Texas’s Green Energy Is Risking Its Electric Grid – $109 BILLION Wasted On Pinwheels and Panels.

Since Texas weathered its second-hottest summer on record and faced unprecedented demands on its power grid, the future of energy supply and use in the state—and across the country—has become the subject of national discussion. 

Air conditioners were in constant use in Texas over the summer as average temperatures reached 85.3 degrees between June and August and didn’t dip below 100 degrees for weeks on end in some cities.

The strain that the soaring temperatures put on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s energy distribution network, is severe, no matter the circumstances.

Making that situation all the more dire is the rapid growth of the state’s population and the rising number of tech companies that are installing or expanding facilities in Texas that require massive amounts of power to operate.

More and more people live and work in a state that’s woefully unprepared to cope with soaring demand.

“Peak demand in ERCOT has grown 14 percent since 2019, while our supply of thermal generation—gas, coal, nuclear—has remained essentially flat,” Brent Bennett, policy director of Life:Powered, an initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told The Epoch Times.

The investment of $99 billion in wind and solar infrastructure in Texas and about $10 billion more in green energy transmission lines has not only failed to improve energy supply but has exacerbated the problem, he said.

Mr. Bennett and others say overinvestment in green energy comes at the expense of investment in sources that actually work.

Texas Swelters

The summer of 2023 was so hot that officials in some areas came close to adopting daily “load shedding,” or power outages, at least as a temporary expedient—protocols similar to those that have made life miserable for many people living in South Africa, whose state-run energy distributor, Eskom, is notoriously ill-managed.

Idiot greentards and brain-dead politicians have allowed over $100 BILLION to be wasted on unreliable power sources like pinwheels and solar panels.

Texas cities sweltered at 105 degrees or hotter for the most days in a row on record.

On Aug. 20, ERCOT hit a milestone: an all-time weekend peak demand record of 84,805 megawatts (MW), according to Alexander Stevens, manager of policy and communications at the Institute for Energy Research, a Washington-based nonprofit agency. Mr. Stevens compared that figure to the August 2022 peak demand of 78,485 MW.

Even that Aug. 20 weekend peak demand wasn’t as high as the demand on individual days this past summer. On Aug. 10, ERCOT grappled with 85,435 MW of demand and hit 81,674 MW on Sept. 5.

Mr. Stevens attributes the records partly to population growth, noting that from 2000 to 2022, Texas received an influx of 9,085,073 new residents, a record among states and 3 million more than the runner-up, Florida.

The retreat of excruciatingly hot weather over the autumn doesn’t mean that the Lone Star State is out of trouble. With winter approaching and posing its own set of challenges, ERCOT last month began soliciting bids from power providers in the hope of ramping up its reserves by at least 3,000 MW.

Given that 2023 was far from the first hot summer in Texas and that the demographic trends have been underway for many years, some may wonder why the state is scrambling now to try to expand its reserves and avoid more emergencies.

Mr. Stevens and other experts who spoke to The Epoch Times agree that while renewable energy isn’t sufficient to meet demand, politicians who want to appear forward-looking and in line with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) imperatives aren’t listening.

A Green Energy Panacea?

Even with policies specifically tailored to meet Texas’s acute needs, the market would be a challenging one. But, in the face of all these trends, Texas doesn’t receive anything close to the level of investment in energy production and distribution systems and facilities that it requires to meet demand.

In fact, policies that encourage wind, solar, and other so-called green and renewable energy sourcesnot only fail to meet the demand but actively undermine any efforts to sustain and broaden supply networks that aren’t cyclical in nature and vulnerable to changes in the amount of wind or solar energy available at a given time,specialists in energy use have told The Epoch Times.

Part of the issue here is cultural and political. Some people assume that only political and social regressives living in flyover states, with a callous attitude about the environment, would harbor doubts about or oppose generous subsidies for ESG policies.

