Before we get into the situations, a word from Slippy in the finance department:
A reduction in monitoring could increase situations, potentially leading to the situations realizing we are no longer monitoring them. Once a situation knows it’s unmonitored, Texas is the one who suffers. We have several situations below, all caught early for you. $6 a month keeps the monitoring on.
Everyone on the Republican ticket wants you to vote for everyone on the Republican ticket. Angela Paxton cut an ad for the whole slate this weekend, and a Border Patrol agent at Trump’s San Antonio rally said it like this: “We need to elect every single one of these Republicans.” So we went down the ticket one name at a time and monitored what each of them did this week.
Who Searched Keller’s Flock Cameras Is Free. WHY Is $768.60
Pennsylvania Man Is Now Burrows’ BIGGEST Donor at $3 Million
Abbott Spent $137 MILLION to Tie Gina Hinojosa, Then Skipped Trump
Where in the World is James Talarico? (RUMOR)
Van Zandt Commissioners do pointless hoax Sharia Law “Denouncement”
Who Searched Keller’s Cameras Is Free. WHY Is $768.60
A reader filed the Current Revolt records request in Keller on September 1. The city answered Saturday, with a bill.
City of Keller Open Records:
I have since been able to extract the Network Audit Log (30 days), which contains 204,865 entries.
If you would like the “Reason” field completely redacted from the entire log, there will be no additional charge for this record.
If you would like the individual notes reviewed and selectively redacted instead, there will be a substantial labor fee associated with that review.
Substantial is $768.60. The 494 emails are another $221.40. So who searched Keller's 11 cameras, and when, is free. Why they searched is $768.60.
It seems likely that the new charges are due to the fact that Flock’s data logs contain unredacted personal information like social security numbers and dates of birth, which the City of Colleyville hilariously released in an open records request obtained by Current Revolt as part of our investigation into Colleyville’s sanctuary city policies.
Upcoming local government action on private, warrantless “pattern-of-life” spy systems:
Thu Oct 8, Conroe City Council. Consent agenda payment to Flock Safety, “year 3 of 5 contract,” approved Sept. 24. Agenda
Thu Oct 8, Double Horn City Council. “Flock Safety Security Cameras Update” from Alderman Glen Stafford, report only. Agenda packet (PDF)
Mon Oct 12, 6:00 PM, Fate City Council and MDD joint meeting. Item 9.E: operational procedures for license plate readers, facial recognition, biometric data, and purchasing policy. Placed by Mayor Andrew Greenberg, “Action Requested: N.A.” Item 9.G the same night reviews the city’s open records processes and “past and current” requests. Agenda | 9.E staff summary | 9.G staff summary
Mon Oct 12, 6:30 PM, Pearland City Council. Public Hearing 2 and New Business 2: first reading of Ordinance 2000M-288, the Magnolia North zone change (15 acres, multifamily). Condition vi of the planned development: “A Flock Safety Camera shall be installed at the main entrance to the project.” Meeting page | Packet (PDF, p. 262)
Tue Oct 13, 6:00 PM, Liberty City Council. Regular agenda item 1: “the possible continuation of the agreement between the City of Liberty and Flock.” Staff form blank; September PD report says 9 cameras read 148,731 vehicles and ran 3 searches. Meeting files
Tue Oct 13, 6:00 PM, Schertz City Council. Item 10, Resolution 26-R-115: quote from Motorola Solutions and BRINC for a two-pod drone-as-first-responder pilot. No dollar amount on the agenda. Not Flock, but the same council runs 41 Flock cameras. Agenda
Tue Oct 13, Hidalgo County Commissioners Court. The watch flagged MVCPA grant money (the state auto-theft grant that funds many Flock buys) alongside an immigration enforcement item. Agenda
Pennsylvania Man Is Now Burrows' BIGGEST Donor at $3 Million
Speaker Dustin Burrows has a leadership PAC called Texas Conservative Majority, and Quorum Report looked at who exactly is paying for the next year’s most conservative session in history.
And Burrow’s largest contributor is now, at a whopping $3 million, Pennsylvania megadonor Jeff Yass, the school voucher supporter who fueled Gov. Greg Abbott’s scorched earth campaign against fellow Republicans two years ago.
The PAC has raised $7,044,373 in its life, so the one check is 43% of everything it has ever taken in. Next is Republican State Leadership Committee out of Washington, DC at $1.25M and Burrows' own campaign with $993k.
On September 4th, a round of $50,000 checks went to 11 House incumbents, with $25,000 and $10,000 checks to 16 more. A school choice appetizer. Yass also gave Abbott another $1 million on September 21 and Dan Patrick $1 million on July 27. Since 2023 he has put $28.2 million into Texas politics.
And it’s going great, of course.
I thought the last one at $0.01M was to the Texas GOP. We checked and he has actually given $0 to the Texas GOP’s state account and $0.02M to its federal one.
Not that it matters.
As a Texan, you have a duty to vote next month. Jeff Yass has already done the choosing, so it won’t take long.
Abbott Spent $137 MILLION to Tie Gina Hinojosa, Then Skipped Trump
Greg Abbott’s campaign spending has gone buck wild, according to a report by the Texas Tribune, with $69.3 million going out between July 1 and September 24! We pulled the TEC cover sheets for both of his accounts: $105.7 million on hand on December 31, $18.2 million on September 24.
Abbott ended the reporting period with $18.2 million in his war chest, dwarfing Hinojosa’s $4 million.
DWARFING
A New York Times/Siena poll in Newsweek has Hinojosa 49% and Abbott 46%. The Tribune counts three polls last month with her narrowly ahead. An Abbott strategist called one of them "bogus" and "garbage." Gregory himself feels "very comfortable about where I am," because he has "internal data," per KRQE.
Trump was in San Antonio Wednesday night for Ken Paxton, with Gregory Wayne Abbott completely and totally absent. "I already have events like this scheduled that day and I will not be able to make it," he said. Per Fox 4, the conflict was a local Republican Party thing in College Station, where Abbott apparently spent the evening getting out the vote for Jeff Yass's candidates.
Anyway. Abbott is near the top of your ballot on November 3, so smash that voting computer screen to elect all the Republicans, lest James Talarico turns your kid into one of the newly discovered genders.
Correction: A previous version of this article ran the Tribune’s “whopping $141.3 million.” That figure counted a $4.75 million transfer between Abbott’s two accounts twice. The real figures are $136.6 million for the year and $69.3 million since July 1. The Tribune’s number is still up. Ours isn’t. We regret the error and feel very comfortable about where we are.
Where in the World is James Talarico?
The X streets have been wild with rumors suggesting maybe Talarico’s recent disappearance isn’t fully flu related.
According to rumors we’ve heard…
