Austin’s cooperatively-owned grocery store and market Wheatsville Food Co-op is going to be closing its original North Campus location eventually. The last day for the 3101 Guadalupe Street shop will be on December 31, 2026.
A press release noted that Wheatsville board of directors and management decided to not renew the West Campus store’s lease, which ends at the end of 2026. A major reason for this decision was the city’s light rail plan Project Connect, which would run through Guadalupe Street. “While this project is in the public interest, it will also curtail our ability to operate in this location,” says general manager Bill Bickford via a statement. The train would take up the major street’s middle lane, so then it would be “impossible for the large trucks our primary suppliers use to access the delivery area,” he writes. Therefore, “if we cannot receive product, we cannot operate a grocery store.
Rita Daily, Wheatsville’s marketing director, noted through email that the shutter was announced to the owners — its website boasts over 28,000 members — this morning. The company is going to se if they can reopen or operate what they describe was “small-format stores” instead.
There’s a south Austin location that will evidently remain open, though one wonders how long the south location can survive without a steady influx of dewey-eyed leftwing college saps the Guadalupe location’s proximity to UT provided.
More Biden corruption unearthed, the Biden Recession has canaries dying left and right, yet another Katy ISD teacher involved in child sex crimes, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge is being given another tomb raider to destroy. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Thursday as part of a probe into whether the Biden DOJ coordinated with Trump prosecutors.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Thursday as part of a probe into whether the Biden DOJ coordinated with Trump prosecutors.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer dropped a bombshell on Thursday, revealing that his panel had unearthed new financial accounts tied to the Biden family investigation. Adding to the drama, Comer announced a fresh subpoena aimed at an undisclosed bank, ramping up the pressure in this ongoing probe.
“This morning, I issued a subpoena for targeted financial information from a certain financial institution related to Jim Biden, Sarah Biden and Hunter Biden. This is a result of many of the documents that Devon Archer turned over,” Comer told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business.
The Oversight Committee began investigating the Biden family’s alleged shady business dealings over two years ago. In March, they called for Biden to testify before Congress, stating that “the committee has accounted for over $24 million that has flowed from foreign sources to you, your family, and their business associates.”
“It is unbelievable,” Comer continued. “I don’t think you would find very many people that have a billion-dollar net worth that have as many different bank accounts as this Biden family had. Many of these were shell companies.”
Those were “companies [whose] sole purpose was to launder the money that the Bidens were receiving from China, from Romania, from Russia,” Comer added. “And never one time through the course of this entire investigation, even during the depositions with Hunter Biden and the transcribed interview with Jim Biden, were they able to answer exactly what the family did to receive this money.”
Gov. Greg Abbott has pardoned U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry following a recommendation of pardon and restoration of his firearm rights by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
The board voted unanimously on the recommendation.
Shortly after the recommendation was made, Abbott officially pardoned Perry.
“The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles conducted an exhaustive review of U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry’s personal history and the facts surrounding the July 2020 incident and recommended a Full Pardon and Restoration of Full Civil Rights of Citizenship,” Abbott wrote in a press release.
“Among the voluminous files reviewed by the Board, they considered information provided by the Travis County District Attorney, the full investigative report on Daniel Perry, plus a review of all the testimony provided at trial. Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws on self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney. I thank the Board for its thorough investigation, and I approve their pardon recommendation.”
Perry was convicted of murdering Air Force veteran and Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster in 2023. A Travis County jury deliberated for 17 hours before finding Perry guilty of murder but not aggravated assault of Foster at the intersection of 4th Street and Congress Avenue in downtown Austin, as well as threatening a crowd with his car during the 2020 protest.
Perry, who was working as an Uber driver, shot and killed Foster with a .357 Magnum revolver after Foster approached the driver door of his Hyundai Ioniq.
This dispassionate description hides the fact that Perry’s car was surrounded by a crowd of rioters, including the one who aimed a gun at Perry. This was a clear case of self defense that never would have gone to trial if Travis County’s far left Soros backed DA Jose Garza weren’t so in favor of radical left wing rioters and hostile the right of self defense.