Many view ESG as essentially well-intentioned and lack any understanding of how such policies actually divert resources from and wreck the competitiveness of the utilities on which millions of people depend for their day-to-day existence, according to energy sector experts.

The escalating crisis in Texas has implications for the availability and reliability of energy throughout the nation, given the tendency in other states to favor ESG-based solutions and the demographic trends that expand energy use without regard for available resources, the experts say.

Misdirected Allocations

The problem comes down to flawed energy policy, William Keffer, director of the Energy Law Programs at Texas Tech University, told The Epoch Times.

“As a general observation, we have allowed our sources for electricity in the state to become lopsided, so that we have too much dependence on the renewables sector—wind and solar—and not as much capacity as we should have when it comes to the dispatchable sources like natural gas, coal, and nuclear,” he said.

Investors looking at opportunities in Texas and elsewhere obviously seek out assets that they expect to generate high returns, and the federal tax credits (MASSIVE subsidies) lavished on wind and solar facilities have helped bring about this lopsided market, he said.

The original idea of providing subsidies to foster renewable energy sources back in the 1990s was understandable, even laudable,but legislators have gone on renewing tax credits for such projects without regard for market dynamics, Mr. Keffer said.

A clause of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act extends the Investment Tax Credit, offering a 30 percent credit for wind, solar, storage, and other renewable initiatives, he pointed out.

The Biden administration is a huge backer of tax credits for investments in wind and solar projects. On May 31, the Treasury Department, the Energy Department, and the IRS released new guidance regarding an allocated credit program, offering a 20 percent tax credit on top of the existing 30 percent credit for wind and solar facilities in low-income communities.

“We just keep on extending these tax credits, which is going to continue to disrupt the market, with people spending their money in ways they would not otherwise,” Mr. Keffer said.

Undercutting the Dispatchables

With such lavish tax credits, wind and solar facilities can essentially sell their energy for close to zero dollars and still turn a profit, according to Mr. Keffer. The producers of dispatchable and badly needed energy sources aren’t in this position, hence they aren’t attractive investment targets, and no one wants to finance the building or expansion of coal, natural gas, or nuclear facilities.

“Wind and solar are always going to beat them to the punch with an artificially low price, such that they can’t sell their electricity at a price that gives them a return on their investment,” he said.

“Coal plants continue to be shut down, and natural gas plants don’t add to their lineup, because nobody wants to invest in a new one.”

Local Socialist Dunce Reposts Nonsense and NEVER Asks Questions About Anything.

Talk about being a lazy sack of shit.

Chairman of the Lampasas Democratic Party (SDEC-24 TX) Clayton Tucker makes a habit of posting ridiculous garbage without ever asking the obvious questions that a normal person would ask. You’d think a chick who spends her entire day on the Internet would dig into things a little bit, but you’d be wrong. It’s all about cliches and platitudes for the tiny, envious socialist brain:

Who is Alec Stapp? We’ll get to that. But for now, just know that he is ANOTHER 32-year-old idiot who has never worked in the private sector and has never owned or managed a business – let alone a restaurant. He’s a “thinker” who lives in Washington D.C. In other words, he is a parasitic grifter socialist worm….just like Clayton Tucker.

So on to the obvious questions a REAL thinker like myself would ask: What’s the name of this restaurant? How are their finances? How much are they raising prices to pay for this? When was the pay hike implemented? What is the old wage and the new wage? How many workers are affected?

Luckily, I am here to do all the REAL work, because I like to get the whole picture. I’m not a moron socialist who just posts one-liners all day long like “we need to pay everyone a living wage,” or “no child should ever be hungry.”

I live in the real world…as do the people who run restaurants and the people who eat at them. So here are some facts:

The restaurant in questions is called Pollo Tropical and they are a Florida chain. I myself was born and raised in South Florida and have never heard of this chain, so that makes me wonder about some things.

