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.
Summer’s coming. That means sunshine, swimming, cookouts — and blackouts.
That’s the warning from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.
According to NERC, at least two-thirds of the country is at risk for major power outages this summer.
This extends to most everyone west of the Mississippi except for Texas.
Texas and much of the Midwest will be fine, the report says, so long as we don’t experience hot, windless summer days.
Well, that’s a relief. When do we ever get hot, windless summer days in Texas and the Midwest?
Part of the problem is the steady removal of fossil-fuel plants from the grid.
These plants are supposed to be replaced by renewables — wind and solar — but wind doesn’t work on windless days, and solar doesn’t keep your air conditioning running on steamy nights.
The Wall Street Journal reports the Environmental Protection Agency has made things worse with new nitrogen-oxides rules from its recently finalized “Good Neighbor Plan, which requires fossil-fuel power plants in 22 states to reduce NOx emissions. NERC predicts power plants will comply by limiting hours of operation but warns they may need regulatory waivers in the event of a power crunch.”
Institute for the Study of War: “Ukrainian forces conducted a limited but still significant attack in western Zaporizhia Oblast on the night of June 7 to 8. Russian forces apparently defended against this attack in a doctrinally sound manner and had reportedly regained their initial positions as of June 8.” Other sources are reporting modest Ukrainian gains.
A comprehensive investigation by the Wall Street Journal and the Stanford Internet Observatory reveals that Meta-owned Instagram has been home to an organized and massive network of pedophiles.
But what separates this case from most is that Instagram’s own algorithms were promoting pedophile content to other pedophiles, while the pedos themselves used coded emojis, such as a picture of a map, or a slice of cheese pizza.
Instagram connects pedophiles and guides them to content sellers via recommendation systems that excel at linking those who share niche interests, the Journal and the academic researchers found.
The pedophilic accounts on Instagram mix brazenness with superficial efforts to veil their activity, researchers found. Certain emojis function as a kind of code, such as an image of a map—shorthand for “minor-attracted person”—or one of “cheese pizza,” which shares its initials with “child pornography,” according to Levine of UMass. Many declare themselves “lovers of the little things in life.” -WSJ
According to the researchers, Instagram allowed pedophiles to search for content with explicit hashtags such as #pedowhore and #preteensex, which were then used to connect them to accounts that advertise child-sex material for sale from users going under names such as “little slut for you.”
Sellers of child porn often convey the child’s purported age, saying they are “on chapter 14,” or “age 31,” with an emoji of a reverse arrow.
Speaking of Meta, they’re threatening to “pull news feeds on its platforms for California residents if the state legislature passes the Journalism Preservation Act.” That act “requires big tech companies to pay news outlets a journalism usage fee.” For once the pedo-coddlers are right: No one should be forced to subsidize failing social justice-infected newsrooms.
Speaking of pedophiles: “Itasca ISD Superintendent Michael Stevens arrested, charged with online solicitation of a minor.” Maybe parents wouldn’t worry so much about educators trying to screw their children if educators didn’t keep trying to screw their children.
This week in Democrats passing unconstitutional laws that strip citizens of rights: “llinois’s Gov. J. B. “Jumbo Burger” Pritzker signed himself a whale of a state law yesterday that went into effect IMMEDIATELY. And, immediately, restricted Illinois citizens from pursuing constitutional claims against their state government unless they filed the lawsuits in one of two, Democratic approved, state sanctioned, Democratic counties – Cook or Sangamon.” That’s a prima facie violation of the First Amendment “right of the people…to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Free New York City crack pipe vending machine cleaned out overnight. “Free crack pipe vending machine” sounds like the punchline to a Norm MacDonald joke from the 1990s, but it’s now evidently the policy of New York Democrats.
North Dakota’s Republican Governor is running for President. Burgum is evidently a billionaire after being an early investor in Great Plains Software, which was sold to Microsoft in 2001. The fact he’s close to Bill Gates doesn’t give me a lot of warm fuzzies, and Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg proved that rich-but-unknown outsiders shoveling money into a Presidential campaign costs you a lot of jack and earn you boatloads of squat. He’s a pretty decent public speaker, but in a blow-dried 80’s executive sense, and he sort of looks like if Richard Belzer had played the Michael Douglas role in Falling Down.
