Where to Celebrate Christmas 2014 in Dallas
We hope you’ve achieved all your goals for the year, because it’s over and the holidays are in full swing.
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Feds: Trinity Toll Road Must Be Built to Large-Scale Version
What this means, of course, is that Michael Morris, Mary Suhm, and Craig Holcomb’s “we can always make a smaller road, and that’s what we plan to do” argument is complete garbage, and likely always has been. Because why wouldn’t it be complete garbage? If the environmental impact was going to be different for two DIFFERENT projects, you’d need two DIFFERENT approvals.
Full StoryThings To Do In Dallas This Weekend: Dec. 5—7
Oil and Cotton will be relocating its current space in Spring of 2015, which will see the innovative creative commons entity sharing real estate with Davis Street Espresso and Oak Cliff Coffee Roasters. A preview of the new space will take place this weekend.
Full StoryLaura Miller Opposes Trinity Toll Road
The ranks of former Trinity Parkway proponents who have turned against the project are growing. Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller tells the Morning News that it shouldn’t be built:
Full StoryIn an email sent to to Dallas City Council member (and toll road opponent) Scott Griggs, and in a follow-up interview with The Dallas Morning News Friday morning, Miller says she wishes the city had built the low-speed, four-lane parkway envisioned by planners responsible for the Balanced Vision Plan adopted by the Dallas City Council in the fall of 2003. But that proposal has been parked by the city’s beloved Alternative 3C, a nearly nine-mile-long, six-lane-wide, $1.5-billion high-speed toll road along the east levee of the Trinity.
Says Miller in her letter to Griggs, “if the road cannot be built as originally envisioned by those of us who fought for a landscaped, low-impact, four-lane solution, the road should not be built at all. Over these past 11 years, the lakes have gotten much smaller, and the road has become much bigger. The result is not a good one.”
Stephen Jones Has a Big Ol’ Tummy
Here’s my breakdown of the below video from last night’s game: the camera cuts to the owner’s box at Soldier Field. Stephen Jones is super nervous, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s because he’s sitting next to his dad. Maybe it’s because he can’t wait to get on the Cowboys party bus and cruise for chicks in Wrigleyville. Maybe it’s because he has stage-four restless leg syndrome. I don’t know. But his legs are bouncing at 100 mph. His tie is askew. His arms are crossed. Then he looks up to check the television broadcast on a monitor above his head, and here’s what goes through his head:
Full StoryWhy Does Desoto Need a $733,000 Mine-Resistant Vehicle? And Duncanville, and Mansfield, and Bedford, and…
The town of Edgewood sits 60 miles due east of downtown Dallas, off US-80. It’s got about 1,400 residents and a busy Dairy Queen. The total size of the town is barely one square mile. And over the past 20 years the U.S. Department of Defense has provided the town’s police department with $1,585,908 worth of rifles, trucks, trailers, barbed wire, and dozens of other items.
The transfer is known as the 1033 Program, launched in October 1995 by the Pentagon as a way to distribute weapons, vehicles, and other supplies to police departments nationwide, with little or no oversight as to their need or use. This week, for the first time, the Pentagon released the names of those departments and the supplies they received. The Marshall Project broke them down, and found that the program has given out $5 billion worth of equipment since its inception, including tactical military equipment worth more than $1.4 billion. Close to 7,500 agencies nationwide have been a part of the program.
Below you’ll find a breakdown of every North Texas municipality that received items in the past 20 years. Thirty-four different departments have received supplies, to the tune of nearly $8.6 million. (Overall, Texas has received at least $191 million in equipment; the highest total for a single department is the Harris County Sheriff Department, with a whopping $26.8 million.)
Leading Off (12/5/14)
Protesters Can’t Get on Interstate 35. For the second straight week, following the second straight week in which the non-indictment of a white police officer for the death of a black man made national headlines, demonstrators took to the streets of downtown Dallas to voice their displeasure. Five people were arrested. The protesters were demanding justice for Eric Garner, who was choked to death by a cop in Staten Island, New York, last summer. Unlike last week, they were unsuccessful in making their way onto Interstate 35E to block traffic. They are reportedly planning another demonstration tonight at 8 p.m.
Cowboys Beat the Bears. Dallas topped Chicago 41-28 at Soldier Field. The win comes a year too late to spare downtown Dallas the sight (and sound) of Tim busking.
Baylor and TCU to Make Final Bids For Playoff Spot. The Horned Frogs have the better shot of finishing ranked among the top four teams in college football and therefore to make the playoffs. That’s because they’ve got a higher ranking than the Bears at this moment and are facing a weaker opponent for their final game of the season on Saturday. However, Baylor beat TCU in the team’s head-to-head matchup earlier this year, and both teams are likely to finish with identical records, which gives the Bears a decent counterargument to the Frogs’ overall stronger strength of schedule. FiveThirtyEight says TCU has a 96.3 percent playoff chance while Baylor’s odds are only 18.2 percent.
Full StoryPeppard Project Tells How North Texas Oilmen Became Political Kingmakers
If you’re into history, and Texas history in particular, you’re apt to enjoy a new three-part, multi-media project by Alan Peppard of the Dallas Morning News. In the stories, titled “Islands of the Oil Kings,” Peppard tells how two remote islands off the coast of South Texas became “unlikely centers of power and influence” nearly eight decades ago, thanks to a couple of multimillionaire oilmen from Dallas-Fort Worth. In 1937, Peppard recalls, President Franklin Roosevelt and his 165-foot yacht, the USS Potomac, visited the San Jose and Matagorda islands, which were owned by Sid Richardson of Fort Worth and Dallas’ Clint Murchison Sr., respectively.
