Hey, before the moment passes, let’s make sure we know exactly what was at stake in Scott Griggs’ remarks about the dump last Monday morning. City Council member Griggs called out city staff on the question of exactly how much money really gets stolen every year by city employees at…
For a long time, a central part of Dallas’ self-concept was the idea that this city had no natural features. At all. The idea was always dead wrong. In fact, because large tracts of land had been neglected and ignored by developers from the city’s earliest days, Dallas always had…
This is for the paddlers. Not for me. No more ranting by me, no more calling people stupid. Even if they are. We are all on our knees here, pleading. All around me are paddlers — canoe paddlers, kayak paddlers. We’re pilgrims, walking on our knees to City Hall with…
Let’s count this out. First, American Airlines management threatens to haul the pilots union into court if the pilots don’t stop finding ways to screw up the flight schedule. See also: – American Airline Pilots’ Slowdown Wins a Victory, Despite What You Read in the DMN Second, seats on American…
All you ambitious students out there, please take time to understand what Governor Rick Perry is really doing to you when he says he wants to help you graduate from college. It’s the opposite. See also: – Rick Perry’s Manufactured Miracle What Perry really wants to do is the same…
David Carr, who writes a media column for The New York Times, has a piece in today’s paper about dumb it is for Republicans to claim the mainstream media are biased against Mitt Romney. He pulls a bit of a trick, seems to me, by folding claims of media bias…
Not that we could know anything here at my house about a matter so remote and complex as the looming budget crisis at the U.S. Postal Service, subject of an editorial in today’s New York Times. We did notice and observe here last March that it was way more difficult…
The question of new and more highways in city centers is too profound, too generational, too close to the heart of things: it’s never going to get a rational answer. The whole thing is way beyond reason. We’ll have to go with our guts, after we decide what our guts…
After grief, the next thing that came to me when I heard about the death of Thabiti Olatunji was his story. It’s not the one we normally tell. Olatunji died two weeks ago. His first name is pronounced with a hard T, Ta-BEE-tee. I think he was 64 years old…
I do not love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy. I love a good conspiracy theory way more than the next guy. I know my conspiracy theories. Conspiracy Theories R Me. For me, the most fun ones, because of the puzzle-solving element, are the riddles wrapped…
Mitchell Schnurman is a really good business reporter. The Dallas Morning News scored a major coup recently when it hired him away from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He’s an ace, the author of serial scoops on airline industry management. But as we see again in today’s paper, Schnurman is strangely…
So dear to my heart, so very dear is my anti-suburban bias, born of the political battles of yesteryear, back when we actually believed white people could fly. Ah, those were the days, were they not? Good was good, evil was evil, and the city limits lay between. Now it’s…
Oh, wouldn’t you know it? Leave it to me to get all gooh-gooh-eyed and sweety-feets about things. Then cruel reality comes crashing in. It’s because I’m just too innocent of heart. Just yesterday, I had my zither out singing softly to you about how the mayor had done the right…
Maybe it is like watching them make sausage, but at least you have to give them a tip of the hat when they get the sausage right. The mayor and the Dallas City Council put themselves through a bruising debate yesterday on municipal court reform and in the end came…
Psst. Hey. Wanna see somethin’ dirty? Peep in this little window with me. C’mon! We won’t get in trouble. Look in here. It’s City Hall. Yeah, no kidding. They don’t know we can see them. For the last year, they’ve been going through all kinds of elaborate window-dressing gyrations for…
The secret story behind the story of the Dallas municipal judge fracas is that judges in the city courts don’t run their own courts anyway. Ticket lawyers do. I have been talking about this to lawyers familiar with the municipal courts — lawyers who work there sometimes, not all the…
Make us believe you mean it, Mitt. Bring back the draft. For the better part of a week, I have been reading all these thinly veiled suggestions by Mitt Romney that President Obama isn’t enough of an ass-kicker in the Middle East. His aides have been telling reporters that a…
The 911 problem itself is bad enough, but the mayor and the police chief are about to drive me crazy. At our house we record the news and watch it right before going to bed. It’s worse than chips and spicy salsa. Night after night we are subjected to these…
This is a personal letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Dear Prime Minister: My name is Jim Schutze. I am a columnist for the Dallas Observer. I write about local things here. My politics are sort of all over the place, but I have always considered myself a great…
The New York Times this morning has a piece arguing that the Chicago teachers strike is a window on the nation’s heart over the last few years, where education is concerned. I would say it’s been 15 years at least, and in a weird way a lot of it started…
Last year, Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm and Mayor Mike Rawlings locked arms to push through a so-called “flow control” law, now locked up in a lawsuit, forcing commercial trash haulers in Dallas to use the city landfill instead of commercial dumps. Mayor Rawlings was candid about why. He admitted…
Pretty good time this morning on Get Off My Lawn on KNON Radio (7a.m. every Monday), where I talked about a bunch of stuff but especially this morning’s upcoming Dallas City Council budget briefing where a council member will be introducing the proposed new Cheryl, Tim and Ruth Law. The…