I know nothing more than this. Evidently local media have ignored it as well:
Tweaker idiot takes the 801 bus hostage. All passengers have exited the bus. Driver is in her seat like a mamaluke. APD is nowhere to be found. Viva la leftists. pic.twitter.com/EpwDhrtCUX
— Blastbeat Industries (@BlastbeatATX) June 9, 2023
“Due To High Crime, Mafia Closes Its Chicago Office.” “How are we supposed to conduct respectable business — loan sharking, bribery, racketeering, illegal gambling — with so much crime going on? It’s insane!”
And those are just the ones with over 100 employees. There are much more with fewer (including Gordon Ramsay North America, which has a chain of restaurants, which has moved its headquarters to Irving, despite having no restaurants in Texas). (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
For the past few years, Atlanta has been roiled by corruption scandals centering on the city’s decades-old program to favor minority-owned businesses in government contracting. The troubles started when Elvin “E. R.” Mitchell, Jr., a black contractor, began paying what became more than $1 million in bribes to city official and friend of the mayor Reverend Mitzi Bickers. Mitchell and his associates wanted to ensure that they could keep winning city-favored contracts and subcontracts for minorities, despite submitting bids higher than their competitors’. Mitchell also helped Bickers bribe officials in Jackson, Mississippi, so that she could secure minority-favored contracts on some of that city’s projects. Meantime, Larry Scott, head of Atlanta’s Office of Contract Compliance, which ensures that minority firms win contracts, started a side gig to help such businesses get favorable deals with the city—receiving over $220,000 in unreported income and partnering with the mayor’s brother and sister-in-law in the scheme. Mitchell, Bickers, Scott, and several other city officials have been sentenced on federal charges ranging from bribery to wire fraud.
Affirmative-action plans in schools or workplaces get the headlines, but the practice of favoring minorities in government contracts is almost as old, and even more far-reaching. Such favoritism—in the form of Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBE), or Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprises (MWBE) programs—exists across all levels of government and in states and cities of every political hue.
The subject of government contracting, or procurement, may not seem exciting, but its importance can’t be overstated. Nearly 10 percent of the U.S. economy goes through government contracts. The federal government spends over $600 billion yearly on contracts, making it the largest buyer of goods and services on the planet. State- and local-government spending on contracts totals about $1.3 trillion annually. Government contracts and purchases range from aircraft carriers and highway construction projects to office supplies and human-resources software. Favoritism to minority-owned companies pervades this vast universe.
Minority contracting was never a coherent way to make amends for the nation’s long, lamentable history of racism. Instead of righting historical wrongs, the policy has enriched a small subset of already-wealthy businesses, bred corruption and fraud, deepened racial divisions, and cost taxpayers countless billions of dollars—while doing nothing to help the truly disadvantaged. Indeed, minority residents of urban areas pay the highest price for lackluster and expensive services caused by such programs. One underappreciated reason for the unparalleled costs of American urban and infrastructure projects is that the government too often picks contractors based on their sex or race, not the quality or cost of their bids.
Snip.
Today, governments use several methods to favor minority contractors. At the federal level, Congress has stated that “not less than 5 percent” of all contracts should go to “disadvantaged” businesses. Regulations clarify a “presumption” that “Black Americans; Hispanic Americans; Native Americans,” and “Asian Americans” are disadvantaged. Government treats the goal as a floor, not a ceiling: in recent years, the true share of contracts going to disadvantaged firms has been around 10 percent, and politicians have urged the bureaucracy to push the total higher. The SBA then sets goals for individual agencies—recently demanding, for example, that the Department of Transportation offer 21 percent of all contracts to disadvantaged enterprises. It also requires that federal “prime contractors” (the lead contractor on a project) create subcontracting plans to maximize minority participation.
