Tag: Misti Talbert

Former Council Members Meddling in Current Affairs, Spewing Bullshit

Well, I tried to take a relaxing day with the kids and enjoy the water slides at Kalahari yesterday. It was all well and good until late evening when the Dispatch electronic issue dumped into my email box. I should have let it lie there until today, but I saw the front page with “skate park” and “historic buildings” and I foolishly opened it up.

What I found was quite disgusting and enraging. FORMER council member “Greasy” Chris Harrison and FORMER mayor “Transparency” Talbert yammering total nonsense about the skate park.

Why a has-been council member and failed mayor are involved in this at ALL is beyond me. Doesn’t Talbert have enough on her plate wasting money in her $7 million dollar sandbox over on Highway 183? I guess not.

The skate park is a disaster that has been out of control for a while. Even Cathy “Pork Chop” Kuehne (who is almost as profligate a spender as Talbert) finally asked “how did it jump like that?”

You KNOW it’s getting stupid when Pork Chop arises from her slumber and asks some obvious questions.

Ya’ll remember the skate park, right? That’s the one that went from a $200,000 estimate in August of 2020 to a $400,000 estimate in August of 2021 (page 20):

Then Finley stood before council and lied right to their faces about it all…

City Manager Tells Blatant Lie To Council Without Blinking

First up to explain this train wreck was former council member “Greasy” Chris Harrison. Harrison hasn’t been on City council for years, so I have no idea why he was wheeled in to bloviate on this topic in the first place.

Chris is the guy who, while running for re-election to City council said: “To me, it’s not the government’s place to fund private business”.

Then after he left office, he whored himself out to developer S2M2 Inc and went to his good buddy and former council chum Misti Talbert to grab $185,000 in taxpayers’ money to “fund a private business” that he now happened to work for and which wanted a free detention pond built. The very same detention pond that Misti and council had said “NO” to before Greasy got hired on to lobby for them:

City Hands Former Council Member “Greasy” Chris Harrison and Developer S2M2 $185,000 In City Funds For Brodie Estates

Anyways, I guess old Chris felt he owed a favor to Misti for getting him that big $185,000 check, so he was in the paper carrying water for her skate park disaster yesterday and trying to tell us why the costs exploded.

His brilliant answer?

Diesel.

Yeah, according to Chris: “Diesel went from $2 to $5.19”

This is complete horseshit, of course. Harrison is cherry-picking the dead-nut low price and the current ridiculous $5.19 price and blaming it all on that.

[Note: Waste Connections is a hell of a lot more “diesel sensitive” in the business of hauling garbage than the skate park is – and THEY are ‘only’ raising trash rates 8.8% – NOT doubling them. Hmmmmm]

The problem is that the original estimate was made in 2020 and the new “doubling of price” estimate was made the next year – LONG before diesel went parabolic.

Let’s see what diesel prices were in August of 2020 and then in August 2021 – which are the two dates the estimates were made (as you can see from City council’s own minutes):

We can see that diesel actually went from $2.37 to $3.45 during that time.

Harrison blaming the skate park cost doubling on diesel is like that moron Biden blaming high gas prices on Putin invading Ukraine. Sorry, but the damage was done LONG before all that.

Granted, that 45% increase sucks, but no way in hell that is to blame for a doubling of the skate park cost. I actually live in the real world and help run real businesses. The cost of everything has been screwing us too, but NOTHING has doubled in price in a year. We’ve had 15% increases, 25% increases and some 30% increases – but NOTHING has doubled.

The skate park fiasco is not due to “diesel”. The skate park fiasco is the result of YEARS AND YEARS of a culture of incompetence and unaccountability on the part of Finley deGraffenreid and City council. It is the result of a council that rubber-stamped any and all project cost increases with zero discussion or interest in knowing why.

It is also the result of a City council heavily populated by idiots like Chuck Williamson and Cathy Kuehne who have never worked in the private sector in their lives and do not value a tax dollar properly.

Their attitude for YEARS, no matter what the project cost overrun (and there have been MANY), was always “well, it’s just another [fill in amount], we can’t stop now”.

