For Trinity East, the Fort Worth-based shale gas producer, the Dallas Plan Commission meeting this Thursday is make or break. Nearly six years ago, the company bid on drilling city-owned land while Dallas sought to shore up a budget shortfall. Since then, the company shelled out tens of millions of…
You’d think in this state, property rights would be the inviolable bedrock around which damn near everything else revolves. You’d think eminent domain, the taking of private property for public use, would be invoked only when the common benefit of a railroad, a highway or a pipeline is so undeniable…
State Representative Rafael Anchia of Dallas filed legislation Friday that he hopes will position Texas to lead the sustainable age. He describes it as a launching point for a dialogue in the Legislature, a “shell” of a bill that will eventually drive workforce development for the next generation of jobs…
Sometimes it seems like all we ever do here at Unfair Park is bitch about the dastardly and frivolous legislation our elected representatives concoct down at the capitol. But not every bill sends us lunging for the bottle. Take this measure, filed by Sen. Bob Deuell of Greenville, barring State…
As the sun sank and the cold set in, Dallas PD mobile command centers idled in an empty lot behind a McDonald’s off Lancaster Road and I-20, a stopover on a trucking line for long haulers. Plainclothes and uniformed officers massed near one of the trailers, walled in by the…
The idea behind McKinney Senator Ken Paxton’s proposed legislation really is pretty ingenious. The whole school-choice voucher idea — essentially a guise to funnel public money to religious schools — invariably runs afoul of constitutional challenges. So, lately, that movement has shifted its strategy quite successfully by avoiding public coffers…
The now-five-year old insider-trading beef against mercurial Dallas Mavs owner Mark Cuban isn’t going away anytime soon. Chief Judge Sidney Fitzwater rejected Tuesday a motion to dismiss the federal case against him, which alleges Cuban dumped his stock in an Internet search engine after getting tipped off by the CEO…
On Friday afternoon came the unheralded release of a pretty important preliminary analysis from the State Department regarding the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a conduit for diluted bitumen mined in Alberta and destined for the Texas Gulf Coast petroleum refineries. The takeaway, however, has to be depressing for the climate-change…
Just in case all this temperate whether has lulled you into the perception that the Texas power grid doesn’t have the thinnest margin of safety between lights on and lights out anywhere in the country, here’s a reminder: Summer is coming. ERCOT, the grid operator for most of Texas, says…
For each of the last eight years, some of the country’s best long-form journalists and memoirists have converged on a Hilton conference center in Grapevine during what always seems to be the most intolerably hot weekend of the scalding Texas summer. Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference writer-in-residence George Getschow — a…
The U.S. Supreme Court began hearing arguments today challenging the constitutionality of and need for Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, which requires Texas and other southern states with a history of suppressing the minority vote to get pre-clearance from the Feds before implementing changes to voting laws. Naturally,…
Before City Manager Mary Suhm struck a secret side deal with natural gas producer Trinity East to drill on parkland in the Trinity River floodplain, there were two lesser-known gas wells situated in Irving that Dallas stood to collect royalty checks on. According to Railroad Commission of Texas documents, Irving,…
The sequester, that “Damocles sword” hanging perilously above federal spending and set to fall March 1, was supposed to be an instrument so blunt, which would cut so deeply and indiscriminately, that the cost of not reaching a bipartisan compromise on debt reduction would become unfathomable. Now, of course, it’s…
State Representative Van Taylor, a real-estate investment banker from Plano, has introduced legislation that would settle, once and for all, who gets the last word on drilling under private property: That would be the Railroad Commission of Texas. The bill, filed Tuesday, would strip from Texas municipalities the ability to…
The fount of red ink spilling onto the pages of beleaguered power generator Energy Future Holdings’ quarterly reports continues unabated. The Dallas company logged $3.36 billion in net losses for 2012. In its last quarter alone, the company reported a $1.95 billion net loss, due largely to a write-down on…
Is Keystone Pipeline really good idea?Bringing lots of heavy, dirty oil across country, when fracked ,cheaper, cleaner energy available— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) February 15, 2013 Yeah, you read that right. Media magnate Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, whose cable news empire has been almost solely…
Greenpeace, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Public Citizen — along with more than 80 other groups from across the country — are calling on the EPA Inspector General to investigate the agency’s withdrawal from legal action against a company accused of contaminating a water well through its fracking operations…
The bakers union’s new president has finally broken his silence following the collapse of Irving-based Hostess, baker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies. It was the bakers, after all, who largely sat out the attempted restructuring in a New York federal bankruptcy court, then dynamited the negotiations by striking last November…
The Dallas Plan Commission voted to delay any decision on permitting natural gas wells in the Trinity River floodplain, telegraphing a clear message Thursday to City Council: Your move. Commissioner Gloria Tarpley remains none too pleased about being asked to consider a permit that currently runs afoul of city code’s…
Opponents of Trinity East’s plan to drill for natural gas inside the Trinity River floodplain say Plan Commission Chair Joe Alcantar of pressing his fellow commissioners outside of public meetings or lawful closed-door deliberations to reconsider the permit. In a complaint filed with the District Attorney’s public integrity division Wednesday,…
In this week’s cover story, we examine the demise of Irving-based Hostess, purveyor of Wonder Bread, Ho Hos, Twinkies and Ding Dongs — basically all the stuff you should never put in your body. These days, pretty much everything is political, even the fate of snack food. Can blame for…
In the years leading up to the collapse of Hostess — baker of Wonder Bread, Twinkies and Ding Dongs — it wouldn’t have required a peek at the company’s closely held books to figure out it was in trouble. Ask the guys who baked the snack cakes and bread. Ask…
