OPINION

Embattled Collin County Judge Keith Self issued an e-mail to supporters in response to allegations from the John Muns campaign. Here's what he said:

"Are these gutter attacks the "Collin County values" that my opponent says that he will bring to the county? No thank you. These are the same attacks that the same consulting firm made against Commissioner Joe Jaynes two years ago. I want to hear from John Muns - are you hidng behind an out-of-control consulting company or are these gutter attacks your values? I want to know."

We talked to Mr. Self on a regular basis during the 2008 campaign, and of all Corbett's supporters and advisors, his strategic direction was by far the most aggressive.

It's not what first-term Self is for that causes concern about his time in office. Rather, it's what he's been against and how he pursues his agenda. Self doesn't shy away from butting heads with people he disagrees with and, at times, seems to go out of his way for a collision. ... With GOP voters choosing between two fiscally conservative Republicans, they should go with Muns, a leader with experience building coalitions.

In his column in Sunday's New York Times, Tom Friedman quotes an interesting news bulletin from a news station from Tracy, California:

Tracy residents will now have to pay every time they call 911 for a medical emergency. But there are a couple of options. Residents can pay a $48 voluntary fee for the year, which allows them to call 911 as many times as necessary. Or there's the option of not signing up for the annual fee. Instead they will be charged $300 if they make a call for help.

Friedman goes on to say we are entering the "lean years."

Sounds to me more like the U.S. is entering "the European years." We are just becoming more like the Old World, where there is a fee for everything. Aside from health care and education, you pay for everything in Europe. Want ketchup with that burger? How about a glass of water? Then you've got to fork over some cash. Heck, European restaurants don't even give you free bread sticks.

I have long (half-jokingly) maintained that what makes America great is that restaurants have bottomless bowls of tortilla chips. A free and unlimited supply of fried chips - God bless America indeed! It symbolizes America's customer service (keep the customer happy by keeping the salsa and chips comin') and our wealth (a bankrupt restaurant can't afford to give out free chips).

But I fear the U.S. is slowly sliding toward becoming more European. America is showing signs that it is adopting things that used to be European trademarks: can't do culture, high unemployment, higher prices, people are poorer, etc.

The good news is that if Americans would snap out of their current funk we could turn this around. Let's have a frank conversation about slashing spending (kudos to President Obama for establishing the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform). Let's stop wallowing around having a pity party mourning America's "decline." Let's get the populists and protectionists to put a sock in it. If we act now, we might not only pull out of the "lean years," we might also save our right to free tortilla chips.

I'm really intrigued by the lawsuit case filed against R. Allen Stanford, Texas' version of Bernie Madoff.

The suit seeks to recover more than $1.6 million that Stanford and a top company officer donated to various Democratic and Republican congressional and senatorial committees. And according to legal experts the committees would have to show that Stanford received something in return.

This isn't a new strategy, but I wonder why the committees didn't just return the dollars and wash their hands of Stanford. The committees aren't going to go broke, but a $1 million seems like a small price for a political committee to "resolve" a sticky political mess.

That said, the suit raises an interesting question: How do we know that everything Stanford did was part of a Ponzi scheme, and is it really fair to demand that a church or another organization that unwittingly receives "dirty money" return it. Believe me, I'm not saying that the political parties are naive -- to the contrary. I'm jut wondering where the line are drawn.

According the story, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which Congressman.Pete Sessions, chairs, has no plans to return the money.

We ran a good op-ed today from Andrea Weinstein and Steve Gutow about a new civility pact that the Jewish Council on Public Affairs is promoting. Both Weinstein and Gutow are Dallas natives who are active JCPA leaders, and their aim is to take this new code of civility and work it into the fabric of schools, worksites and congregations.

Along these lines, I was privileged to moderate a panel yesterday at the JCPA annual meeting that Rabbi Gutow appeared on with the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, the general secretary of the National Council of Churches. The session was devoted to bridging the divide between the Jewish and Protestant worlds, which have been significant at times.

I was struck by both leaders' sincerity and interest in trying to hear each other out on the issue of Israel. Some mainline Protestant churches have taken up the cause of Palestinian Christians more than the cause of Israel, and that has caused some tension.

What I liked about Gutow and Kinnamon's dialogue is that they are very candid about each other's point of views. They didn't flinch about their disagreements, which is the only way we ever are going to have a civil dialogue.

One of the first things I read when I signed on this morning was this comment from JK on my post from yesterday:

Sharon asks "what are they proposing to help people like those quoted in the NYT story?" Here's an idea -- "Nothing ... It's interesting that Liberals believe people should be "put to work". I was raised to "find a job".

Full disclosure: I've excerpted from his comment, but it's this part of the sentiment that I find most troubling. And I'm focusing on it because I'm thinking about a friend of mine ...