Over and over and over again, ridiculous bungling, cost overruns and fiscal waste were left unmentioned and unpunished. Everyone just went back to the Magic Money Tree to pay for all the stupidity. Wildly overpriced elevators, selling a building for $75k and buying it back for $225k, paying $96,000 for a $33,000 A/V system, not bothering to get bids on bathroom construction, etc, etc, etc. It has been going on for YEARS!

I can almost hear Talbert sitting in on this skate park discussion (where she had no business being in the first place – you are a FORMER council member, sugar) and blabbering something like “well, it’s only another $90,000 and we have to get this done”.

This is known as the Sunk Cost Fallacy and it is why the shitty Business Pork is STILL going strong and wasting $7 million over 20 years despite not a single prospect showing any interest in the damn thing.

Then our Parks Director made a ridiculous statement too! Here is what Chris Eicher had to say in the newspaper:

“We knew if we wanted a $300,000 skate park, we would have to budget $400,000. That’s just the way it is”

Huh? Ummm, no. If you know it’s going to be $400,000 then you SAY it’s going to be $400,000. Anything else is bordering on fraud as you give a bullshit low-ball number to get your project passed and then admit the “real” much-higher number later. I can’t believe he actually said that out loud. It reeks of dishonesty or incompetence, I’m not sure which.

The whole fiasco wouldn’t be complete without a zinger from Finley himself. Here is his brilliant addition to the anaylsis:

“The only thing I can guarantee is that the exact cost will be different than budgeted”

THAT is the wizard who is supposed to be on top of things and who costs the city around $200,000 per year for his “expertise”. For 25 years he has been working in the government sector doing this shit, but hey – don’t expect him to have a fucking clue either!

I pointed out the “Finley Factor” many years ago on these very pages. Finley is always off by a factor of 3x or so – and the price is ALWAYS higher.

Is Misti Talbert Actually Judith Hetherly Reincarnated?

After combing through years of LEDC minutes about the Business Pork, it becomes depressing and frustrating to see how the EXACT same useless ideas are tried over and over and over.

Committee after committee after committee. Economic plan after economic plan after economic plan. Task force after task force after task force.

Below is an excerpt from a 2007 article. It interviews Judith Hetherly. Hetherly shows up repeatedly in the LEDC minutes in the 2001 to 2005 time frame. She was another clown on the LEDC board who was instrumental in wasting money on failed ideas. As you read this, you can’t help but notice the similarities to today. Just substitute Misti Talbert for Hetherly. Both were on City council. Both were mayor. Both were president of the LEDC and both helped waste enormous sums with nothing to show for it.

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun:

Last month, Judith Hetherly took the seat of mayor of Lampasas, a position formerly held by Jack Calvert for the past 16 years.

“I think Lampasas is a progressive city that has a lot of possibilties for business growth and economic growth, and I think we’re going to see that. With the springs we have here, we’re sitting on a gold mine,” Hetherly said.

In fact, the natural mineral springs are what got Hetherly involved in Lampasas politics. The town was thinking of shutting down Hancock Springs Pool, which Hetherly saw as a potential tourist attraction, so she joined the campaign to keep the pool open. Hancock Springs Pool remains operational to this day, and Hetherly remains active in city government.

Hetherly served two terms on the city council and is the president of the Lampasas Economic Development Corporation board. As mayor, Hetherly sees herself as a facilitator, collaborating with city and county officials, the school district and Lampasas citizens to achieve positive growth and a sound economy.

Her priorities as mayor are to develop a recently purchased business park and to work with the newly formed Downtown Task Force to inventory available downtown commercial space and attract buyers.

“We have a beautiful downtown, and it’s here only because of that courthouse,” Hetherly said. “We have never planned for anything down here. It just happened. This task force is looking at where (downtown) wants to go.”

The city council is also challenged with revising the Comprehensive Plan for the city. The plan was developed in 2005, but the broad scope of the document created challenges in implementation. Hetherly said that the plan must be more focused.

Amazing! SAME EXACT BULLSHIT. Task forces. Trying to snazz up the downtown area. The Business Pork pipe dream. She even talks about a Comprehensive Plan developed in 2005!!!!

