If you didn’t notice when Texas Republican Party chair Tina Benkiser stepped down last month to join Governor Rick Perry’s re-election campaign as a senior adviser, you’re forgiven. We didn’t pay it much attention either. But when the State Republican Executive Committee recently elected radical right winger Cathie Adams to…
Houston Mayor Bill White’s speech Saturday afternoon in Plano was initially as insipid as the front of the brochures handed out at the door touting his experience as a Sunday school teacher. “I’m here to work for you, and that’s about it,” White said at the Baker Bros American Deli…
Maybe you’ve heard the radio ads: Rudy Giuliani (didgeridoo), Colin Powell (bass), Terry Bradshaw (lead vocals), Zig Ziglar (banjo), Robert Schuller (keytar), Rick Belluzo (hurdy gurdy) and Tamara Lowe (bagpipes) are getting the band back together for an all-star jam session at the Fort Worth Convention Center this Monday, Monday,…
As the city council continues to discuss ethics reform in the aftermath of 23 guilty verdicts in the Dallas City Hall corruption trial, we thought it would be worthwhile to take a gander at the money that consultants and lobbyists are already required to report. Because Carol Reed’s name came…
Jim spent a few minutes yesterday trying to keep from giggling like a little girl as the Dallas City Council struggled to reform its ethics. Some council members were way for ’em; others, not so much. Which brings us to Angela Hunt’s short essay on her Web site concerning restrictions…
It doesn’t sound like a buzzword or a catch phrase — at least, not like “Obamacare” or “Socialism.” But heading into the next election season, keep an eye out for it: “educated voter.” That was the phrase being bandied about Saturday, when Unfair Park headed to Lakewood Theater for the…
That is, unless you have business with former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who, in his position as U.S. Trade Representative, will be holed up at the hotel Monday talking North American Free Trade Agreement. But, as Kirk cautioned in April, don’t count on anyone “reopening” NAFTA any time soon. So,…
On Tuesday, DMN’er Gromer Jeffers reported on one of the paper’s 423 blogs (apparently they have one named after the Portland Trail Blazers) that Dallas County Republican Party chair Jonathan Neerman (and the target of the plot to blow up Fountain Place, according to one fine journalist) will not challenge…
I know Rowdy is gone and we haven’t lifted a sports championship trophy this millennium, but it could’ve been much, much worse. As in, we almost had a sleezeball for a mayor and – more ominous – we were almost all blown to smithereens. While we were busy diagramming a…
Council member Angela Hunt has nominated Dr. Bill Peterson, a professor of biochemistry at UT Southwestern Medical Center, to replace term-limited Neil Emmons on the city plan commission. Peterson’s term as Hunt’s appointee to the city’s senior affairs commission expired Wednesday, and Hunt expects the city council to approve the…
Some time today, the Dallas City Council will approve City Manager Mary Suhm’s FY2009-2010 budget. And as a sort of preview, District 14 rep Angela Hunt last night posted a flashback to last year’s budget vote, when she warned on September 24, 2008, that “this budget is overly optimistic …..
Governor Rick Perry and U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison are sure to grab most of the headlines between now and the March 2 primary elections as they trade insults while seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination, but Kinky Friedman spices up an otherwise bland field of Democratic candidates. The author and…
It took Mayor Tom Leppert approximately two years to accomplish what no one else in Dallas could: begin building a convention center hotel. And hundreds of assorted politicos, city officials, business leaders and supporters were on hand Tuesday afternoon at the site of the Omni Dallas Convention Center Hotel to…
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison criticized Governor Rick Perry in a speech to the local Republican Jewish Coalition this afternoon, claiming Texas has the country’s highest property taxes, an education system with the worst dropout rate in the nation and a government growing faster than the federal government with more than…
So, let’s see … we’ve got those Victory Park shirts. That Leppert poster. Maybe a Schutze tee or two. Guess it’s time to open up an Unfair Park store, now that our very own Alexander Flores has taken our Friend Heywood U. Buzzoff’s suggestion and turned Angela Hunt’s “hell of…
Dunno how we missed this one, but on her blog yesterday Angela Hunt took a long, hard look at City Manager Mary Suhm’s proposed FY 2009-2010 budget and wrote at great length about her most major concern: the pile of debt that would result from bond projects proposed in the…
Don’t know how we missed word of the Whole Foods “buycott,” which kicked off Tuesday night in St. Louis and at the Preston Forest location. Read about it in this morning’s Los Angeles Times, where author Meghan Daum brings word of the National Tea Party’s response to the response to…
In this week’s paper version of Unfair Park, Schutze uses two of Mayor Tom Leppert’s top political consultants — Carol Reed and Mari Woodlief — to explain why the mayor is hardly the “Angel of Ethics” despite the new lobbying rules presented (per some council members’ requests, behind closed doors)…
Tuesday morning, Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka took note of Schutze’s column from July, in which Jim got a no-nuthin’ from the mayor and his peoples concerning his interest in running for Kay Bailey Hutchison’s could-come-open Senate seat. Wrote Burka, he’s never taken the idea seriously, as big-city mayors haven’t done…
In case you missed it, over the weekend the Texas Nationalist Movement — whose motto is “Independence. In Our Lifetime.” — held a rally in Austin demanding secession now or else goddamnit. And tomorrow is the TNM’s “National Day of Action,” during which organizers want folks to call Governor Rick…
Kinky Friedman’s been running for Texas governor ever since, oh, March, far as I can figure; that’s when he told folks at the Texas Film Hall of Fame dinner in Austin he was running as a Democrat this go-round, rather than the indie he ran as in ’06. He’s already…
With the role of consultants in the city under the microscope because of what we’ve learned in the Dallas City Hall federal corruption trial, it seemed like a good time to check in on newbie Tanya Watkins, who started Grassroots Strategies in March, seeing how she’s the wife of the…
