Author: admin

Wise Words….

“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing… when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors… when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you… when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice… you may know that society is doomed.”

Ayn Rand

Mike White Right – Lampasshole Wrong. April Sales Tax Haul UP 8.8%

Score one for Mike White. He didn’t see how sales tax receipts were going to drop in Lampasas during the Wuhan Flu lockdown. I took the position that with people ‘locked’ in their homes and tons of businesses shut down, that it would be impossible for sales tax revenue to NOT go down. Turns out Mike was correct.

Despite sales tax revenue for the entire state of Texas DROPPING 11.7% and sales tax allocations for the City of Austin DOWN 19.9%, the City of Lampasas was UP 8.8% for the month of April.

Excuse me while I eat this crow.

Lampasas sales tax allocation jumped from roughly $158,000 in April 2019 to $172,500 for April 2020.

I would love to get hold of a breakdown of the numbers and see how this happened. I’m genuinely curious. I can only think of a few reasons:

(1) The population of Lampasas grew BIGLY over the last 12 months. Maybe an extra 100 people live here now and they all spent $2000 in April? An extra $200k of sales would result in roughly $15k extra of sales tax, very roughly.

(2) A LOT of out-of-town locusts traveled from liberal dumps like Austin to Lampasas to buy scarce toilet paper and other non-food consumables?

(3) Maybe the lure of 0% on automobiles pulled forward demand on a bunch of cars from the future? The marginal buyer saw that 0% and said “I was gonna wait a year to buy a new truck but I better grab it now”. It would not take too many extra cars at $1500 or $2000 tax each to make up that difference.

(4) Everyone sat at home an ordered an extra several hundred dollars MORE than usual from Amazon? I don’t know how those Amazon sales taxes are collected (or even if they ARE – I know I get charged sales tax when I order) but perhaps panic-buying of useless shit put us over the top?

Of course, these increases would all have to MORE THAN offset large declines for some of the businesses in town that got bent over and shafted. One local business held up as an example by Mike himself claimed revenues were down roughly $50,000 PER WEEK. That business loss alone would have caused a large dent in sales taxes.

So, that’s the good news. The bad news is that Mandy Walsh and the LEDC now have more money to set on fire. A salivating Finley is probably already counting out the salary increases for City employees for next year (ALL of whom were safe from job loss during the Wuhan Flu, btw).

Additionally, since the City was too cheap to pay a decent wage to lifeguards this summer, the Hanna Pool is closed this year – a pool which appears to COST the City over $80,000 per year to operate. That means EVEN MORE money in City coffers for Finley and Mandy to mismanage and waste.

That is a bad thing.

It DOES, however, kinda makes me wonder why we handed out over $170,000 in free money to help local businesses though: the LEDC gave out $100k in grants plus the City handed out $72,000 in ‘free’ electricity. The sales tax numbers sure seem to say we came out unscathed compared to the state of Texas as a whole and especially the large cities.

It’ll be interesting to see what the numbers are going forward. Was April just a lot of demand pulled forward? Will we thus see sizable decreases in May, June, July, etc?

Stay tuned!

Council Meeting 06-08-20 **LIVE Updates**

Tune in at 5:30pm.

5:30pm – only two of us watching today!

Ricky Roy up first! My lucky day. Khakis and a dress shirt. Ricky Roy knows how to dress. He’s talking about a drainage project. Go to it, Ricky. I have no beef with the City doing normal City stuff….like roads. Most superheroes have secret identities that are an alliteration between first and last name- just like Ricky Roy! Peter Parker. Wade Wilson. Clark Kent. Matt Murdoch. Bruce Banner.

Five of us watching online now. Talk about a huge stage! Be on your best behavior, City council – .07% of the City is watching.

Every time I watch these meetings online, I can’t help but remember they COULD have stayed in the old City council building (saving over $1.5 million) and then paid Broadcast Works $34,000 to rig up this exact same live-streaming setup (they paid Azbell $96,000 instead). It’s hilarious. The Internet has capacity for thousands to watch this and they get 5 people. LOL! Money well spent, Goldfish!

Whoah – the City spent over $100,000 on the airport runway? Did I just hear that? I’d love to know how many planes land there per year.

Secretary now telling us there is an entirely new “totally online” permitting process….I assume for construction. Wow. Cool! Guess we can fire whichever paper pusher used to do that stuff? Just kidding. Nobody EVER gets fired from City Hall. Except Gary Cox, that is.

