REPORTER’S NOTES
Texas Rose Granite
Walking down the Capitol promenade in Austin, bricked with fine-cut Hill Country granite known as Texas Rose, I’m reminded of the last time I was wading knee deep in the Llano River, towing a kayak.
In several places, large sandbars made up of the crushed remains of these granite formations were found in the wide basin of the river, and in some of the smaller sinkholes, it’s possible to step into a drift of the crushed rock and sink up to your knees.
It’s made from the parent rock of the massive Llano Uplift, and it’s some of the oldest rock in Texas. It’s also pretty abrasive stuff.
The cut granite for the Texas Capitol was transported to Austin via rail for construction, and “Texas Highways” Magazine reports that several large slabs fell off during the ride, where they were simply left in place due to their weight, and they remain to there to this day.
This rock of the Capitol comes from Marble Falls, although you can find large granite “caps” all over the Hill Country — like Enchanted Rock — along with the remains eroded over the centuries, that washes down into the local riverbeds.
The Llano Uplift — an island geologically — is currently one of the most likely places to find naturally occurring radon gas in the United States.
This granite also emits a small amount of gamma radiation. Not anything to get in a tizzy about, or that would require leaded undergarments, but enough that a small Geiger counter will register 50-100 nanoparticles-per-minute of ionizing radiation, which translates to about 0.2 microsieverts in the time it takes you to tour the Capitol building.
Roughly the equivalent to eating two bananas.
Austin: City of Mixed Messages
“Considering the last session, the radioactivity makes sense,” says a state representative’s staffer.
It’s Friday, and I’ve been talking about the granite with as many people as I can here; it’s a reliable ice breaker.
This is right in the middle of the Texas Tribune Festival, but the streets outside are empty right now. The walking / street setup comes tomorrow, and right now the gardens around the Capitol are quiet and peaceful as attendees listen to lectures and live podcast recordings.
Live oaks grow up in great gnarly burls around the red and white concrete. Fat, happy squirrels make their homes there.
People are looking up articles on their phones from Wikipedia, and ChatGPT to tell them about the architecture and the monuments.
They are taking photos and having near-silent conversations; it’s a style a lot of people who work in Austin adopt, which I suspect evolved due to never quite knowing who might be overhearing.
Off to one side, there is the monument celebrating the abolition of slavery and the Emancipation Proclamation.
There, freedmen and women stand, cast in bronze, holding the life-changing document in their hand.
About 50 good-sized paces to the left, stands the monument to the Confederacy.
“DIED,” it reads, “FOR THEIR STATES’ RIGHTS GUARANTEED BY THE CONSITITUTION.”
Climate
Back around the Sam Houston admin building, with its glass façade attractive to birds they had to install fake bird-decoy stickers all over it so real birds would quit slamming into it, I am shaded from the sun on this unseasonably warm November day.
Temperatures are in the upper to mid-eighties, or just about 20-degrees hotter than the historic average for a Nov. 13 afternoon in Austin, since record keeping started in 1891.
My lanyard: black with white text and an embossed “Chevron” logo, begins to itch a little.
Around the Fest
It’s a big shindig; attendees from just about every organization in the state, along with many important national concerns, are milling about, walking quickly in shiny, pointy shoes.
There are teachers and administrators, stockbrokers and bankers, and reporters with dirty sneakers and sweat stains (me).
I see lots of women who look like Rachel Maddow, and lots of men that look like Matt Gaetz.
Fine patent leather, with houndstooth dresses and pantsuits with gold clasps for many ladies, and light-colored suits starched to within-an-inch of their lives for the men.
Follow the Money
On our little name badges, our organization’s name is printed underneath our own, and just by being nosy, I see tags from The New York Times, The Atlanta Constitution. The Texas Education Agency, and a good 40 to 50 state reps.
Intel, Tesla, and strategy groups that sound like some variation of “Strategic Enterprises” or “Tactical Revenue Stream Dynamics” or “Upward Synergy Flow Consultants.”
Top level sponsors include Blackrock Investments, Chevron, and British Petroleum. Full credit where credit is due, Methodist Healthcare Ministries is also a lead sponsor of the program.
But the title sponsor is none other than JPMorganChase, able to boast about its 155 years of trading in Texas.
