Wait a minute. Before we all just go tripping on down the road, we need to go back and sort out a particular aspect of last week’s nasty city council meeting about the Trinity River toll road, the multi-lane, high-speed, limited access highway some people still want to stick on…
Right after the Trinity Commons luncheon early last week, there was something close to euphoria among hardcore opponents of the Trinity toll road, the limited-access, high-speed highway proposed but unbuilt for 18 years along the Trinity River downtown. They spoke to me off the record, because they assumed negotiations lay…
Oops. Had to leave town early last week for a wedding. Almost let a good one slip by. Do you mind if I go back and pick it up, if a few days belatedly? Three weeks ago I told you about the case of Don Smith, an internal investigator at…
Told you so. Curtis Lockey and Craig MacKenzie, the downtown tower redevelopers who accused Dallas of practicing deliberate racial segregation, are back with a brand-new federal lawsuit against the city. These guys won’t go away. See also: Nobody Has Counted to 10 Yet in that Lockey/Mackenzie vs. City of Dallas…
The muscle is on, Chicago-style in Dallas. The mayor and the people he carries water for on the Trinity toll road do not want you to see, hear or talk about their so-called “Dream Team” plan for the toll road before they can get it underway. That’s why they will…
All right, the only thing I’m doing here is hitting the button to start the half-life timer on the latest installment of Scandalgate. At the end of last week, Brett Shipp at WFAA TV and the education beat reporters at The Dallas Morning News launched a new Dallas school district…
R.G. Ratcliffe, former investigative ace for The Houston Chronicle and long one of the top reporters in Texas (maybe the top), has a wonderful piece up this week on the Texas Monthly politics blog about Bill Hammond, chief executive officer of the Texas Association of Business (state Chamber of Commerce)…
Be right with you. Sorting through some stuff here at home. This is the room that has become the unofficial warehouse. Ah, here it is. The box of keepsakes from our child’s first days. Yesterday I attended an event at City Hall where Mayor Mike Rawlings announced the pending announcement…
Shiggy bops drawbacks. I’m serious. I have been searching through basic literature on both vaudeville dance steps and the major propaganda techniques. I will explain. I wanted to find a basic category of propaganda for the position taken by Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and the Dallas Citizens Council on the…
In watching the battle over school reform in Dallas, it’s worth keeping in mind sometimes that Dallas is far from being the Lone Ranger. Issues similar to our own are stirring strongly parallel responses in cities around the country, the best example at the moment being Chicago, where today the…
Guess what. To my own absolute amazement, that stupid toll road — you know the one! — turns out to be the one thing people want to hear about in this election. Otherwise, they’re asleep. Typical timing for me. I had just gotten to the point where the words, “Trinity…
You know the story about the new Dallas County District attorney, Susan Hawk. She covered up a stint in rehab when she was running for election. It all came out recently when she went through some dramatic office turmoil. See also: Dallas County DA Hawk Chats at SMU, Says Little…
Wow. You really have to be careful these days what to make of things people tell you about Dallas School Superintendent Mike Miles and school reform. A few days ago somebody told me Miles was going around town giving speeches saying he wants to fire all the teachers who have…
News bulletin from Corruptdrunktown: a grand jury under the drunk lady who is the Travis County district attorney in Austin has declined to indict University of Texas Regent Wallace Hall. The drunk lady’s grand jury devoted months to finding some way to criminally indict Hall, who is from Dallas. Hall…
It’s a good time to be a fan of live music in Dallas. With the smashing success of The Bomb Factory’s reopening last weekend, it’s clear that the local scene, and in particular its hub in Deep Ellum, is the strongest it’s been in ages. Thousands of people flocked to…
Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk and former Dallas County Judge Lee Jackson, two wild and crazy guys, had a shared piece on the opinion pages of The Dallas Morning News yesterday under a headline, “Congestion will worsen without Trinity toll road.” If you asked Kirk and Jackson to produce a…
Last week, barely 24 hours before the Dallas school board was to vote on a complicated school construction proposal, two major media published stories saying the district has been conspiring to strip-mine federal subsidy money out of poor schools and spend it instead on more affluent kids. That’s huge. If…
The kid from Highland Park who got caught singing a racist chant on a fraternity bus at Oklahoma University has apologized, but some of the twitterati aren’t buying it. See also: Highland Park Grad Who Sang Racist Chant at OU Fraternity Says He’s Sorry @GEEPENNIN tweeted: “Pettit’s apology is rehearsed…
OK, here comes a great chance to see what the Dallas school board is really made of. Spotted this on the agenda for tonight’s meeting: The board will vote on a legal settlement for a fired employee who was the board’s own employee, not an employee of the superintendent of…
Last week I attended a community meeting for the La Bajada neighborhood, an old working class Hispanic community at the foot of the fake Calatrava suspension bridge in West Dallas. A new entertainment district is already well established cheek by jowl with the neighborhood, and developers nearby are ready to…
What does it mean to be a product of Harvard and/or Princeton? Does it imply a mandatory elevation, a certain stature beneath which a person cannot sink? Now that Ted Cruz has declared his candidacy for president of the United States, I have been forced finally to come to grips…
Less than a mile from D/FW Airport, brand-new street signs proclaim the names of two newly paved streets snaking through acres of raw dirt — the corner of Al Razi and Al Hazen. In the distance, the first new house in the Al Hamra subdivision soars up off the ground…