State and local governments set even higher goals for minority procurement but usually focus on encouraging large businesses to subcontract out to minorities. Chicago insists that 26 percent of all construction dollars go to minority companies and 6 percent to women-owned businesses. But a city-funded report noted that “almost all City funded construction projects require M/WBE” goals for subcontractors and that “project goals should exceed the ‘baseline’ goal.” Maryland has a target of 29 percent of contract dollars to minority firms. New York City and State have set a goal of 30 percent of all contracts going to MWBE, and the city itself goes into more detail, setting precise contracting goals for each race and business category (for instance, black-owned businesses should get 11.81 percent of all city professional-service contracts).
Agencies have various ways of meeting these benchmarks. Federal agencies can directly award contracts to minority firms, without a normal bidding process and through a no-bid deal, if they cost less than $5 million. This arrangement, of course, has caused abuse. After 9/11, the federal government, hoping to accelerate security purchases, expanded awards to “Alaska Native Corporations,” which had a special exemption that allowed them to get no-bid minority contracts of unlimited amounts. Federal contracts to these corporations increased 20-fold in the decade ending in 2009, when spending totaled almost $6 billion. The army’s infectious-disease center at Fort Detrick, in a no-bid deal, shifted the management of all its contracts to an Alaskan Native Corporation, whose most significant former venture was a failed cruise-ship line. Another such corporation won a port-scanning deal and then subcontracted it out to traditional defense companies; only 33 of the corporation’s 2,300 employees were Alaskan Natives. Though Native Americans are the smallest “disadvantaged” group assisted by the federal government, they get 2.7 percent of all federal contracts—more than twice the proportion of any other group.
Snip.
The City of Austin Disparity Study for 2022, conducted by Colette Holt & Associates, a large disparity-study firm started by a lawyer who had previously worked for Chicago’s city government, is typical. It approaches 300 pages and contains a recitation of every supposed ill that has befallen a minority business in the Texas capital. The report uses only anonymous quotes that make accusations against unnamed individuals about racism or sexism. “There is no requirement that anecdotal testimony be ‘verified’ or corroborated,” the report notes.
Try as they might, these studies have had little success proving racism or sexism in contracting. They typically use a “disparity ratio” to show the difference between the number of available minority firms and the number of government contracts going to these firms, though these ratios rarely account for the ability of different firms to perform government jobs. Yet studies conducted by Austin and Washington State found that MWBE firms were more likely to get contracts than were those owned by white men. A Missouri disparity study found that minority firms were more likely to get contracts than nonminority firms. A Chicago disparity study found that black and Hispanic firms were about twice as likely to get construction contracts, and Asian firms four times as likely, relative to their availability.
These reports’ surveys of minority firms find that most aren’t worried about discrimination. Of those MWBEs responding to a survey in Austin, 75 percent said that they had not experienced barriers to contracting based on race or gender. Over 85 percent agreed that they did not get different prices or terms because of their race or gender. Disparity studies ignore such data and argue that the minority of minorities who report unspecified discrimination need assistance.
When studies admit that there is no discrimination in contracting, politicians refuse to abide by them. Miami-Dade County made the mistake of employing a legitimate accounting firm, KPMG, for a disparity study, which determined that companies owned by blacks and Hispanics were not underused. The Miami mayor rejected the study. Los Angeles’s city council rejected a study that found that black firms did not suffer discrimination in contracting. The occasional lawsuit will surface, challenging these disparity studies when they provide no evidence of discrimination. But in such cases, governments will simply look for another minority contractor to conduct another study calling for more minority contracting.
Minority-contracting programs are a magnet for fraud. No-bid contracts represent an obvious avenue, but the most common kind of MWBE fraud is simple: contractors with subpar bids either lie about being run by minorities or lie about involving other minority businesses in the contract. The Wedtech scandal in the 1980s involved such fraud; though John Mariotta, a Puerto Rican immigrant, had started the company, it was partially run by Fred Neuberger, a Romanian Jew who escaped the Holocaust in Europe but did not count as “disadvantaged” for the purposes of the 8(a) program. Similar issues arose with the recent Atlanta scandals: while contractor Charles Richards was white and won many “prime” contracts, he promised to subcontract work to Mitchell’s minority firm, and then paid Mitchell without asking his firm to do any work. A 2016 Department of Transportation presentation stated that more than one-third of its contracting-fraud cases involved minority contracting and that, over the preceding five years, cases involving minority-contracting fraud had led to $245 million in financial penalties and 425 months of incarceration for offenders.