By my count, that is FOUR “economic plans” the City has wasted time and/or money on. Angelou Economic Advisory was the first back in the 2001/2002 era (cost of $25,000). Then the one Hetherly mentions here from 2005 (cost unknown), then the “Strategic Plan” formulated in July of 2017 by the LEDC and then the Comprehensive Plan that Finley keeps under his pillow from Halff Associates (cost $120,000).

When will these dummies EVER learn that government bureaucrats, central planning, economic development con men who charge by the hour, and endless committees are a colossal waste of time and money??? Truly amazing.

City/LEDC Refuse to Give Names of Business Park “Prospects”. Again.

Not long ago, Mandy Walsh (Economic Development Director) told the media that the LEDC had “six prospects for the Business Park and four of them are serious”.

So two aren’t serious, apparently. Whatever that means.

Then, two nights ago, LEDC President Misti Talbert (who was appointed, not elected to that position) went before her former City council buddies (conflict of interest much?) and mayor TJ Monroe (who ALSO sits on the LEDC) to beg for another $971,000 for their ill-fated Business Park. This would bring the total wasted up to well over $7,000,000.00

As she rattled her tin cup in front of council, Misti assured us there were a plethora of companies just DYING to move into the park! Manufacturing, entertainment, medical research, you name it. She dazzled City council with piles of bullshit in her attempt to pilfer City coffers for yet another million bucks.

It worked. City council bought it and approved unanimously. Nobody bothered to ask the names of any of these prospects to see if they were legit. So I did. Here is what I was told by the City secretary:

To answer your question the Lampasas Economic Develop Corporation (LEDC)  has adopted a policy under which it maintains the identity of all potential prospects for Economic Development Projects with the LEDC as confidential, until the time that either the prospect indicates to the LEDC Board that it desires to “go public” with information related to its future plans for its project, or at the time when an agreement between the prospect and the LEDC is formalized…..Accordingly, at this time, pursuant to the LEDC policy and State laws, neither the LEDC or the City will be disclosing the names of any potential prospects for the future Phase 1 Industrial Park Project

It’s like deja vu all over again! I figured this would be their answer. After all, they told me the same thing the last time they had a “prospect“.

I’m not asking for their plans. I’m not asking for any “proprietary information”. I’m not asking for the deal you’re giving them. I’m just asking for a NAME. But according to their own rules, they can’t tell us anything. Just hand over the million bucks and trust us.

Yeah, sure.

Maybe they could change that rule and give a name or two as a good faith gesture in exchange for another million? What reason could they possibly have for keeping everything a huge secret until the last second? I’ll tell you why:

They don’t want guys like me picking apart the “deal” ahead of time and exposing it for a massive scam – like I did with Mike Cour and Eco-Strong.

Yeah, THAT Eco-Strong. The scumworms that strung Mandy Walsh, Misti Talbert and the ENTIRE LEDC along for almost a YEAR with their ridiculous scheme to recycle tires! I even got my lawyer involved to try and find out what was going on.

Turns out Eco-Strong didn’t want much: just a bunch of free land…and $1.8 million in tax dollars. Needless to say, the entire scam blew up and their Super Secret Prospect that was held out to City council as proof they needed to spend another million was COMPLETE SMOKE AND MIRRORS!

Some might even call this fraud – using an obviously nonviable “secret prospect” to grab more money from the City. You see, if guys like me (or a slightly skeptical City council) had gotten to see the Eco-Strong bullshit AHEAD OF TIME, we would have seen it was OBVIOUSLY nonviable nonsense and the LEDC would have been back to square one with NO prospects – and their begging would have fallen on deaf ears.

Instead, with their self-made rule about not disclosing anything, they can make up anything they like about their “prospects” to grab another million from a council that is kept in the dark. Which is EXACTLY what Misti Talbert did two nights ago. Truly, scumbaggery of the highest order.

Council Meeting 2-14-22: Talbert and LEDC Pilfer $971,000 MORE From City Coffers For Business Park Debacle.