The first thing I learned, is they are a shit company whose stock (FRGI) has been destroyed by about 86% over the last few years. So the one thing they HAVE accomplished is bending shareholders over and making them bleed from the anus:

A negative P/E ratio is never a good sign

Socialist retards like Clayton Tucker and Alec Stapp probably don’t know this, but that little dash in front of the 5.03 MILLION means NEGATIVE. As in, they lost five million bucks on over $400 million of revenue.

That is not good.

We also learn that they have raised prices a lot recently and will raise them AGAIN next month to pay for these generous wages. The raises JUST happened, so it would make sense that we need to see how this restaurant is doing a year from now – because they might just be out of business. Which means all those workers would have a salary of $0.

So in addition to the 17% price increases from last year and this year, they are tacking on ANOTHER 6% next month.

Once you raise the price of a shitty chicken sandwich to $17.00 or so, people tend to say “no thanks” and pretty soon you are out of business.

FURTHERMORE, this chain has a LOT of locations around Miami. How many undocumented Cubans and Haitians do you think they have in the kitchen washing dishes for $10/hr cash under the table? As someone who has worked in several kitchens in his life (as opposed to Clayton Tucker and Alec Stapp who have never worked ANYWHERE) I can guarantee you there are more than a few.

As for the “boost in pay” they are giving out: how much of a boost? Did you raise it from $9/hr to $11/hr? Because that’s still pretty much a shit wage. Naturally, NONE of the articles about this magnanimous company makes mention of cold, hard numbers or facts. Just feel-good bullshit that simpletons like Tucker and Stapp can re-post and point to and say “SEE?!? It works!”

Unfortunately, the reality is always more like THIS little story:

It turns out an anti-capitalist cafe called ‘The Anarchist’ that let customers pay whatever they wanted couldn’t turn a profit

Or maybe THESE stories:

Wage hikes force large-scale restaurant closings, study finds

Minimum-wage hikes do close restaurants. Just not the ones you care about.

Minimum Wage Hikes Kill Yet Another Restaurant in 2022

Harvard study finds increased minimum wages contribute to restaurant failures in California’s Bay Area

But why take the word of actual restaurant owners? I’m sure unemployed parasites who have never even seen the inside of the restaurant business (like Tucker and Stapp) are SO much more knowledgeable than those people that actually RAN restaurants for decades.

What Tucker and Stapp can just NEVER understand (but what I learned in second grade) is There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (TANSTAAFL). When the cost of your inputs spikes drastically (labor, electricity, insurance, cost of good sold, etc) you have two choices: raise prices to pay for it or close your doors. The more you raise your prices, the less demand you will see for your product. Again – there is a limit to what people will pay for a shitty chicken sandwich.

Contrary to what morons like Tucker and Stapp believe, the restaurant business operates on razor thin margins. That’s why 60% of them fail in the first year and 80% of them are out of business within five years of opening.

These aren’t “fat cat greedy owners” who are hogging millions to themselves and refuse to pay a decent wage. If you do an honest accounting, most small business owners make LESS money on an hourly basis than a lot of their employees. Tucker and Stapp don’t know this either, because they are do-nothing clowns who post Tweets for a “living” and have mommy to live with.

SO – the post shown above about them “boosting wages” and making it “work” is complete bullshit for now. We’ll see where they are next December.

[Oh – did I mention that Pollo Tropical has ALREADY closed THIRTY of their restaurants? That means the hundreds and hundreds of workers in THOSE restaurants now get $0 per hour from Pollo Tropical. TANSTAAFL baby!]

This Is Who The Left Idolizes

The Obamas are disgusting hypocrites and rabble-rousers.

Fools like Clayton Tucker, Bruce Haywood and Stephanie Fitzharris will NEVER criticize the Obamas for being greedy, even though they have never worked an honest day in their lives or created anything of value for their $70 million dollars. The are quintessential grifter scumbags.

It is also quite telling they own TWO mansions right on the water- which means they are not the least bit worried about the supposed global warming and sea level rising. Only morons like Clayton Tucker believe that tripe.