These cases tend to follow a certain playbook. A minority-owned front company wins the government contract, takes a small cut, and issues a pass-through contract to a white-owned firm. The largest such case in American history involved Schuylkill Products, a Pennsylvania firm that manufactured concrete bridge beams but had used a Filipino-owned front company for 15 years to win more than $130 million in contracts. The federal investigation led to several prison sentences in 2014. Front-company and pass-through fraud has dogged construction work at Chicago’s O’Hare airport and New York casinos. According to the New York State inspector general, the minority firms in the casino-fraud case did little more than submit invoices. A former Dallas councilman, meantime, went to prison for his role in setting up minority front companies for government contracts. Sometimes, the fraud is even more direct: in Seattle, the owner of a company that was paid to clean up homeless camps falsely identified as black on city forms. She also happened to be a city employee.
Target has repeatedly boasted about efforts to support the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, also known as GLSEN, an entity which helps teachers place LGBTQ books in school libraries and hide their students’ so-called gender transitions from parents.
Conservatives have launched a boycott against Target after the retail behemoth marketed a female swimsuit as “tuck-friendly” and with “extra crotch coverage,” as well as hired an artist who creates Satanic items to make various designs for the company. Links between the company and GLSEN, which supports “affirming learning environments for LGBTQ youth” and activates “supportive educators,” resurfaced amid the backlash against Target.
The retail behemoth boasted last year about donating more than $2.1 million to GLSEN over the past decade, lauding the group’s mission to create “affirming, accessible, and antiracist spaces for LGBTQIA+ students.” Target also actively promotes GLSEN on its online store.
Strangely enough, having a DA who will prosecute criminal and not lawful citizens defending themselves makes a difference. “San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins follows the law and the evidence and does not make decisions based on what may be politically expedient.”
Speaking of Soros-plagued cities: “Citywide Youth Curfew Begins In Baltimore As Mayor Strives To Restore Law And Order.”I doubt Mayor Brandon Scott’s policy will make that much of a difference, though maybe with Soros-tool Marilyn Mosby out of office and awaiting trial on federal perjury charges, maybe there’s a chance of Baltimore improving. But remember:
Of course. “Just Stop Oil’s Hollywood Patron Has Holiday Home in Ireland That he Jets Off to ‘When the Going Gets Tough.'” “Oscar winner Adam McKay, whose films include The Big Short and Don’t Look Up, is one of a group of multi-millionaires behind the Climate Emergency Fund. The Beverly Hills-based fund raises cash from its mega rich supporters and distributes it to ‘disruptive’ activists, including handing almost £1million to help Just Stop Oil wreak havoc in the U.K.” Being a Democrat means never having to apologize for your hypocrisy.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and the Atlanta Police Department (APD) arrested Marlon Scott Kautz, age 39, of Atlanta, Savannah D. Patterson, age 30, of Savannah, Ga., and Adele Maclean, age 42, of Atlanta, on Wednesday on charges of money laundering and charity fraud in association with fundraising efforts for the domestic terrorists who are currently in jail.
“The GBI, along with the Atlanta Police Department, have arrested three people on charges stemming from the ongoing investigation of individuals responsible for numerous criminal acts at the future site of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center and other metro Atlanta locations,” reads the GBI’s press release.
The trio ran a non-profit called Network for Strong Communities, which worked with another group called the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which, at least on paper, was a bail fund for the thugs who attacked the training center property and other areas in Atlanta.
Given that, it might be time to take a look at Worth It or Woke for honest movie reviews.
Dwight has a good look at the Battleship Texas, and (for Memorial Day) seaman Christen Christensen, who was killed in combat during the bombardment of a German shore battery off Cherbourg.
Don’t let JinJin eat poop off San Francisco’s street, or they may end up tripping balls.
