Elon Musk warns Austin, Texas to not develop into a ‘San Francisco copycat’
Elon Musk warned Austin not to become a “San Francisco copycat” after he announced plans to move Tesla’s headquarters to the Texas capital.
“Austin should be his city, not a copycat of San Francisco,” tweeted the richest man in the world on Sunday in response to an article about police cuts in Austin.
The report, which was published by Fox News the previous Sunday, was about a proposal in Austin to expand the city’s police force amid the city’s record killings in 2021.
Proposal A would require at least two Austin police officers for every 1,000 residents, and would also provide officers with 40 hours of additional police training each year on topics such as active rifle scenarios and gun skills.
The proposal is an electoral measure, which will be voted on in the elections of 2.
Elon Musk warned Austin against becoming a “San Francisco” copycat after he announced plans to relocate Tesla’s headquarters to the Texas capital. In the picture: Musk gestures while visiting the construction site of Tesla’s Gigafactory in Grünheide near Berlin, August 13, 2021
“Austin should be his city, not a copycat in San Francisco,” tweeted Elon Musk on Sunday in response to an article about police cuts in Austin
What does Proposition A mean for the Austin Police?
The Texas election season is back in full swing, and one of the key items on the November 2nd ballot paper is Proposal A.
If the proposal, which aims to increase the Austin Police Department’s staff, is adopted, it would require two sworn officers for every 1,000 residents in the Texas capital.
The current rate is around 1.6,
It would also provide officers with 40 hours of additional police training each year on topics such as active rifle scenarios and gun skills.
The motion was tabled by the local political action committee (PAC) Save Austin Now – and met with both support and rejection.
In early October, Councilor Mackenzie Kelly and three former Austin mayors Lee Leffingwell, Lee Cooke and Ron Mullen approved the proposal.
However, the current Mayor of Austin, Steve Adler, has spoken out against the request and said: “[The initiative is] really out of date if ever it was appropriate.
“That would require a budget increase of $ 150 million to $ 300 million over five years. And with a budget cap of 3.5%, that part of our budget would grow faster than the total budget. ‘
Austin’s financial services division estimated in August that the initiative could raise nearly $ 120 million of the city’s budget each year.
An opposition campaign called “No Way on Prop A” was formed and the city’s fire department also opposed it on October 1st.
The amount makes up just over a third of the total budget and is instead invested in other public services.
However, since then, the city has seen killings rise nearly 71 percent, according to the Fox News report.
The budget cuts also resulted in a number of changes in the city’s police force.
Cadet courses were canceled, making it more difficult to recruit more officers for the force, and certain special forces were cut. In the meantime – until May 2021 – the response times of 911 increased by 30 percent due to staff shortages.
Spurred on by soaring homicide rates, Austin City Council reversed budget cuts and agreed on a new budget that would raise the city’s police department budget to $ 442 million for 2021-22, up from $ 309 Dollars in 2020-21.
Earlier this year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott also signed a bill penalizing cities for reducing police agency funding, which means cities must allocate funds to police – or face penalties – equal to their 2020 budget.
However, Local Political Action Committee (PAC) Save Austin Now argues that the damage has already been done and is pushing Proposition A to increase the numbers further.
“The local people don’t want to fund the police’s efforts. They don’t want to disappoint the police, ”Matt Mackowiak, co-founder of Save Austin Now and longtime Republican activist, told Fox News.
In San Francisco, the Mayor of London Breed last year announced plans to divert $ 120 million from law enforcement to other services working to address the inequalities of the city’s black community.
Those areas included housing, health, economic opportunity and education, Mayor Breed said at the time.
However, while funds have been channeled in these areas, questions have since been raised as to whether the money was withdrawn from the police budget. SFWeekly reported in June this year that the numbers over the course of the next two budget proposals.
“Proposal A” would require a minimum of two Austin police officers per 1,000 residents and would also provide officers with 40 hours of additional police training each year on topics such as active rifle scenarios and gun skills. Pictured: Austin officers in June 2021 (file photo)
Musk made headlines last month and thwarted his own executive team when he announced Tesla’s headquarters were moving from Fremont, California to Austin, citing the cost of living in the Golden State as the reason.
