BG Reads 10.18.2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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October 18, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟪 Endorsements for the November 2024 general election (Austin Chronicle)

🟪 West side District 10 candidates do not agree on much (Austin Monitor)

🟪 Special Report: Crime in Austin (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 The billionaires backing the new "anti-woke" University of Austin (Wall Street Journal)

🟪 Harris clashes with host in contentious interview on Fox (Washington Post)

Read On!

LINK TO THIS WEEK’S CITY OF AUSTIN HEARINGS + AGENDA

>>> See also, Austin City Council Regular Meeting Agenda (10.24.2024) <<<

• Item Highlight, #47: Discussion and possible action to ratify a proposed five-year Meet and Confer Agreement with the Austin Police Association relating to wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment for police officers of the Austin Police Department.

[CITY OF AUSTIN]

🟪 The Austin Council has four (4) regular meetings left in 2024

🟪 City of Austin Org Chart (as of 8.22.2024)

📺 City Council Candidate Forum: District 2 - Video (9.26.2024)

📺 City Council Candidate Forum: District 4 - Video (9.19.2024)

📺 City Council Candidate Forum: District 6 - Video (9.5.2024)

📺 City Council Candidate Forum: District 7 - Video (9.5.2024)

📺 City Council Candidate Forum: District 10 - Video (9.30.2024)

📺 City Council Candidate Forum: Mayor - Video (10.3.2024)

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

Endorsements for the November 2024 general election (Austin Chronicle)

The Chronicle Editorial Board provides the following endorsements to Democrats in advance of early voting (Monday, October 21, through Friday, November 1) and Election Day, Tuesday, November 5. We urge readers to be thorough with their ballots and cast a vote in every contest. Please note that we only endorse in contested races. Visit austinchronicle.com/elections for more information on the races and important voting information, as well as a shorter, poll-friendly version of these endorsements… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

West side District 10 candidates do not agree on much (Austin Monitor)

There are just two candidates running for the District 10 City Council seat: Marc Duchen and Ashika Ganguly.

While both have lived in West Austin for a number of years, Duchen, 46, has a longer track record. Duchen has an MBA and has served on the board of his homeowners’ association as well as the Austin Neighborhoods Council executive committee and the Community Not Commodity board of directors.

anguly, 29, who is a former grade-school teacher, has spent the last few years at the Texas Capitol working as a legislative aide to Democratic Rep. John Bucy.

Like Duchen, she has a master’s degree, but unlike Duchen, she has not spent much time at City Hall. When asked whether she had attended any Council meetings, Ganguly explained, “I stream almost every City Council meeting.” She said she was “balancing my job at the Capitol and the campaign.”

Duchen got his first taste of Austin politics when he ran former Council Member Betty Dunkerley’s reelection campaign in 2005. The following year, Duchen managed a successful House race for a Democrat in a normally Republican district in Corpus Christi. He returned to Austin to work for the Texas Progress Council and served as the research director for the Texas Democratic Party.

After that, he started a technology engagement company, and six years ago he returned to consulting.

Ganguly told the Austin Monitor she decided to run for the Council seat in May 2023.

Her website notes that, “During the 88th legislative session, Ashika found herself fighting for equitable legislation amidst attacks on inclusion efforts, LGBTQ+ rights, school finance, voting rights, local control, and much more. These experiences propelled her towards her new mission: advocating for her community at City Hall.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Youth homelessness has increased rapidly in Austin, according to nonprofit data (KUT)

The number of young people experiencing homelessness in Travis County, which includes most of Austin, has risen substantially in the past four years, according to numbers from a nonprofit that tracks the issue.

Since 2020, the number of people under 25 years old without permanent housing and not under the care of a parent or legal guardian has nearly quadrupled, jumping from 247 people to 934, according to LifeWorks. This data excludes families with kids who may be experiencing homelessness.

“It’s alarming in the sense that it signifies the work that we have to do,” said David Gray, the city’s homeless strategy officer.

Gray and Liz Schoenfeld, the CEO of LifeWorks, both said one factor that may have contributed to this jump is better data. Gray said the city has been doing more outreach with people living on the streets and the difference in these numbers could reflect, in part, a better count of those experiencing homelessness… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Special Report: Crime in Austin (Austin Business Journal)

Fingers are pointed everywhere. The police department's ranks are depleted.

Businesses must be soft on crime. The district attorney can't stop the revolving door of the criminal justice system. Developers exacerbate the problem. Mental health care is in short supply, and so on.

It's a complex issue that demands a sweeping, multi-pronged solution. But forces are fighting back and showing progress. Businesses are spending millions annually on security guards who can get tough when their employees can't. More mental health services are on the way. Police staffing levels appear poised to improve. Developers are closer to reinvigorating dead sites that attract loiterers. And crime statistics are largely down.

Still, crime, or often the perception of it, has been putting daytime office workers and late-night revelers alike on edge, and it also risks hurting commerce in a crown jewel of the city's economy — its central business and entertainment district… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

The billionaires backing the new "anti-woke" University of Austin (Wall Street Journal)

Billionaires frustrated with elite colleges are banding behind a fledgling school in Texas that boasts 92 students. Trader Jeff Yass, real-estate developer Harlan Crow and investor Len Blavatnik are among the high-profile people donating to the University of Austin, or UATX.