Instead, Marxist grifters do all their complaining about entrepreneurs, businessmen and risk-takers being “greedy.” I hope you lefty clowns all get pancreatic cancer from your Covid “vaccines.”

Of course, Big Mike Obama is completely wrong with his idiotic quote about the pie. The pie is not static. One guy getting rich is not TAKING from the poor person, no matter how badly Clayton Tucker wants that to be true so he can blame someone else for his failures.

Entrepreneurs, inventors, businessmen, problem solvers and risk-takers create wealth with their inventions and creations and that makes the pie bigger for EVERYONE. That is why even the “poorest” welfare bum in the United States has incredible gadgets that the richest man in the world didn’t have just 50 years ago.

Free-market capitalism, risk-taking and building a better mousetrap is what made American wealthy and lifted ALL boats. Socialist grifters do nothing but destroy all that is good.

Garden Loon Makes Expensive, Permanent Changes To City Property.

Well, Janet “I Never Asked The City For Anything” ‘Crazier’ Crozier is finally seeing her ridiculous dream come true. She has managed to blow about $24,000 to make her private garden club “ADA compliant.”

Nobody asked her to do this, of course. She just has an irrepressible urge in her liberal DNA to waste other people’s money in the most ludicrous fashion. As far as I know, the fake crippled Russian persona I made up is the only “person” who expressed any interest in this ADA idea.

This latest hare-brained scheme brings the TOTAL cost of her garden area to nearly FIFTY-THREE THOUSAND dollars [for a tally, go HERE]. Quite a sum of money for a simple garden. You could probably feed a needy family of four for a couple of years with that.

Where did the $24,000 come from? Well, over $5,000 is from the taxpayers as the City had to extend some sidewalk over to her sand box. Another $12,359 comes from the clearly-insane people who give away money for the LCRA.

Why the LCRA keeps throwing money at this idiot, I cannot fathom. They gave her $4,330 two years ago for a tool shed after all her tools were stolen due to her negligence.

Either she has a cousin working over there or something OR the LCRA is swimming in so much money, they have decided to just set it on fire. Honestly, if the non-profit LCRA has THAT much coin sloshing around their bank accounts, I’d much rather they give a refund to all of us who pay for water and electric through them. Clearly we are paying too much!

[Fun fact: the City of Lampasas pays roughly $600,000 per month to the LCRA for electricity – which the city then marks up and sells to you]

I’m guessing the remainder (about $5,000) of it came from the “fundraiser” they did. I’m sure her lovely daughter Potato Head Fitzharris chipped in a few thousand to make mom happy and to try and buy some goodwill. Maybe make everyone forget she is a far-left Marxist. Or maybe not, since she only gave $31 dollars to the Christmas light fundraiser she herself started.

But that’s not all of it. It occurs to me that a couple years ago, she pitched her garden idea to City council as just a tiny little gardening group. They wanted to use an old volleyball court (City property) over by the swimming pool since it was sitting there unused.

Fair enough. If it wasn’t going to cost the City anything, why not let a few old biddies dig in the dirt and grow a tomato plant or two?

Of course, it swiftly blew out of control. Crazier asked, nay demanded, that the City blow about $11,000 on some water storage tanks – even though the City ALREADY installed water lines for her (for ‘free’) and give her 5,000 gallons of water for ‘free’ every month as well. She has received thousands and thousands of dollars worth of “free” stuff from the City in terms of City workers’ labor.

She put a large, permanent shed on the property, as well. But the latest move is by far the most ridiculous:

Pretty big and PERMANENT changes to CITY property. I don’t recall any of this being discussed during council meetings. Maybe I missed it.

I wonder what would happen if, say, some Frisbee Golf club that used the 580 sports complex decided to start digging holes and filling them with concrete to plant permanent flags in the ground to use? Or if the Rodeo Club decided to start digging holes and filling them with concrete to put up some permanent cross-rail jumps? Oh, and what if those clubs had a fence around their little area that was locked to regular citizens?

