When radical leftwing city officials push insane, impossible policies, are they merely engaging in virtue signaling, hope to profit off graft for the issue, or want to inflict as much pain on ordinary Americans as possible?
Two Texas cities are participating in an emissions-cutting program that seeks to end meat and dairy consumption.
According to the organization, “C40 is a global network of nearly 100 mayors of the world’s leading cities that are united in action to confront the climate crisis.”
Although largely funded by Democrat billionaire Michael Bloomberg, C40 has other donors including FedEx, Google, and the Clinton Foundation.
Both Austin and Houston are listed as participating cities, with “membership operat[ing] on performance-based requirements, not on fees.”
Houston is a “Megacity,” according to the C40 membership ranking. Megacities are “Cities that show exceptional climate leadership at the global level, and have an urban population that currently/is expected to exceed 3 million or more people by 2030.”
Austin is in the “Innovator” membership category, which includes “cities that show exceptional climate leadership at the global level, but do not meet the population/size criteria of a Megacity.”
Altogether, the participating cities make up a quarter of the global economy.
According to C40 Cities Executive Director Mark Watts, “As always, C40 has adopted a science-based approach and that science is clear: average consumption-based emissions in C40 cities must halve within the next 10 years. In our wealthiest and highest consuming cities that means a reduction of two-thirds or more by 2030.”
Watts stated this in a report from C40 Cities in 2019 entitled, “The Future Of Urban Consumption In A 1.5°C World.” The report lays out “ambitious targets” for cities to meet regarding the urban consumption of building materials, food, clothing and textiles, private transportation, electronics, and household appliances, as well as private aviation travel.
The report defines “ambitious targets” as the following:
“Target level of ambition for consumption interventions that is more ‘ambitious,’ based on a future vision of resource-efficient production and extensive changes in consumer choices. This level was typically informed by expert judgment rather than existing research.”
Under meat and dairy consumption, the ‘ambitious target’ would be 0 kilograms of either for all citizens.
Of course, the idea that a large city in Texas is going to give up meat is absolutely bonkers. Barbecue is one of the biggest civil religions in Texas, only slightly behind football. You might as well ask Frenchmen to give up wine. And I’d really like to see leftwing apparatchiks attempt to close down every taqueria in Houston, as the beat-downs they’d receive would be epic.
We could ask why liberals continually push policies that they would hate living under themselves, but we all know the answer to that: They’ll never live under the rules they apply to others. You have to give up private vehicles and all air travel in the name of global warming, but they’ll feel no compunction in continuing to jet off to Davos because they’re special. The Gavin Newsoms of the world will always eat at the French Laundry, no matter how much they slam you for daring to leave your house to buy a hamburger.
Rules are for the little people. Nancy Pelosi will never give up here freezer full of high-end ice cream, but she’ll happily castigate you for daring to ignore the dictates of the ruling nomenklatura.
Those pushing eating the bugs will never have to eat the bugs themselves. The point is to make you eat the bugs…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Transients from homeless camp break into local businesses. Austin Police clear out camp in February. Homeless creep back in.
Small businesses in South Austin are trying to recover after having their windows smashed. This isn’t the first time the owners have dealt with homeless-related crimes in the area.
The employees in the area said a church nearby feeds the homeless, so they flock there every day, but they also linger and cause destruction at night.
Video shows multiple people walked up to the Headspace Salon in South Austin and threw rocks into the front glass.
In the last probably two months, we’ve had, easily, well over $10-15,000 worth of damages,” Headspace Salon and Co-op Owner Laura North said.
She said, as a small business, it hits hard.
“They’re just coming there and smashing things with rocks and just walking off and not understanding for small business owners that is a huge, huge financial hit for us, and it’s just not sustainable,” North said.
Oh they understand, it’s just not relevant to their need to get high and stay high, so they don’t care.
Other businesses nearby have been dealing with similar issues.
“The guy came around and that’s when we had the rocks, we saw him on camera, we got him right over here. He threw it on the second floor window and busted out the window in the hallway, and then he busted out the window around this corner, and he busted out that window,” said Jason Dawkins, an estimator who works in a building that was vandalized.