The Department of Justice recently argued that a whistleblower lawsuit against Pfizer, filed by Brook Jackson, should be dismissed.
Jackson, a 20-year veteran in clinical trial administration employed by a third-party vendor (Ventavia Research Group), worked on Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trials in 2020. Alarmed by what she witnessed, Jackson raised concerns to her superiors, Pfizer, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September 2020.
She claimed the trial was being run, documented, and reported in a manner that violated Federal law and was potentially dangerous.
Hours after contacting the FDA on September 25, 2020, Jackson was fired. Her sealed whistleblower complaint seemed to stall, with the FDA not investigating her claims. Faced with inaction, Jackson filed a lawsuit.
As the case progressed towards discovery, the DOJ intervened, asking the judge to dismiss the case. Jackson argues that the government failed to articulate a legitimate reason for dismissal and did not demonstrate why the burdens of continued litigation outweigh its benefits.
Disturbingly, a former FDA lawyer who worked at the agency when Jackson’s complaint was filed has moved to the DOJ and is now representing the government in its attempt to shut down the suit, raising concerns about regulatory capture and the use of government to shield companies from accountability.
In 2021, the British Medical Journal published an article investigating Jackson’s claims and found them credible. The journal’s investigation concluded that Jackson’s account was supported by documentation and raised serious questions about the integrity of Pfizer’s vaccine trials and the FDA’s oversight.
Other former Ventavia employees vouched for Jackson’s complaint, describing a “helter-skelter” work environment and lack of oversight.
Despite evidence and corroboration, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia after Jackson’s complaint, and Pfizer did not mention any problems at Ventavia in its FDA submission for emergency use authorization.
BMJ’s findings lend significant credibility to Jackson’s claims and raise serious questions about the integrity of Pfizer’s vaccine trial data, the adequacy of regulatory oversight, and, ultimately, the approved emergency use authorization.
Follow the money…
Court throws DEI amendment to NY constitution, off November’s ballot. “The NY State Supreme Court (trial court) in Livingston County (near Rochester), granted summary judgment throwing the ERA off the November ballot, on the ground that the proponents of the legislation did not follow the constitutionally required procedure for advancing a ballot initiative for a constitutional amendment.”
A Tompkins High School teacher has been arrested on nine counts of possession of child pornography.
James Paul Stone was booked into the Fort Bend County Jail Monday.
According to the Montgomery County Precinct 3 Constable’s office, thousands of images of child pornography were recovered from Stone’s residence, including several images that Stone admitted to producing himself.
Ah, not this crap again. “Venezuela Moves ‘Substantial Quantities’ Of Troops To Guyana Border.”
Not living in Austin, I missed the news that several de-annexation elections were on the May 4th ballot.
In 2017, Texas lawmakers passed a bill stopping cities in large counties from being able to annex areas if residents didn’t want to be part of the city. But between the time the law passed and when it went into effect, many areas were annexed.
Last year, lawmakers passed House Bill 3053 to allow neighborhoods that were annexed during that time period to disannex, if voters approve.
Lost Creek in West Austin is the largest area proposing to deannex itself from the city. It’s been a part of Austin since 2015, but many residents have been petitioning to separate them from the city, claiming they’ve been paying city taxes for services that have been lacking. Neighbors in the area have had to pay for off-duty sheriffs to patrol the area.
Three areas voted to disannex from Austin after saying they’re paying for services they don’t receive.
Katieva Kizer lives on Blue Goose Road in northeast Austin, which is one of the six neighborhoods that voted to leave Austin’s city limits on Saturday.
“The whole time we’ve been with them, it’s been a run around as to who should provide anything,” Kizer said.
Texas passed HB 3053 which stopped cities in large counties from being able to annex areas if residents didn’t want to be part of the city. But between March 2015 and December 2017, many neighborhoods were annexed.
“My grandfather fought the annexation of this little area the whole time here until he died in 2015,” Kizer said. “He was the kind of guy that would call the county … Call the city and tell them, ‘You need to come do things.’”