To put it a little more bluntly, what happens when Crazier kicks the bucket and the club falls apart in a couple years? I guess we are left with a big chunk of concrete where a volleyball court USED to be. It certainly can’t be used as a volleyball court anymore. I’m wondering who will pay to restore everything back to the way it was?

Ironically, the City recently spent almost $40,000 to REMOVE concrete from their Industrial Park so Martin could get a better deal if he decides to exercise his option to purchase the land.

Paying lots of tax dollars to dig holes here and fill them in over there! Pour concrete here, and remove it over there! Brilliant. Sounds like an FDR make-work, Depression-era wet dream from the 1930s! Comrade Clayton would be proud.

Five Woke Companies To Avoid During Holiday Buying.

Consumers’ Research issued a “Woke Alert” on Tuesday warning Americans not to buy from five prominent businesses in the country this holiday season.

Best Buy

Electronics retailer Best Buy committed to fill one out of three new non-hourly corporate positions with black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) employees by 2025. The company also intends to fill one out of three new, non-hourly field roles with women by this time and provide $44 million in college preparation and career opportunities to BIPOC students.

In August, O’Keefe Media Group revealed that one of Best Buy’s management training programs was discriminating against white applicants. A qualification criteria for joining the program was that the candidate should identify as black, Latino, Hispanic, Asian, or Pacific Islander.

The revelation was met with calls to boycott the company. “It’s time to Bud Light Best Buy,” Kingsley Wilson, of Washington, D.C. Young Republicans, said in an Aug. 9 X post. The public backlash prompted Best Buy to temporarily move its profile on X to “private,” per Consumers’ Research.

Activision

Video game publisher Activision faced a federal civil rights complaint from America First Legal (AFL) for its “illegal, racist, sexist, and discriminatory hiring practices,” according to an Aug. 15 post by the advocacy group.

In 2021, Activision mandated that the company raise the number of women and “non-binary” employees in the firm by 50 percent in five years, said the watchdog. To achieve this, Activision created scholarships only for women, non-binary, and “gender fluid” individuals.

The company’s network groups aimed at helping employees advance in their careers are only open to “Asian and Pacific Islanders, Black, ‘Latinx,’ LGBT+, ‘SWANA’ (Southwest Asian and North African), and women,” AFL stated. “Those who are white, straight, or men are not given the same opportunities as their peers to network and advance their careers at Activision.”

The company embedded “DE&I (Diversity, equity, and inclusion) leaders” within their business and also into their games, according to AFL. Activision developed a tool called “Diversity Space Tool” which measured video game characters based on their culture, sexual orientation, gender identity, body type, ability, age, and ethnicity.

“It’s unbelievable that in 2023—some sixty or so years after the civil rights movement—major corporations would obsess over the race and sex of the employees in their workforces,” Gene Hamilton, AFL vice president, said at the time.

Target

Target faced backlash after promoting LGBT Pride products in May—some of them targeting children. Consumers immediately called for a brand boycott, prompting the company to withdraw the LGBT-themed children’s products from all U.S. stores and websites or in some instances, to reposition the products in its retail outlets.

A video of a Target customer in a store’s kids’ section showed LGBT clothing and books for sale. A tag on a kids’ dress read—“Thoughtfully fit on multiple body types and gender expressions.’ Another clothing tag said—“pride toddler legging.” One piece of clothing had a tag saying “tuck-friendly construction.”

Two books being sold in the kids section were titled “Glad You Came Out!” and “I’m So Happy That You’re Queer!”

Some of the items in Target’s Pride collection were designed by UK-based designer Abprallen, who identifies as a transgender gay man and is a proclaimed Satanist.

“To make matters worse, when recently confronted on national TV about these products, Target CEO Brian Cornell tried to sweep the controversy under the rug by flat-out lying, stating ‘Well, I think you and I both know those weren’t true,’ Consumers’ Research stated.