“We see a lot of drug use, a lot of open sexual behavior, a lot of defecation and urinating in public areas and a lot of that stuff, and I will say it seems like some of that has gotten better, but it seems like definitely the vandalism and the kind of destruction, especially later in the evening has gotten significantly worse,” North said.
Drug-addicted transients shitting in public: Your number one sign of social justice “compassion” for the homeless.
“‘The city will step in kind of help very briefly, and it does not last long, and then it just goes right back to how it was before,’ North said.”
Why it’s almost like the Social Justice allies of the Austin City Council make money off the homeless and don’t care what you think…
The City of Austin will again be on the search for someone to head its police department after Chief Joseph Chacon announced his intention to retire next month.
Chacon had been in charge of the Austin Police Department (APD) since September 2021, when he was appointed as the permanent chief after serving on an interim basis following Brian Manley’s retirement earlier that year.
“Working at APD has been the privilege of my life,” said Chacon. “Being the Chief of Police is something that I never thought would have been possible, and it has been the pinnacle of my career.”
In a letter to the department, Chacon said he first began considering retirement a few months ago and ultimately decided his 25-year run at APD was nearing its end.
APD Chief of Staff Robin Henderson will be named interim police chief once Chacon’s retirement becomes effective in the first week of September.
Then comes the more interesting part: The stalemate between police who want to do their jobs and the Austin victimhood identity politics establishment who want to prevent them from doing that continues:
During Chacon’s tenure, APD has been marked by staffing hemorrhage; a labor contract dispute with the city council; and a thorny relationship with Travis County District Attorney José Garza, who’s taken an active approach in prosecuting officers for alleged misconduct.
Garza’s uncle, Jesús Garza, is the interim city manager.
As of March APD has seen 89 officer departures, leaving the department 300 positions down from its 2019 staffing level. In 2020, the city council’s $150 million APD budget cut and redirection removed authorization for 150 patrol positions.
Austin’s police and elected officials have spent much of the last 12 months in a prolonged standoff over a new labor contract.
The Austin City Council, led by Mayor Kirk Watson, rejected a four-year agreement with the Austin Police Association in favor of a one-year extension of the now-expired deal. That leaves APD employment to be governed by Chapter 143 of the Local Government Code.
The impasse came largely over how much authority to vest in the Office of Police Oversight (OPO).
The city’s “reimagine policing” activists wanted to make the OPO significantly stronger, including enabling it to conduct investigations into alleged officer misconduct rather than its current role of simply fielding complaints and observing the process.
You remember the “Reimagining Police” initiative, don’t you? If not, this should refresh your memory.
In 2021, the OPO and its former head Farah Muscadin were found by an arbitrator to have violated the police labor agreement — just the latest chapter in a string of actions by the OPO that’s strained a contentious relationship.
The two sides remain at an impasse, and APA has no intention of giving in to the progressive activists’ demands.
Good.
Kirk Watson was elected mayor in large measure due to his promises to get crime under control and cut back on the radical Social Justice agenda driving the city. So far he hasn’t done much to deliver on those promises.
Austin apartment complex gets repeatedly hit by thieves breaking into apartments and cars night after night. Last year they had repeated transient break-ins through a hole in the fence, and this year two individuals seem to be the same ones breaking into cars over and over again.
So a woman gathered video evidence of the twp suspects. Austin police response? “This is not a high priority case.” And they wouldn’t look at her videos.
The apartments appear to be those off Riata Trace Blvd., which is about a mile from my house.
Years of understaffing, coddling crime in the name of “social justice” and luring more drug-addicted transients to Austin have put APD in a bind, as they don’t have enough manpower to protect life, liberty and property.
That won’t change because the Austin City Council doesn’t want it to change.
Despite the camping ban repeal, sprawling camps of drug-addicted transients lured here by departed mayor Steve Adler and the hard left Austin City Council continue to dot the landscape in and around Austin.
Indeed, the problem remains so large that one Austinite has created a Google map to track homeless camps. If you live in or near Austin, click on that to see how big the problem is, and how many camps are near you.
Liberal policies have led to a shocking explosion in homeless camps across the state capital, with around 168 different homeless camps across the city and 10,000 people living on the streets, sources tell The Post.
The sheer amount of people living on the street, 10,000 according to the City of Austin’s own count, now makes up 1% of the entire population in the greater Austin area.