That first presidential visit represented nothing less than a “cosmic shuffle,” effectively putting Lyndon Johnson and Dwight Eisenhower en route to the White House, and fashioning Richardson and Murchison as “the first oilmen kingmakers,” Peppard writes. The DMN scribe also dug up some old, black-and-white home movies of FDR fishing and palling around with the Texans, then put together an online mini-documentary in three parts. Peppard says he spent a year working on the “Kings” project, traveling to the islands and dodging a “scary number of rattlesnakes, alligators, mosquitoes, and killer bees.” The first installment runs this Sunday, but it’s available online now. Part two will run Sunday Dec. 14, and part three the Sunday after that.
Full StoryThings To Do In Dallas Tonight: Dec. 4
The greatest anomaly of 2014 award has to go to Serial, that’s the profane and obsessive offshoot of This American Life. The program utilizes the Dickensian form of the radio serial, a style long thought abandoned in the early-to-mid 20th century.
Full StoryTrinity Toll Road Town Hall Backs Pro-Roaders Against the Ropes
A standing-room-only crowd of more than 500 people packed the auditorium at Rosemont Elementary in Oak Cliff yesterday evening for what was perhaps the most honest, open debate about the Trinity Toll Road ever to take place in this city.
The event, organized by State Representative Rafael Anchia, pitted the most outspoken representatives of the pro- and anti-toll road debate in a town hall-style discussion about the controversial plans to build a high-speed traffic artery through the Trinity River floodway. The crowd was overwhelmingly against the road and at times cheered for comments made by anti-road flag wavers Scott Griggs, Patrick Kennedy, and Bob Meckfessel and laughed –- and at one point hissed –- at remarks made by North Central Texas Council of Government transportation director Michael Morris. But the event was largely well-mannered, thanks in part to able moderating by the state rep, who reminded everyone at the outset that they were sitting in an elementary school.
“If we were parents, and children were acting up, we would frown on it,” Anchia said.
Full StoryLight Up the Night in Austin
Head south this New Year’s Eve and ring in 2015 at W Austin’s party of the year.
Full StoryGhosts of Dallas: Old Red Courthouse, 1913
A peek back more than 100 years.
Full StoryLeading Off (12/4/14)
Monta Ellis Hits Second Game-Winner In Two Days. This one, in Milwaukee, was a spinning, fadeaway runner going the wrong way as time expired and never looked as though it was not going right into the net. MONTA HAVE IT ALL. Mavs are starting to have kind of a special feeling, no?
Trinity Toll Road Opponents Comes Out Strong At Debate. Hosted and moderated by state Rep. Rafael Anchia, the debate at north Oak Cliff’s Rosemont Primary School featured mostly the usual players (Michael Morris, Mary Suhm, Craig Holcomb for; Patrick Kennedy, Scott Griggs, former supporter Bob Meckfessel against). But, as Brandon Formby notes, there were either very few people in the audience in favor of the road, or all of them were playing an extremely competitive edition of the quiet game. More on this later.
Josh Brent Faces Lawsuits. The Dallas Cowboys defensive lineman is being sued by the father of Jerry Brown, the teammate he killed when he drove drunk and wrecked his Mercedes. Brown’s father is also suing Privae Lounge, the now-closed club that the state found overserved Brent. The owners of Privae are also suing Brent for damages, just in case Brown’s father wins.
Full StoryWho’s Ready to Talk Some Trinity Toll Road?
What would we do in Dallas if we didn’t have the Trinity Toll Road to talk about? The “zombie road,” which is back from the dead and suddenly, once again, topic du jour in our fair burg will get a roll-em-out, sock-em, rock-em, run-em-dry, spitfire, conversational whooping this evening at the Charles Semos Campus of Rosemont Elementary in Oak Cliff. The public event in Scott Griggs’ council district promises to be the debate that the Stemmons Corridor Business Association luncheon wasn’t. In the pro-road corner: Michael Morris, director of transportation for the North Central Texas Council of Governments; Mary Suhm, former city manager of the city of Dallas; and Craig Holcomb, former city councilman and current executive director of the Trinity Commons Foundation. In the no-road corner, Griggs, urban planner and designer and StreetSmart‘s Patrick Kennedy, and architect and Trinity Trust member Bob Meckfessel. I’m hoping State Representative Rafael Anchia, who is hosting the event, wears a referee uniform. A drop down mic would be fun. Double Dare-style post-Q&A round would be ideal.
If you want to brush up on your Toll Road facts, check out Brendon Formby’s run down of the ten things to know about the zombie road. If you’re looking for some pregame analysis, check out Schutze’s thoughts on why this event is unlike anything that happened in the lead up to the 2007 referendum. Here’s some more info about tonight’s event.
Full StorySAGA Pod / Learning Curve 12.03.14 — Mayor Mike, the Sequel
Jim Schutze of the Dallas Observer (and his dogs) join me in Jim’s living room to discuss Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings’ announcement that he will run for re-election. Do his opponents have a chance? What has the mayor accomplished? How can he help DISD reform? When will Eric pay Rudy Bush of the DMN the $20 he now owes him? Will the tollway be built? Why is DISD so important to this election? Why can’t Jim ever talk directly into a microphone? And why does everyone hate Eric so much? We answer-ish all these questions and more in […]
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