Nordstrom

Luxury store chain Nordstrom is affiliated with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which runs the “Welcoming School Program.”

The program aims to “create LGBTQ+ and gender inclusive schools, prevent bias-based bullying, and support transgender and non-binary students.” HRC gives Nordstrom a 100/100 score for its promotion of LGBT policies at the workplace.

Over the past years, Nordstrom has donated almost $1 million to support LGBT activities. It has taken part in over 35 Pride festivals and parades across the nation.

Home Depot

Home Depot has also teamed up with HRC for the Welcoming Schools Program, which Consumers’ Research says is “specifically geared towards indoctrinating schools on how to promote LGBT ideology among vulnerable students under the guise of ‘inclusivity.’”

Happy Thanksgiving

Every year, I like to remind everyone that socialism nearly killed the pilgrims:

Luckily, it only took the pilgrims a year to figure out that socialism doesn’t work. As opposed to today – where morons well into their adult life STILL think it’s a grand idea.

What the pilgrims knew about socialism and private property by John Stossel:

The Pilgrims had clashing ideas about how to organize their settlement in the New World. The resolution of that debate made the first Thanksgiving possible.

The Pilgrims were religious, united by faith and a powerful desire to start anew, away from religious persecution in the Old World. Each member of the community professed a desire to labor together, on behalf of the whole settlement. In other words: socialism. But when they tried that, the Pilgrims almost starved.

Their collective farming — the whole community deciding when and how much to plant, when to harvest, who would do the work — was an inefficient disaster. “By the spring,” Pilgrim leader William Bradford wrote in his diary, “our food stores were used up and people grew weak and thin. Some swelled with hunger… So they began to think how … they might not still thus languish in misery.”

His answer: divide the commune into parcels and assign each Pilgrim family its own property. As Bradford put it, they “set corn every man for his own particular. … Assigned every family a parcel of land.”

The Pilgrims’ simple change to private ownership, wrote Bradford, “made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Soon they had so much plenty that they could share food with the natives.

Happy Thanksgiving! Before we eat that turkey today, we should first thank private property rights because they protect us from the “tragedy of the commons” that resulted in starvation and death for the early Pilgrims’ failed experiment with Bernie Sanders-style socialism! Without property rights, Thanksgiving Day would instead be “Starvation Day.”

Socialism is being repackaged and recycled by today’s left-leaning politicians including Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez and is being taken seriously by a new young and gullible generation, many who weren’t even alive when the historic events of the 1980s and 1990s occurred including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the lessons from history about the defects, deficiencies, and failures of socialism are very clear. As we’ve learned from countless examples throughout history, including now Venezuela, the main difference between capitalism and socialism is this: capitalism works.

Potato Head Trying To Buy Her Way Into Polite Society….For $31? Come On, Man!

What do you do when you’re a rabid left-winger from California/Austin who has ruined her own city with terrible liberal policies and has decided to move into infest a nice, small town which leans politically to the right and tends to love Trump (Trump got 78% of the vote in 2016 AND in 2020)?

Trump – a person you detest with all your being and who you STILL stupidly think is a secret agent of Vladimir Putin?

Well, first you try pretending you never said all the Marxist, lefty-lunatic-fringe stuff you’ve said over the last 10 years by erasing all of your social media.

But let’s say that doesn’t work! Perhaps there is a Paul Revere type out there who has alerted the citizenry that they are being invaded by commie scum from Austin. The kind of scum who applauded when the Biden puppet stole the election thanks to the VERY SAME authoritarian Covid measures that you ALSO applauded heavily?

Well, you try and buy your way in. Maybe you start a fundraiser to buy more lights for the annual town Christmas display….

You see, you can’t signal your virtue the old Austin liberal way – which was to demand people wear masks, get ‘vaccinated’ and social distance, or maybe start blathering about tranny rights or publicly support the Marxist front group called Black Lives Matter.

That dirt don’t stick in Lampasas.

