Maybe Ybarra finally got a tap on the shoulder from the City’s hack attorney JC Brown telling her to lay off all the bullshit and lies because it was making it harder and harder to keep denying me information.
Here is the OLD “economic matrix” – complete with the horseshit about “20 – to 35 jobs created” and “project wins”and “announced capital investments”
Here is the NEW “economic matrix” from this week’s LEDC packet (page 27) – all that garbage has been erased. In its place is a “rah rah” cheering section about the new businesses that have opened recently:
Of course, if they were intellectually honest, they would ALSO include the businesses that have CLOSED this year: Wool & Vine, Baby J’s, The Dog House, Rolling Pin and Gillen’s Candies.
I suspect that Bidenomics will claim at least another business or two before the year is over, unfortunately.
This is just over the last few years. I’ve lost track of how many UAW Presidents have gone to prison for theft, fraud and embezzlement. This is the SAME group of clowns berating “greedy” CEOs.
Just remember: while the poor union schlubs are out there striking and getting by on their $500/week fund, the UAW Fat Cats will still get their $200k salaries and dine on steak and lobster. All while funneling MILLIONS in union dues to “climate change” bullshit.
Aug 27, 2018: Former Fiat Chrysler Automobiles labor relations chief Alphons Iacobelli is sentenced to 66 months in federal prison for tax evasion and his role in a wide-ranging conspiracy to win favorable treatment from the UAW for FCA.
Aug 5, 2019: Former UAW Vice President Norwood Jewell was sentenced to 15 months in prison and a year of supervised probation for his role in a multimillion-dollar corruption scandal involving the union and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.
Aug 14, 2019: Michael Grimes, a senior UAW official who “at times worked closely with the UAW Vice President and Director of the GM Department,” according to court filings, faces wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering charges. In court filings, Grimes and other unnamed UAW officials are accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Aug 30, 2019: The FBI is investigating UAW President Gary Jones, whose home was raided this week by federal agents, over allegations of financial crimes. Sources told The Detroit News that investigators are looking into whether Jones or other UAW officials spent member dues on junkets to California and other potential wrongdoing.
Sep 4, 2019: Michael Grimes, who worked as an assistant in the UAW’s General Motors department, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Ann Arbor, Mich., to wire fraud and money laundering charges.
Sep 13, 2019: Vance Pearson, was arrested Sept. 12 and charged with conspiring to embezzle UAW funds. He is president of the union’s Region 5. The Detroit News reports that Jones and former President Dennis Williams are among officials implicated, but unnamed, in the criminal complaint against Pearson.
Oct 22, 2019: Jeffery Pietrzyk, a former assistant to former UAW-GM Department Vice President Joe Ashton, pleaded guilty on Oct. 22 to charges of conspiracy and fraud.
Oct 31, 2019: Edward Robinson, former top aide to UAW President Gary Jones and head of a UAW regional community action program council, was charged with conspiracy to embezzle union funds and conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
Nov 2, 2019: Rory Gamble, vice president of the UAW-Ford department, will be acting president after Gary Jones requested a leave of absence. Jones has been reportedly implicated in the federal probe into the UAW.
Nov 6, 2019: Federal prosecutors charged former UAW Vice President Joe Ashton, who headed the union’s 2011 negotiations with General Motors and was on GM’s board for three years, with money laundering and wire fraud.
Nov 20, 2019: News of Gary Jones’ decision to resign came shortly after the UAW’s International Executive Board voted unanimously to seek the permanent removal of Jones and regional director Vance Pearson from the union.
Nov 26, 2019: Former UAW regional director Vance Pearson, facing charges of misusing hundreds of thousands of dollars of union funds, appeared in federal court two days after resigning from his position and terminating his membership.
Dec 3, 2019: U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider said while the UAW has not adequately cooperated with the yearslong federal investigation of the union, his office has received new tips about corruption within the union.
Dec 4, 2019: Joe Ashton, the UAW’s lead negotiator with GM in 2011 who later sat on the automaker’s board, pleaded guilty to money laundering and wire fraud. He is expected to receive a prison sentence of 30 to 37 months and agreed to forfeit $250,000 he collected in kickbacks. Sentencing is scheduled for March 3.
