This, I hope, will not turn into a rant. I want it to be more of a solemn prayer. I pray that this city, my city, will deeply and sincerely examine its heart where the poor are concerned. But I could start ranting anyway. It happens. I want you to…
Just perusing some of the financial disclosures for the “nonprofit” online news service based in Austin called The Texas Tribune. And this, by the way, is a column about my own craft, journalism, which I will try to make as painless as possible because I know many of you did…
Every time I see another story calling Trump a bully, I duck. I’m always afraid somebody will call me. So this is my declaration. I am not an expert on bullying. I wrote a true-crime book 15 years ago about a bunch of horrible Florida mall rats who killed one…
They could all turn out to be wrong in the end, of course, or maybe just not right enough, but close observers around town are beginning to place bets on strong rumors that the Walt Humann Fair Park deal will fall apart soon. The ostensible reason – the one for…
So Dallas will solve its loose dog problem by killing more dogs. Good. I could hope for only more thing. I wish they would film the killing of the dogs every week and put the video online. With that video, I wish the city also would post the names, addresses and…
Construction cranes rise all over the skyline, traffic jams rush hour, so many apartment/condo projects crowd the city’s older neighborhoods that you can hardly see the neighborhoods. With this sheer volume of economic activity that we can see in this city with our bare eyes, how does City Hall still…
Years go by. I’m OK. Sleep great. Steady hands, no shakes. Then out of nowhere I awaken one night from a dead slumber covered in a cold sweat with eyes like silver dollars and a throbbing heart. And I know. Somewhere out there in the black of night, the beast…
Too many times I tell you how City Hall doesn’t have a single desk where the buck stops, how you can’t get City Hall to do anything for you, and I always forget to mention the exception. There is one thing you can do to make City Hall work like…
A story in yesterday’s Dallas Morning News about a slow-down in turnover among public school principals in Dallas contained this unattributed wisdom: “Experts say a principal needs five years at the same school to make real improvement. When the principals keep changing, so does the teaching staff. Student test scores…
The news lately on DART, our regional mass transit agency, is that the city’s elected officials are having major credibility problems with the things DART staff tells them about rail construction projects worth billions of dollars. When I hear about those problems at the big-deal end, a part of me…
When does City Hall do anything even vaguely related to your life? Can City Hall help you find you an apartment in a safe neighborhood at a rent you can afford? Can City Hall help you get to work? Can it leave enough money in your pocket at the end…
In retrospect and now that her very sad saga is at an end, Susan Hawk, the Dallas County district attorney who resigned last week for mental health reasons, looks more and more like a puppet in a macabre political marionette show. In the first act in 2014, Hawk played the…
Settle down. Sit back. Face it. The mayor’s plan to give a private group virtual ownership of Fair Park, a 277-acre exposition park at the heart of the city, is a done deal. He’s got the votes. The count I heard yesterday was 10 in favor. That leaves five dissenters…
The city of Dallas got poured out of court again yesterday in its decades long extra-legal persecution of Kennedy assassination expert Robert Groden, making the 82nd time the city has lost against Groden in its own municipal courts, not counting a major slap-down suffered by the city in the 5th…
I’ve given up proposing that we kill the homeless. No one ever takes me seriously. Some wag like Tim Rogers at D Magazine always chimes in saying I’m copying Jonathan Swift (“A Modest Proposal,” 1729) – in other words, it’s satire – in spite of my very best efforts to speak…
Maybe we need to read that loose dog report again. A little more closely this time. It could be read as a pretty good indictment of the entire system of government at City Hall. An outside consultant was brought in to tell us what to do about loose dogs. Our…
The entire dilemma faced by the national Republican Party – all of it, top to bottom, start to finish – can be explained through the prism of one small news item: Former Texas Governor Rick Perry will appear on the upcoming season of the television show Dancing with the Stars…
One good indication an institution is up to no good and probably guilty of the sin you suspect it of is an extremely thin-skinned response to your complaint. If they’re not feeling guilty, they wouldn’t be thin-skinned. With thin skin as my scale, I don’t know who measures up as…
Maybe this is all moot. Letters and emails are flying around all over town, one side accusing or attacking the other in the debate about privatizing Fair Park, but I think the deal is done already anyway. No matter what anybody says about it, Mayor Mike Rawlings probably has the…
Did anybody else notice that Inclusive Communities Project just got its hat handed to it on its big lawsuit against the state over placement of subsidized housing in already segregated neighborhoods in Dallas? No, I didn’t think so. Welcome to Weirdtown. After yesterday’s City Council briefing on a new city…
The biggest news across my own desk in the last several months — maybe decades — was the recent endorsement of a subway for downtown by The Real Estate Council. And maybe you think that means I live in a world of very small news. Maybe I do. But, look,…
This is like two weeks before Christmas when I was 7 years old. I’m so excited. I know it’s going to be something very good. There is no way the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development would devote this much energy to keeping something away from little old me…