Secretary now using the huge TV screens they paid like $8,000 for. Ironically, there is no public gallery, so nobody can see it. It is not visible on YouTube at this resolution.

Now showing off the new Wastewater Lab. I have no doubt tens of thousands of dollars of graft and waste were skimmed off while building this, but it is necessary infrastructure…so I let that shit slide.

5:52pm: Old City Council building. Oh joy. Now they get to spend a pile of money on the ‘old’ crappy building that wasn’t good enough. It’s going to be the “IT Building”. Better call in Network Solutions to take a look at where they’ll be doing all their work now.

Finley to talk about Hancock swimming pool. Their high-count day was last Saturday – 121 total swimmers, which is supposedly nowhere near the max. I see Finley is now laying the groundwork to allow people from out of town to use the pool. I suspect Delana Toups is behind this, as she was the most butt hurt about the “no non-residents allowed in the pool” rule.

To summarize, Council/Finley were too stupid to offer a wage that attracted lifeguards (they offered min wage). Nobody applied for a job. They used this as an excuse to close Hanna Springs pool rather than up the wage a bit. They then reduced Hancock capacity with some “Wuhan flu” horseshit. Now, after roughly NINE whole days of data, they have deduced that it’s just dandy to let out-of-towners take up valuable pool space.

Makes sense. Congrats Delana!

6:10pm – adjourn workshop session. Will reconvene in 10 minutes. Can’t wait to hear all the ‘business park’ discussions coming up!

6:21pm – meeting reconvened. Back to two people watching.

Manager’s reports. Finley talking about Brodie Estates. I think that’s the one where City council handed their old council buddy ‘Greasy’ Chris Harrison $150,000 for their detention pond.

Business park: staff looking at financing options. Trying to find suckers to provide a boatload of money for the LEDC waste on the business park. That’s it?! Finley tosses that off on the LEDC meeting coming on June 17th. What a letdown. I think their big plan is to “apply for grant” and steal money from other people. Shocker. True fiscal conservatives.

Well, that’s all I care about. The rest looks like fluff. See you in two weeks.

OK – Can We Get Back To Lamenting The Money Wasting?

Now that ‘racism’ has been solved by a couple of teen kids (who have probably never been more than 50 miles from their hometown) who ‘shared their wisdom’ with adults twice their age, can we get back to the money wasting?

Specifically, that these LEDC and City council FOOLS are going to plow ANOTHER $2 million dollars into the failed goat patch ‘business park’??

That’s IN ADDITION to the millions ALREADY wasted on this thing.

I remember the heady days of 2015 when Chris Toups was mayor and City council had the EXACT SAME DISCUSSION about this corpse repository ‘business park’ boondoggle.

The thinking then was that they had held this property long enough and it was time to shit or get off the pot: either sell it or spend close to a million dollars to “develop it” into “shovel ready” parcels by bringing electricity and water into the ‘park’. The theory was that AFTER wasting another $1,000,000.00 THEN the high-paying jobs would come pouring in. THAT was the story that was used to sell this pipe dream back in 2014/2015.

Of course, they made the WRONG decision. Goaded on by Toups (who was ALL FOR this ‘upgrade’), instead of selling this piece of shit they poured another million into it. I have LOTS of dummy politicians and bureaucrats [Monroe, Toups #2, Finley, etc] on record claiming that a ‘business park’ BOOM was imminent.

That was five years ago. It’s still a weed patch today.

NOW the EXACT same dummies are making the same argument: we need to shoe this horse or sell it (actual statement by City council). Except THIS time it will cost the taxpayers TWO MILLION [see page 4]. And like clockwork, the dummies made the WRONG choice yet again. Here are the estimated costs to make the corpse repository SUPER DUPER ‘shovel ready’ this time:

[OF course, all these estimates come from Pope Eckermann, who will also be handed large sums to bless this project]

Total roadway and drainage: $1,396,272

Total wastewater to support Phase I improvements: $279,566

Total water to support Phase I improvements: $298,041

Grand total: $1.974 MILLION DOLLARS

I know what you’re thinking: how can they be SO STUPID as to waste ANOTHER $577,000 on ‘water and wastewater’ when they ALREADY paid Qro-mex somewhere north of $800,000 five years ago to run water and wastewater to the ‘business’ park.