His map reveals the clandestine encampments have spread to a far greater extent than many taxpaying residents had previously realized — dotting the entire city, including near popular tourist destinations like Zilker Metropolitan Park.
Often hidden from public view in wooded areas, the encampments, banned by voter mandate, have become hotbeds for illegal activity and been the site of two deaths since April.
[Jamie] Hammonds warns that an even bigger public safety threat could be looming as the sites remain largely unregulated by the Democratic city’s leadership.
“A big fire is going to take place, and it’s going to burn up a lot of people. It’s going to happen,” Hammonds predicted.
“I’ve been warning the city about this for over a year.”
In the year and a half that Hammonds has been documenting the camps, he claims to have regularly witnessed people with mental health and drug issues use unsupervised fires for warmth and cooking.
“We have fires in these camps every year, but thank the Lord the fire department has been able to put them out very quickly,” he added.
The homeless sites are often nestled in wooded areas, surrounded by oak trees.
“It gets really hot and really dry in the summer,” the filmmaker explained. “These folks build fires, and these greenbelts, when it gets dry, it’s like a match waiting to go off.
The Homeless Industrial Complex obviously benefits from these sprawling homeless camps (and, indeed, tried to directly financially benefit from cleaning them up before they got caught). They exist because those on the hard left benefit from their existence, no matter how many camps they burn down, piles of trash they leave behind, or how many law-abiding citizens they victimize.
[Travis County Democratic] District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg was arrested and charged with drunken driving Friday night in Northwest Travis County…
According to the arrest affidavit, a witness called 911 just after 10:45pm to report a four-door Lexus wandering into the bike lane and then into oncoming traffic while traveling southbound on FM 620 near Comanche Trail. The car was being driven by Lehmberg, according to the affidavit.
Lehmberg told the deputy that she’d had two vodka drinks earlier in the evening and that she was on a prescription beta-blocking drug. According to the arrest affidavit, there was an opened bottle of vodka in the passenger area of the vehicle within reach.
(Sorry for linking to the Austin Chronicle but a lot of the original stories on the arrest no longer seem online.)
Here’s a pro-trip, boys and girls: If you you find yourself driving around at night (well, any time, but especially at night) while drinking from an open vodka bottle (she evidently had a blood alcohol level of .239), you have a problem, and you should seek professional help and/or check yourself into rehab.
Like, the next day.
Eventually Lehmberg spent 45 days in jail and declined to run for reelection, but wasn’t removed from office.
But the thing I remember most about the Lehmberg case was her in restraints…
Eh, not quite like that
…screaming “Call Greg!” (Dwight even bought me a bumper sticker.) The “Greg” in this case was then Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton, who Lehmberg obviously believed would get the charges dismissed.
Ten or twenty years before, that might have happened, but one big reason it didn’t happen in Lehmberg’s case was dashcam footage. (Another was that Travis County LEOs seemed to hate Lehmberg’s guts.)
Speaking of “Call Greg!”, many of the videos of her arrest I previously linked to seem seem to be dead. (It seems more likely for a book to survive 100 years than an online video to last 10.) So here is sort of a compressed “greatest hits” of Lehmberg at the booking station, including the magic phrase:
Some valuable takeaways still true ten years after the fact:
Being drunk makes you stupid.
Belligerent entitlement and threats don’t make police any more likely to let you off (unless, perhaps, your last name is “Biden”).
No, seriously, shut the fuck up. When arrested, remain silent except to ask for your lawyer.
DWI is expensive, even if you don’t kill anybody. At a defensive driving class many moons ago, the instructor noted that it would be cheaper to hire a limo to drive you to Dallas, stay in a five-star hotel, dine at the city’s most expensive restaurant, down three bottles of their most expensive champagne, and have the limo driver drive you back than it would be to pay the legal fees to successfully fight a DWI in court.
I did a search to see what Lehmberg was up to after leaving office, but I couldn’t find out anything. It’s like she dropped off the face of the earth. Hopefully she got some help for her alcoholism.
2009 – The Obama-Biden administration takes office
November 1, 2013 – China / BHR:
Hunter Biden, business associate, and Chinese investors agree to create Bohai Harvest RST Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd. (BHR), an investment fund controlled by the Bank of China, to focus on mergers and acquisitions, and investment in and reforms of state-owned enterprise.