Jan 6, 2020: Federal prosecutors filed new charges against former UAW Region 5 Director Vance Pearson, indicating that they expect him to plead guilty to embezzling member dues to pay for expensive cigars, golf equipment and other luxuries.
Feb 2020: Former UAW Regional Director Vance Pearson pleaded guilty in federal court on Feb. 7 to conspiring with at least six other UAW officials to embezzle union funds and to further racketeering activity. He agreed to cooperate in the federal government’s investigation, which also targets former UAW Presidents Gary Jones and Dennis Williams. On Feb. 19, Michael Grimes, a former assistant in the UAW’s General Motors department, was sentenced to 28 months for wire fraud and money laundering.
March 2, 2020: Edward Robinson, a top aide to former UAW President Gary Jones, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to embezzle union funds and conspiring to defraud the U.S.
March 5, 2020: Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged Gary Jones, the former president of the UAW, with embezzling more than $1.5 million from the union he once led. Jones was charged in a criminal information, indicating he’s expected to plead guilty.
June 3, 2020: Gary Jones agreed to forfeit $144,000 and is expected to serve about four years in prison. His sentence could be reduced if the assistance he provides to investigators is substantial.
Aug 27, 2020: Federal prosecutors charged ex-UAW President Dennis Williams, who led the UAW from 2014 to 2018, with conspiring to embezzle funds from rank-and-file workers for nearly a decade.
Sep 30, 2020: Dennis Williams, who served as the UAW’s president from 2014 to 2018, pleaded guilty on Sept. 30 to embezzling money from the members he once led.
Nov 17, 2020: Ashton, who negotiated the UAW’s 2011 contract with GM and later became a GM board member, was sentenced on money laundering and wire fraud charges.
May 11, 2021: The UAW’s president from 2014 to 2018, Dennis Williams is the highest-ranking UAW member to be sentenced in a yearslong corruption probe that has netted 15 convictions.
June 10, 2021: Ex-UAW President Gary Jones is the second-consecutive UAW leader to be put behind bars.
July 6, 2021: Vance Pearson was sentenced for conspiring to embezzle union funds and further racketeering activity with other high-ranking union officials.
He was a Greektown Casino regular, prosecutors said, had cash buy-ins of more than $1 million, and put more than $16 million in play while at the casino from 2016-20.
Dipshit greenies and libtards can yammer about “ending fossil fuels” all they want, but it will not happen anytime soon. One of my favorite things in the world was buying oil (USO) and energy stocks (XOM, VGELX) back in 2020 when idiots thought the world was going to end. Worse yet, they actually BELIEVE that we will transition to “net zero” by 2030. Dipshit greenies do not understand that without oil, civilization will collapse in short order.
Here is why:
Energy is the ability to do work. A barrel of oil contains 5.8 million British Thermal Units of energy in a typical 42-gallon barrel.
A human in peak physical condition is capable of putting out 750 BTU per hour of work (we will ignore that a human can’t maintain this pace). That translates to a barrel of oil doing 7,733 hours of optimal human labor.
At the average wage of $26.92 USD per hour, a single barrel of oil produces $208,172.36 of skilled labor! That’s remarkable!
Even more remarkable, oil stores this energy as potential energy. That barrel might cost $70 and weigh 300 pounds when full. To gain the equivalency in batteries, you would need over 33,000 pounds of Tesla’s Powerwall batteries at a cost of more than $1.3 million.
It’s even more amazing once you realize that this liquid is able to produce over $200,000 worth of economic output, for less than the price of a Coca-Cola, and without requiring the added expense of storage. If that’s hard to believe, here is the math: a barrel of oil contains 42 gallons; the average price of oil in 2021 was $67.99 USD per barrel, so that comes to $1.62 per gallon. Costco sells 8 liters of soda for $6, a price that amounts to $2.85 per gallon.
Illumination from petroleum oil helped save the whales, not Greenpeace.
