By now you have seen X-many lists of answers to all the questions people are asking. So I thought I’d work on a list of answers to questions people are not asking. These are questions people may not want to ask because they fear the questions may not be politically…
If I could have one wish, which I can’t, it would be that people would stop telling me not to panic. Panic is a personal matter. I don’t need public officials or editorial writers telling me whether to panic or not. And, by the way, nothing they say is going…
The wolf is at the door in South Dallas. The very near future could see massive dispossession and displacement there to dwarf the city’s long, ugly history elsewhere of dispossession and displacement. The elected leadership of South Dallas not only will fail to raise a hand to protect it. They…
If we were to be perfectly honest with each other, which we never will be, we would agree on a few things about voting in Texas and in Dallas. Rich white Republicans would prefer to see fewer, rather than more middle class and poor nonwhite Democrats show up at the…
I promise never to bring this up again. I may have said that before. I can’t remember. But this is definitely the last time. What is the etiquette for running up silently behind unfamiliar dogs on leashes and then passing them on the same sidewalk? Actually, forget etiquette. What is…
Tuesday when I wrote this thing, the list of entities and people pulling out of SXSW because of coronavirus, according to the Austin American-Statesman, included Facebook, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Intel, Mashable, the Global Alternative Food Awards and a trade show for Chinese companies called China Gathering. As for China…
Hats off, thank you, sincere gratitude, honest admiration, respect and kudos to WFAA Channel 8 for admitting publicly they were totally full of it Nov. 15 in their story about the famous notorious car wash on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in South Dallas. WFAA reporters David Goins and David…
Close your eyes, hold your nose, turn around three times, stamp your foot and say “charter schools.” A vision will appear. No, really. I just noticed it, over on my personal Facebook. Personal Facebook is where the action is for me now. Over here on the Dallas Observer, it’s so…
Are you a socialist if you don’t want families to get blown up in gas well explosions? Is it socialism to try to get your city to live within its means? Clearly, the term socialist will get a stiff workout between now and November. I got a wake-up earlier this…
We here in Dallas must reserve some place in our hearts for the old-school white-shoe Republicans, because, after all, their leader and standard-bearer, Bush XLIII, lives quietly here among us. Perhaps it is appropriate that our city’s only daily newspaper is the one that has devised the template for white…
“Reform Dallas,” a Facebook group I’m still trying to figure out, lit up for a while this week with a provocative post that started out, “I see a lot of people who despise and rally against gentrification.” The post went on: “My question is how do we organize and improve…
Show me a silver lining, I will find you a cloud. From 2014 to last year, the Dallas public school system became a state leader and role model for its ability to turn around failing schools. That’s the silver lining. The cloud is what happened next. As soon as the…
A little over a year ago, The Dallas Morning News hired a new editorial page editor, Brendan Miniter, from the (George W.) Bush Presidential Center (Library) in Dallas. Ever since, the page has been embarrassing. And I guess it would be fair to wonder who is embarrassed. Clearly not the…
Sometimes somebody just rings the damn bell. Two young guys who are smart, one an analyst at the Manhattan Institute in New York and another an urban developer here in Dallas, co-wrote an op-ed piece recently that rang the bell loud and clear on DART, our regional transit agency. The…
Sometimes somebody who actually knows a thing or two looks at a story on the TV news and just can’t stay still about it. Documentary filmmaker Dustin Grant has been working for a year on a film about Jim’s (benighted) Car Wash on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in South…
In a small town, the powers-that-be can usually handle the town’s affairs over a dinner table at the country club, because, most of the time, not that many other people in town know what’s going on or care all that much. In a big city where lots of people not…
Last week an attorney for indicted Dallas housing developer Ruel Hamilton filed a federal court document (see below) describing “outrageous government conduct” by FBI agents going after Hamilton. Outrageous government conduct is a legal term. But let me tell you what’s outrageous to me as a non-lawyer. I’ve been out…
The document by which Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall announced the outcomes of a two-year crooked-cop investigation of the vice squad reads like it was written by Joseph Heller, the guy who wrote Catch-22. Only Heller was funny. The memo made public a week ago makes Hall look far worse…
The Dallas Morning News editorial page is schizzy. Most of the time, it’s pretty smart, even measured and thoughtful, at least on local non-partisan issues. But every fifth Thursday or something, a whole different crazy newspaper appears on my lawn. Right toe forward, hands on the hips of its checkered…
This may be an ill-informed and over-personal approach to a very serious matter, but I truly believe the whole Trump/Bolton imbroglio is about the mustache. Hear me out. OK, hear me part of the way out. Right after he was elected president, Donald Trump declined to hire John Bolton because…
Announcing a $100 million fund drive to find jobs for the perennially jobless, Potter’s House evangelist T.D. Jakes told Mitchell Schnurman at The Dallas Morning News this week, “If you have to go to work in the morning, you’re not hanging out on the streets at night with a gun.”…
We have to stop being played for suckers on race, crime and poverty, both here in Dallas and as a nation. Take murder. In recent weeks, two significant local studies and one exciting policy proposal have come forward to combat the social and moral dysfunction that drive murder in particular…