Major topics:

Rain collection system for local idiot Janet “Crazier” Crozier‘s community garden: this has no business being funded by HOT funds in the first place, but it is a turd that won’t die. It was off the menu, but then Randy “Speedbump” Clark wanted it back on there. So now Finley is telling us that due to the shitty economy created by the Brandon administration, the price of the moronic water tanks (which are not needed at all because the Community Gardens get FREE water from the City already) has gone from $10,200 up to $12,750 (exactly 25% increase).

The irony here is that Janet is a raging libtard and very likely voted for Joe Biden – so she essentially caused this price increase herself. But she doesn’t care, because the money is “free”.

Randy is now arguing that the city needs to “do some investment in rain water collection and conservation effort”. Wrong, Randy. You are now officially in the “dummy” group of City council. From a cost/benefit standpoint it is not even REMOTELY a good idea to spend $12,750 dollars to catch rain when the Community Gardens ALREADY gets water from the City for a total cost of $35 per year. Crazier Crozier could pay for city water for 364 years before she breaks even on that trade.

Cathy “Porkchop” Kuehne now jumping in with the idea to only use one tank to save money. It does not occur to her pea brain that perhaps the City should buy ZERO tanks and let Crazier Crozier raise the money herself.

Now Janet herself is up there muttering into the mic and no doubt making a completely incoherent case for wasting $12,750. From what little I can hear (she won’t speak into mic) it is even more elaborate and idiotic than I imagined. Underground pipes?

I can’t believe there is any discussion on this at all. This is PURE virtue signaling – kind of like wearing a face mask to stop an aerosolized virus. No wonder Kuehne is all in favor of it.

It makes ZERO economic sense to waste $12,750 of taxpayer money for an elaborate rain catch system when the City has ALREADY put in EIGHT water spigots for free. Water is water, you dumb shits. You’ll also get plenty of rain from mother nature all year long. It is crazy that this is even on the table.

Goat pasture updates: the ‘business’ parkcontinues to increase in cost. No surprises there with Misti Talbert in charge. Oh wait! There is Misti Talbert at the podium….asking for money! I am SHOCKED, I tells ya, by this development.

Misti and Steve Hudson casually ask for “roughly another” $700,000 – $971,000!!! [32:50 mark].

Insanity.

Talbert: [24 minute mark] “It has come to my attention that the City is blessed with a significant amount of money in the American recovery funds to the tune of 1.978 million dollars, I believe….and thewater/wastewater portionof this project will run $971,000 and the funds can be used for this project...I’m quite certain there’s not another project you can put these funds into that….are gonna bring you the potential ROI that this project is gonna bring you…“

ROI? Less than two years agoformer councilman Mike White admitted this about the goat pasture businesspark project: “I don’t love it, just from a return on investment standpointit’s never…never going to be anywhere close…”  [5/26/20 Council meeting at the 10:08 and 19:30 minute mark].

And that was when a much smaller number was being thrown around! Now, here we are less than two years later, and Misti wants ANOTHER $700k? Pure stupidity. Mike White was right. This project will NEVER make sense but they are too far down the road now to stop – because they will all look like the idiots they are. It’s called The Sunk Cost Fallacy and they have all fallen into it.

Furthermore, pardon my impertinence, governor, but you ALREADY SPENT $678,000 on “water/wastewater”back in 2015!

“We have no more commercial development space in Lampasas…that business park is it.”

That is a bald-faced lie. Sorry, but that is an outrageous statement.

In an unsurprising turn of events, Cathy “Porkchop” Kuehne gives this colossal waste of money her blessing: “I’ve been filled in on this, and I think it’s a win-win“. [34:45 mark]

Lady, you’re an art teacher. You know nothing about numbers, unless they are maybe paint-by-numbers. You have proven that repeatedly during your time on City council. You also think wasting $1.4 million on the Hostess House so you can rent it out for $12,000 per year is a great idea. So we can safely toss out your opinions on the goat pasture.

This was an insane presentation by Misti and there is a lot to unpack. Not the least of which is her outrageous claims of all the jobs this will bring in. We have heard that bullshit for 20 years now.

I’ll get into it more later when my blood pressure is lower….

P.S.