“I’m excited to announce that we are moving our headquarters to Austin, Texas,” said Musk during the automaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting on October 7th.
He said Tesla will “continue to expand strongly in California, but more so here in Texas.”
“It’s hard for people to buy houses and a lot of people have to come from far away,” he said. “We’ve pushed it as far as possible, but … there’s a limit to how big you can scale it in the Bay Area.”
“Here in Austin, our factory is about five minutes from the airport and 15 minutes from downtown, and we’re going to create an ecological paradise here because we’re right on the Colorado River,” he added. ‘It is going to be great.’
Musk became the first person to break the net worth of $ 300 billion last week on the weekend – after his net worth rose $ 10 billion in a day thanks to a surge in Tesla stock, a day before Microsoft took the title of the most valuable company in the world.
General view of the Tesla Gigafactory construction site in Austin, Texas, October 25, 2021
Musk’s net worth hit $ 302 billion on Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires’ Index.
The $ 10 billion increase was due to a surge in Tesla shares Thursday after the electric automaker closed a huge deal with Hertz to allow the rental giant to buy 100,000 of its vehicles.
The mogul is now worth over $ 100 billion more than the world’s second richest person, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. His fortune is $ 199 billion.
And on Friday, Microsoft regained its place as the world’s most valuable company with a market capitalization of $ 2.46 trillion after the iPhone maker’s total value fell around four percent to $ 2.41 trillion after Apple shares fell by around four percent. Dollar had fallen.
This happened after Apple slumped just under four percent after lower-than-expected sales in the fourth quarter. Microsoft rose 1.1 percent, overtaking Apple after sales estimates for the 11th straight quarter were higher than expected.
Musk is now worth more than the annual GDP of countries like Egypt, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Greece, Qatar and Finland.
It’s also worth more than the market value of PayPal, the company he co-founded, and streaming giant Netflix.
Musk’s worth even surpasses the combined Forbes rating of the Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees, New York Knicks, and top football teams Barcelona and Real Madrid ($ 25.4 billion).
Experts recently predicted that Musk would become the world’s first billionaire, but said the fortune would come from his SpaceX company, not Tesla.
After the news that it hit the $ 300 billion mark
“If WFP can describe in this Twitter thread exactly how 6 billion dollars solve world hunger, I’ll sell Tesla shares now and do it,” tweeted Musk, the richest man in the world, on Sunday.
Elon Musk became the first person to cross the $ 300 billion net worth. Pictured: Elon Musk leaves court during the SolarCity trial in Wilmington, Delaware, United States, on Tuesday, July 13, 2021
The richest people in the world
These are the 10 richest people in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
1. Elon Musk: $ 302 billion
2. Jeff Bezos: $ 199 billion
3. Bernard Arnault: $ 168 billion
4. Bill Gates: $ 135 billion
5. Larry Page: $ 129 billion
6. Sergey Brin: $ 125 billion
7. Mark Zuckerberg: $ 118 billion
8. Steve Ballmer: $ 116 billion
9. Larry Ellison: $ 115 billion
10. Warren Buffet: $ 105 billion
However, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO added that the World Food Program (WFP) must publicly disclose how it uses its funds.
“But it has to be open source bookkeeping so the public can see exactly how the money is being spent,” added Musk.
Musk’s tweets come in response to a comment from David Beasley, the executive director of the United Nations WFP, calling for billionaires to help.
“The governments are worn out. For this reason, and at this point in time, the billionaires now have to make a one-off increase, ”he said in an interview on CNN on Tuesday.
“$ 6 billion to help 42 million people who will literally die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated. ‘
Beasley continued, “This is just heartbreaking. I don’t ask them to do this every day, every week, every year. We have a one-time crisis, a perfect storm that brings climate change and COVID together. It’s a unique phenomenon. ‘
The WFP director’s interview followed a tweet he wrote earlier this month explicitly telling Musk and Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos, whose net worth was $ 311 billion.