So you need a NEW way to signal your virtue. What better way than to create a fundraiser and be the FIRST ONE to donate and get the ball rolling!

Wow. What a virtuous person! She probably donated a whole bunch of money to get the ball rolling, right?

Well, not exactly….

Seriously, Potato Head? Thirty-one bucks?!? That’s an insult, man.

I guarantee you that Potato Head donated WAY MORE than that to Black Lives Matter back in 2020 – to help out her oppressed black sisters and brothers buy a $6 million dollar mansion who are brutalized and terrorized by those evil cops….

Odds that Potato Head has even ONE black friend? I’m guessing about 300-1.

Thirty-one bucks from the chick who humble-bragged on social media about her Austin mansion that “used to be a 4-plex”?

“WE bought it”? Don’t you mean when Kurt Eller bought it?

Thirty-one bucks from the chick who humble-bragged about her dogs that cost about $2,500 each and are “super, super rare”?

Yes, they are expensive!

Come on, lady. You’re not going to buy your way out of being a Marxist whack-job for a measly $31. Pathetic.

Maybe you can get your mom to submit yet ANOTHER grant to the LCRA – those idiots just handed your mother over $12,000 to waste in her garden. A garden that gets used by maybe 12 or 14 people (and is locked to the public). The Christmas lights are seen by THOUSANDS. Seems like a much better expenditure to me.

I actually considered donating $32 just to be a dick, but then it occurred to me: the City of Lampasas had something like a $331,000 budget SURPLUS at the end of the last fiscal year. They could have easily peeled off 1.5% of that to spend on Christmas lights that the entire City could enjoy. But they didn’t. Instead they spent every cent of that money to give raises to a bunch of overpaid City Hall bigwigs who hardly need it.

So I’ll take a pass. Bah humbug.

Highest Paid City Workers Got Raises Of Over 4.2% For New Fiscal Year – 34% HIGHER Than The 3.2% Social Security COLA.

I remember not too many months ago, I was given an explanation for why City council felt that everyone with a pulse who worked for the City deserved a raise of “between 4% and 5%.” The reason given was that social security COLAs were going to be going up by about that amount. So it seemed fair.

[Ignore for a moment that for the already-overpaid Nerf job holders at the very top making six figures, a 4.5% increase is a much bigger chunk of change than it is for the poor schlub who actually goes out there and turns a wrench or fixes downed power lines. ALSO ignore all the huge raises that were given in years past when inflation was close to zero]

As it turns out, social security will only be giving a 3.2% increase next year:

Social Security Benefits Increase in 2024

So if they decided on 4% raises, we are looking at being 25% more generous to City Big Wigs. But it turns out, the raises were even more generous than that.

SALARIES: FAT and ALWAYS going UP:

Stacey Ybarra: has been with the City less than a year. Has failed to find a tenant for the Business Park. She saw a pay increase of 4.2%– her salary goes from $85,000 up to $89,280, according to paystubs I obtained. This is 31% more generous than social security.

Ryan Ward: has been with the City less than two years. Started out at $110,000, which was ALREADY $25,000 higher than the average for an ASSISTANT City Manager nationwide. Has already been given a COLA last year. His salary is now $126,243 – an increase of 4.3% over last fiscal yearand a total increase of 14.5% in just 21 months This is 34% more generous than social security.

Jody Cummings: Ryan Ward told us last year (May 2022) that our police chief was overpaid by 7.9% – but that didn’t stop him from getting an even bigger raise than Ybarra or Ward for this fiscal year…

Librarian overpaid by 11.2% and police chief overpaid by 7.9%

According to paystubs obtained from the City, Cummings will see his salary increase from $103,220up to $107,874 – an increase of 4.5%. This is FORTY PERCENT more generous than social security. Oh, and the police chief of Burnet “only” pulls down $73,544…

BENEFITS: FAT and always GOING UP:

This does not even consider benefits. The City’s gold-plated health insurance premiums jumped 13% this year. City employees only pay a small fraction of that cost. As I have shown previously,someone with a health plan that costs $1,548 PER MONTH is only required to pay $438 out of their own pocket.