Prior to petroleum oil (kerosene), whale oil was used to illuminate society; it was a luxury because it burned brighter than candles and cleaner than wood fires. By 1830, the United States was the global whaling leader. At its peak, whaling produced 600,000 barrels of whale oil annually. That changed after the Drake well, which produced in one day what it took a whaling voyage to produce in 3-4 years.
By 1900, U.S. whaling output was 10% of its peak. Vegetable oils helped too. Whaling peaked in 1962, 13-years before Greenpeace heavily publicized action in Vancouver.
The next time someone tries to tell you how horrible this fuel is, I hope you are able to view it differently than the “climate chaos” idiots (who prey upon your cognitive biases) would have you believe.
When you are a “virtual” rancher as opposed to a REAL one, you can stay up until 1am rage posting on Twitter about how oppressed workers are and how overpaid “fat cats” are….
“Dignified” wage? Who gets to define “dignified”? What the hell do YOU know about dignified, anyways:you live with your mother at age 32!
You’d think the little guy with (1) no job (2) who lives with mom at age 32 and (3) has probably not been laid by a female in his life would focus on THOSE three MAJOR issues in his life instead of getting worked up about how much some guy in Michigan gets paid to put wheels on a car.
But you’d be wrong! Instead of looking to find a real job or maybe develop some skills, he prefers being unemployed and yelling on a street corner about how unfair life is…
Here are some comparisons you will NEVER hear the little guy make:
“It’s not fair that LeBron James makes $50 million per year and the guy selling beer in the stadium only makes $38,000!”
“It’s not fair that Tom Cruise makes $70 million for a film while the chick doing his makeup only makes $55,000 per year!”
“It’s not fair that Taylor Swift makes $100 million per year and her low-income fans have to shell out a ridiculous $800 per ticket to see her.”
No, he will never mention that. Because THOSE rich people are liberals…and they virtue signal properly. He only bashes CEOs, because they are “evil,” for some reason. Never mind that fact that LeBron and Cruise could disappear off the face of the planet tomorrow and it wouldn’t affect me one bit. Whereas if all the major companies in the world shut down tomorrow, we’d all be quite fucked. So personally, I value the companies a lot higher than the useless rich celebs he never criticizes.
Our local socialist also never complains about the super-rich politicians who amass hundreds of millions but never create anything of value in their entire pathetic lives:
You know who else Clayton Tucker SDEC-24 will never disparage? Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. That is because Tim Cook is a homosexual and raging liberal, so he is a protected species.
Here are some facts for you, Comrade:
*** Tim Cook took home over $100 million in one year as CEO of Apple. FAR more than your automaker CEOs.
*** Apple profit margins are 26%! More the TRIPLE the 7.5% industry average for automakers.
*** Apple has spent FAR more on stock buybacks than the $5 billion Comrade Clayton is upset about with the automakers!
So Apple is about 30 times WORSE in terms of “corporate greed,” to use Comrade Clayton’s terms. But guess what? Comrade Clayton HIMSELF owns an iPhone and very likely owns other Apple shit like an iPad or iMac. Because he is a chick and chicks own Apple crap.
What a hypocrite: typing about “corporate greed” ON HIS APPLE PHONE AND APPLE COMPUTER and posting it on FACEBOOK (Facebook profit margins 24% and CEO worth over $100 billion).
Only in America will you find stupid, spoiled assholes like Clayton Tucker raging against “greedy capitalists” on their $1,200 iPhone while posting on Twitter and sipping their Starbucks latte. What a complete and utter douchebag.
Combined salary and benefits for current fiscal year: $10.605 million– first year EVER over $10 million. Assuming 116 employees, this works out to $91,422 on average for every single City employee. Obviously some people at the top (like Finley) get almost triple that figure.
Combined salary and benefits increase over two years: 24.1%
Tax revenues UP 8% from $4.865 million to $5.251 million (this could have been reduced by lowering the tax rate…but it wasn’t) – the City siphoning almost $400,000 more out of the citizens compared to last year.
Don’t forget – the Feds dropped almost TWO MILLION DOLLARS into the laps of City government over the last couple years with their “Covid Relief” bullshit, and they STILL need to soak you harder!
