If you haven't carefully checked the fine print in the city's proposed high-crime apartment ordinance, which the Dallas City Council will take up today, you might have missed this little gem: Apartment owners whose properties become too crime-ridden according to the city's calculations will be required to collect credit reports on future tenants and make those reports available on demand to the cops. Apparently, City Hall has found there's a correlation between credit-worthiness and crime. Unfor
Jim SchutzeThe Trinity River in June 2007On February 11, I wrote a piece for the paper version of Unfair Park in which I said officials in New Orleans shared blame for the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Specifically, I wrote, "The locals had pushed and pulled for a century to get the federal government to help them build cheap, badly designed levees so their real estate cousin-buddies could sell flood land to middle-class and poor people."In the last week I have received severa
Just in time for April Fool's Day: Ponzi gardens, Beano for cows and breast enhancement in a bottle. But it may be all very real...
Looking for a good excuse to jump head-first into gardening? Sarah Gilbert at Wallet Pop challenged herself and readers to start a garden for $25. It's based on these encouraging numbers, figured out by Kitchen Gardeners International. Even Bernie Madoff couldn't promise that kind of return on that kind of investment.
By now you've probably heard somewhere t
Alexa SchirtzingerThis morning, in the reflection of Dallas's Fountain Place building, a small group of environmental activists gathered as previously announced to oppose the nomination of former Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission head John Hall as the new regional director of the Environmental Protection Agency. Some were outraged at Hall's past and current ties as a lobbyist for oil, gas and waste companies, but others openly shared their personal experiences with Hall -- and some,
Tom PettersFirst there was Bernie Madoff; then, Alan Stanford. Then came Minnesota's Tom Petters, who, as The Wall Street Journal documented in April, was popped by federal authorities who claimed he operated a $3-billion Ponzi scheme built upon his taking investors' hard-earned scratch to buy flat-screen TVs and other electronic whatchamacallits that he would then resell to Big Box stores like Sam's Club and Costco. Seemed awfully, dunno, GoodFellas -- but, look, it really didn't matter anyway,
Whether you're at the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt's End:
*Any day now expect 103.3 FM ESPN to announce it has signed Michael Irvin and co-host Kevin Kiley to a new contract keeping them in the 11 a.m.-2 p.m. slot. Considering the show's uninspired ratings and the current radio landscape (re: financially barren), I can guarantee Irvin took a significant pay cut on this deal.
*It's Texas. It's summer. Deal with it. The heat, I mean. To halt the bitch
Greg Rohan, president of Heritage Auction GalleriesA former senior Civil War consultant for Heritage Auction Galleries alleges the Dallas-based company uses a fake bidder to defraud customers. A lawsuit filed May 22 by Gary Hendershott against Heritage and six others also claims the world's third largest auction house has violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, Texas Administrative Code and Texas Pawnshop Act.
"Heritage and its owners use N.P. Gresham -- a non-existent,