Great question. I guess it’s the same stupidity that allows them to pay to have the same piece of property surveyed over and over and over again. Or to waste over FOUR MILLION on an idiotic project like this.

Just a sample of how wrong they were last time:

“I feel like we’re getting somewhere,” LEDC board president Dr. Neal Leavell added. “I think we’ve really accomplished something. It’s taken a lot of patience, but we’re here.” – September 23, 2014

“Advocates of utility extensions have said entities compete vigorously for new jobs and that cities with ready-to-build sites have an advantage as they try to attract new businesses.” – August 8, 2014

“Economic development officials have said utilities for the business park are essential to make the 165-acre area attractive to companies.” – July 22, 2014

The LEDC was “proactive,” deGraffenried said, in acquiring the U.S. 183 property several years ago for a business park. The goal of utility extensions, the city manager said, is to develop the land into a site that can promote economic growth. – June 17, 2014

BLM Ain’t About Black Lives. It’s Commie Pinko Horseshit Masquerading As ‘Equality’

Cade Snyder and Fin Burbz are just pawns. Useful idiots in a greater plan. The plan is to implement communist and socialist agendas into the United States. Sounds crazy? Take a look at some of the zany crap posted on the blacklivesmatter website:

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

“We practice empathy. We engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts. Every day, we recommit to healing ourselves and each other, and to co-creating alongside comrades, allies, and family a culture where each person feels seen, heard, and supported.

“We cultivate an intergenerational and communal network free from ageism. We believe that all people, regardless of age, show up with the capacity to lead and learn. We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence”

We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual 

Smart people saw BLM for what it was YEARS ago….as you can see HERE.

BLM launched in 2013 with a Twitter hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, after neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman was acquitted in the Trayvon Martin killing. Radical Left activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi claim credit for the slogan and hashtag. Following the Michael Brown shooting in August 2014, Dream Defenders, an organization led by Working Families Party (ACORN) activist and Occupy Wall Street anarchist Nelini Stamp, popularized the phrase “Hands Up–Don’t Shoot!” which has since become BLM’s widely recognized slogan.

Garza, Cullors and Tometi all work for front groups of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), one of the four largest radical Left organizations in the country. The others are the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). Nelini Stamp’s ACORN—now rebranded under a variety of different names—works with all four organizations, and Dream Defenders is backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center and others.

The brilliance is in the name “Black Lives Matter”. How can anyone be against THAT? If you speak out against these commie pinko dirt bags, then clearly you must think black lives DON’T matter and you are shouted down as a racist. This is where all the brain-dead 20-something chumps come into the picture. Chumps like Cade Snyder and Fin Burbz, as well as a gaggle of local morons right here in town.

I’ll be posting some of their pictures later. But they all have something in common: early 20s, mostly female, overweight, low IQ, poorly educated, a couple of kids to take care of and no man around. It’s sad and pathetic, really. These kids’ parents are to blame for doing a poor job of raising them.

Helen Leathem is a sick woman, doing this to her daughter. These people are SICK

This woman is committing child abuse. If she has a husband, he is the saddest cuckold in the history of cuckolds. I never condone hitting a woman, but I would grab my wife by the neck and throw her out of the house if she did this to our kid. Absolutely disgusting and nauseating.

I’ve said it before and will say it again: commies, socialists and pinko scum need to be wiped off the earth. Not reasoned with. These are the sick people we are up against.

LEDC Grant Program Recipients And Amounts

Do I blame businesses for applying for grants (free money) when it is offered? Of course not. After all, the LEDC skims over $300,000 in sales tax revenue every year and wastes almost all of it on idiotic projects like the ‘business park’….and they PAY Mandy Walsh $101,000 in salary and benefits to do it! So, seeing taxpayers get a sliver of their money back that was stolen by government morons in the first place is a good thing.

Of course, I would prefer that that $400,000 is never skimmed in the first place and is LEFT in the hands of those who actually earned it….rather than people having to go to a group of overlords (Walsh, deGraffenreid, Monroe, Talbert) and beg for their own money back.

Furthermore, I don’t trust that group of overlords to know what the hell they are doing, since NONE of them has ever owned a business and probably don’t even know the difference between ‘revenue’ and ‘profit’. So you’ll pardon me if I wanted to see how much they gave to whom and if any of it makes any sense at all.