December 4, 2013 – China / BHR
Vice President Biden travels with Hunter Biden on Air Force 2 to China and meets CEO of BHR, Jonathan Li. Shortly thereafter, BHR’s business license was approved and Hunter Biden was a board member.
February 5, 2014 – Kazakhstan
Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani businessman, meets with Hunter Biden at a hotel in Washington, D.C.
April 15, 2014 – Ukraine
Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, appoints Biden business associate to their board of directors.
After initially killing a bill on July 12, 2023 that would have increased the penalties on child sex traffickers, the Democrats who completely control the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee reversed course one day later and voted to advance the bill.
With a final vote of 6-0, including two abstentions from progressive Democrats, the bill now moves to the Appropriations Committee, after which, if it is approved, can move the bill to be voted upon by the entire State Assembly. If passed, SB 14 will make trafficking of minors a serious felony that would qualify under California’s three strikes law, which keeps dangerous, serial criminals off the streets, and make individuals convicted of the crime ineligible for early release.
I highlight the two abstentions by Democrats. Even after a nationwide uproar over their willingness to block harsh penalties on those who traffic young children for sexual slavery, these two Democrats, including Assembly Majority Leader Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles), still could not bring themselves to vote for the bill.
State Senator Charles Schwertner (my state senator) has his DWI charges dismissed. Still, he hardly crowned himself in glory. At least he didn’t yell “Call Greg!” (It did make me wonder what Rosemary Lehmberg is doing today, and if she ever conquered her alcoholism…)
A detailed look at the recording of one of my favorite albums of all time: Peter Gabriel III.
Just what does electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick’s “Silver Apples of the Moon” sound like? You know that scene in a 70s SciFi dystopia where someone’s face gets ripped off to reveal they’re a robot? It sounds like that.
GWAR plays for NPR. So on one side you have horrible monsters who are unbearable to listen to, and on the other side you have GWAR…
Despite a massive deficit in the number of police officers needed to patrol city streets, want to guess how many police Austin’s new budget plans to add?
Austin’s far-left City Council continues to view police as the enemy, continuing it’s defund-the-police bias even after most city’s have abandoned it as madness. Their funding priorities continue to be finding new ways to rake off graft to the hard left.
After months of caterwauling and posturing, the Texas Legislature’s property tax plan ended up about where it began, with additional rate compression, an increased homestead exemption, and an appraisal cap.
The Texas House and Senate put the final bow on their recently announced deal on property tax relief to put to bed the months-long standoff — after which the pair adjourned sine die for the third time this year. The plan is expected to be signed quickly by Gov. Greg Abbott.
The toplines of the $13 billion deal are:
More than $7 billion to compress school district Maintenance & Operations rates
An increase of the standard homestead exemption to $100,000
A three-year trial run for a 20 percent appraisal cap on commercial and non-homestead residential properties valued at or below $5 million
A $1.47 million increase to the state’s franchise tax exception
The creation of three elected positions on Appraisal Review Boards in counties above 75,000 population
That compression is on top of the $5.3 billion already passed in the 2024-2025 state budget to continue the 2019 reform.
The new compression and the homestead exemption — should it be approved by voters in November — will be effective this tax year. The appraisal cap will begin next year and run through the end of 2026 unless continued by the Legislature.
Estimates project the reform will provide a $1,200 “savings” for the average homeowner in Texas — meaning a reduction from what tax bills would yield without the reform, not a reduction from the previous year’s tax bill.
Good news, if long in coming.
You know the “incident” Austin City Council used as an excuse to end DPS patrols? It never happened.
The City of Austin canceled its recently-resumed partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) on Tuesday after allegations were made that officers pointed a gun at a child during a traffic stop — but DPS has now released body camera footage disputing that claim.
The patrol partnership that deployed DPS officers throughout the capital city to assist the ailing Austin Police Department was set to resume this month after a May pause to bolster enforcement at the border as Title 42 expired. But city officials — Mayor Kirk Watson and Interim City Manager Jesús Garza — abruptly canceled the partnership on Tuesday.
The onus for that decision was an allegation made by Carlos Meza and his son Angel that during a Sunday evening traffic stop, DPS officers pointed their sidearms at the child.