Kizer said they never got any benefits from the city in the seven years they were annexed and that their roads and water infrastructure deteriorated.
“I did call and contact the city for services, and they’re like, ‘No, we’re not up to date in your area to provide those services,'” Kizer said. “Huge potholes everywhere … They didn’t actually come and fix our road until they started doing new construction in the rest of the area. It was only to benefit the newcomers to the area, not anybody that’s already been here and paying taxes.”
Lost Creek, Blue Goose Road and River Place Outparcels voted to leave Austin on Saturday. Kizer was one of the three people to vote and said there are nine or 10 houses in their 28-acre neighborhood.
“They can’t tell you that every vote doesn’t count because three of us voted, and it could have just been one of us,” Kizer said. “If it was none of us, then it would have stayed the same. So every vote does matter. It does count … Because just the three of us made the decision for all of us.”
Disannexing means they will no longer receive certain city services, like fire or police protection, no street maintenance, public health sanitation, and more.
“There weren’t a lot of things to look forward to or that they were giving us,” Kizer said. “So, the major benefit is that I get to go back to being county taxed.”
Lost Creek, the largest of the neighborhoods at 738 acres, had more than 1,500 people vote with 91% for disannexing. River Place Outparcels, a 212-acre area, only had one person vote for disannexing, and no one vote against it.
Until Austin gets its act together (or the charter is revoked), maybe the legislature should let any neighborhood in Austin vote to disannex itself from the People’s Republic…
Austin’s liberal establishment has been trying to trick taxpayers into pouring billions into their light rail boondoggle for decades, finally winning an apparent victory when voters approved a scheme in 2020. But it turns out that the terms of the ballot language may have doomed the project.
Austin’s controversial light rail program, approved by voters in 2020, could be null and void due to an allegedly unconstitutional financing proposal.
According to press reports, during a court hearing, proponents of the transit scheme found themselves unable to defend the project’s ability to borrow money. Absent this authority, it is unlikely to continue.
At issue is the convoluted structure of the measure presented to voters in 2020. Designed to evade state limits on debt and borrowing (which seemed like a money laundering arrangement), the measure created a so-called “governmental corporation” called the Austin Transit Partnership. According to the 2020 proposal, the Austin Transit Partnership was supposed to be funded by a one-time increase to the city’s maintenance and operations property tax.
However, proponents of the project lowballed the cost estimate.
Austin’s liberal establishment, lowball cost to get something passed?
Combined with Biden’s inflation, this has led to a situation where the Austin Transit Partnership now needs to borrow substantial sums.
Unfortunately for proponents, state law prohibits using maintenance and operations property tax dollars to pay debt for so-called ‘governmental corporations.’ While a second component of the property tax—interest and sinking—could be used to pay debt, that’s not what was approved in 2020.
It was obvious to any non-Democrat that the Project Connect light rail project was a boondoggle from the git-go, just as the previous light rail effort was a failure. The fact that more than three years on, Project Connect still doesn’t have a definite plan or path is a handy indication of its dysfunction. Hopefully Texas courts will put it out of Austin taxpayer’s misery.
But I’m sure lots of consultants got paid quite handsomely…
Yes, this is already halfway over, but I only found out about it tonight: There’s a Texas Peace Officers Memorial Weekend happening this weekend (April 27-28) at the Texas Peace Officers’ Memorial on the grounds of the state capitol.
A PDF detailing events and times can be found here.
I’m not sure if any of the usual leftwing idiots (the ones calling for the death of police officers) will be there to cause a scene, but it wouldn’t surprise me…
If you follow news on conservative blogs, you’ve probably read about antisemitic riots roiling liberal campuses like Columbia, where Jewish students have been assaulted or threatened by Hamas supporters who loudly proclaim their desire to “destroy Zionists” throughout the world.
The usual gang of idiots tried that at the University of Texas and quickly found out that Texas isn’t New York.
More than 20 people have been arrested, including a FOX 7 Austin photographer, by law enforcement on the University of Texas at Austin campus Wednesday.
UT Police have issued a dispersal order directing everyone to leave the South Mall area immediately.
