You may or may not be familiar with Allen Gwinn — the blogger-provocateur who keeps watch over the public school system and other matters. He has a new website going called taxrollback.org calling for a local version of the California legislation that has helped reduce that state to ruin –…
I have been keeping my mouth shut for months about this deal between Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and city council member Angela Hunt concerning committee assignments and Hunt’s ability to care for her new baby. But today there’s a good story about it by Rudy Bush on the Metro front…
Made a short canoe trip up White Rock Creek from the lake with my son yesterday evening. He’s visiting for the holiday. Half the leaves are off the trees, so we’re back to the season of the year when you can see all the trash along the banks. But it’s…
The New York Times op-ed page today has a big essay on anonymous blog comments and what to do about them: “Where anonymity breeds contempt,” by Julie Zhuo, a “product design manager” at Facebook. So how do you feel about anonymous comments, fellow Unfair Park Anonymati? Me, my own feelings…
There’s a lot of shape-shifting going on below the media radar at City Hall, a sense that some kind of realignment is in the works. A lot of it has to do with the fraying and maybe dissolution of the traditional Citizens Council/South Dallas Deal. Mayor Tom Leppert has been…
O.K., I promise not to go on about it, but there’s an interesting little two-step today on Page One of Dallas’s Only Daily Newspaper. I just wanted to call it to your attention. It’s about congressional earmarks and us. For a week or so we have been going on and…
Lend us your earmark: Buzz has never been supportive of the Tea Party and its goals, which as near as we can figure consist of turning back the calendar to 1796. Still, one must keep with the times, so maybe we should rethink our stance. Couple of questions though: If…
A hundred years ago, when I was a city desk reporter for the Dallas Times Herald, there was a certain dreaded 4 a.m. phone call I used to get from the late Ernie Makovy, one of the great breaking-news city desk editors of all time, usually having to do with…
Last week Friend of Unfair Park Shaggy predicted that the Tea Party will get over its aversion to congressional earmarks in however long it takes for the Triple R’s (Really Really Rich People) to get Dick Armey to convey the new post-election marching orders down to the tri-cornered-hat persons: “Earmarks…
In my narrow and twisted personal universe, everything is about the trinity River Project, even today’s closing arguments in Austin in the money laundering trial of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Follow me into the labyrinth. People ask me all the time, “Who’s behind this thing?” Dallas’s multi-billion…
Wilonsky sent me an interesting Wall Street Journal article this morning by Jonathan Weisman talking about the shift of power that would be brought about by a Republican-backed ban on congressional earmarks. The great irony is that an earmark ban shifts power and leverage to the Democrat in the White…
Dallas Park Czar Mike Rawlings — current president of the Park and Recreation Board, former homeless czar (he was not homeless, he was helping them), former Pizza Hut CEO and ad guy — declares in The Dallas Morning News today that he wants the Dallas park system to be one…
Friday I’m going to this thing at the home of garden designer Robert Bellamy called “Light a Fire,” some kind of dinner deal to make people more aware of the problem of bullying of gay kids and suicide. I do things like this because I’m a great guy and my…
Not to be cranky or anything, but it’s really irritating to read all this crap about congressional earmarks and realize nobody knows what the hell they’re talking about. Stories in both The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times today paint the whole debate on earmarks in typical who’s-on-first…
I want to catch you up on a story I told you about in September, concerning Josh and Jenn Terry, both 29 years old, who were rehabilitating an apartment building in North Oak Cliff. It’s sort of a Halloween story. Before starting their project, the Terrys checked in with the…
Democratic incumbent Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson raised $548,514 to run for re-election and won with 75.76 percent of the vote, which was not up to her standard snuff. In 2006, the 17-year veteran raised only $411,189 but won with 80.19 percent. Of course, that was before scholar-gyp. Johnson was surpassed…
So leave it to me. Here it is Sunday night. I’m sitting on the porch handing out Halloween candy and trying to be nice. But I am gnashing my teeth. On Saturday The Dallas Morning News published a story about Halloween in my neighborhood. Much mention was also made of…
The contest for the 30th Congressional District of Texas has taken Dallas back to its cuckoo-town roots in a way nobody here has seen since 1963. First, U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, the incumbent Democrat, went on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 and insisted she had done nothing wrong by diverting…
In an interview today with Bill Zeeble of KERA-FM (90.1), Republican congressional candidate Stephen Broden trots out his belief that Roe v. Wade — the Supreme Court decision affirming a woman’s right to abortion – was “passed” as part of a racist elitist plot of genocide against black people. Broden,…
Small wonder the Stephen Broden camp is gnashing its teeth over the Brad Watson violent-overthrow interview. Just before Channel 8 ran the interview in which congressional candidate Broden said violent uprising is “on the table,” Broden’s campaign says it had received polling data showing Republican Broden within six points of…
The Dallas Morning News today withdrew its endorsement of Stephen Broden in the Texas 30th District congressional race, after Eddie Bernice Johnson’s Republican challenger told WFAA-Channel 8 reporter Brad Watson that violent revolution is one of his “options” for changing the regime in Washington. “The Editorial Board has too many…
So I’m at City Hall watching the city council last week, and out of the blue—I don’t know where it comes from, just craziness—I have this thought. I know why Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and City Councilman Dave Neumann don’t get it. Seriously. It was a lightning bolt. Neither one…
