You Will Sacrifice. It Will Hurt

Many people have likened the battle against coronavirus to a war and invoked imagery of the US fighting World War II. President Trump has even deemed himself a “wartime president.”

The president told reporters at a White House briefing that fighting the virus would require a sacrificial national effort just like it took to defeat the Axis in the Second World War.

Every generation of Americans has been called to make shared sacrifices for the good of the nation. To this day, nobody has ever seen like it, what they were able to do during World War II. Now it’s our time. We must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together, and we will come through together. It’s the invisible enemy. That’s always the toughest enemy, the invisible enemy.”

But listening to all the rhetoric coming from politicians and pundits, one has to ask, where exactly is the sacrifice?

The government is promising bailouts for everybody. We’re only WEEKS into the crisis and there is already an expectation that the government will be sending everybody checks. Call it “bailout nation.”

Apparently, the government wants “sacrifice” with no pain.

Unfortunately, that’s not a thing.

Americans didn’t get checks from the government in World War II. They got higher taxes.

During WWII middle-class Americas sacrificed to support the US government’s war effort. They paid much higher taxes, substantially reduced their consumption, and loaned their savings to the government. The people support the government. The government can’t support the people.”

Therein lies the ugly truth. There is no sacrifice without pain. The government can bail out the airlines. It can bail out the hotels. It can helicopter money in and drop it on your head. You’re still going to pay, either through higher taxes in the future or through inflation.

In the end, economics always wins.

Trump is right. You are going to sacrifice for the government actions surrounding the coronavirus. What he’s not telling you is it’s going to hurt.

The government and central bank response to the economic crisis precipitated by coronavirus are creating the perfect storm for price inflation. The problem isn’t a lack of money. It’s a lack of stuff. We’re all sitting at home and a lot of us aren’t producing anything. Uncle Sam can stuff our mailboxes with checks. That money doesn’t do us a damn bit of good if there is nothing to buy.

The end result will be a lot more dollars chasing a lot fewer goods. That means prices will go up.

When inflation heats up, interest rates rise. That’s the proper response. How exactly is that going to work in a world up to its eyeballs in debt?

All the money the Fed is printing isn’t going to have value. It isn’t going to buy anything. Prices are going to skyrocket. And in fact, this coronavirus is accelerating that process because the coronavirus is reducing the supply of goods available to buy.”

I’ve always held to the theory that when the doctor tells you “this won’t hurt a bit,” it’s going to hurt like hell. You would be wise to treat politicians the same way. When they tell you the sacrifice won’t hurt because they will make it all OK, you had better hold on to your wallet. Because you will sacrifice. And it will hurt.

Good Thing Talbert Didn’t Get Her Wish To “Shut Down Hysteria and Misinformation on Social Media”

I bet Mayor Talbert wishes she could take back that ridiculous post she made. It makes her look sillier by the day. I mean, just look at the hysteria and misinformation the Family Medicine Clinic is now spreading on social media! It doesn’t conform at ALL to Misti’s belief that the virus is no big deal and people are causing hysteria by taking it seriously:

“Very hard and very fast and could overwhelm the system“! Holy shit! THAT will stir up the crowd and cause a panic! Mayor Talbert to the rescue!

If Mayor Talbert was so utterly wrong about this, what else has she been wrong about? Pretty much everything, as it turns out. Blowing millions on a City Hall remodel and ‘business park‘ that is a weed patch come to mind. Handing out ‘free’ electrical hookups to her developer buddies and $150,000 to former Council members (S2M2) also come to mind. Or maybe the $120,000 you wasted with Halff Consultants to “study how Lampasas can grow”. Maybe the over $40,000 on new equipment ruined in the ransomware attack (the ransomware attack that saw nobody reprimanded or fired and was never even explained to the public).

Did I mention the $166,000+ wasted on a no-bid toilet? Or the wildly overpaid/overstaffed IT Department?

Misti and City council have been terrible stewards of taxpayer dollars for YEARS and YEARS. Now that the good times are over and they will very likely face a massive hole in their budget (I would not be surprised to see a $400k to $500k deficit), I can only imagine their incompetence will multiply exponentially.

Since you are in for a BIG world of hurt with City finances, allow me to refresh you memories on a LOT of ideas I had NINE MONTHS ago to trim the fat. I’ve done all the hard work for you. HERE IT IS.

Talbert Is Going To Flip Her Wig When She Sees This

What was that about hysteria, ridiculousness and misinformation on social media?

Looks like Chane Rascoe, the $200,000 man, is acting all hysterical and ridiculous-like! Wow. I guess all the people speculating last week that the schools might shut for a while were also being all ridiculous and hysterical too, right?

