Only two months after a recent mass eviction of homeless people from a downtown encampment, Dallas officials already are preparing for a second mass evacuation of the new camp that the homeless people moved to when they got kicked out of the first one. This confirms a prediction I made the first…
Daniel Miller is seizing his moment. Following Great Britain’s vote Thursday to remove itself from the European Union, Miller, the leader of the Texas Nationalist Movement, has jumped on the opportunity to push his message of Texas sovereignty as hard as he can. “From the looks of it, the British…
Carolyn King Arnold is the city council representative from District 4 in central Oak Cliff. She and I have three things in common. We’re both skeptical of anything North Dallas likes. So we’re against deck parks. And we’re both dead wrong. I learned this one the hard way. Beginning in…
Marc Veasey, who represents a swath of southern Tarrant and Dallas Counties, was among the Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives involved in a sit-in on the House floor yesterday. The stunt was an attempt to force the chamber’s Republican leadership to take a vote on so-called “no fly,…
Oh no you don’t, City Hall. Don’t think for a minute that the May 2 dog mauling and death of Antoinette Brown is somehow going to die down or fade away and then you’ll be cool. This woman, this citizen, this human being was ripped apart by dogs while neighbors,…
Republicans. If you want to dismiss me as an ignorant hippie libtard, I will understand. You have your reasons. Sometimes I look in the mirror myself in the morning and silently mouth, “Oh shut up, you ignorant hippie libtard.” But I urge you to believe that my question today is…
If you’re going to run a political campaign, it doesn’t hurt to have David Axelrod on your team. The New York-born, Chicago-schooled operator shepherded a green Barack Obama past John McCain and into the Oval Office in 2008. After the election, Axelrod served as Obama’s senior adviser until it was…
Because we have this weird “city manager” system of government in Dallas, where no one person is actually totally in charge of anything, Dallas City Hall always assumes it can get away with dodging responsibility. The mayor’s not really the mayor. The city manager’s not really the manager. The city…
Before we get into a whole thing about it, let me just ask a question. If a formerly down-at-the-heels inner city neighborhood is becoming more middle class, which way should house prices be going, up or down? Well, wait. Two questions. If the city wanted to promote middle class housing…
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings loves task forces. During five years in office he has created specialized committees both large (Rawlings’ domestic violence task force boasts more than 40 members) and small (the obscure senior citizen’s task force, chaired by Councilwoman Monica Alonzo, which we have to assume has some members, though…
The word, hater, has come to Dallas City Hall. Let’s hope its a temporary infection. This is anecdotal, not scientific, but use of hater really does seem to have grown in frequency, the most recent bump coming from the harrumptive Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump. He used it three…
Nothing has changed but the stakes. From the American Airlines Center last September to Gilley’s Southside Ballroom last night, this is still Donald Trump’s show. The presumptive Republican presidential candidate showed up in Dallas on Thursday as unlikely party standard bearer. He’s the guy who, unless something unprecedented happens…
Texas’ fight to keep refugees out of the state appears to be over, and the Syrians can stay. In a ruling released Thursday morning, U.S. District Judge David Godbey, said that the state did not have grounds to sue the federal government and an immigrant settlement non-profit to keep refugees from…
It took a while, but the details of Dallas’ latest encounter with presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign finally got filled in Wednesday afternoon. After a nearly weeklong search for a venue, the Trump operation found a DFW home at the Southside Ballroom, otherwise known as the big room…
Serious effort here on my part. Really. I shall approach the story of our local mentally ill district attorney from a more positive perspective than in the past. Ahem. Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk has returned to Dallas from yet another institutional sojourn associated with mental illness – I…
Another painful moment lies ahead for Dallas as the city struggles to deal with an issue most of the nation probably thought was long shut away in the history books – formal racial segregation by policy. It’s not history here. Segregation is about to be news again. But first, there…
When it’s finished later this year, the Trinity Forest Golf Club will be, per Avid Golfer magazine, “pretty freaking awesome.” It will be expansive and undulating, with carpet-like greens and fairways accented by native grasses, all just a short hop from Downtown Dallas. In the meantime, the private Company of…
After the fatal savaging of Antoinette Brown in southern Dallas in May, the status quo on loose dogs in Dallas has grown increasingly unacceptable. Led by City Council member Tiffinni Young, residents and other leaders of the city’s southern sector have grown louder in demanding that the city do more…
Dallas City Manager A.C. Gonzalez announced on Memorial Day he intends to resign at the end of January, telling a TV crew he wants to get his “life back.” I don’t know any more than that, so I am bound, however grudgingly, to take what he says at face value. But…
In an extensive report released Friday afternoon, the city of Dallas detailed the lapses in enforcement and communication that led to the dog-mauling death of Antoinette Brown on May 2. In memo to the Dallas City Council, Assistant City Manager Joey Zapata wrote that Dallas Police and Dallas Animal Services…
Here are some observations that may help you put the city’s projected budget shortfall of $19 million for 2016-2017 into a proper context. In a total city budget that was something over $3 billion last year, a $19 million shortfall will amount to about 0.6 of one percent of the…
Very late Thursday afternoon, a Dallas County judge ruled that Dennis Topletz can’t intimidate, threaten or retaliate against his tenants for the duration of city of Dallas’ lawsuit against him. Topletz is, if you believe the city and The Dallas Morning News, a slumlord. He owns about 200 houses in…