The back of our programs is adorned in a finely set letter from the main man himself, Jamie Dimon, CEO:
“Dear Texas, We’re So Proud To Serve You.
“Recently, in my annual letter to shareholders around the globe, I reflected on why Texas is an economic powerhouse, and so important to our firm’s success.
“The answer is simple, Texas values free enterprise and is open for business. It’s our role to help clients, customers, communities and employees.
“Thank you for being a home to our employees, business and future growth. I encourage you to read my full letter to learn more about we power economic growth and create opportunities across Texas, the United States and the world.
Jamie Dimon,
Chairman and CEO, JPMorganChase
Business Reigns Supreme in Texas
Being the main depositor bank for the cities of Houston, Austin, and Fort Worth, in addition to serving Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, and Parkland Health System, JPMorganChase is arguably the most politically powerful bank on Earth, and Dimon, a candidate for most important man on the planet.
With an annual revenue of $1.7 trillion, JPMC ranks fifth worldwide, trailing behind the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, with right around $4 trillion in total assets.
In Mr. Dimon’s letter, which he encourages us to read, he discusses the corporation’s future within the economy in a laid-back, cool-California-uncle approach.
One can almost taste the Grey Poupon and sparkling water through the text as he communicates the fundamental business principle of always trying to lay off 10 percent of your staff — or as he puts it — “streamlining.”
A point he emphasizes further in a subhead further down in the letter: “YOU MUST KILL BUREAUCRACY ALL THE TIME AND RELENTLESSLY.”
Before wrapping up with some of the issues facing JPMC now — namely that they are likely to have $30- to $60 billion that they’re not quite sure what to do with.
Considering the options of further expansion or acquisitions, Dimon says there aren’t really any tasty prospects at this time.
(Of note: experts suggest the amount of money Dimon is talking about could pay for housing about 1/3 of the homeless population in the United States.)
Dimon closes the letter by dishing during a “tell us how you really feel” moment:
“Here’s another example of what slows us down: meetings. Kill meetings. But when they do happen, they have to start on time and end on time – and someone’s got to lead them,” he quipped.
Check Your Privilege
During the confab, I had a chance to speak with one Texas state employee who said they felt a little turned off by the whole affair.
“Yeah…I mean, it’s a lot of panels that are titled something like “Small Town, Bigger Dreams: Sponsored by Blackrock,” she said, chuckling. “The whole thing is pretty grim.”
I’m not quite sure if it was the endless glass going up toward the sky, the shiny marble or the hotel bar –where a gin and tonic costs fourteen dollars, but the whole thing started to leave a slightly metallic taste in my mouth as I considered the sheer amount of capital represented here.
The State of Things to Come
In Mr. Dimon’s letter to shareholders, he takes special care to include an entire section dedicated to Texas:
“We also know Texas is a great place to do business that values the power of free enterprise and partnership across sectors,” he writes. “We have shown up for Texans in good times and bad, and we will continue to do what it takes to keep growing.”
Alright, so what’s my beef here? Perhaps another jealous type that doesn’t like seeing people make money?
After all, this is all going towards supporting The Texas Tribune, a news outlet that I, as a reporter for the Concho Observer, and just about every other reporter in Texas, rely on each week for arguably the most unbiased news coverage in Texas.
Over the last several years, the number of very important articles to flow out of The Texas Tribune’s corner on Congress Avenue is staggering.
From ongoing series on the water conservation crisis to their reporting alongside ProPublica with details about the allegations of corruption in AG Ken Paxton’s office.
It is award-winning journalism.
Maybe that’s why I’m a little worried about it. What exactly does a platinum-level sponsorship buy?
I worry that large corporations like BP, Chevron, and JPMorganChase might see the Tribune Fest as a way to clean their hands of at least some of responsibility they share for our current predicament, which some experts suggest is an “everything coming together all at once” situation, of climate change and the AI market bubble, rampant income inequality, and an oil and gas industry with the mandate from heaven to drill, baby, drill.
If you sponsor a panel about extreme weather and its consequences, nobody can point a finger at you and say you didn’t care.
A Future Of Corporate Malfeasance
Chevron has successfully dodged international settlements ordering them to pay billions in compensation to tens of thousands of people in Ecuador who suffered immense health problems following countless pollution violations in the Lago Agrio oil fields, along with the devastation of the natural habitat.