Local socialist Clayton Tucker (Chairman of the Lampasas Democratic Party SDEC-24 TX) is absolutely amazed by the things the free market creates. Things that ass-backwards socialist regimes like the USSR, North Korea and Cuba would never in a million years create….
Then again, this idiot thinks WINDMILLS are the future of energy production, and they were invented about 1,500 years ago.
Theoretically, the price of medical care should plummet as stuff like this (and DaVinci the surgical robot) becomes more widespread. But don’t worry – fuckheads like Clayton Tucker who LOVE Big Government will be sure to push for laws and regulations that will kill that baby in the cradle.
Not to mention we have had WebMD for over 20 years now. In the first quarter of 2020, WebMD received approximately 127 million unique users viewing over 229 million page views per month.
But we already knew that our local socialist had a child-like mind. After all, he believes in Santa Claus, only he calls it “free government stuff.”
What’s even more hilarious, is Clayton Tucker was vehemently OPPOSED to AI back on July 16th – when it hurts moron Hollywood liberals and union members:
Yes, we don’t want AI to take a job away from some low-IQ twat like Sean Penn or Ed Norton or Dan Rather. That would be unconscionable. Clayton Tucker’s suggestion is “not allowing” that to happen. Of course, it’s going to happen whether Clayton Tucker (the random 32-year-old guy who lives with his mom in a small town in Texas) wants it to or not.
Quite frankly, I very much look forward to a time when quasi-retarded clowns like Matt Damon and Cher are mopping floors at the local high school because computers can easily generate pretty faces for pennies and there is no longer demand for human pretty faces.
But Clayton Tucker is FINE with AI putting doctors out of work! This can only be because Hollywood liberals and journalists are about 93% libtards whereas highly skilled doctors probably tend to skew a lot more towards “conservative,” right comrade??
With a hat tip to the original Terminator movie from 1984….
That Gardinator is out there, she can’t be bargained with, she can’t be reasoned with, she doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fiscal sanity, she has an IQ of 75 and doesn’t understand the value of a dollar…and she absolutely will not stop… EVER, until you WASTE MORE TAX DOLLARS!
Janet “I never asked the City for anything” Yoder “Crazier” Crozier is back up there AGAIN demanding more money for her retarded “ADA compliant garden” project. Apparently she was promised that the City would build or “rework” an entirely new portion of sidewalk to be “ADA compliant” – which is going to cost well over $5,000.
This dunce spends FAR more time dreaming up ways to waste money on ridiculous projects than she does ACTUALLY GARDENING! Somehow they are guzzling 8,000 gallons of water a month on a weed patch that makes the Business Park look like the gardens at Versailles:
Not content to have the city hand her a plot of land and put in irrigation pipes and bibbs at City expense. Not content to get 5,000 gallons per month handed to her for “FREE,” courtesy of the taxpayers. Not content to blow over FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS and counting on this garden hobby of hers…she has tried to scam another $10,000 from the City for water catch tanks (last year) and now she’s up there crying that the City isn’t being quick enough about wasting thousands of dollars to re-do the sidewalks to her liking for her insane ADA project.
You gotta hand it to the Krauts. When they decide to do something, they go all in with ruthless efficiency. Whether it’s killing jews or destroying their own industrial base with moronic energy policies, they are second-to-none.
On one hand, this represents the decay & destruction of many billions of euros of capital.
On the other hand it represents hardly any energy risk, because 10 gigwatts of solar capacity produces very little power, much less during peak demand period, in a dark cold country like Germany.
Fortunately for the grid, the power isn’t needed because Germany is just losing its industries instead of growing the clean energy supply. Further, this rotting solar, even when new, didn’t produce the sort of electricity supply that supports factories staying in the country.
Germany’s nuclear plants were getting more effective with age, with extraordinary uptime and reliability at low cost. Its solar equipment, on the other hand, gets worse with age. From here on, Germany is going to have to sprint just to keep its capacity numbers up, to say nothing of actual solar energy production.
