The city council’s supposed to meet with this man — John Paul Woodley Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works), tomorrow. Rest of us ain’t invited. Yeah, sounds odd to Jim too. Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm sent a memo to the city council a couple weeks ago inviting…
Sing along: Whoever it is, we’re against them. The mayoral election has gone facial. Runoff candidate Ed “Eminent Domain” Oakley has ads running on TV portraying his opponent Tom “The Leppert of Two Evils” Leppert as a guy with a major facial twitch. Leppert hasn’t struck back on that one…
Just got back from a Tom Leppert press conference calling on Ed Oakley to clean up his act. No shit, Ed! The Ed Oakley for Mayor campaign has turned into the runaway Steam Engine of Sleaze in the last few days. His grimy team are stoking sleaze into the firebox…
Ed Oakley was all for taking a man’s land, till he realized, ya know, people aren’t gonna react well to that. Which, come to think of it, is very mayoral. Well, well, well. I am getting quite a bit of response to my column in this week’s paper version of…
Dear Mexican, Has the 1965 Immigration Act proved to be a good thing or bad thing for America, and has the recent unprecedented flood of immigrants (both legal and illegal) been an overall good thing or bad thing for America? Please fully explain your answer and include economical, cultural and…
I have to tell you this story because it’s three things: 1) an appalling example of arrogance and sleaziness at City Hall, 2) a stirring example of integrity and courage at City Hall, and 3) it’s about Laura Miller. This guy owns a business that has been in his family…
Trinity Vote late yesterday posted the ultimate in-your-face FAQ-to-FAQ rebuttal of all the stuff the road pushers over at Sink the Trinity! are saying. Sink the Trinity!, of course, is the Web site run by the folks in favor of putting a toll road through the new river park downtown…
Colleen McCain Nelson was a crackerjack City Hall reporter for The Dallas Morning News before becoming an editorial writer. She’s a very smart and accomplished pro. The tortured logic, pathetic attempts at obfuscation and ultimate dishonesty of her editorial in The News yesterday about Congresswomen Eddie Bernice Johnson served to…
Lucky me, I attended two debates on the Trinity River toll road referendum this week — one held by the Dallas Homeowners League and the other by the Belmont Neighborhood Association. I would like that on my tombstone: “Jim Schutze, 1966-2076, attended two debates on Trinity River toll road in…
Day Eight: The Dallas Morning News still won’t do the Eddie Bernice Johnson story. I called the Washington office of Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson yesterday and spoke with her chief of staff, Rod Hall. He told me that as of yesterday, Johnson still had not spoken with The Dallas Morning…
Dear Mexican, I was going through a local state college’s academic program the other day and found that they offer a bachelor’s degree in Chicano studies. My question is in what field of work would someone with a bachelor’s in Chicano studies land? Here are a few jobs I came…
Carol Reed, the political consultant, told another staff member here at the Dallas Observer that I was “a man without a country” because nobody I liked for mayor got into the runoff election. I like it. Call me the “Flying Dutchman of Bryan Parkway.” It’s because I made the horrible…
Day Five: The Dallas Morning News still refuses to cover the Eddie Bernice Johnson-Corps of Engineers story on the Trinity River toll road. Bloated, purple-faced and emitting unseemly grunting noises, Dallas’ Only Daily continues to retain the most important news story in months about the Trinity River project. The News…
We imagine this is how Wick Allison looks — and feels — whenever he comes to Unfair Park and sees that Jim’s written another Trinity River project item. Wick Allison posted an item over on FrontBurner purporting to explain how Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson was only telling a wily lie…
So this morning with trembling hands I pluck my daily Dallas Morning News up off the dewy lawn, slip it from the bag and — at the risk of showing myself to my neighbors in my Tartan plaid bathrobe and bedhead hair — ask myself the question: “Can they possibly,…
Eddie Bernice Johnson says a vote on the Trinity River toll road will not affect the Trinity River Project. So, there. Mayoral candidate Tom Leppert is about to talk his way into a truth-telling issue on the Trinity River project. He keeps insisting in speeches and appearances that a referendum…
Dear Mexican, I have no problem with immigrants. My grandparents were Dutch on one side and Irish on the other—but they came here legally, through Ellis Island. What I can’t stand are a bunch of fence-hopping, river-wading illegals telling me I owe them a free education, free health care, and…
OK, I approach a polling place in Far North Dallas on Frankford Road where I see a representative of Mayor Laura Miller out front. He appears to be fast asleep. The Laura Miller representative is sprawled loosely over a lawn chair in front of the door to a city rec…
I spent Saturday going around to polling places trying to talk to the “blockers” hired by Mayor Laura Miller and others to keep people from signing petitions for a referendum on the Trinity River toll road. I consider myself a halfway decent street reporter, so I was very frustrated that…
This morning The Dallas Morning News publishes its big front page-editorial page diatribe against having a referendum on the Trinity River toll road. It’s an exercise in truly classic Morning News Pravda Sovietski journalism. Makes me feel like I’m back at the Dallas Times Herald. So, for your edumification and…
C’mon, there’s no reason the Trinity can’t kinda, sorta look like this, right? My brother, Bill Schutze, lives in a high-rise condo tower above the San Francisco Bay. He has been reading my stuff about Angela Hunt and her doughty band of battlers who are fighting to save the Trinity…
Dallas Mayor Laura Miller has conceded to me that the toll road under design for the Trinity River project is a bad road. “The city manager and I have complained to the North Texas Tollway Authority and told them to fix it,” she said in an exchange of e-mails. “We…