That is a HUGE benefit, as those of us out here in the real world know. I know my health insurance just jumped 15% yet again this year…and I get to pay the whole thing myself.

JOB SECURITY: you are GUARANTEED your job for as long as you want:

Did I mention that it is basically impossible to get fired from a City job? DeGraffenreid, Ward, Ybarra, Cummings, Wright, Acevedo, Moreno – they can stay as long as they like. There will NEVER be the shock of losing your job in a bad economy. They will be there until they decide they want to retire – and they will get a 4% to 5% increase in their salaries AND benefits for the rest of their careers – regardless of performance.

Must be nice! We’ll revisit all of this next year when the U.S. economy is deep in the shitter and people in the real world are being laid off left and right.

2023: Another Year of Failure For Lampasas Economic Development Corp.

The LEDC has now concluded their business for 2023, since they never meet in December. What have they accomplished this year? Let’s take a look.

Business Park: still empty.

Next May will mark the TWENTY YEAR anniversary of when the LEDC decided to embark upon this disastrous adventure at the urgings of Angelou Economics (you can learn about that HERE):

They borrowed $1.1 MILLION (over TWO million in today’s dollars) at a hefty 7% – for what is now STILL a giant empty “goat pasture” (former City council member Mike White’s words, not mine). The only excitement that has happened over there was when a murderer dumped a corpse there in July of 2019.

Well over seven million dollars has been wasted thus far.

Last January (almost a year ago now) Finley hired Stacey Ybarra as the new Economic Development Director. She was hired on at a very generous $85,000 per year (quickly raised to $89,280 after less than nine months on the job) – which is $10,000 MORE than the person she replaced (Mandy Walsh) who had been there FIVE years and had a lot more experience than Ybarra.

Ybarra promised last January that getting tenants for the Business Pork Project was her “number-one priority.” After that, she posted a lot of phantom jobs and “projects awarded” which were subsequently erased from history when I started asking for specifics.

[Oh, and the City’s hack attorney JC Brown billed the taxpayer lots of hours to keep the charade a secret from me. Money well spent!]

Eventually City council grilled her hard on what the hell was going on over there! She did a lot of stammering and sputtering, but the eventual answer turned out to be: absolutely nothing.

NOW, Ybarra and the LEDC are “rewriting” the LEDC incentives plan and the “strategic plan” AGAIN (third or fourth time now…I’ve lost count).

Bottom line? Don’t expect any miracle “high paying jobs” to show up at the Business Pork Project any time soon.

SUMMARY:

Business Park expenses: over $7,200,000.00

Jobs created: 0

Days park has been empty: 7,155

Thugs Running Wild – A Democrat Legacy.

You should know about this case if you haven’t heard about it yet. Jillian Ludwig was an 18 year old musician in Nashville attending Belmont University. She died a few days ago after getting hit in the head by a bullet fired by Shaquille Taylor who was out on the street corner shooting randomly at passing cars.

Taylor is of course a career criminal with an extensive rap sheet. This past spring he was charged with aggravated assault when he shot into a vehicle with children inside. The charges were dismissed and Taylor was set free after the court deemed him mentally unfit for trial. They didn’t send him to a mental institution. They just let him go. Now Jillian Ludwig is dead.

This is what “compassion” for these violent parasites gets you. It’s a trade off. Compassion for them means abject cruelty to innocent people like Jillian Ludwig. It means that Jillian Ludwig has to die so that we can be nice to a criminal scumbag who contributes absolutely nothing to society.

Society would be a better place if Shaquille Taylor was not in it. It would be better place if Jillian Ludwig was still in it. But instead Ludwig is dead and Taylor is alive. This is what we do now. Time and time and time again. We trade the worst for the best. We sacrifice the lives of the people you want in your community for the sake of people that nobody wants anywhere near them.