Also, Rascoe says “at a MINIMUM“! Geez…he better be careful. He may cause some hysteria and misinformation with that statement and draw the ire of Misti Talbert!!!

I guess the question now is: do the teachers all take a 3% pay cut? Or do they tack on these days at the end of the year and cut into their summer break? Kinda like ‘snow days’ up north?

Yet Another City Promise Turns Out To Be A Lie

From today’s Dispatch:

In another upcoming event, the city will hold a town hall meeting April 6 to discuss recycling, a potential landscape/tree policy and a potential requirement for a form survey for new construction projects. The town hall meeting will be at 6 p.m. at the former Lampasas Middle School cafeteria on Western Avenue.

It is bad enough The Goldfish are putting something as asinine as curbside recycling up for a town hall meeting, where every uninformed dummy in town (like THIS ONE) can clamor for an expensive and useless service. What is WORSE, is that they are holding it in a freaking cafeteria!!

I remember when Spinley and the Seven Goldfish tried to justify their $1.5 million City Hall vanity project by saying the following in the Lampasas Dispatch (and I quote!):

The new City Hall and Council chambers would “allow more public participation in council meetings [and] also will provide a place for various community groups to meet. City Manager Finley deGraffenried said the City Council’s vision is to have a facility that encourages public participation and “that could be seen as a hub” for a variety of meetings, civic activities and community groups.

I would say a town hall meeting to let morons clamor for ‘free stuff’ fits Finley’s description of “a variety of meetings, civic activities and community groups”.

I ranted about this LAST MAY when the City was having meetings at the same cafeteria. Of course, that’s because the $1.5 million boondoggle STILL wasn’t done yet.

Well, it’s done now! They have held Council meetings there for MONTHS. I guess the fancy $1.5 million vanity project is NOT for the community who paid for it after all. It’s just for the Big Wigs. The important politicians and City workers don’t want the filthy masses dirtying up their $12,750 worth of chairs.

I also wonder why the LEDC doesn’t hold their meetings there and use the $96,000 audio/visual system just like City council does. After all, the LEDC handles (I should say ‘mishandles’) hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. The taxpayer has a right to know EVERYTHING that is being discussed in those meetings – not just the short crib notes that show up in the printed minutes.

I asked Finley this very question last month when I met him at City Hall. I did not get an answer.

Kinda Looks Like Gary Cox Got the Shaft Back in October

Oh, the things you accidentally find sometimes when looking through public records. I really missed my calling as a detective.

I have recently been going over 2019 time sheets for our IT Department to see exactly how many overtime hours the City got jammed for during the Aug 16th Ransomware attack (spoiler: over 100 hours). You remember that, I assume? A bunch of equipment got wrecked, nobody got in trouble or even questioned, no explanation was ever publicly given.…THAT ransomware attack.

Anyways, I noticed something weird on Network Administrator Kristy Acevedo’s time sheet for the end of September. Thursday September 26, Friday September 27th and Monday September 30th her time sheet is marked “ADM LEAVE PD.”

Or, paid administrative leave. Conveniently taken around the weekend so she got a sweet 5-day vacation and got paid as if she worked those days. Love it! But why would our intrepid IT girl be in any trouble? Especially just weeks after she ‘saved the day’ by cleaning up the ransomware attack her very department allowed?

I then remembered what ELSE happened around October 1st and was quietly buried for over a month: Gary Cox was shown the door ‘resigned’ ….remember?? He “submitted a letter of resignation on October 1st”, according to a November 5th Dispatch article.

Hmmmm. Now, with well over 100 City employees running around town (many of whom do REAL work like fix broken pipes, repair downed power lines and toss violent douche bags in jail), you can be sure there are more than a few who don’t care for the IT Department people in their cushy overpaid Nerf world job. Subsequently (look it up, Monica) I had heard hilarious rumors that Kristy was tangled up in the Gary Cox ‘resignation’ affair.

I won’t go into too much detail but supposedly it involved a fairly harmless prank with some Goldfish crackers (hey, she really IS The Joker!!).

I don’t traffic in rumors. I try to stick to facts – usually taken straight from City documents or City council’s own minutes. But this is just TOO big of a coincidence to NOT be related….and here is a FACT staring me in the face. Paid administrative leave for three days at exactly the time former Assistant City Manager Gary Cox was let go resigned.

Seems to me Gary got shafted pretty hard. He appears to have been shown the door while Kristy was only “punished” with 5 days of paid vacation administrative leave.

Ouch, man.

Of course, we’ll never know the real story. No way Elmo Spinley will ever let that one out!