Hundreds of students walked out of class Wednesday to rally for Palestine and attempt to occupy the South Lawn on campus.
The students gathered on the South Lawn and set up tents while chanting “Free Free Palestine” and other slogans, including ones aimed at the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and even Austin police.
DPS said in a release on social media that it responded to the campus at the request of the University and at the direction of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott “in order to prevent any unlawful assembly and to support UT Police in maintaining the peace by arresting anyone engaging in any sort of criminal activity, including criminal trespass.”
UTPD is warning people to avoid the area in the 2200 block of Speedway for “police activity”. This area is between the South Lawn and the Gregory Gymnasium where the march began.
On Wednesday afternoon, Gov. Greg Abbott vowed that the arrests would continue until the crowd dispersed.
“These protesters belong in jail. Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period. Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled,” said Abbott.
State Sen. Brandon Creighton (R–Conroe), who chairs the Senate Education Committee, noted in light of the protests nationwide that the First Amendment does not protect violence or harassment.
“Let’s be real: if campuses witnessed protests with anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Asian, or anti-Hispanic slogans, the backlash would be fierce and immediate. Yet, when protests challenge Israel’s existence, they’re often waved off as acceptable political speech. It’s an unacceptable double standard, one that’s been fueled significantly by DEI programs,” he wrote in a post on X.
Creighton was the author of the state’s ban on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs and departments on college campuses that went into effect earlier this year.
“And let’s not forget what Israel is fighting against —Hamas, a known terrorist organization, carried out the Oct. 7th attack—the worst attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust. This isn’t about politics; it’s about recognizing and condemning terrorism and violence,” Creighton added.
The first amendment affords these morons the right to protest for their incredibly stupid causes. However, the right to protest is not the right to break the law, and clearly leftwing campuses across America have been letting their radical darlings break laws at will. Eugene Volokh has additional information on what is and isn’t lawful protest and both public and private universities. “There is no First Amendment right to camp out in any university, public or private. Indeed, there is no First Amendment right to camp out even in public parks (see Clark v. CCNV (1984)), and the government’s power to limit the use of property used for a public university is even greater than its power as to parks (Widmar v. Vincent (1981)).” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Disruptive protests that break the law are not constitutionally protected. Pro-Hamas protestors may get away with that sort of thing in deep blue cities and states, but that sort of thing doesn’t fly in Texas.
Many Texans will have their first opportunity to elect representatives to the governing boards of their local appraisal districts, making the agencies that assess property values for tax purposes more accountable to citizens.
A new property tax relief law, passed last year and approved in November by voters statewide, included a provision for voters in counties with a population of 75,000 or more to elect three new members to their county appraisal district board of directors.
The three elected board members will serve alongside the five appointed directors and the county tax assessor-collector, who will become an ex-officio board member.
Directors elected in May will take office on July 1 and serve a term that expires on December 31, 2026.
Going forward, elected appraisal district directors will be on the ballot in November of even-numbered years and serve staggered four-year terms.
The five directors appointed by local taxing units (counties, cities, school districts) that participate in the appraisal district will also transition to staggered four-year terms, starting in 2025.
Property tax consultant Chandler Crouch, who has championed appraisal district reforms for years, told Texas Scorecard, “I believe the legislation that implemented these changes is a direct result of the trouble I’ve experienced and would not have happened if it weren’t for concerned Texans demanding change.”
Crouch was targeted by his local Tarrant County appraisal district officials after helping thousands of residents protest their property taxes and calling attention to problems within the system.
In the wake of several scandals, longtime Tarrant Appraisal District Chief Appraiser Jeff Law resigned last September.
“Over the past few years I’ve seen plenty of corruption at the appraisal district. I believe the problems I encountered would have been dealt with much quicker if we had someone at the appraisal district that was directly accountable to the taxpayers,” said Crouch.
In addition to adding elected appraisal district directors in the state’s 50 largest counties, the new law puts the directors in charge of appointing members to the appraisal review board.
