The North Texas Tollway Authority has had trouble in recent years of actually making drivers pay to use its roads. Hence the tens of millions of dollars in unpaid tolls and fees it says it’s owed, hence its infamous list of the most egregious offenders, hence the lawsuits it began…
This past legislative session, billionaire Elon Musk’s push for a new law allowing electric-car maker Tesla Motors to bypass car dealers and sell directly to consumers crashed and burned. Which wasn’t a surprise. The state’s car dealers have a long, proud history of plying legislators with campaign cash and gifts…
My personal traffic-signal nemesis is where Garland Road and Gaston Avenue meet at the southern tip of White Rock Lake. Woe to the southbound driver who, having hit the intersection at 6:30 p.m., and having just learned that the squirming 4-year-old in the back seat has to go potty RIGHT…
Dallas will never be able to completely escape blame for killing JFK. There’s simply too much documentation of how reactionary hate-mongering gripped the city. Esquire’s Charlie Pierce dredged up one of those documents yesterday, a leaflet distributed in the streets of Dallas on the day of the assassination. Except that…
The way Railroad Commission Chairman and Texas Attorney General candidate Barry Smitherman tells it, the aim of his 10 years of public service was not brazen tub-thumping for the industry he regulates in order to shore up deep-pocketed benefactors for his political aspirations. It’s only ever been about readying Texas…
Barry Smitherman recently leapt off the political springboard that is the Texas Railroad Commission and dove into the attorney general’s race. Heretofore, he has focused his campaign primarily on extolling the virtues of hydraulic fracturing, firearms and suing the Obama administration. Yet Smitherman isn’t just another Greg Abbott wannabe mindlessly…
Last we heard from Craig James, he was groveling for cash to pay off the debt racked up during his ill-conceived U.S. Senate campaign and denying that he killed five hookers. That was more than a year ago. Then, on Friday, Fox Sports Southwest reminded the world of James’ existence…
It’s been eight months since the Dallas City Council passed new rules forcing drivers to be nice to cyclists. It’s been six months since the short-lived, ill-conceived public education campaign. It’s been almost a year since some asshole shot up me and my bike with paintballs. So, what has become…
State Senator Wendy Davis’ epic abortion filibuster in June inspired many things: a spike in pink Mizuno sales; imaginary jars of human excrement; an unfamiliar sense of accomplishment among Texas Democrats. And now, a video game. The New York Daily News brings us the story of “Choice: Texas,” which its…
Hispanics have boycotted Farmers Branch before. In 2006, as the city was first considering a crackdown on illegal immigrants, including an instantaneously infamous rental ban, immigrant rights activists called for supporters to shop and conduct business elsewhere. It didn’t work. Tim O’Hare, the city councilman who proposed the crackdown to…
After nearly seven years, Trinity East has its answer. It all began when the Fort Worth independent answered a call put out by a cash-strapped city for bids to sink natural gas wells into the far eastern frontier of the Barnett Shale — unproven territory few operators had ventured into…
More than 100 people filed into Dallas City Hall this morning to speak on the city’s proposal to regulate Uber out of existence. The expected showdown, however, will have to wait after the City Council unanimously approved an investigation into how the proposed rules were developed and wound up on…
On any given day, the Dallas Police Department’s vice control unit is combing the city’s streets in search of prostitutes and johns, illegal gambling parlors and people having sex in parks, restrooms, and bars. Recently, they’ve shifted their focus to a less traditional target: drivers for Uber. See also: Dallas…
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott should have learned by now that running for governor requires far more caution and cunning than suing the federal government. He’s already stumbled twice since mid-August, first when he took the mind-melting step of joining forces with the Obama administration in a lawsuit to block…
The local Twitterverse is currently exploding with people explaining why Dallas needs Uber and why City Hall shouldn’t shut it down: Because cabs in Dallas suck; because it increases competition; because you can’t stop progress. The city, meanwhile, says everyone is overreacting. The proposed ordinance, which would require a 30-minute…
Environmental activists, in spite of the lobbying of the energy industry and some sleight of hand by city staff, appear to be winning the fracking debate. The City Plan Commission has twice denied Trinity East Energy permits to drill on city parkland it leased for $19 million. Last week, it…
The city of Dallas doesn’t buy Uber’s oft-repeated claim that it’s simply a technology company. Its lawyers made this perfectly clear to the company 10 months ago, when they warned the California-based purveyor of private driver apps to get taxi permits or shut down. Uber has done neither of those…
Tuffy Gessling didn’t mean to offend anyone when he put on an Obama mask and did his thing as a rodeo clown at the Missouri State Fair. Yet enough people mistook Gessling’s good intentions for some sort of race-baiting minstrel show that he wound up getting banned for life from…
Before the Dallas Plan Commission got to what is almost certainly the most controversial matter it has ever deliberated on — whether and how the city should drill for natural gas — it spent more than an hour on the positioning of a wooden fence and a gazebo in relation…
A young boy buys a bag of potato chips. He’s barely out of the local bodega when he takes his first bite, thoughtlessly tossing aside the plastic bag it came in. Meanwhile, in an alleyway nearby, two more of the polyethylene sacks dislodge themselves as a garbage truck empties the…
During his decade in the Texas House, Republican Dan Branch has never been one to demagogue on social issues, always more focused more on fiscal and other matters that lined up better with the values of his Park Cities constituency. Now that he’s waded into the attorney general’s race, however,…
Senator Ted Cruz no doubt hoped the release of his birth certificate to The Dallas Morning News would settle the question of whether he is a “natural born” American citizen and thus eligible to run for president. Instead, the revelation that Cruz is a dual Canadian-American citizen — which, given…
