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- BG Reads 12.1.2023
BG Reads 12.1.2023
🗞️ BG Reads | News - December 1, 2023
December 1, 2023
In today's BG Reads:
✅ Austin homeowners are selling homes at a loss
✅ How Mark Cuban’s Mavs sale could push gambling expansion forward in Texas
✅ Elon Musk says ‘go f*ck yourself’ to advertisers leaving X
More stories below. Read on!
[BINGHAM GROUP]
Converge Public Strategies Enters Strategic Alliance With Bingham Group
Miami, Florida and Austin, Texas - Miami, Florida-based Converge Public Strategies and Austin, Texas-based The Bingham Group, LLC have entered into a strategic alliance.
The strategic alliance adds to Converge’s significant public affairs and government relations capabilities by providing a strong presence at the local level in the Austin Metro market. Through the alliance, The Bingham Group’s clients will gain access to Converge’s multistate capabilities across the U.S., and its state and local capabilities in markets such as Florida, Illinois, and New York.
Jonathan Kilman, Chairman and CEO of Converge Public Strategies, said of the strategic alliance, “I’ve developed a great relationship with A.J. over the last few years, and I’ve watched his firm in Austin grow and thrive.
The clients we’ve referred to The Bingham Group rave about their relationships and execution. As a firm with extensive clients in the technology sector, we see Austin as a natural place to extend our capabilities, and The Bingham Group is a fantastic fit.”
[2024 Austin City Council Race Watch]
Next fall will see elections for the following Council positions, District 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, and Mayor. Candidates can’t file for a place on the ballot until July 22, 2024.
Declared candidates so far are:
District 2
District 6
Krista Laine
District 7 (Open seat)
District 10 (Open seat)
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Austin homeowners are selling homes at a loss (Axios Austin)
A growing share of Austin homeowners are selling their houses for less than they paid for them, per data Redfin shared with Axios' Brianna Crane.
Why it matters: Some Austin area homeowners lost upwards of five figures on their sale this year amid higher interest rates.
State of play: Nearly 5% of Austin metro homes sold at a loss from August to October — up from 0.75% a year ago.
The median loss was around $35,000, per Redfin data.
What's happening: Austin's housing market is still normalizing after 2020's hot housing market, when buyers snapped up homes within weeks — sometimes for hundreds of thousands of dollars over the asking price… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin throws $2.6 million more into project converting hotel into housing for the homeless (KUT)
More money is being poured into a former North Austin hotel that will be converted into housing for elderly people who are exiting homelessness.
The Austin City Council on Thursday authorized an additional $2.6 million for continued renovations to the Pecan Gardens project, raising the total contract to $6.5 million. The contract was also extended through March 2024 to finish out the renovations.
Pecan Gardens will provide permanent supportive housing for people who are elderly or disabled and have a history of chronic homelessness.
But opening Pecan Gardens has not been easy. The project has had a slew setbacks since the city bought the building in 2021… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin’s Trail of Lights makes national list of 25 best Christmas light displays (KXAN)
U.S. News & World Report listed Austin’s Trail of Lights in its rankings of the best Christmas light displays in the nation for 2023.
The list features 25 displays and tours across the country, and while Austin’s trail was the only Texas display listed, the state’s neighbors to the east and west were mentioned in the rankings as well.
Austin’s famous display was also listed in U.S. News & World Report’s 2022 list of the top displays in the country.
The Trail of Lights at Zilker Park is a beloved annual tradition, and it features more than 2 million bulbs and over 70 displays… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
See also, https://austintrailoflights.org
[TEXAS NEWS]
Texas grid faces winter after failed attempt to get more power online (Texas Tribune)
After saying there was an “unacceptable” risk of a power grid emergency during a strong winter storm, the Texas grid operator's plan to prepare the state better for extreme winter weather failed to take off this fall.
In early October, officials at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the state’s main power grid, announced that they wanted more power plants available to run this winter. They explained that demand for electricity had grown overall, and past extreme winter storms showed how high demand could spike during frigid temperatures.
ERCOT’s plan to entice companies to make more power available involved asking if they were willing to bring some shuttered gas- and coal-fired power plants back online — and, if so, what it would cost ERCOT.
As it happened, not a single company thought reviving an old power plant made sense, and the Nov. 6 deadline passed without a single proposal to revive a power source for the winter… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
How Mark Cuban’s Mavs sale could push gambling expansion forward in Texas (Dallas Morning News)
Mark Cuban’s surprise sale of a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks to Las Vegas’ Adelson family could set the stage for another battle in Austin over the future of legalized gambling and sports betting in Texas. The Dallas billionaire is a proponent of legalizing gambling in Texas to bring in resort casinos. Though the state has killed any efforts to allow sports betting or gambling, industry experts say Cuban’s move could be what finally pushes Texas lawmakers to act. “I have to believe that the political leadership has got to be a little tired of looking at all the tail lights leaving Texas,” said Alan Feldman, a distinguished fellow at the University of Las Vegas International Gaming Institute.