Countries have demonstrably powered themselves at or above 50% nuclear in their power mix for decades [Texas is at a pathetic 10% or so], whereas solar and wind dependency is merely in the experimental stage and may actually not work. Only Denmark has broken 50% and its reward is excruciatingly high electricity prices and several times the carbon intensity of France.
We’ll see! The stakes are perilously high for countries attempting this grand experimental transition.
Let’s move on to the next wildly-overpaid and underworked employee: Economic Development Director Stacey Ybarra.
If the 4% universal raise goes through, Ybarra will be pulling in $89,147. She has not even been with the City for a year and has no letters after her name. What she DOES have is a long history of non-private sector employment.
This comparison will be short, because to be honest – there aren’t many cities our size who even have a position for “Economic Development” on their payrolls!!
Burnet, TX: In 2020, they had a guy as “economic development director” who was pulling down $48,324. He either got canned or left. The NEW chick is making $61,534.Ybarra will be paid 45% more than her Burnet counterpart.
The funny thing is, I’m pretty sure Ybarra actually LIVES in Liberty Hill! LOL. Either there or Cedar Park. I forget which. She lives closer to L.H. than to Lampasas.
Wait a sec…the Liberty Hill EDD looks EXACTLY like Jim Carey’s secretary in the movie Liar Liar!
Perryton, TX: $64,064 (population 8,150 – larger than Lampasas). Ybarra will be paid 39% more than her Perryton counterpart.
Now, some BIG cities (Austin, Dallas, Round Rock) have EDD positions and pay them ludicrous sums like $200,000 per year. We are not those cities. We are a small town of 7,500 which happens to sit at the intersection of three major highways. Every penny spent of “economic development” is a penny wasted. Just look at the still-empty Business Pork project.
[Bidenomics! Weird – the dems keep telling us inflation is only 3%.]
Many City Hall Big Wigs have plans that cost the City $1,548 per month! But they only pay $438 of that! Person in real world = $560 per month. City Hall Big Wig = $1,548 per month and taxpayer pays $1,100 of that. Quite generous!!
So if 6% to 6.5% is the real number, why is the City of Lampasas getting creamed for a 13% hike? Good question.
They sure don’t want to lose their gold-plated Baylor Scott & White plans – those are basically the best (your) money can buy! Sitting down and doing the bitch work of contacting 5 or 6 different companies to find a better rate sounds like a task that belongs to Assistant City Manager Ryan Ward. Unfortunately, he is too busy dicking around with the new $40,000 payroll software to bother with that, I bet.
How did this all get so out of control? Well, some of it has to do with terrible decisions made back in 2013 and 2014 when moron City council members like Wanda Bierschwale decided the City taxpayers should help pick up the tabs of employee dependents AND RETIREES!
Yes, those retirees who ALREADY were paid highly for decades and had 2-1 matching for their retirement also STILL get a subsidy for their health care premiums. Think Sammy Bailey.
Here is the discussion from 2013 and 2014:
July 8, 2013 council packet – City personnel salaries – Proposing a three percent (3%) global increase which would be $117,000 budget impact. The new health premiums increased three percent (3%)and would like to budget $71,000 to assist employees with 25 percent (25%) of dependent premiums.[the CPI that year was about 1.5%]
July 25th, 2014 council packet – Initial budget assumptions call for a 4 percent increase in total salary expenses, although deGraffenried said that does not necessarily mean an across the-board 4 percent raise is suggested. In the budget approved last year, total salaries increased 3 percent. Mayor Pro Tem Wanda Bierschwale said she would like to see employees get “a goodly raise” and for the city to pay a portion of retiree health care costs. Mrs. Bierschwale also said she would like to increase the dependent cost share. White said he supports a 50 percent health care cost share for retireesand a 4 percent raise for all employees. Councilman Chuck Williamson also said he favors 4 percent raises. [CPI that year was about 1.6%]
Biershwale and White were certainly generous with taxpayer funds back in 2014! Those changes were forever – and it will bite them in the ass going forward, as it is this year.
But don’t worry! Finley has a big money tree behind City Hall. Nobody who pushes paper in their air-conditioned office will have to worry about paying full price for their $1,548-per-month health insurance!