DPS said that did not happen. The agency released three angles of footage of the incident.
The Texas Department of Transportation is attempting to withhold documents concerning the agency’s use of materials related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and environmental, social, and governance (ESG).
Responding to a tip from a whistleblower, Texas Scorecard sought agency records that would either confirm or debunk allegations that the agency has been pushing a “woke” agenda on its 12,861 employees.
Texas Scorecard sent an open records request to TxDOT under the Texas Public Information Act (PIA). This request sought to unveil whether or not TxDOT employees are being paid to discuss such issues.
Specifically requested were communications referring to DEI and ESG in the possession of the Texas Department of Transportation commissioner, chief of staff, director of human resources, and/or the director of the DEI section.
Obviously TxDoT must be hiding considerable social justice subversion.
A northeast Texas school district has adopted new policies related to the continued hot-button topics of restroom accommodations for transgender students and pronoun usage by school employees.
On June 28, the Keller ISD board of trustees voted 5 to 0 with one abstention to establish a new pronoun policy wherein “district staff, educators, and other district employees shall not promote, encourage, or require the use of pronouns that are inconsistent with a student’s or other person’s biological sex as it appears on the individual’s birth certificate or other government issued record.”
Additionally, the school district shall not compel any employee or “other students to address or refer to students in any manner that would violate the speaker’s constitutionally protected rights.”
Prior to the vote, the board engaged in back-and-forth discussion of hypotheticals, such as if a teacher is asked by a student to be referred to by a pronoun that does not correspond with their biological sex.
“The policy is pretty clear,” board President Charles Randklev said of the hypotheticals. When asked if the trustees will support teachers who might come to them with concerns following the passage of the pronoun policy, he said that “this board has always supported teachers.”
Randklev added that the new policies “lay the groundwork for protecting kids and educators.”
“I also think they basically help us get off to a good start for the upcoming school year.”
The board did pass an additional bathroom policy that will “maintain separate restrooms” based on biological sex, but will make accommodations for students who are “seeking privacy” such as in a single-use bathroom.
This move by Keller ISD comes on the heels of a federal judge’s ruling in 2022 that Texas had the ability to vacate the Biden administration’s guidance on allowing people to use restrooms based on their gender identity that do not correspond to their biological sex.
A small public school district in the Rio Grande Valley is the latest to face a state takeover under Texas law, but district officials have vowed to fight the Texas Education Agency (TEA) in court.
Located on the U.S.- Mexico border west of McAllen, the La Joya Independent School District (LJISD) operates 38 schools and serves 24,804 students. However, enrollment has steadily declined over the past decade and the district has been embroiled in multiple scandals.
After an FBI investigation into corruption in Hidalgo County, five LJISD officials pled guilty last year to federal charges that included theft, bribery, money laundering, extortion, and wire fraud.
In January 2022, Trustee Armin Garza admitted to participating in a kickback scheme regarding a district energy-saving plan under which he received more than $234,000. Later, central office administrators Luis Morin and Alex Guajardo would both also plead guilty for their part in the conspiracy.
In a separate case, trustee Oscar Salinas pled guilty to federal extortion charges related to kickback payments he received from contracted vendor L&G Engineering. After discovering that L&G Engineering’s chief operating officer supported a political opponent, Hidalgo County Commissioner Everardo Villarreal, Salinas demanded additional funds and threatened to cancel a contract with Villareal’s wife. When the CEO refused, Salinas voted to terminate the contract.
Another LJISD administrator, Rodrigo Lopez, pled guilty to federal charges of theft and bribery in August 2022 in relation to contracts for athletic equipment. Lopez also served as the mayor of Penitas, Texas.
Earlier this year, TEA officials notified La Joya ISD Board President Alex Cantu and interim Superintendent Beto Gonzales that investigators had substantiated allegations related to fraud and violations of conflict of interest and contract procurement laws.
Those who have been following the blog for a while know that fraud in border school districts and Hidalgo County (still Democratic Party strongholds) has been a recurring theme.
By approving a new wealth tax last year, Massachusetts voters might have dented the Boston Celtics’ chances of chasing down a National Basketball Association (NBA) championship.