Don’t ever forget the PREVIOUS lies we were told by these fools. For example:

“Ms. Toups said she wants to continue to provide infrastructure to develop the business park — which she said Harrison spoke against publicly. Ms. Toups said through the Lampasas Economic Development Corp.’s hard work, “we are on the verge of seeing large corporations come in [to the business park].” – April 21, 2017 [FIVE YEARS AGO!]

“The LEDC’s new debt service payment will be about $150,000 a year, Mrs. Masonheimer said. The economic development corporation projects annual revenue of about $250,000, which will leave approximately $100,000 for operating costs after making loan payments.” – September 23, 2014

So 7.5 YEARS AGO the head of the LEDC (Kathi Masonheimer) was projecting revenues of $250,000 per year. It has actually been $0.00 per year. So they are only currently off by about $1.9 million on their revenue estimates. No biggie!

Look How Much Money the LEDC Has Squandered Over The Last Six Years

Sickening.

That’s the only way to describe the utter waste of tax dollars called the “Lampasas Economic Development Corporation”. After seeing the latest figures (10/1/19 through 9/30/20), I decided to go over the previous five filings as well. The following totals are the amounts wasted by the LEDC in JUST the last six fiscal years (10/1/14 through 9/30/20):

INTEREST PAYMENTS: $327,173 That is money that goes straight into the pockets of the banks for the privilege of borrowing money to “improve” the ‘goat pasture’ (former councilman Mike White’s words, not mine) known as The Business Park. That is $327,173 in tax dollars that will not be used for parks, streets or swimming pools. It is gone forever. Misti Talbert and TJ Monroe (among others) are directly responsible for this.

LEGAL FEES: $93,237 How the LEDC managed to blow nearly a hundred grand on legal fees for a “business park” that has sat empty for 17 years is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps the idiots who run the LEDC can comprehend it (Talbert, Monroe, etc), but I cannot. Some lawyer out there has a nice new boat, no doubt. Citizens of Lampasas have nothing to show for it.

ADMIN/OVERHEAD: $72,000 The LEDC spend exactly $12,000 per year on administration/overhead. Year in and year out. It appears it is paid to the City – perhaps for consulting their accountants and wasting City time. But I really couldn’t tell you. More money vaporized.

ADVERTISING/PROMOTION: $31,389 The LEDC has somehow spent over $30,000 promoting and advertising their “business park”. What exactly are they advertising and promoting? A goat pasture (Mike White’s words, not mine) with tumbleweeds and cactus all over it? Whatever they spent it on, the ‘business park’ STILL sits empty after 17 years.

TRAVEL: $31,205 The LEDC has blown over $30,000 on “travel” over those six years. While $5,000 per year might not sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things, I have to wonder why it isn’t $0. Where exactly do these dunces need to travel to and why? What was gained by it? Clearly not any tenants for the goat pasture (Mike White’s words, not mine). Anyways, somebody got a lot of nice little useless junkets. The taxpayers got the bill.

FURTHERMORE – all this money is being thrown around with next to ZERO controls or oversight. I have covered repeatedly how Misti Talbert and TJ Monroe essentially oversaw their own activities by holding positions on the LEDC and City council (as MAYORS!) at the same time. It is a very incestuous and inbred group of dummies.

This group ALSO: (1) has no written whistleblower policies, (2) has no written conflict of interest policies and (2) has no written document retention and/or document destruction policy.

Add all that up? You have a small group of insulated, inbred, low-IQ people with next to zero oversight handling millions of tax dollars who are not accountable for their results. The predictable outcome is exactly the one that has been taking place over the last 17 years: millions of dollars wasted and nothing to show for it.

Disband the LEDC. Eliminate the Director of Economic Development position. Let the free market preside.

Don’t Forget, Former Mayor Talbert Refused to Put Waste Connections’ $6 Million Garbage Contract Out For Bid Last Year

Apparently Waste Connections is doing a pretty shoddy job picking up garbage in the City lately. I only know this because it was discussed at the last City council meeting. I’m lucky enough to live in the boondocks – which means I store my trash in the back of my truck and then sneak into town around 11pm and dump it into the cans of people like Misti Talbert and Bruce Haywood.

Just kidding.