“There’s a lot of money leaving the state. And at some point, I think they’re going to realize if they don’t get in the game, Texas is just going to be exporting money to other states.”
Cuban sold a majority interest in the NBA team to Miriam Adelson, the biggest shareholder in one of the world’s biggest casino operators, Las Vegas Sands, and a widow to Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. Cuban made clear last year that he hoped to eventually partner with the Adelson family to build an arena and resort-style destination in Dallas. Texas is one of the biggest states to not yet legalize casino gambling or sports betting. But with a fervent fanbase for its sports teams and a growing population, Texas, and Dallas specifically, are seen by proponents as perfect locations for casinos and gambling companies to set up shop, said Andrew Brandt, executive director of the Moorad Center for the Study of Sports Law at Villanova University’s Law School.
“Texas is such a big stage. So much of a revenue base could come from sports betting and it’s the reason why a lot of states have implemented it,” he said. “It’s an anomaly that large states like Texas and California are sitting on the sidelines in this industry.” The Texas Sports Betting Alliance, relying on a report from Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, estimates that more than $8 billion is illegally bet in Texas annually. The sports betting market was estimated to be nearly $77 billion in 2021. Data Bridge Market Research thinks that figure could soar globally to $297 billion by 2030. Texans also spend roughly $5 billion a year in adjacent states and Las Vegas, according to another estimate… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Texas is on the verge of making illegal border crossings a state crime. Here’s what you need to know. (Texas Tribune)
Texas lawmakers last month approved Senate Bill 4, an immigration law that would allow Texas police to arrest people for illegally crossing the border from Mexico.
SB 4, which Gov. Greg Abbott has said he will sign into law, has sparked intense debate, with opponents saying it will lead to racial profiling by police and supporters saying Texas needs to step in because the federal government isn’t doing enough to stop illegal immigration.
When Abbott signs the bill, it’s scheduled to take effect in early March.
Abbott has taken a series of actions since March 2021, such as sending troopers and National Guard members to the 1,200-mile-long Texas-Mexico border to apprehend immigrants crossing the Rio Grande… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US/WORLD NEWS]
Millions of seniors struggle to afford housing — and it's about to get a lot worse (NPR)
A newly released report from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies sounds a loud warning about what's ahead as the country ages rapidly, and how unprepared the U.S. is as boomers start to turn 80 within the next decade.
Nearly a third of households headed by seniors are considered cost burdened, which means they pay more than 30% of their income for housing. Half of that group pays more than 50%. And as the boomers have aged, households in this group reached an all-time high of 11.2 million in 2021… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Elon Musk says ‘go f*ck yourself’ to advertisers leaving X (Tech Crunch)
Onstage at the DealBook conference, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked the X owner about these pauses in advertising. Musk replied, “Don’t advertise.”
“You don’t want them to advertise?” Sorkin said.
“If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself,” Musk said. “Go. Fuck. Yourself. Is that clear?”
He then waved to the audience and said, “Hey, Bob,” referring to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who was also at the event.
Needless to say, it’s not an encouraging message for advertisers who are deciding whether or not to continue giving the platform their ad dollars. And it seems contrary to the strategy of bringing in an advertising industry bigwig like Linda Yaccarino as CEO.
“What this advertising boycott is going to do is kill the company,” Musk continued. “And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Meta Is struggling to boot pedophiles off Facebook and Instagram (Walls Street Journal)
Instagram and Facebook, but it is struggling to prevent its own systems from enabling and even promoting a vast network of pedophile accounts.
The social-media giant set up a child-safety task force in June after The Wall Street Journal and researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst revealed that Instagram’s algorithms connected a web of accounts devoted to the creation, purchasing and trading of underage-sex content.
Five months later, tests conducted by the Journal as well as by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection show that Meta’s recommendation systems still promote such content. The company has taken down hashtags related to pedophilia, but its systems sometimes recommend new ones with minor variations. Even when Meta is alerted to problem accounts and user groups, it has been spotty in removing them.
The tests show that the problem extends beyond Instagram to encompass the much broader universe of Facebook Groups, including large groups explicitly centered on sexualizing children. Facebook, which counts more than three billion monthly users worldwide, promotes its groups feature as a way to connect users with similar interests… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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