Grant Williams, a talented power forward drafted by the Celtics in the first round just four years ago, declined to re-sign with Boston this summer. Instead, he’ll be playing next season in Dallas, where his new contract won’t be subject to Massachusetts’ so-called “millionaire’s tax.”
Williams told The Athletic that his decision to sign a $54 million deal with Dallas over a $48 million offer from Boston was “a little strategic” and that the gap between the two offers was larger than it might seem.
“In Boston, it’s…$48 million with the millionaire’s tax, so $54 million in Dallas is really like $58 million in Boston,” Williams said.
In Texas, which has no state income tax, Williams can keep more of his earnings, though it is worth noting that professional athletes unfortunately owe taxes in states where they play road games. His new state’s tax situation gives Williams a nice incentive to move, considering Massachusetts would have taken 9 percent of those earnings—thanks to its 5 percent flat income tax and newly created 4 percent tax on income in excess of $1 million.
The City of Austin has suspended its recently restarted partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), established to aid the city’s struggling police department.
Announced back in March, the partnership between the Austin Police Department (APD) and the state was initiated to help APD respond to 911 calls and monitor traffic. APD has long struggled with staffing issues and saw 89 departures through the first three months of 2023, as city policy and posture toward the department were not appreciated by many rank-and-file officers.
As of March, there were 281 vacancies on top of the 150 positions eliminated in the 2020 budget cut. Due to the staffing shortage, police response times ballooned to at or nearly 10 minutes and 911 call holding times grew even larger.
At the time of the announcement, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said, “During my run for mayor, I promised we would make city government work better in providing basic services.”
“This is an example of that. It’s a common-sense, practical response to a serious need and arose out of a positive working relationship between the Capital City and the Capitol of Texas.”
A report on the partnership was released this month showing average response times in council districts dropping between 30 seconds and a minute and a half.
But after a citizen complaint alleging DPS officers pointed firearms at a father and his child, the city’s Public Safety Commission recommended the council scrap the partnership.
A citizen. One.
On the first day of the partnership, DPS officers seized 70 pounds of methamphetamine and made 14 felony arrests.
It was temporarily paused in May to shift the manpower to the border as Title 42 expired but was set to resume after the hiatus.
“From the start of this partnership with DPS, I said I wanted Austinites to feel safe and be safe. Recent events demonstrate we need to suspend the partnership with DPS. The safety of our community is a primary function of City government, and we must keep trying to get it right,” Watson said.
“This partnership was an innovative approach to address acute staffing shortages that were years in the making. However, any approach must be in sync with Austin values.”
The city’s release says that the DPS support “has resulted in a decrease in violent and gun crime, fewer traffic fatalities, shorter response times to calls for assistance, and seizures of significant amounts of illicit drugs, including fentanyl and heroin.”
Councilman Chito Vela said of the announcement, “This is the right decision, especially given the events of the last few days. Policing in Austin must be aligned with our community values. Unfortunately, the type of policing we have seen by DPS is not in line with Austin’s values.”
Evidently “Austin values” are “We can’t put criminals in jail, because white supremacy.”
A source within APD said to The Texan, “It’ll get worse before it gets worse and people want to leave.”
“The activists who don’t have the residents’ or visitors’ best interest at heart are succeeding in tearing down public safety,” he added. “Until city leadership is brave enough to reject their radicalism, the dire situation will only get worse.”
Sadly, “city leadership” is in on the scam. They want as many criminals and drug-addicted transients walking the streets as possible because they’re an excellent source of graft for the hard left.
In a statement provided to The Texan, Austin Police Association President Thomas Villareal said, “The decision by the Interim City Manager and Mayor to suspend the APD/DPS partnership is absolutely unconscionable. Instead of asking DPS to look into the actions of a specific Trooper, the City allowed a one-sided, inflammatory, poorly researched news story, one purely intended to get clicks, to be treated as truth and fact.”
According to Villareal, the department’s internal staffing numbers show APD is currently 500 officers short.
Yeah, that happens when you defund the police and cancel cadet classes.
Austin is following in the same crime-and-homeless infested footsteps of San Francisco even after San Franciscans have risen up to start kicking them out of office. Hopefully Austinites have just enough sense to avoid following them into that feces-strewn ditch.
