Lucky me, I attended two debates on the Trinity River toll road referendum this week — one held by the Dallas Homeowners League and the other by the Belmont Neighborhood Association. I would like that on my tombstone: “Jim Schutze, 1966-2076, attended two debates on Trinity River toll road in…
Day Eight: The Dallas Morning News still won’t do the Eddie Bernice Johnson story. I called the Washington office of Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson yesterday and spoke with her chief of staff, Rod Hall. He told me that as of yesterday, Johnson still had not spoken with The Dallas Morning…
Dear Mexican, I was going through a local state college’s academic program the other day and found that they offer a bachelor’s degree in Chicano studies. My question is in what field of work would someone with a bachelor’s in Chicano studies land? Here are a few jobs I came…
Carol Reed, the political consultant, told another staff member here at the Dallas Observer that I was “a man without a country” because nobody I liked for mayor got into the runoff election. I like it. Call me the “Flying Dutchman of Bryan Parkway.” It’s because I made the horrible…
Day Five: The Dallas Morning News still refuses to cover the Eddie Bernice Johnson-Corps of Engineers story on the Trinity River toll road. Bloated, purple-faced and emitting unseemly grunting noises, Dallas’ Only Daily continues to retain the most important news story in months about the Trinity River project. The News…
We imagine this is how Wick Allison looks — and feels — whenever he comes to Unfair Park and sees that Jim’s written another Trinity River project item. Wick Allison posted an item over on FrontBurner purporting to explain how Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson was only telling a wily lie…
So this morning with trembling hands I pluck my daily Dallas Morning News up off the dewy lawn, slip it from the bag and — at the risk of showing myself to my neighbors in my Tartan plaid bathrobe and bedhead hair — ask myself the question: “Can they possibly,…
Eddie Bernice Johnson says a vote on the Trinity River toll road will not affect the Trinity River Project. So, there. Mayoral candidate Tom Leppert is about to talk his way into a truth-telling issue on the Trinity River project. He keeps insisting in speeches and appearances that a referendum…
Dear Mexican, I have no problem with immigrants. My grandparents were Dutch on one side and Irish on the other—but they came here legally, through Ellis Island. What I can’t stand are a bunch of fence-hopping, river-wading illegals telling me I owe them a free education, free health care, and…
OK, I approach a polling place in Far North Dallas on Frankford Road where I see a representative of Mayor Laura Miller out front. He appears to be fast asleep. The Laura Miller representative is sprawled loosely over a lawn chair in front of the door to a city rec…
I spent Saturday going around to polling places trying to talk to the “blockers” hired by Mayor Laura Miller and others to keep people from signing petitions for a referendum on the Trinity River toll road. I consider myself a halfway decent street reporter, so I was very frustrated that…
This morning The Dallas Morning News publishes its big front page-editorial page diatribe against having a referendum on the Trinity River toll road. It’s an exercise in truly classic Morning News Pravda Sovietski journalism. Makes me feel like I’m back at the Dallas Times Herald. So, for your edumification and…
C’mon, there’s no reason the Trinity can’t kinda, sorta look like this, right? My brother, Bill Schutze, lives in a high-rise condo tower above the San Francisco Bay. He has been reading my stuff about Angela Hunt and her doughty band of battlers who are fighting to save the Trinity…
Dallas Mayor Laura Miller has conceded to me that the toll road under design for the Trinity River project is a bad road. “The city manager and I have complained to the North Texas Tollway Authority and told them to fix it,” she said in an exchange of e-mails. “We…
Dear Readers, Gracias, gracias, gracias for ustedes who bought the Mexican’s book last week (deportation for those who haven’t). I’ve done mucho national press because of the interest; the list so far includes Talk of the Nation, FOX News Live, Paula Zahn Now, The Tom Leykis Show, The Glenn Beck…
What was it the mayor said last week? Oh, yes: The truth shall set you free. Read to the end of Jim’s column, where you will find nothing but the truth. On February 25, 2007, at the Fourth Annual Trinity Commons Foundation Membership Luncheon at the Wyndham Anatole Hotel, Mayor…
Last night Mayor Laura Miller and I exchanged several e-mails about the Trinity Parkway referendum issue, which I am writing about in my column for tomorrow’s paper version of Unfair Park. At the end of that exchange, Miller conceded that opponents of the referendum have hired “blockers” to go to…
Dear Mexican, I’m a gringa married to a mexicano, and we have a 3-year-old son. His family is wonderful for the most part, and they adore my son, but as he is getting older, his tos are trying to “toughen him up” and make him more macho. So far, they’ve…
In recent weeks the call for a referendum on the Trinity River toll road has come to the center of the Dallas mayoral election. At the end of last week, The Dallas Morning News said in an editorial that Tom Leppert and Sam Coats were the two top contenders, but…
When city council member Angela Hunt succeeded in getting copies of consultant Alex Krieger’s e-mails to the mayor about the Trinity River toll road, we mere taxpayers succeeded in getting a glimpse of the truth. Krieger plainly told Mayor Laura Miller in his e-mail that the road he had helped…
Earlier today, Jim Schutze wrote that Mayor Laura Miller “directly misled the public” concerning the design of the Trinity Parkway. This afternoon, the mayor responds. Schutze, you are wrong. The four-lane Trinity Parkway is precisely what the City of Dallas plans to build. We worked hard to forge a compromise…
Angela Hunt has just blown the center right out of Laura Miller’s defense of the Trinity River toll road, and she has done it with a bit of investigative reporting that should have our tree-climbing ex-reporter mayor tied in little green Boy Scout knots. Miller has been defending her plan…