[P.S. to poor Gary Cox out there in Houston: anonymous tips are always welcome!]

City Employee Benefits Cost UP 25% Over Same Period Last Year

New all-time-high in City employee benefit costs. For February 2020 (page 90), the grand total for health care, retirement, life insurance, dental and vision for City employees totaled $272,833 – or an annual rate of $3.274 million

Same period last year (page 34) the total was $218,404 – or an annual rate of $2.62 million.

Some highlights:

The cost for Colonial Life and Accident rose 22% (check #147288 versus check #155160).

A BRAND NEW benefit through “The Guardian Life Insurance Company” is now listed at nearly $6,000 per month (check #155194).

The combo of “Scott and White Health Plan” and “Texas Municipal Retirement System” increased from $213,741 PER MONTH up to $261,196 PER MONTH.

This is the stuff Spinley and the Goldfish never bring up. They talk non-stop about SALARIES and how “we need to be competitive to keep people here” (never mind the City is LITTERED with employees who have been around for DECADES – which kind of destroys that argument). But never a peep about the rapid rise in BENEFITS.

Also, back in 2014, City council decided to pay for 50% of employee dependents health care – up from 25%. They also decided to pay for the premiums of RETIREES! Yes, they people who had been there decades and already received large piles of money would also then get their premiums paid for by the City after they retired.

To say the benefits of working for the City are generous (especially compared to those of us in the private sector who pay for them) would be a large understatement. But that doesn’t stop Spinley and politicians from clamoring for additional 3 or 4% SALARY raises nearly every year.

The problem is the City employee does not SEE the huge benefits they get. The don’t SEE that it cost the taxpayer, for example, 8% more to provide health care for each of them than it did last year. They then get angry their paycheck hasn’t risen much.

The problem is these benefits are VERY REAL costs to the taxpayer. It is these costs that crush the taxpayer and ruin government finances in the long run.

A very simple solution would be to shift some of this ever-increasing health care cost onto the people who use them: the City employee. Those of us who own small businesses and live in the real world have to deal with these ludicrous price increases every year AND STILL shell out taxes to cover the same for the City employee…many of whom are extremely unappreciative of them and bellyache for a raise as well.

I would be VERY curious to see how the amount of health claims filed by City employees varies year over year. Very curious indeed. After all, there is zero incentive to take care of yourself and every incentive to overuse the “free” health care when you aren’t the one footing the bill

More Disturbing Lampasas School District Spending Numbers

Back in August of 2011, the LISD had 3,415 kids in the system. Today that number is actually LOWER at around 3,300. A DECREASE of roughly 3% in the number of students served. I’ll be generous and say the student body size is pretty much FLAT over the last eight years.

During that SAME period (between the 2011/2012 budget and the 2019/2020 budget) the following has happened to revenues and expenditures (source HERE):

Expenditures are UP 17.8% ($31.730 million to $37.387 million)

Revenues are WAY up 27.6% ($30.674 million to a whopping $39.152 million) – Think of ‘revenue‘ as ‘money taken from other people to pay for my kid’s education‘

Under ‘expenditures’ we have seen the following increases when you break down the categories:

Instruction: UP 24% ($13 million to $16.2 million)

Curr & Inst Staff Develop: UP from $122,000 to $433,000 – an increase of NEARLY FOUR FOLD! That is a 17% compound annual growth rate.

Instructional Leadership: UP from $225,000 to $653,000 – an increase of NEARLY THREE FOLD! That is a 14% compound annual growth rate.

General Administration: UP from $1.131 million to $1.440 million – an increase of 27%.

Data Processing Services: UP from $500,000 to over $1.1 million – an increase of 100% in 8 years! That is a 10% compound annual growth rate.

I know what I see here: a lot of bullshit categories exploding in cost at a ridiculous rate. Instructional leadership? Curriculum Development? Those costs increase 17% a year? Nonsense. Those are nests being feathered.

DATA PROCESSING?? Data processing costs go up 10% a year for a student body that stays the same size? Weird how technology makes things CHEAPER everywhere but in government and the school system. Who’s in charge over there…Monica and Kristy? If parents actually had to shell out this money on the first day of the school year, and little Johnny said “hey pops, I need $330 for school – that’s what it’ll cost this year to process all my data”, I think the parent would be down there screaming about being ripped off.

I’m sure the $200,000 man, Superintendent Chane Rascoe, is all over this. Surely someone who makes that kind of money is a small town is super, duper smart and can control costs and personnel.

Right?

