This should be said: One of the heroes in the otherwise ugly stupid saga of the inland port development in Southern Dallas has been Dallas County Judge Jim Foster.First of all: He figured it out. A very good source close to the county commissioners told me, “He’s like a little…

It may not be Blago in Chicago, but it’s definitely malice in Dallas. In fact the word that keeps popping up in relation to a master plan effort for the city’s proposed inland port is shakedown. For a long time, Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price…

I’m working on a new theory of life. I used to think the City of Dallas was obviously the big cheese in the region — the wheel — and that all of the little surrounding municipalities were sort of cheese wedges. Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe Dallas has cheese…

It’s over.Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert just cried “Uncle!” in the battle over the Southern Dallas “inland port,” an expandable map of which is available at right. Chris Heinbaugh, the mayor’s spokesman, confirmed for me by e-mail mere minutes ago reports I heard yesterday afternoon that Leppert was pulling his support…

Under the headline “Refined Refuge,” Traditional Home has come up what we news types here in Dallas might consider a pretty decent scoop. They have a story that answers the question: Where the hell has Laura Miller been the last year? Feathering her nest, looks like.The story is all about…

I will put my bleeding heart up next to anybody’s bleeding heart. Community activist and blogger Sharon Boyd once told me, “Schutze, you’re so liberal you won’t even take your own side in an argument.” I favor most forms of affirmative action, especially where minority contracting is concerned. Tell me…

The Dallas Morning News this afternoon posted an editorial urging people not to worry about so-called new extra levels of government and taxation being created to make their lives hell. The editorial also castigated Chicken Little types who spread rumors of new extra levels. My bumper sticker, incidentally, reads, “Chicken…

I have been worried about why George W. Bush wants to move back to Dallas. What does it say about us that he feels welcome here? Obviously he has chosen an address that may be outside the Park Cities proper but is still solidly within “The Bubble.”He will be living…

Rudy Bush had a good story in The Dallas Morning News yesterday about the new Trinity River “overlook” unveiled by the city on Wednesday and how handy it is if you want to go down and marvel at the lack of progress. Basically, as Bush points out, it’s a vantage…

I write a lot about how the city, Dallas proper, needs to defend itself against the suburbs. Sometimes I feel as if we are an urban Jerusalem surrounded by Nebuchadnezzar and all his Babylonian, golf-playing horde. But lately I’m wondering: Who’s the horde? Them or us? I’m talking about this…

Oh, what a nice morning. I had an opportunity to check back in on an old companion of mine, the Trinity River Project, and I’m delighted to say the old boy hasn’t changed not a jot nor a tiddle. Still dressed to the nines, lying through his teeth and playin’…

One of the more astounding discoveries I have made about the Dallas school board is that its recent behavior has been based on a so-called “theory of action for change” — part of a program called The Reform Governance® Framework run by an outfit called the Center for Reform of…

Wait a minute. How many times are we going to discover that DISD is stupid? I do not think—and I suspect you do not think—it’s even interesting anymore to learn that the financial accounting system at Dallas school headquarters looks like something the cat coughed up. Do you even read…

DISD HR director Kimberly Olson I’ve been trading e-mails since yesterday with Dallas Independent School District’s spokesman extraordinaire Jon Dahlander on the subject of retired Air Force colonel Kimberly Olson, head of personnel for the district. She’s the person who approved all the unfunded teacher hirings that supposedly put Dallas…

Go ahead and say it. Sometimes you think I make things up. I know you do. I don’t blame you. I can’t even believe this stuff half the time myself. This is an example. If somebody else told me this, I would chalk it up to urban legend. Bad urban…

Interesting how these things go. Yesterday I posted an item about DART. The comments thread turned into a discussion of DISD. Did people just get confused about the acronyms? I don’t think so. I think the school system is very much on people’s minds now, mainly for bad reasons. The…

Everybody needs to watch the ongoing KTVT-Channel 11 series by Bennett Cunningham on over-the-top spending at Dallas Area Rapid Transit. People also should go look at the incredible Web presentation 11 has put up. The thing that comes across so powerfully in Channel 11’s hidden-camera pieces is the overall culture…

Look, let me take one specific portion of the D special issue about the Dallas Independent School District that came out this week and use it to explain why I don’t think much of this stuff is worth reading. This was a sidebar under the byline of our former colleague,…

This is a bad story about our city. I am going to tell you that our mayor and other people at City Hall are in the process of screwing around in a potentially damaging way with the biggest, most astonishing opportunity for prosperity ever to come to South Dallas. In…

Uh-oh. Have I been here before? It’s the day before Halloween. I am at Dallas Independent School District headquarters, and I am already seeing ghosts. One is in a real short skirt, and her name is Yvonne. The other one, Waldemar, is holding a tin cup and chortling insanely. They’re…