I’d argue that some places on this list deserve more and some deserve zero. But that’s the nature of an arbitrary cash grab run by dunces: somebody (and probably several somebodies) is going to get hosed hard while others get a windfall they don’t deserve. I leave distinction to you, dear reader.

Some businesses will probably be miffed that I’m making this public. I don’t really care. The grant applications made it very clear these are tax dollars and subject to public disclosure. As the old saying goes: with government shekels comes government shackles.

So, without further ado:

One thing is sure: barbers, hairdressers, bartenders and servers got screwed the hardest during this whole forced shutdown. Must have driven them crazy to see people cramming into Wal-Mart legally while THEY weren’t allowed to even cut ONE person’s hair. Talk about a screw job.

Thank Goodness City Council Handed The Developer of Stone Valley $72,000

I did some ranting last year about City council waiving electrical hookup fees for rich developer Deorald Finney – which cost the City approximately $72,000 in lost fees [5/21/19 page 10]. City council (most of whom are reliant on the taxpayer for their OWN salaries and only one of whom has an inkling of the real business world) was in such a huge rush to “promote development” that they just gave away the farm for no reason at all.

“GIMME $72,000!!!!!” <—————————-> “Derrrr ummm….OK”

Proof they did the wrong thing comes today in the latest Dispatch (5/28/20 page 7) – where we learn that while everyone else was forced to stay in their homes like scared rabbits this spring – and many business were wrecked and jobs lost – Stone Valley was just chugging right along on their construction.

In fact, according to the article: “Danielle Sheppard, a Lampasas resident who works for Coldwell Banker: ‘We are definitely in a seller’s market.‘ The supply of available homes has had a hard time keeping up with the demand for housing as more people flock to Central Texas.”

How nice! Deorald will have no problem selling his houses for TOP DOLLAR…and he gets an extra $72k to boot, thanks to the dummies on City council!

Of course, Deorald is not only helped by City council handing him free shit, he’s also helped by the morons at the Federal Reserve who have pegged rates at zero (yet again) in order to screw savers and encourage reckless borrowing. I guess it pays to have the largest lobbying group in Washington DC.

Economic lesson for City council dummies: when people are fleeing liberal dumps like San Francisco, New York City and Chicago and choosing Texas in droves anyways, YOU DON’T NEED TO HAND OUT SUBSIDIES. They are coming here no matter what. If anything, you should be extracting an extra pound of flesh from these guys…after all: IT’S A SELLER’S MARKET!!!

The Goldfish Swim Tonight – Live Commentary – 5:30pm

“A weem a way a weem a way, a weem away a weem a way

In the Fishbowl, the pricey Fishbowl, the Goldfish swim tonight”

Topics of discussion (my predictions):

  1. We’re spending another $2 million on the idiotic corpse-repository ‘business park’. Screw you.
  2. We’re closing the pools this summer. Screw you.
  3. We’re giving Finley $140,000 a year. Screw you.

Also guys, I’m still waiting on that list of businesses you handed out $100,000 in tax dollars to! Tell JC Brown to stop racking up the billable hours and cough it up already. There’s no way around it.

MEETING NOTES

5:30pm: Six of us masochists waiting on the Internet to watch…..

Finley now talking about the corpse repository ‘business park”. He is informing council that the BP is not as shovel-ready as we were led to believe. Mandy now about to run through the nearly TWO MILLION MORE DOLLARS they want to piss down this rat hole. The bank will likely only lend around $900k. Leaving approximately one million short.

According to Mandy, there is plenty of demand for the business park [LOL!!], but it’s not ready for them to move in…even though they said it was “shovel ready” almost FIVE YEARS AGO. Three years ago, then-candidate Delana Toups said “businesses were on the verge of moving into the corpse repository business park“….which was clearly a complete lie.

5:40pm: Now the LEDC is begging council for $500,000 to “develop” the property further. You know – the shovel-ready property. Who are these prospects???? They have NEVER named a single prospect by name.

Mike White admitting the thing is a “goat patch” and his preference is to sell the entire thing. I love it. EXACTLY RIGHT.

Somebody else now claiming there is a “prospect” willing to pull the trigger on moving in….a supposed “proven business”. OK – WHO IS IT???? Morons! Really guys – if you expect to be taken seriously, then name the damn prospect already.

Randy “Speed Bump” Clark now jumping in….I have no idea what his point was.

I almost feel sorry for these saps. They have painted themselves into a corner with this silly-assed ‘business park’ and there is really no way out without spending FURTHER millions on a shaky idea or dumping it and looking stupid.