The new school has raised roughly $200 million so far—including $35 million from Yass—a huge sum for a tiny school without any alumni to tap. Crow, a major GOP donor, was an early backer. “Much of higher ed today seems to want to reject Western accomplishments and the accomplishments of Western civilizations in their entirety,” he said.

“Many people think that’s a bad idea.” Crow said he expects UATX to encourage ideological diversity. Crow and his wife, Kathy, have hosted several events for the school at their Dallas home and let the school use space in an office park he owns for its summer program, provocatively called Forbidden Courses. Crow has been a controversial benefactor to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He has said he has never discussed pending cases with Thomas.

Frustration with the state of debate and levels of unrest at prestigious universities has spurred some of the richest Americans to flex their financial muscle. Billionaires like Marc Rowan and Bill Ackman led campaigns to oust Ivy League presidents they viewed as being too soft on antisemitism on campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza.

Many wealthy donors believe elite colleges are overwhelmingly progressive—and are attracted to the idea of an alternative school that says it encourages meritocratic achievement and myriad viewpoints. Enter UATX, which welcomed its initial class of first-years last month in a former department store near the Texas Capitol.

The school says it is nonpartisan and refers to its mission as the “fearless pursuit of truth.” Its foundational curriculum marries classical texts—students were given a copy of Homer’s Odyssey upon enrollment—with an emphasis on entrepreneurship. A video posted to the school’s YouTube page contrasts scenes of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments at other schools with a civil UATX seminar.

The video ends with the message, “They burn, we build.” Yass, who has long pushed for school choice and is UATX’s biggest donor, said in a statement, “Higher education needs competition. It is time for philanthropists to start new colleges in keeping with the way American learning institutions were founded.”

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who has long known Lonsdale and has separately been paying students to skip college, made a small gift. Former energy trader John Arnold and his wife, Laura, who are advocates of criminal-justice reform and open debate on campus, are major donors. Alex Magaro, co-president of investment firm Meritage Group, gave $10 million last month… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Lina Hidalgo, Wesley Hunt, Ron Nirenberg among Texans hitting the road for presidential race (Houston Chronicle)

Texas politicians are increasingly being dispatched to the front lines of the presidential race. While neither campaign is spending much time in Texas down the stretch — except to fundraise — both have been calling on key leaders in Houston, San Antonio and beyond to help them in other states.

“I’m just trying to help any way I can,” U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, said as she prepared to head to Nevada on Wednesday to campaign for Kamala Harris.

Garcia, in her third term in Congress, earlier this year was tapped as an adviser to the Harris campaign and has been a close ally for the White House since Joe Biden was elected in 2020. She’s just the latest Texan to hit Nevada to campaign. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, both Houston Republicans, were there on Friday to campaign with former President Donald Trump at a rally. The next day, Hunt was a featured speaker in California for another Trump rally.

“This man literally took a bullet for this country,” Hunt said to applause as he referenced the assassination attempt of Trump in July. Hunt has been an important surrogate for the Trump campaign all year.

As one of just four Black Republican members of the U.S. House, Hunt has been sent to key areas of Atlanta, Philadelphia and Milwaukee to make a direct appeal to Black men to back Trump. Meanwhile, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who was featured during the Democratic National Convention in August, has also been hitting the road for Harris. Earlier this month, she was in Tuscon, Ariz., to help rally campaign volunteers. Early voting in Arizona is already underway… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US and World News]

Harris clashes with host in contentious interview on Fox (Washington Post)

Vice President Kamala Harris, under pressure to broaden her appeal to Republicans and conservatives with Election Day fast approaching, sat for a contentious interview with Fox News where she said more bluntly than before that her presidency would not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s.

The interview with Fox chief political anchor Bret Baier, which also featured a testy back-and-forth on immigration, represented a calculated gamble for Harris, given Fox’s role as a conservative-leaning network that is one of the top news sources for Republicans. It offered her a chance to refashion a recent comment on ABC’s “The View” that she could not think of anything she would do differently from Biden, a remark that even many Democrats strategists viewed as a misstep.

“Let me be very clear — my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency, and like every new president that comes in to office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas,” Harris said. “I represent a new generation of leadership.”

From the first few minutes of the interview, Baier sought to put Harris on the defensive with aggressive questions about the Biden administration’s record on immigration, a top issue for many Republican voters.

Baier repeatedly asked if she would apologize to the families of women who were killed by undocumented immigrants after the Biden administration eased President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies. Baier played a clip of one of the mothers blaming the Biden administration for her daughter’s death. Harris called the crimes “tragic cases” and said she could not imagine the pain those families felt “for a loss that shouldn’t have occurred.”

But she sought to shift the focus to Trump’s move to torpedo a tough bipartisan border security bill that would have funded 1,500 additional agents and allowed the president to essentially shut down the border if illegal crossings reached a certain point. Had Trump allowed that bill to pass nine months ago, Harris said, “It would be nine months that we would have had more border agents at the border, more support for the folks who are working around-the-clock trying to hold it all together to ensure that no future harm would occur.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Israel says it killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza (NPR)

Israel says it killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, believed to be the mastermind behind the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack in the country.

In a statement Thursday, the Israeli military said it and the Shin Bin domestic intelligence agency confirmed that on Wednesday, Israeli soldiers "eliminated Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Hamas terrorist organization, in an operation in the southern Gaza Strip."

Hamas has not commented publicly on the announcement.

The news marks a major development — the death of Israel's most wanted man — a year into the war in Gaza after Israel vowed to crush Hamas following its attack on Israel… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)

_________________________

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