The appraisal review board (ARB) is the group of citizens that hears taxpayer protests and resolves disputes between property owners and appraisal districts. Currently, ARB members are appointed by the county’s local administrative judge.
At least two members of the majority voting for ARB members must be elected directors.
Any possibility for voters to check tax increases is a good thing.
According to this Facebook thread, Buell, Sanders and Klein are running a taxpayer-friendly slate, while Hisle-Piper, Lux and Moses are already appointed members of the board, using a loophole to run for the elected seats. Sanders asserts “If they win, each of them will then hold two positions on the Appraisal Board.” That hardly seems kosher. On that basis, I’m tentatively recommending a vote for Buell, Sanders and Klein, but if you have any countervailing information, please share it in the comments below.
Note: Early voting for this election has already started and runs through April 30.
The U.S. Senate race in Texas is shaping up to be an expensive bout between Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Congressman Colin Allred (D-TX-32), with both candidates posting high fundraising totals and the challenger burning through most of his haul.
Both candidates announced close to $10 million raised in the April quarterly report last week. The two touted the fact that their contributions came from every — or in Allred’s case, almost every — county in Texas. The pair’s average donations were both around $35.
Cruz reported $15.1 million cash-on-hand at the end of this period — which includes monies raised into the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Texas GOP itemized for his race — to Allred’s $10.5 million left on hand.
Cruz’s number is $2.7 million more than he raised in the first two quarters of 2018 combined. Allred’s haul exceeded 2018 candidate Beto O’Rourke’s first-quarter number by close to $3 million.
Though he posted a record first quarter haul in 2018, the biggest money for Beto’s bid really started flowing in during the spring and summer following the primary; he raised nearly $80 million in that race, and narrowly lost to Cruz, who raised $45 million that cycle.
Both Cruz and Allred have raised around half of their money in 2024 from within Texas, with big money figures and organizations on both sides of this fight salivating for another high-profile clash. More than 12 percent of Allred’s haul came from California to Cruz’s 32 percent from Virginia, the vast majority of which is due to the GOP’s small-dollar donor interface, WinRed, being headquartered there.
The Democrats’ version, ActBlue, is headquartered in Massachusetts.
One of the most interesting factors in these reports is Allred’s burn rate — the amount of money spent relative to what he raised. Allred has plenty of money left over, but he spent 96 percent of his haul, more than two-thirds of which was spent on media advertising.
I would be lying if I said I was up to date on the latest campaign finance trends, but it’s universally acknowledged that a burn rate that high this far out from the general election is “bad”…
…and that media buys this far out from the general are fools gold. Maybe Allred thinks he needs to get to the same level of name recognition as O’Rourke did in 2018, but that’s simply not possible. He’d need just as many fawning media profiles as O’Rourke got, and the national media is too busy ramping up the Orange Man Bad machine to do that. This time in 2018, I’d already seen a zillion Beto signs and bumper stickers, and I doubt I’ve even seen five for Allred. And, after all that money and name-recognition, Beto still lost…
The latest poll on the race from the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation — which pegged Allred down 5 points to Cruz — showed the challenger with a +24 net favorability rating to Cruz’s +3. However, Allred’s undecided total was 40 points, showing that there are loads of movable voters who could go either way on him; Cruz’s undecided number was 1 percent.
Polls this early mean very little. But cash on hand is rarely overrated…
In his nascent bid for Congress, Brandon Herrera is putting two things to the test: embattled Congressman Tony Gonzales (R-TX-23), and the ability of next-generation politicians to overcome statements — and jokes — made on social media.
Known popularly as “The AK Guy,” Herrera is a YouTuber boasting a large following whose schtick is firing cool guns and teaching his viewers about their characteristics and history. His X bio reads, “Congressional Candidate (R TX-23) YouTuber, Second Amendment Absolutist, VERY Politically Incorrect.”
The field of Republican primary challengers pushed Gonzales to a runoff, with the incumbent falling 4.6 points away from winning the primary outright; Herrera received 24 percent of the vote, finishing a comfortable second place and securing a runoff against the incumbent.
Now he’s the last man standing between Gonzales and a third term in Congress.
