Austin Provides ‘Rapid Permitting’ For Developers Who Sponsor Communism

Long before defunding the police, open air drug markets, homeless ‘campers’ littering playgrounds and green spaces with human waste and spent needles, plans were underway to re-imagine Austin, and by all accounts, the City of Austin succeeded. While many of us saw it coming and tried to circumvent their efforts, the majority fell victim to “The Boiling Frog Syndrome”.

The boiling frog Syndrome is an urban tale based on the simple premise that if a frog is suddenly put into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out to save itself from impending death; however, if the frog is placed in warm water and the temperature is slowly increased over time, the frog senses no danger and will boil to death – This is how we got here, a well-orchestrated plan that incrementally and opportunistically chiseled away at the foundation of any free and functional society.

In hindsight, a plan taken directly from the communist manifesto. Instead of leveraging the financial windfall that accompanied countless high-tech industries relocating to Austin, city council squandered the funds on activities like “Transvestite story time for toddlers” (1), spending $450,000 on two public toilets (2), and $140,000,000 on a flawed tunnel to nowhere (3), to name just a few. City council’s insatiable appetite for spending soon took its toll on working families struggling to make ends meet; in less than 10 years, city council’s fiscal illiteracy resulted in an 80% increase in property tax for all of Austin and significantly increased the number of working-class families struggling to keep their homes (4). Despite numerous attempts to have their voices heard by city council, their concerns fell on deaf ears.

Frustrated and without a voice, district four’s then candidate and staunch socialist Greg Casar leveraged this frustration and his history as a policy director at the Workers Defense Project to tune his political messaging to one that would give those who had been ignored for so long, a voice. He dubbed himself a “fighter for the working-class” and created a misleading backstory that he was the son of an immigrant and knows what it’s like to struggle and fight for opportunities. In 2014, Greg was declared the winner of district four’s city council elections, despite several irregularities and violations of procedures meant to protect the integrity of elections. His opponent brought the case to court, where it spent years in litigation before reaching the Texas State Supreme Court where Greg was made to pay his opponents court fees (5).

Soon after taking the city council seat, it was clear that Greg had created a false persona and was far from a “fighter for the working class”, quite the contrary. Greg was born in a prominent Houston suburb, son of a renown surgeon, grew up in a million-dollar house, attended Houston’s finest Catholic schools, and had never held a job before becoming a council member. His voting record confirmed his fraudulent intentions when he voted in favor of ‘CodeNEXT’, a $14,000,000 effort by the city to change the land development code throughout Austin that would re-zone residential housing in populated areas multi-family units only, forcing those who live in these redefined ‘zones’ to only be able to sell their homes to multi-unit/dense housing developers.

In 2016, Greg Casar and fellow Marxists / DSA member, Jose Garza, who has also worked at Workers Defense Project devised a plan that would have made Karl Marx proud. They called it the “Better Builder Program” and it was going to provide higher wages and increase worker safety for ‘working class’ and illegal labor. The pair attended Obama’s first annual Worker Voice Summit in Washington where they would socialize the idea amongst other socialists.

After returning from Washington, Greg, city council member, and Jose, director of the Workers Defense Project, devised an ingenious, self-serving plan. In 2017, despite push back from the Chamber of Commerce, Austin Business Alliance, and several others, councilman Greg pushed forward, implementing the Better Builder Program, which is still in place today. This program provides a pathway for developers to receive expedited building permits, if and only if, they agree to take part in it. The program was pitched as a means to provide job place oversight, ensuring workers receive fair wages and a safe work environment, at a cost of $1.25 / sq. foot of developed space, capped at $5,000/month. Who would be the recipient of this financial windfall? None other than Jose’s Workers Defense Project, councilman Greg’s friend and fellow DSA / Marxist.

There was no open bidding for the oversight role, the program explicitly identifies Workers Defense Project as the sole provider of workplace oversight. Today, the city has gone one step further, removing themselves from the program completely and handing it over to Workers Defense Project, which incidentally stripped of its 5013c designation by the Department of Labor after learning it was little more than a labor union.

The Workers Defense Project has become a pipeline for radical socialist political candidates, the co-founder Cristina Tzintzun left the labor union to run for U.S. Senate, Greg Casar left to run for Austin city council, and four years after that, Greg and Jose established the Better Builder Program revenue stream, Jose Garza left the labor union to run for Travis County District Attorney.

The Austin District Attorney race was the most expensive Austin’s history, with Jose Garcia reporting more than $548,000 in political contributions between Feb 23 – July 4 (7). With donations from Workers Defense Project, Austin Firefighters, and more than $600,000 from the Texas Justice & Public Safety PAC from which George Soros donated $652,000. The $600,000 was reportedly spent on glossy fliers and digital media for Garza’s campaign. (8).

Reviewing Jose Garcia’s campaign and “in-kind” contributions, you will find the Workers Defense in Action PAC listed throughout, these are the first two encountered.

In addition to the City funneling money to Workers Defense Project under the Better Builder Program, then Jose receiving donations from the Workers Defense Action PAC, the city further “gifted” $398,000 of Federal COVID funds to the Workers Defense Project under the fraudulent label of “Family and Social Services”.

Honest politicians are like unicorns, but this level of collusion and outright corruption rarely occurs in plain sight. Redirecting money from developers to a communist run labor union, taking COVID monies earmarked for those in need and gifting it to the District Attorney candidates organization, that’s a new low for Austin’s politics.