LEDC for this Eco-Turd company. I asked him at the time why he needed free land from the taxpayers if he had 200 acres himself?
He didn’t like me asking those questions.
Anyway, the deal fell through and I hear the would-be buyer walked away from a $100k deposit on the place (this is just what I heard – I have not seen any documentation). THEN, the property was re-listed almost immediately at $5 million. Ouch. Immediate 17% haircut!
So close!
Well, looks like Mike is trying to shave off chunks of the property to raise some cash. Not only do you get 11 whole acres, but you get the apparently-failing “Equicare” business and the included buildings with it…
Trying to keep the Eco-Turd afloat until the LEDC throws some free stuff their way? Guess we’ll soon find out!
Who Wants To Tell This Moron You Have To WORK First To Collect Social Security?
Local deadbeat and socialist barnacle Clayton Tucker is demanding people get soaked HARDER to fix the Social Security trust fund that has been plundered and drained by Big Government idiots (like Clayton Tucker) over the last few decades….
I’m not sure what’s funnier: the fact it says “Social Security Works!” on the very same page where they are admitting it is nearly insolvent and demanding that SOME people get soaked harder to pay for the entire debacle….
OR
The fact that Clayton Tucker will not even QUALIFY for social security because he hasn’t put in the 10 years of work required to do so.
That’s right, Clayton. You have to WORK first before you can collect – even for Social Security. Seeing as how you turn 32 next month and have literally never had a real job, you better get cracking, shit bird!
I think the very first comment on his post says it best:
What Fresh Hell Is This?
Is this a bad joke? Janet “Crazier” Crozier the local recycling and gardening loon is now the face I have to see when I log on to my bank account????
First my bank hands this nut job $5,000 for her “community garden” – which is $5,000 more than they have given me in TEN YEARS despite me having a fairly decent balance there the entire time.
Yes, ZERO dollars in interest over 10 years. But the failed Life Coach who thinks autistic children are clairvoyant and who has blown about $30,000 on this garden already gets a $5,000 gift.
The world has definitely gone crazy.
P.S. – if you are looking to get MORE than the crappy -0% interest offered around town, be sure to read my post on linking your bank account to Treasury Direct – where you can buy T-bills DIRECTLY at auction and get almost FIVE PERCENT right now!!
That is a RISK FREE 4.9% right now on 6-month T-bills. I’ve been doing this for the last few months. I-bond rates are also very fat – almost 7% right now.
Sunday Humor
Socialists won’t get this, but….