But standing between Herrera and the upset is the very reason he has such a large following: his irreverent, and very entertaining, streaming persona. Herrera’s YouTube channel has 3.3 million subscribers and the pinned video is him testing out the “magic bullet theory” related to the JFK assassination — namely that the bullet attributed to the president’s death looks as if it didn’t actually hit anything, let alone a human being.
But it was a different video that caught the attention of his opponent — and a national media outlet.
“Rep. Gonzales’ right-wing GOP challenger posted videos featuring Nazi imagery, songs, jokes,” reads a headline from the publication Jewish Insider. The video in question is an informational on the MP-40 submachine gun, developed in Germany during the Nazi Third Reich.
Discussing the gun, Herrera refers to it as “the original ghetto blaster” and then shows a sardonic black and white montage firing the weapon as the German military marching song “Erika” plays.
“If the MG-42 was Hitler’s buzzsaw, the MP-40 was Hitler’s street sweeper,” he adds.
At the end of the video, Herrera says of the sarcastic tone and jokes, “The best way to not repeat history is to learn about history. And the best way that I know to get you guys to learn about history, is make really f—– up jokes about it.”
In acknowledging the “edgy” humor, Herrera unknowingly handed ammunition to his future political opponents — the effectiveness of which remains to be seen and a potential dagger that Herrera brushed aside.
“Whereas before you have little statements that can be taken out of context or jokes that were made that would tank careers, it’s no longer that way,” Herrera told The Texan in an interview, suggesting the current political climate has passed the point of caring about such remarks.
“One of the big catalysts for that change was the way that Trump ran his campaign. I think people related to him and people aren’t really afraid to see that side of elected representatives anymore.”
About the potential shift, Herrera added, “[Candidates] don’t have to be as squeaky clean, and really, fake as they have been in years past. And I think we’re getting closer to an era of real people.”
“Being representatives now, which I think is going to be a net positive because people are realizing it doesn’t matter what jokes have been made in the past, and it doesn’t matter if your congressman was caught swearing or something like that. People care about how you vote and I think that’s the core of it. And that should be what people vote on.”
Is a post-Trump disdain for political correctness going to prevent it from being used on other candidates for edgy humor? Maybe. But a bigger problem for Herrera is that he came out of the primary 21 points behind Gonzales. That’s a large gap to make up, especially since Gonzales is out-raising Herrera. Absent dramatic developments, the vote and money gaps may be too big for Herrera to make up between now and May 29.
A petition filed in the 455th Travis County District Court on Apr. 8. calling for the removal of Travis County District Attorney José Garza was granted Friday afternoon by Dib Waldrip, the 433rd District Judge in Comal County and Presiding Judge of the 3rd Administrative Judicial Region.
Waldrip, who was appointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to serve as the Presiding Judge of the 3rd Administrative Judicial Region in 2022, was assigned the case on Apr. 10 before granting the application for the issuance of a citation with an order for Garza to answer and appear in Travis County District Court on May 16.
Additionally, Waldrip appointed the Office of the Bell County Attorney and the Honorable Jim Nichols to represent the State as “a qualified and appropriate prosecuting attorney from within the region.”
Nichols is a Republican.
According to the court records, Nichols was selected by Waldrip after considering available options in accordance with Texas’ statute stating “the county attorney of the jurisdiction serves as counsel for the State in actions to remove an officer, except when such an action seeks removal of a prosecuting attorney.”
KXAN reached out to Waldrip, Abbott and Nichols about the matter and will update this story once a response is received.
The petition argues “Incompetency and official misconduct” related to the policies enforced by Garza about the who and what criminal offenses his office prosecutes.
Specifically, the petition references three issues supporting these allegations:
Defendant singles out law enforcement officials by automatically, indiscriminately, presenting charges against them to grand juries;
Defendant maintains a “do not call to testify” list of law enforcement officials who he deems unfit to testify and disqualifies from serving as witnesses for the State of Texas and
Defendant refuses to prosecute a class or type of criminal offense under state law.