Finley now using $140,000 terms like “development matrix”.

Now they are discussing mooching off taxpayers by applying for grants (‘free money from other people’) at the state or federal level…or maybe USDA. City saying their best guess is 8 to 10 months to get the shovel-ready park actually ready. Which likely means 18 months, if you convert to Finley time.

Mike White falling victim to the “sunk cost fallacy” – saying they have too much invested to walk away. Admits it is a shitty project on ROI terms.

TJ Monroe totally and enthusiastically in favor of flushing more money down the toilet – huge shocker. This pea-brain sits on City council AND the LEDC. A double whammy of stupidity.

Speed Bump back in there talking about chasing a chicken. Gotta love the old guy!

These bozos are all talking themselves into flushing more money down the toilet. Of course, there is then the question of where all those millions come from. Council is now on record as “we need to shoe this horse or sell it…let’s shoe it and move on”. Wrong call. The next TWO MILLION DOLLARS will not put any lipstick on this pig.

Taking a break now before workshop session. Sixteen people in the Internet peanut gallery now.

Back in session…..Chamber of Commerce representative speaking. Quite frankly, I have no idea why the City pays money to the Chamber of Commerce. Makes zero sense to me. I’ll just let this chick prattle on for a bit.

Police chief now talking about the commercial vehicles being parked on residential streets. This issue bores me a bit – all about permitting. Still waiting for pool discussion.

This is brutal. Parking permitting STILL being discussed 20 minutes later. Crazy how council makes us listen to hours of boring minutiae but when it comes to a three minute discussion of Finley getting a $10,000 raise, they can’t bother us with that and it gets hidden away.

Mike White for banning huge trucks altogether. HERE HERE! Agreed. Let’s get on with it!

6:36pm: FINALLY….moving on to a stop sign Delana Toups wants put somewhere or something. At least she hasn’t brought up the Tree Police idea lately.

6:40pm: Pools about to be discussed. Some chick (Kim?) is at the mic who apparently runs the pools. Didn’t catch her name. They need 32 employees to run the pools and 23 are lifeguards. She only has EIGHT trained guards. She needs to train 12 new lifeguards….now she’s explaining that nobody applied. [see my discussion about WAGES TOO LOW!!!]

[No mention, of course, that if City council hadn’t dicked around two weeks ago and tabled this discussion until today, that she could have been halfway there already. So, there’s that. Good job, Goldfish!]

She is telling us it takes a month to train everyone….school starts August 10th…we’d only have a 5-week pool season…uuuhhh oooh…here comes the bad news….BAM – proposes to close Hanna for the season.

Now she’s claiming closing Hanna is good so they can “do repairs”. Christ lady – what have you been doing the last SIX MONTHS?!?!? Total nonsense.

She proposes Hancock pool open with a ton of ridiculous Covid bullshit attached: Capacity greatly reduced…something about cleaning the bathrooms constantly (we all piss in the pool…forget that one)…nobody without a parent…more blah blah blah about social distancing.

One Goldfish (Toups?) is upset that the pool is only for local residents. What if cousins come in from out of town? [Lol. Too bad!]. Kim shoots that shit down: “this isn’t a normal summer”. HA! Starting to like this Kim chick a bit. Amen – you’re already reducing total City pool capacity by like 75% – outsiders can pound sand, ding dong.

This whole “capacity reduction” is retarded in the extreme. If you’re gonna open, then OPEN. Such nonsense. If Ricky Roy was the mayor, he’d tell the Gov to suck an egg.

Finley “$140,000 salary” deGraffenreid is now discussing the 2020/2021 budget. He’s concerned about sales tax receipts going down into the new year (obviously). He’s sounding like every politician ever: we’ll keep taxes low and give you all you want! I don’t see a point in detailing all this as it’s likely smoke, mirrors and crazy assumptions. I’ll start believing the numbers they come up with in late July. That’s when the REAL numbers come out and we find the IT Department gets a 15% increase or something.

Very last thing he throws out: employee compensation. LOL. Can’t forget that one. Lemme guess: raises for everyone!

Ricky Roy on deck! All City buildings open to the public June 1st. They will practice social distancing and sneeze guards are being installed all over the damn place. RICKY, NOOOOO!!!! This isn’t you, Ricky. YOU KNOW this social distancing is all horseshit.