Anyways, I thought now would be a good time to re-post a journalistic masterpiece I posted last year when Talbert didn’t feel like putting the garbage contract up for bid:

2017 Talbert Vs. 2020 Talbert – April 16th, 2020

Here is an interesting nugget I ran across from Jan 17, 2017 [page 11] regarding the last time City council renewed their trash hauling contract.

WAY back then (three whole years ago), the City of Lampasas used Waste Management for their trash hauling. That contract was due to expire in the spring of 2017. Here is what then-council-member Misti Talbert said about renewing the contract with Waste Management:

 “City council is not unhappy with Waste Management but wants to see if it is possible to save money on trash collection”

Wow. Smart thinking, Misti. I would agree that it NEVER HURTS to look around for a better deal. Seems to be something City council rarely does with anything else (*cough* AZBELL *cough*), but I wholeheartedly agree it is a smart thing to do with EVERYTHING.

So what happened in 2017? Finley and the gang looked at FIVE different companies and let them bid for the new contract (yes, there are FIVE companies out there!). According to 2017 Finley, this “is a highly competitive process” [1/20/17 front page news].

Oh goody! Competition! That is always good for getting the best price!

They determined that Waste Connections “had the highest score of the five companies that submitted proposals for trash service” [3/3/17 front page news].

They did all this work for a three-year contract…since that Waste Connections contract was to last until April 30, 2020 (two weeks from now). All well and good. Nice job, 2017 Misti and 2017 Finley!

Fast forward three years to 2020 Talbert and 2020 Finley. Waste Connections’ contract is now up for renewal and the new period will be for FIVE years. Do 2020 Talbert (now mayor) and 2020 Finley still have the same zeal for “seeing if it is possible to save money on trash collection”?

Nope. Finley now can’t be bothered with that stuff. He says his “recommendation for council to extend [the current Waste Connections] contract is because of the company’s good performance and the potential disruption of service if the city sought a different provider” [2/18/20 front page news]

Weird how nobody worried about “potential disruption of service” three years ago when they let five companies go at it to get the best price. So what changed?

Well, as I have already mentioned previously, three members of City council (Talbert, Toups, Kuehne) won a bribe prize back in 2019 in a karaoke contest hosted by…..you guessed it! Waste Connections! They took home a whopping $2,500 in Oct 2019 and before that, $5,000 in 2018.

Three voting members of City council showing off their “prize” from Waste Connections…just a few months before contract was up.

In short, Waste Connections handed three members of City council thousands of dollars just months before those same council members would be making a decision on a new five year, $5.5 MILLION dollar contract

Sooooo….back THEN (2017) it was worth it to check around for a better price just for the hell of it. But NOW (2020), after winning a bribe prize from Waste Connections, you are perfectly happy NOT to bother looking around for a better price, despite the fact that there is a “highly competitive process” out there and despite the fact that THIS contract is for a much longer period (5 years versus 3).

Got it.

My how things change in 36 months.

Just to be clear, you can hardly call this a bribe…since ALL the money Waste Connections handed to City council (plus another $7,200 swiped from the HOT slush fund) was immediately wasted on some giant metal letters. They didn’t PERSONALLY see any gain from the money. HOWEVER, they were without a doubt in my mind, influenced and not intelligent enough to see it. Unwittingly duped, as it were.

Two Goldfish Flushed In Tearful Council Ceremony

And so, with much blubbering and tearful yammering, two Goldfish are dropped into the proverbial toilet to be flushed back out into the real world.

Death Of A Gold Fish Stock Photo - Download Image Now - iStock

Two NEW council members are now dropped into the $1.5 million dollar Talbert/deGraffenreid Wow! Factor Vanity Project Fishbowl to swim for the next two years: Zac Morris and Herb Pearce.

Misti also got her digs in on the “keyboard warriors” out there (me) who criticize City council’s never-ending poor financial decisions.

Poor baby.

If you are going to enjoy the type of low-level celebrity you do by being mayor, you better damn well be ready for being called out for any terrible decisions you make with tax dollars.

Turns out Talbert made a LOT of them over four years. Millions of dollars. That is no exaggeration. Since it clearly rankles Talbert that these colossal bungles are made public here, I’m going to give her a little going-away gift and summarize ALL the horrible spending decisions of the Talbert administration just as soon as I can. Of course, it may take a while since I can think of a dozen right off the top of my head!