The 21-page petition goes on to detail policies and evidence that allegedly show violations of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure such as presenting cases to grand juries that are not supported by probable cause and discriminatory practices specific to law enforcement officers.
Samsung’s Texas fabs are evidently going to be the beneficiary of CHIPS Act subsidies.
The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) has announced that $6.4 billion will be sent to a Texas Samsung facility to bolster the supply chain of semiconductors.
The multi-billion dollar investment is part of a larger $40 billion dollar federal funding agreement as part of the CHIPS and Science Act.
As a White House press release states, the investment aims to “cement central Texas’s role as a state-of-the-art semiconductor ecosystem, creating at least 21,500 jobs and leveraging up to $40 million in CHIPS funding to train and develop the local workforce.”
This investment would be used at both the research and development facilities in Taylor and the expansion of the fabrication factory in Austin.
The Taylor facility isn’t just an R&D site, it’s a full-blown state-of-the-art fab, and they could start running the line as early as July. The chips Samsung will be producing are planned to be on their 4 nanometer node.
The City of Austin has previously identified semiconductor production as part of its Opportunity Austin economic expansion plan where the city sees itself as a “top global destination for businesses and investment.”
“We’re not just expanding production facilities; we’re strengthening the local semiconductor ecosystem and positioning the U.S. as a global semiconductor manufacturing destination,” said Kye Hyun Kyung, president and CEO of the Device Solutions (DS) Division at Samsung Electronics.
“To meet the expected surge in demand from U.S. customers, for future products like AI chips, our fabs will be equipped for cutting-edge process technologies and help advance the security of the U.S. semiconductor supply chain.”
As I’ve written before, semiconductor subsidies are the wrong solution for the wrong problem (especially if the Biden Administration demands Samsung pledge fealty to social justice before sucking the taxpayers teat). But if you are going to subsidize someone, and your goal is more cutting edge American fabs, then Samsung isn’t the worst recipient. Their fab tech is either second third best (depending on whether intel has actually gotten their act together or not) in the world behind TSMC, and 4nm is good enough for just about every fab customer in the world, save Apple (who is TSMC’s alpha customer), Intel (yes, Intel gets some of their cutting edge chips fabbed at TSMC), AMD, and a few others. Technical details here, assuming the difference between FinFET and GAAFET doesn’t make your eyes glaze over.
— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) March 29, 2024
I was particularly struck by the phrase “fundamentally unwifeable.” Add “social justice” to “feminism” for the reason. As for “Disney Princess programming,” the Disney Princess thing has been around for over half a century. So why have things gotten so much worse on that front over the last 20 years?
On the flipside, here’s a 20-something girl complaining that she can’t afford rent. She apparently deleted the original tweet, but she said her rent had jumped from something like $1,200 a month to $1,600 a month, and she was having trouble affording food. Thanks, Joe Biden! Rent inflation is real, especially in blue cities where regulation prevents new housing being built to meet demand, but if your rent is that much, then you either need to move further out, find roommates to share rent with, or you need to consider moving to a less expensive city entirely.
During an Austin City Council meeting on public safety, Austin-Travis County Emergency and Medical Services (EMS) spoke about the rising rates of opioid deaths in the county.
“Travis County now has twice as many opiate overdose deaths than any other county in Texas, per capita,” said Steven White, acting assistant chief for Austin-Travis County EMS.
White explained how the opioid crisis began in the community in 2016, “with a severe increase in 2017.”
White elaborated that in 2018 there were about 30 overdoses per month, and “now we’re averaging about 100 overdoses a month.”
He went on to show a heat map of where the overdoses are occurring, stating that “opioids do not seem to be contained by geographic barriers or financial barriers.”
“It really gets into every part of our community and touches every family [and] at some point will be affected by the opioid crisis.”
White also highlighted that “30 percent of all the opioid users who die of an overdose, at some point had contact with EMS in the previous 12 months before their death, which gives us an intersection point where we’re actually meeting these patients who have the potential to overdose and die.”
Another statistic he presented is that “patients that receive Narcan in the field by EMS have a 10 percent chance of having a fatal overdose in the next 12 months.”