And if you want to know Chevron’s opinion of constitutional rights; you can ask Steven Donziger, the lawyer who sued on behalf of the indigenous collectives in the Ecuadorian Amazon in 1993.
Though that case was dismissed over jurisdiction, it led to a ruling in February 2011: an Ecuadorian court ordered Chevron to pay $8 billion.
Chevron accepted jurisdiction in Ecuador, but they never paid, claiming that the decision was “illegitimate and inapplicable.”
Though today Chevron will say first that they have never operated in Ecuador; rather Texaco, a subsidiary, has operated in Ecuador.
After this, and subsequent proceedings, Steven Donziger was ordered to turn over his electronic devices to Chevron forensic experts. When he refused, he was placed under house arrest, where remained for 993 days, and a 45 day stay in prison.
Or British Petroleum, who I hopefully don’t have to remind you plead guilty to all charges of negligence after the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig explosion in 2010.
We can look directly to the NOAA for our long-term impact on this one:
“As the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill released 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over a period of 87 days, fouling 1,300 miles of shoreline along five states.
“The scientists concluded that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill killed thousands of marine mammals and sea turtles, and contaminated their habitats.”
In 2012, BP announced that the total compensation would amount to $525 million paid in installments over a period of three years. Along with a $40 billion charge against income.
Finally, lest we forget, our dear old JPMorganChase; who have somehow managed to avoid galactic scale malfeasance scandals like BP and Chevron, but as expected still get their hands dirty; like in 2001 when they were ordered to pay over $2 billion in fines and settlements for aiding and abetting Enron Corp.’s securities fraud. A financial blow up that affected many here in West Texas personally.
Or in 2011, when it admitted that it wrongly overcharged several thousand military families and their mortgages.
And in 2014, when they agreed to pay $2 billion in fines, this time for their role in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.
Or in 2023, when they reached a settlement of $290 million with victims of Jeffery Epstein’s sex trafficking racket, who sued saying that the banks knew about Epstein’s criminal uses for his massive accounts.
The internal logic is essentially the same as a playground bully kicking sand in your lunchbox, and then turning around and holding a roundtable symposium on the long term impacts of dental health and eating silicon dioxide.
Inside the program, an ad appears that reads “Petrochemicals endanger the health, air, and waterways of Texans. For many of us, they are a daily threat lurking in our backyard. Together we can do something about it.”
A full-page ad sponsored by Beyond Petrochemicals, a conglomerate of environmental orgs including some collaboration with the Sierra Club in their “Beyond Coal” movement, sponsored by Mike Bloomberg.
Turning the page, we find an advertisement for, none other than Chevron: “The Human Energy Company.”
“The future of energy will come from next level thinking,” it reads. In the illustration, a man and woman gaze into a hologram of some kind. This is here to indicate that Chevron is getting into the hologram business, I guess.
“At Chevron, we’re applying technology in innovative ways to explore what’s possible. This includes developing cutting edge software to analyze data more effectively, as well as partnering with universities and research institutions to help pioneer new solutions. All to fuel innovation that helps us meet the world’s energy demands now and for years to come.”
If the past is any indication for the years to come, the near-term future will continue to be dominated by corporate negligence and malfeasance, disguised under a thin veneer of techno-optimism and radical capital investment into ventures that probably wont be around in 20 years.
If someone is following in my footsteps twenty years from now, perhaps they will point out that the very bank that’s sponsoring a news festival is the same one that defrauded investors in the late 2020’s during the great AI bubble burst.
Making my way down the granite lined streets, while graduate students zoom past on lime green electric rental scooters. There is a homeless man who has clearly not had shoes for a very long time sitting on a water outlet. A wave of Waymo self-driving cars cruise their way down San Jacinto; totally silent except for the rush of wind.
Employing nobody, taking money from everyone; A fine example of the efficiencies that Mr. Dimon suggests we all employ to continue making Texas a business-friendly environment.
These were the things floating in my mind, thinking about the crushed Texas Rose granite sinking and cold water into my sneakers on that October day many years ago, and looking up at the Capitol building.
Finally staring into the wrinkled lip sneer of cold command of Jefferson Davis; well his passions read, which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things. The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
