The origins of the ongoing scandal at Dallas City Hall are in a well-intended bill passed two years ago. This bill is a great example: They pass laws in Austin, and it’s like two guys kicking a bomb out of an airplane with their feet. They crawl over on all…
Wait a minute. Before it slips beneath the waves forever, I would like to take a quick second look at the recent Dallas Morning News series, “Striking Differences,” in which the newspaper accused the Dallas County prosecutor of racism. Race is a tough issue in town. Everything in Dallas is…
The Dallas City Council voted last week to protect the man on the plan commission who refuses to say who gives him the luxury cars he drives. The issue here is that the cars may be bribes. Your stellar city council danced all around the town about it. Everybody was…
Please try to follow this. You might need a notebook. I’m trying to get across a very complex technical point about urban governance. You’re familiar with The Three Stooges, right? You know how sometimes Moe whacks both Curly and Larry in the back of the head, then Curly whacks Larry,…
You’ve had this experience, too, I know. You talk to somebody and not too far into it you think, “This individual is seriously separated from reality.” And then you start smiling too much and speaking in a soft voice. That’s how I feel sometimes about City Hall. Only it doesn’t…
So now the Dallas Independent School District is going to marry the suburban Wilmer-Hutchins district? Let me ask you something. Is this not every parent’s absolute worst nightmare? “Hi, Mom and Dad. Me and Wilmer-Hutchins here have something really, really important to tell you. First, I know how you feel…
So the fans cheered Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers next time he took the mound after attacking two camerapersons at Ameriquest Field in Arlington on June 29. All that tells me is that fans like cowards. Somehow I’m not surprised. Look at the video again on Channel 11’s Web site (cbs11tv.com,…
D’Angelo Lee is meeeeelting. If anybody looks like a central figure in the FBI raids on Dallas city officials, it’s he. Lee. But he’s disappeeeearing. Nobody knows him. Two weeks ago when the FBI swarmed City Hall with search warrants, Lee was one of three top city officials whose vehicles…
Dear Elaine Agather, chairwoman of the Dallas Citizens Council; Joel Allison, chairman of the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce; Steve Taylor, president of the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce; former city council members Alan Walne and Max Wells: Thank you all so much for helping defeat the recent strong-mayor proposal…
This should be good. The city of Dallas is about to flip Austin the bird in a major way. Dallas got whipped in the recent session of the Texas Legislature. The House and Senate passed a new “nuisance abatement” law aimed specifically at Dallas City Hall. The law was accompanied…
The big drumbeat at City Hall, led by Mayor Laura Miller and echoed by The Dallas Morning News, is that the city’s civil service system is corrupt. It protects dishonest, shiftless bums who need to be fired, according to our mayor. Normally this is the kind of drumbeat to which…
The Texas Legislature is moving toward a two-year corruption investigation focused on Dallas. Two House of Representatives committees may combine forces to look for civil rights violations, acts of official oppression, solicitation of bribery and other crimes and corruption at Dallas City Hall. The spark for this was testimony the…
The message from Dallas City Hall is that it can’t really fight crime. The message is that you need to do it yourself. Or else. And, man, does that message ever come across. Ask Barbara Edmondson, an apartment developer and operator. She spent a quarter-million dollars rehabbing 20 townhomes in…
This is the story of Bozo. At first it’s funny. Then it’s not funny. Then the punch line makes you want to punch somebody. The question is who. Punch Bozo? Punch the cops? The city attorney? The mayor? Sam Jamal-Eddine? The city of Dallas says Jamal-Eddine is the proper punchee…
Over a period of months, a Texas House committee has heard sworn testimony that Dallas City Hall is impotent in the face of one of the worst urban crime rates in America and wants to blame private business. Business people from Dallas painted an ugly picture in which the city…
I’m gonna vote for it. You do what you think is right. It took me forever to make up my mind, so I understand. But look: These last couple of weeks, a stark reality has been staring me in the face. If the Blackwood proposal to get rid of the…
Part of the illusion we try to maintain in the news business is that we know what’s happening. We try to look sharp. When you sell newspapers for a living, you don’t want somebody else to point out that you forgot to put your pants on this morning. That’s not…
The Dallas County sheriff makes people disappear right off the face of the earth, and you and I have no earthly way of finding out where they are or what has happened. It’s like the damn desparecidos in Argentina 25 years ago. County officials are pointing fingers at each other,…
Think about it: Some really outlandish stuff has been written about Beth Ann Blackwood and her husband, Tom Thomas, the lawyers who brought us the strong-mayor proposal on the ballot May 7. They’ve been called “Park Cities bubblati,” whatever that means. One guy compared the arguments for their proposal to…
Whoa there, pod’nuh. Let’s pull this buggy over and catch our breath for a second. Some major developments occurred last week, and I didn’t see news of it oozing out from the usual media. There were stories about the details, for sure, but I didn’t see anybody pointing out the…
I am so laden, so heavily weighted, so freighted down with reverse-snob anti-suburban bias that I shouldn’t even open my mouth. But…oh, guess I will anyway. In the suburban Beulah Land of Frisco, Texas, I spy something interesting, which surprises me–a strange refracted image of our own urban woes in…
E-mail. It’s so great, politically. Probably my favorite of all movie scenes as a kid was when the villagers and peasants marched on Dr. Frankenstein’s castle at night with those torches. I think that scene may still be my own notion of political activity at its very best. Especially the…
