Don’t tell Dallas it hasn’t done anything for racial desegregation. Since 2004 a $22 million trust fund that grew out of a Dallas housing desegregation case has been used to bankroll an aggressive campaign to push integrated housing into highly resistant affluent white majority areas. Didn’t know that? Maybe you…
One of the most cherished lines in American movies – “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown” – may take on new and bitter meaning here in Dallas, where backers of a proposed new six-lane toll road along the Trinity River through the center of the city are about to get the…
Quick! Somebody tell the mayor! The homeless are being unacceptable again! A month ago Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings toured the “Tent City” homeless encampment beneath a cat’s cradle of freeway overpasses at the intersection of Interstate 30 and I-45, one mile due east from City Hall. He told people living…
I tell myself, if it’s anything to do with how adults feel about kids and education, don’t try to predict it and do try not to be surprised. Dallas School Board member Miguel Solis is arguing for a new policy to reduce the number of very little kids who get…
I have been reading all of the responses to my column earlier in the week saying the city may need to start shooting stray dogs, including the comments suggesting I’m the one who should be shot, thank you very much. All I can conclude is that a whole lot of people…
Getting tired of people taking Donald Trump to task on his philosophy? Think that’s like criticizing him for not being able to stand on his toes in ballet slippers? Yeah. Me, too. He never promised us a philosophy garden. But the things the man says also do point inevitably to…
Shoot the dogs. And I owe an apology to Dallas City Council member Ricky Callahan for making fun of him a couple weeks ago when he said the same thing. It should not have taken the horrific story of Antoinette Brown to get me up to speed. Brown is the 52-year-old…
When I saw last week that Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings had sent a letter to Austin regulators in support of a bid by the Hunt family of Dallas to take over our local electric transmission utility, all of the “how high” jokes I have ever heard in my life started…
This week Robert Wilonsky at The Dallas Morning News and Peter Simek at D Magazine both have been telling some of those important but very painful stories we all need to hear about the city’s racial history. I just want to make sure we don’t throw the old guy out with…
What mystery? Republican leadership offered Republican primary voters a choice between 16 conservatives and a white guy. The voters have spoken. Yesterday morning after Trump nailed the Republican nomination, I’m reading Nate Silver, I’m reading The New York Times lead editorial, reading Ross Douthat, The Washington Post editorial, The Wall…
Halt! Or should I use the German, “Halt!” An idea is afloat out there, almost certainly well meaning, for dealing with the city’s homeless population by creating a concentration camp at a disused military base where you and I won’t be able to see the problem any longer. Who else…
According to repeated public statements from Dallas oilman Ray Hunt and his son Hunter, the main benefit to me of letting them take over Oncor, the big state-regulated electrical transmission utility, will be, “…to keep control of Oncor here in Texas where it belongs.” Is that where it belongs? I…
All of the pundits and all of the cues and signals are telling me I’m supposed to be angry and suicidal right now. Even though that seems like a conflict in and of itself, I still want to do what’s expected of me, but it’s really hard because I live…
Balance. That is the best I can offer. I can’t tell you if the people whom The Dallas Morning News describes as vile malevolent slumlords are what they say they are or if they are legitimate honorable business persons targeted by forces that just want their land. But I can…
The Dallas Morning News ran a big editorial yesterday vowing to hold the city’s feet to the fire on a new campaign to curb stray dogs. Yeah, I get all that, but the problem isn’t the stray dogs. It’s the damn stray people. Not homeless people. Not talking about that…
Let’s say, just for grins, they don’t wind up building that six-lane expressway along the Trinity River in downtown Dallas. Guess what. All of a sudden we’re looking at an adventure that could put Dallas at the global forefront of the most crucial issue facing mankind in the 21st century…
Big debate going on now in Dallas about a porn expo at the city convention center, but first we need to talk about eastern Oklahoma and international necrophiliacs. Necrophiliacs, as I once heard explained by a politician from the “Little Dixie” district of eastern Oklahoma who was speaking to to…
So in the way things have been done around here forever, a rich lady has suggested to a former City Council member that a bridge on the river — a major feature of the as yet unnamed Trinity River park — be named for former Mayor Ron Kirk, who for…
I was on Channel 11 last night about the Bryan Parkway Parkway pothole. I’ll explain the hospital wristbands in a minute. Last week I apologized for writing an alarmist column in which I said I thought people might be living in a pothole in my alley. Further exploration revealed that…
This has been a busy week on the Fair Park/State Fair of Texas news front, as the City Council approaches a vote this summer on competing plans for the park. Steve Thompson in The Dallas Morning News told readers how the fair had refused to pony up any straightforward data…
This moment, right now – after a rigorous Baylor economic study has blown to smithereens the “economic impact” claims the city has made for years for Fair Park and the State Fair of Texas – is an invaluable learning opportunity. This is way beyond anything to do with the Fair…
Hey, I got this one. People online Monday were wondering why in the world the Dallas Park Department had turned down a university’s offer to do a free study of the impact that the State Fair of Texas and Fair Park have on the Dallas economy. That’s easy. They don’t…