Taxpayers Soaked Hard Once Again – For The Kids

From yesterday’s Radiogram:

“This evening, our school board approved a compensation plan for next year that includes a 7% general pay increase of the midpoint for teachers, clerical/aides and auxiliary. Teacher salaries will reflect a minimum starting amount of $47,000. A general pay increase of 5% of the midpoint for administrators was approved as well. In other news, the purchase of 280 Chromebooks was approved. The Chromebooks will be used by grades K-4″.

Wow. A MASSIVE increase. Must be nice. Remember of course, that these people work 9 months and not 12…so these numbers must be multiplied by 1.33 to get a 12-month equivalent. So that MINIMUM STARTING amount turns into $62,651 equivalent. Then you add on the benefits like ‘free’ medical and retirement contributions (which run 40% of a typical salary for the City of Lampasas workers, as an example) and you are very quickly up into the $65,000 to $70,000 range as a cost to the taxpayer for 9 months of work.

I guess I’m not surprised, seeing as how these same people voted to give school LISD Superintendent Chane Rascoe a recent raise to a massive $158,751.84 PER YEAR (or a $211,615 annual equivalent) PLUS all his benefits.

Of course, you can never question school salaries, or you’re a giant asswipe. I’ll cite some great studies HERE and HERE so you can see why the constant throwing of money at schools steams my beans.

I really don’t know why Mandy Walsh and the LEDC are spending millions of dollars on a “Business Park” to attract high-paying jobs. Pretty much every single government job here for the City, County or school is VERY high-paying compared to the poor schlubs in the private sector who have to pay for all this (see below). Mandy should just give everyone cushy government jobs like Assistant Deputy Guidance Counselor or something…we can ALL get well-paid jobs in government!

Some data from Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2010. I have no doubt the gap has since widened in favor of the powerful teachers unions who are ALWAYS clamoring for more money and benefits:

Don’t even get me started on the MASSIVE bloat of administrators and other parasitic paper-pushers that have infested the public school system and cost the taxpayers an absolute fortune while contributing zero value. Here are some charts to really drive the point home:

Administrators have grown FOUR TIMES FASTER than student enrollment.
MASSIVE bloat in parasitic paper pushers who add zero value

Hurry Up And Wait

Good thing the City rushed out and wasted $158,000 $166,315.80 on a NO-BID contract for a small crapper at Campbell Park. The pre-fab dumper was dumped in the parking lot on Jan 21st and there it sits….5 weeks later and STILL not open or hooked up!

The ironic thing is, for the first time EVER (I drive by there almost daily), I counted a ton of people in the park last weekend. And by “a ton”, I mean nine.

Nine poor citizens with bursting bladders being taunted by Finley’s not-quite-finished-$166,315 toilet in the park. Ah Finley, you have a devilish sense of humor. Think of all the fools running up to the door about to crap their pants, and finding it locked!!

Hilarious.

Still not open or hooked up – Feb 25th, 2020

Climate Change And Recycling Dummies Never Talk About The Other Side Of The Ledger

Ruh roh. Don’t show this news to recycling zealot Janet-Yoder-Kraeff-Crozier-Thunberg. She just may blow a gasket!

The giant turbines on those “clean, free energy” windmills actually can’t be recycled and have to be buried in a landfill. LOL. You can’t make this stuff up.

People like Janet (a locust here from Ohio by way of Austin) never talk about THIS side of the “clean energy” ledger. They tout recycling or electric cars or wind turbines as an ‘obvious’ move that creates jobs, saves the planet, saves money, blah, blah, blah.

They IGNORE the massive amounts of smelting energy and and iron that go INTO creating these turbines. They IGNORE that these things are BURIED in landfills after their useful life. They ignore that the magnets used in these windmills create horrific pollution. They IGNORE that electric cars use massive batteries that require strip mining of lithium and cobalt and need to be disposed of eventually. They IGNORE that the energy coming out of your garage outlet to power your electric car is likely powered by fossil fuels. They IGNORE the massive costs of collecting, sorting, transporting, and cleaning their garbage to recycle it.

Unfortunately, these are REAL costs. But faux enviro-dummies don’t care about that. They care about virtue signaling. Much like the ethanol boondoggle, when a TRUE accounting of COSTS and benefits is made, almost all of these activities make zero sense.

These REAL costs should not be thrust upon Lampasas citizens with a ridiculous curbside pickup recycling program. If Janet-Yoder-Kraeff-Crozier-Thunberg wants to THINK she’s saving the planet and it’s SO important to her, then go ahead and learn when our recycling center is open and cart your old jars 1.3 miles to deposit them. If you’re too lazy to do even that much, then perhaps you should quietly slink off into the sunset.

City Council needs to let this asinine idea die a quick death – not bring it to a town hall meeting where OTHER enviro-dummies might clamor for it.

P.S.