Lot of interesting murmurs going around Southern Dallas the last few days concerning Christy Hoppe and Todd J. Gillman’s stories in the The Dallas Morning News about Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, Democrat of Dallas, dishing scholarships to her own relatives and the children of her top aide, Rod Givens, from…
Apparently my column in this week’s print edition has sparked some controversy (I just hate that, shy fellow that I am), especially a quote from developer David Spence to the effect that he thinks a recent wild and woolly town hall meeting over housing for the homeless in North Oak…
Homelessness is a horrible issue—painful, endlessly complex, almost impossible to contain in any useful summary way. The worst of it is that all of the passionate voices arrayed on each side of the issue bring their own urgency and legitimacy to the table. Couldn’t we just have good guys and…
Fine print alert! When Mayor Tom Leppert tells you that yesterday’s agenda item vote on the city tax rate didn’t mean anything, he’s got his hand deep in your pocket. It may be fine print, but ask Leppert why the vote was required by state law if it didn’t mean…
Big sturm und drang going on in New York and Europe amongst book dealers dealing with the Green family in Oklahoma City regarding the collection I wrote about in March that was supposed to become a national bible museum here in Dallas. So: Is it on, or is it off?…
The North Texas Tollway Authority board of directors is meeting as you read to take yet another whack at its “legacy contractors” problem. Item No. 11 on this morning’s agenda, dealing with “future procurements,” will provide the sparks:Discussion and possible direction to staff regarding the Board of Director’s role in…
The New York Times today has a story about an organic golf course on Martha’s Vineyard of which the newspaper says: “Opened eight years ago, the club is thought to be the only completely organic golf course in the United States …” As we know, that actually means, “the only…
This is a story about Tom Leppert, our mayor and a $27-million-dollar stickup he tried to pull out at the airport last week, but it’s also about Jim Schutze winning the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Believe it. Last week Leppert tried to get…
Trinity River Project stories are The Dallas Morning News on mescaline. The city’s only daily does so well with other coverage. But then they drop one of those Trinity River tabs, and the walls go to rubber. This morning The Dallas Morning News publishes a story saying the federal share…
We still have the South Dallas News in this town, only now they call it the DallasSouthNews. That’s the name of the online publication Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson went to recently in order to rebut a recent column of mine about her. More this town changes, more it’s the same…
The drums are sounding in the night. Lot of action here last week on the biko front, indicating pent-up interest and a growing constituency. One commenter claimed that only 8 percent of Portland residents are regular cyclists but the entire city council is made up of bikos. I think his…
It’s weird. Today I have no appetite at all, and I am seriously considering never eating again, but I have been thinking about nothing but food all day and how we don’t think enough about where our food comes from. I mean really comes from. Yesterday when I went home…
A new phrase enters my impoverished lexicon: “North Oak Cliff snobbery.” I had called an East Dallas biko leader to ask about something, and he used that phrase in reference to North Oak Cliff bikos. My gosh. The Dallas biko world is now so entrenched and plentiful, it’s dividing itself…
Whenever I come across news accounts of sudden shocking budget catastrophes at DART, our regional transit agency, I think back to the sudden shocking budget catastrophes a reporter friend of mine used to have. This was at the beginning of my newspaper career when I was still young and dumb…
Tell you what. I will agree to leave the Coppell mayor murder-suicide story alone and stop stirring the pot just as soon as everybody else does. But today I have yet another pot-stirring by somebody else to deal with. Mark Davis, the conservative talk-show guy who writes op-ed pieces for…
That’s it. I have waited three days. Time to speak up. Where are all of the outrage junkies who couldn’t wait to pour salt in the wounds of bereaved Dallas Police Chief David Brown over the death of his cop-killer son? Why aren’t they venting at roughly the same decibel…
I think I just saw it. Caught a glimpse anyway. The Trinity River Project knuckle-under. I could be wrong. But I do consider myself a world-class expert. I believe I just saw Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson do it. Listen. I’ve been covering this project for 12 years. I’m so familiar…
Dropped by the Green Spot neighborhood farmers market Saturday morning on the parking lot at the Green Spot gas station and store on North Buckner Boulevard at Northcliff Drive on the east side of White Rock Lake. It was sort of Bedouin — a gathering of tents, stalls and tables…
Note from Jim: In the last week of April I asked the city to tell me how many guaranteed low-income housing units are available in downtown Dallas. There should be lots of them by now -a a couple thousand by some estimates — because over the decades, the city has…
Everybody is on such pins and needles, walking on eggshells at City Hall about the police chief thing. You know they’ve gone over to the weird side when they appoint a special funeral procession prosecutor. City Hall has handed off the controversy over the cortege for Police Chief David Brown’s…
On Thursday we will get an interesting first official bite of the apple in complaints that the city of Dallas flouts federal law and practices racial discrimination in its downtown housing policies. The board of directors of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs will ask downtown developers Ted…
We earn disasters like the Gulf oil spill. We bring them on ourselves by breaking the rules every time the rules get in our way. Houston attorney Jim Blackburn, one of the nation’s top environmental lawyers, talked to me last week about efforts by Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert to get…