I’m sure it ALSO rankled Talbert that while she was busy bragging about her administration being “transparent”, I had to hire a lawyer more than a few times to get PUBLIC records I was entitled to as a citizen. And I wasn’t quiet about it.

Tough cookies, baby.

Misti, of course, spends her time with her little insulated group of fellow politicians and City workers. In doing so, she rarely hears the many, many citizens who privately rage about their taxes being wasted continually. In short, she is in an echo chamber comprised of the likes of Monroe, Williamson, Toups, deGraffenreid, Walsh and other “yes men”.

[In fact, several City council members traveled to the Texas Municipal League conventions repeatedly with the very same employees they were supposed to be overseeing and whose continued employment was in their hands. Not a good look and quite unprofessional.]

This detaches her from reality and allows her to live under the delusion that her selfless and brilliant decisions are being unfairly attacked by meanies.

Here is to hoping that Zac and Herb govern with a strong sense of COST BENEFIT analysis. Let’s hope they remember each tax dollar they spend was taken from a productive citizen in the private sector and that they run the City on sound economics instead of impulsive desires, delusions and crazy pipe dreams.

Let’s hope they view Finley as a WELL-PAID employee of the City instead of a “best fried” they don’t want to upset, like some other council members we know. City council is supposed to represent and advocate for the CITIZENS – not for the employees of the City.

Misti and Family Somehow Pull Through And Defeat Cold

I’m SHOCKED, I tells ya! How did she and her daughter ever survive this terrible cold? I mean, to face 300,000-1 odds in your favor and somehow come out on top! Amazing. It’s as likely as losing the lottery, fer chrissakes!

To recap:

July 12th: Tearful (sorta) video dramatically announcing the Wuhan Flu has hit the Talbert household. Community outpouring of prayer emojis immediately goes to work combating their sore throat and sniffles.

July 15th: Radiogram quotes Finley as stating Talbert family is in good spirits and has “turned the corner”, lol. The corner of what?? I think I changed my underwear once since the illness was announced. They barely took three steps down the street, let alone ‘turned’ any corners. I guess I can assume there was no hospitalization involved?

Here’s what else happened in those three days:

OVER THREE THOUSAND TEXANS DIED of random causes.

OVER TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND Americans dropped dead of random causes.

Somebody, somewhere found out they have pancreatic cancer and will die very soon – thus shattering their entire world.

Somewhere, a parent knew REAL pain as they watched their young child suffer from leukemia and chemotherapy and hoped they beat REAL odds to live.

So let’s screw our heads back on and get some perspective, mmkay?

It would be nice if some of people who had this thing would get on Facebook and make hundreds of posts to talk about how it was no big deal – and thus combat the hysterical lunatics out there who haven’t even had it yet and think it’s the Bubonic plague or something.

And The Academy Award Goes To….

Misti Talbert! For her subdued yet poignant “why can’t we all just get along” pleading video message on Facebook during her announcement that she has caught the lethal plague flu. I haven’t seen forced half-crying like that since she dedicated the Jack Calvert $1.5 Million Dollar Municipal Fishbowl back in December 2019.

The virus she now has is SO deadly in fact, that the people suffering from it regularly post on Facebook to tell you how they felt like they have been “hit by a train”. The horror!

Just to recap:

Misti claims she wore a mask AND social distanced and she thinks you should too…even though it didn’t help her one bit!

Besides wearing masks and socially distancing, she CLAIMS she “practices healthy habits”. I’m sorry, but I take issue with that, because it is simply not true. It’s clear you have NOT made healthy choices going back a while. I’ll just leave it at that. I don’t want to be blunt or cruel, but if we are going to have a RATIONAL and HONEST discussion about how much of a threat Wuhan Flu REALLY is, we need to be honest with ourselves. That includes all the unhealthy choices made by (and pre-existing conditions of) those stricken with Wuhan Flu.

