I’m a Democrat. I’m anti-Trump. The only things more depressing to me than President Donald Trump are Democrats. If it’s still like this in 2018, I may have to vote for the vegan, even though I have never really been totally sure what that is. Maybe for a change and…
Every once in a while, somebody says something so wholly at odds with evident truth, so totally contrary to known facts, so diametrically opposed to obvious reality that we just have to stop and do big, loud forehead slaps on ourselves. Last week, Dallas City Secretary Rosa Rios, bristling at…
Construction crews were putting finishing touches on the new Uplift Pinnacle Secondary school at Camp Wisdom Road and Interstate 35E when I toured it last week with architect Brian L. Nelson of HKS, school director Rachel Harris and Uplift chief development officer Deborah Bigham. I tried to imagine the throngs…
Maybe for once I will try to exercise the better part of valor and not wade knee-deep into the El Paso public school cheating scandal, about which I know not one thing except for this: A federal district court judge in El Paso recently tossed federal prosecutors and the FBI…
Explore any aspect of Dallas as intently as naturalist Ben Sandifer does on his birding and biking expeditions, and you are bound eventually to see all the rest of the city somewhere in the weave, especially if you look at all of it with the same wonder. Sandifer’s most recent…
If people who write about and think about affordable housing on a national level ever look at Dallas — and they do, from time to time — surely they will find the Dallas citizen who was just commended by the recent national convention of the League of United Latin American…
The cruelty, grief and alienation that spring from racism are all still with us, continuing to deform our day-to-day lives, because white supremacy is still with us. White supremacy is a social chasm across which people can barely see each other, let alone hear and understand. None of that will…
For now, let’s pretend for a minute that nobody wants to build an expressway on top of the Trinity River through downtown Dallas. For the sake of argument, let’s just pick up that naughty little gnome of an idea by the ears and plunk it down in the center of…
I understand why leaks in Washington about Trump are a big deal and my leaks about things like drainage problems in Dallas, not so much. I think I have a pretty good working sense of proportion. But leaks are still leaks, and I have my reasons to make sure people…
The view I give you here sometimes of City Hall is depressing, and yet some twinge of conscience provokes me now and then to tell you how optimistic I am about the city. According to the surveys, I think you are, too. Between City Hall and the city, a strange…
The school reform issue ought to split up conservatives as badly as it does liberals. But it doesn’t. I can’t figure that out. No matter which side looks at it, school reform turns on the same fundamental question: Can a poor, minority kid from a chaotic background be as smart…
The greatest challenge in the thing we call vaguely “The Trinity River project” is sheer size. The full project area along the river through downtown is 10,000 acres. That’s 15.6 square miles. You could put New York City’s Central Park in it 12 times. It’s two-thirds the size of Manhattan,…
Shocking news, shocking, unbelievably shocking that the Russians tried 17 times to hack the Dallas County election system before last year’s presidential election. More shocking, possibly even earth-shaking: They did not succeed. In years covering vote fraud issues in Dallas, I have known drunken homeless people who could hack local…
Because the Dallas municipal system of government is this kind of headless, directionless fidget spinner, we may lose sight of something: There is a right way to go. Somewhere. A right direction. Take Fair Park, our decaying exposition park in the center of the city. Maybe you don’t want to…
The pirates who run the State Fair of Texas and the army of flying monkey lackeys otherwise known as the Dallas Park and Recreation Department are trying to bury all the State Fair’s loot for good before the Dallas City Council can send anybody in to police up Fair Park…
By no means is it all bad news at Dallas City Hall. At least we learn from our mistakes. I offer in evidence an idea that popped up in the most recent City Council briefing on the upcoming bond program, which I call the new rule of “no money, no…
After five Dallas city appointees to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit board defeated a suburban-backed, billion-dollar borrowing scheme by DART on Tuesday, the usual grumbling and ominous threats of withdrawals of membership in and support for the agency burbled up from the ‘burbs. The city, they said, had better do…
8i Everybody’s for civility now. So am I. Newly elected Montana Rep. Greg Gianforte called for civility shortly before seeking a soft sentence, which he got, for assaulting a man who had asked him a question he didn’t like. Aging rocker Ted Nugent called for civility after the recent congressional…
Yesterday, Dana Goldstein, who covers a lot of things for The New York Times, including education, took note of Dallas schools in a story about reform efforts here, calling Dallas, “a national leader in trying to figure out how to encourage students of all backgrounds to willingly go to school…
Revolution never happens in one fell swoop. It’s a process. I think what we just witnessed in our recently completed Dallas City Council election was a very early stage in the process. This election was the local equivalent of the 1825 Decembrist revolt against Czar Nicholas. Not the full-tilt boogie…
All the talk has been good so far about a new regime at Dallas City Hall under recently hired Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax and the new city attorney, Larry Casto. Their new byword is supposed to be transparency. You could fool me. On my first real challenge to them,…
