You know, maybe things just worked out exactly as they should have in the Amazon HQ2 story. Amazon, of course, made a big deal out of what any city would need to do and to be and to offer and to promise in order to be worthy of becoming the…
The nation seems to be splitting in half, so why shouldn’t journalism? Right now we seem to have two camps — the half of the craft that recognizes the kind of lying crooks they’re dealing with and knows what it will take to beat them and the other half, the…
Do you remember when it was fun to sit up election night watching the returns roll in? At our house we used to make popcorn. Now it’s like watching a dress rehearsal for the end times. We eat chocolate candy that’s really bad for us because why not? In fact,…
Last week I wrote about Dallas City Council member Jennifer Gates, who is white, appearing on her own Facebook page dressed in a Halloween costume as a caricatured Mexican man in a sombrero with a black mustache. Later Sharon Grigsby at The Dallas Morning News wrote a thoughtful column taking…
Next time somebody wants to charge you 25 percent extra for a house because it’s near a man-made private lake in Texas, ask him to tell you who’s on the hook when the dam blows out. That’s the lesson homeowners are about to learn in Arlington. Prestonwood Lake, about 3.5…
Dallas City Council Member Jennifer Staubach Gates, whose name has been mentioned recently as an establishment candidate for mayor in 2019, announced the end of her political career in novel fashion the day after Halloween by posting photos of herself dressed as a Mexican man in a sombrero with a…
A lot of the time, probably too much, we talk about the Dallas City Council strictly in terms of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, death, famine, war and conquest. There’s more to it than those four guys. A recent debate about a run-down apartment complex in far West Dallas…
Well, I never. I never thought it would come to this, but I guess I might have to let the Dallas Citizens Council make me a member. After that, I might even have to join the Dallas Regional Chamber of Commerce. But let me promise you something right here. I…
If you did what I do for a living, you might get a little down-in-the-mouth once in a while, too. But I want you to know that I also get wonderfully optimistic about where the city is headed. That’s what this will be about, after I get done whining and…
Kevin Felder, the Dallas City Council member I have been calling King Cuckoo, cuckooed me big-time Wednesday I guess, winning a 13-2 vote against the South Dallas car wash that I have been defending from time immemorial. Another big winner in the deal — this one really sticks in the…
Today the Dallas City Council will be asked to vote to commit a form of public fraud. The council will be asked to launch a process that would shut down a private business as a public nuisance, even though years of extraordinary effort have failed to prove it’s a nuisance. But…
Let me ask you something. Do you remember ever reading a column by Jim Schutze in which I said that I was a prince? Yes or no. Did I say that? Did I put myself up as some kind of knight in shining armor on a white horse? On a…
Last week I told you a story about Dallas City Hall that made no sense whatsoever — nothing new there — but this week I have it sort of figured out, and I want to share. Last week I said the city had formed a special taxing district to raise…
I may join the Republican Party and start pinching women on elevators. I swear I’ll do it. The one thing that could drive me to it, the only thing that might actually push me out of the Texas Democratic Party for good is the Texas Democratic Party. It’s the party…
Dwaine Caraway’s City Council district is about to do the same thing again: elect somebody who owes her or his soul to outsiders. It’s the tragic flaw in Dallas’ system of city government. Nobody who might really represent a poor district, who might truly stick up for it, can beat…
My job is hard. Sometimes I hear terrible things — things I have to live with because of my work. For example, in a recent conversation I was told something positive about the Trinity Forest Golf Club. How do you think that made me feel? But I soldier on, and…
I have been writing about Dale Davenport, proprietor of Jim’s Car Wash on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near Fair Park, for 14 years. Monday for the first time in all those years, I heard him say something I didn’t believe was true. Speaking in reference to a new initiative…
Genocide is a tricky, ugly word to trot out in an argument. Comparing something to the brutality and madness of genocide to make a point is likely to blow up in your face. Survivors are justifiably touchy about anything that remotely devalues their suffering. Plus, my editor won’t let me…
I watched the Kavanaugh hearing last week with a bunch of old white guys. Of course, it was strictly research, but I was also hoping they might get enough of it at some point to lift themselves painfully up off the couch so we could go fishing, as promised. But,…
Monday I wrote a column saying there is a chance under the law that fired Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger, who shot and killed an innocent man in his own apartment on Sept. 6, is not guilty of murder. The reader response was numerous and mostly angry with me, as…
Last week The Dallas Morning News said in an editorial that Dallas police Chief Renee Hall did the right thing by firing a police officer who shot an innocent man in his own apartment: “It is right for Hall to expect better from her officers than the use of deadly…
It’s not that the State Fair of Texas has no responsibility to the bitterly poor, racially segregated neighborhoods surrounding the fairgrounds. Of course it does. We all do. I do. You do. The danger for us all, however, is that we satisfy ourselves with pinning the blame for urban poverty…