ZERO people have died from Wuhan Flu in Lampasas County over the last 10 months – despite the best efforts of scumbags at hospitals trying to re-code EVERY DEATH as Covid so they can get free government money. Not to mention them also GOING BACK in time and trying to attribute deaths from months ago as Covid posthumously. That is outright fraud, of course. But it sure makes it look like a “surge” is happening now!

[And it also doesn’t help when scumbag alarmist liberal mayors OUTRIGHT LIE about bringing in refrigerated trucks to store all the Covid bodies]

I’m going to go out on a huge limb here and predict that Misti AND her daughter will survive this easily, thanks to their immune system. ESPECIALLY her daughter, who, I believe is in high school. It is an indisputable fact that Wuhan is LESS DEADLY to those under 25 years of age than the common flu!

MY hope here is that after our high-profile mayor and her daughter easily recover from this, people MIGHT use their heads and think “hey! This isn’t the lethal plague that the media and certain morons in town (*cough* Bruce Haywood *cough*) are making it out to be!”.

I know that is wishful thinking but let’s keep our fingers crossed. If this Wuhan Flu had happened in the world BEFORE Facebook and Twitter and other social media, the irrational fears generated by this would be about 100x less prevalent. The moral of Wuhan Flu in 2020 will be that social contagion via social networks is more dangerous than biological contagion

P.S. Misti, I would “send you prayers” like everyone else but there is no proof that actually works. Actually, quite the contrary. So I offer no prayers but I offer the firm mathematical knowledge that STATISTICALLY, you have nothing to worry about. You’re more likely to be killed in a car wreck next year.

MORE Politicians Flip-Flop On ‘Free’ Stuff

In light of the recent giveaways to developers, I thought I’d search the Dispatch archives to see if any other politicians besides “Greasy” Chris Harrison have changed their tune on handing out “free” stuff like the electrical hookups recently gifted to Deorald Finney and S2M2 Inc for their developments.

Turns out they have! The original Drunken Sailor herself, Mayor Talbert, was actually AGAINST these types of giveaways back in August of 2014. So was Chuck Williamson! Fancy that!

As usual, they were desperately looking for revenue back in 2014. Those of us in the REAL world know that government has a SPENDING problem…not a revenue problem. But dummy politicians and City bureaucrats always go looking for more money first and never look at their own ledgers for waste.

Anyways, there was a HUGE discussion in the Lampasas Dispatch Record chronicling the debate between City council about how to raise MORE money and balance the budget back then. Here are some choice excerpts [look it up, Monica] from the article along with some commentary by me:

“Another revenue idea the council discussed is charging for items – such as replacement of broken valves, meter boxes and cleanout caps – the city currently provides for free. “We’ve been giving a lot away,” Mayor Pro Tem Chuck Williamson said. – August 4th, 2017 – page 5

[Chuck Williamson is STILL on City council to this day and JUST “gave a lot away” this year to S2M2 Inc and Deorald Finney! What’s the matter Chuck?? You buddies with all these developers too? Or just going senile?]

“Mrs. Talbert said in light of discussions about taxes and utility rates, the council certainly should consider every revenue source that only impacts the person that causes the problem, or creates the cost, before everybody shares that cost.” Ms. Moreno said charges for those types of items likely will not boost total revenue much, but Mrs. Talbert said it still is an important principle” – August 4th, 2017 – page 5

[The person who creates the cost should pay for it?? Kinda like a homeowner or developer paying for their own electrical hookup? Being one of the Seven Goldfish, I doubt Misti remembers saying this but there it is in black and white! She even had “principles” back then! My, how things have changed]

And here is the coup de grace [look it up, Monica] from my new hero Shane Brown. Shane was the DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC WORKS back then, so he probably knows what he is talking about:

“Public Works Director Shane Brown said the city loses money when officials waive fees for utility extensions. Brown said he questions how much the city benefits compared to the value of what it gives away in waivers“. – August 4th, 2017 – page 5

[Amen, Mr Shane Brown! Testify! Could not have said it better myself].

Of course, this was all in 2014 before Misti transformed into an intoxicated seaman. Now it’s all about buying power, love and admiration with other people’s money in the name of “growth”…a fool’s errand. So much for her “principles” she was babbling about back then. She clearly has none.