She's in her early 50s, she's college-educated in the field in which she's worked her entire life, she was laid off due to downsizing, she's kept a good attitude and done everything possible over the past 18 months or so to find another job -- paid for extensive training to make her skills tippy-top marketable, pounded the pavement, networked and taken any odd job available to make ends meet. She's single, she lives in a small apartment and she's now siphoning off her small retirement nest egg to pay her monthly bills.

1. EXONEREES - We make the most persuasive argument possible about why exonerees deserve to be "made whole" regarding the money paid to them by the state for being wrongfully convicted. It's important that we confirm that the legislation passed last year by lawmakers significantly upping the rate of recompense was intended to get all the money allotted to each exoneree and not be shared with government in the form of taxes. If that's the case, then it seems to us the best solution is a federal one and we're researching to determine which of these two possible federal resolutions makes most sense: Modify the definition of the existing tax exemption for awards of "pain and suffering" to make explicit that somebody wrongly convicted and sent to prison qualifies for the pain-and-suffering exemption OR create another exemption specifically aimed at exonerees. We'll note in the editorial that if neither of these routes works, there are a couple of possible state solutions. Regardless of all of the nuance, the bottom line is that this is an important matter that must be addressed. Very few people qualify for this money but those that do have been egregiously harmed and therefore it's imperative that a fix become a top priority - especially of our Dallas County congressional delegation, since this county leads the nation in exonerations. Tod writing on behalf of the board.

2. TRANSIT - We offer qualified praise for Straus in his opening the door to regional solutions to the state's rail conundrum and we outline why moving forward aggressively on the Cotton Belt's east-west rail line through DFW Airport is important to this region. Rodger writing on behalf of the board.

What do you think? Join the debate in comments below.

Which of the following revenue sources has grown the most since Rick Perry became governor?

A. Sales tax, driven by a strong economy.
B. Natural gas production tax revenue, driven by a strong economy and the Barnett Shale discovery.
C. Federal income.

The answer is C, though you'd never know it from listening to the rhetoric from the governor. Rick Perry is trying hard to capture the anti-Washington mood of voters, and he likes to argue that he is turning away federal dollars because, by golly, we Texans are independent and can solve our own problems. Problem is, the numbers just don't support that assertion.

Compare the 2009 revenue for the state of Texas with the 2000 revenue, and you'll see something you might not expect from a state that is led by someone who is sypathetic to secessionists. Federal income has grown 108.53 percent since 2000, more than double the revenue growth of taxes (50 percent). That means the Texas miracle is producing half as much revenue growth as reliance on federal dollars. As a portion of the state's total revenue, taxes actually decreased by 6 percentage points while federal dollars increased by 7 percentage points.

That means Texas relies more on federal dollars and less on its own taxes than it did when Perry took office. Put another way: Texas is less independent than it was when the governor took office, not more.

To be fair, this isn't all his doing. A lot of it is surely due to rising entitlement program costs, esepcially in health care. He cannot control a lot of what comes to the state through federal income, but he sure likes to create the impression that he can -- and that he has. He ignores the federal dollars he has accepted, and he seems proud of denying dollars for Texas teachers and classrooms based on some sort of principle that Washington is bad.

Take a look at the numbers yourself (source: the link above, the Window on State Govenment Web site produced by the state comptroller). You'll see that what Rick Perry says just doesn't add up. ...

I'm skeptical that we need a new jobs bill, but I do love that Scott Brown voted yesterday to let the measure go to the Senate floor. If we're ever going to get past reflexive partisanship, legislators are going to have to buck their parties. Brown, Massachusetts' new Republican senator, did that on his first really big vote. He went with Democrats and a few other Republicans to stop a filibuster of the bill.

As I said, I'm skeptical of this bill, mainly because we have spent only about 30 percent of last year's stimulus. Why don't we get that into place before deciding whether we need another stimulus?

But the bill is not really the big point in play here. It's the willingness of a freshman legislator to say no to his party right out of the box. Brown was probably under intense pressure not to cast that vote, but he did. That took courage and is a triumph for independent leadership.

Now, when are we going to see more of that from Democratic legislators? Sen. Ben Nelson' s showing some by opposing the jobs bill. Sen. Evan Bayh showed some in pressing his party to rethink its health care approach before he decided to resign. And Blanche Lincoln, another Democratic senator, shows some from time to time. But when are we going to see more Democratic moderates make Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi squirm?

That's one way we will know when predictable partisanship is slowing down. Scott Brown sure made his leaders squirm. I'm proud of him.

For years, I have followed efforts to build a shared arts hall in Collin County. I was disappointed when the McKinney bond election years ago failed at the polls. That left only three cities to participate. Really, the effort never seemed to get on track, though not anyone's fault. It just always seemed that the cities needed a fourth major partner.

Well, they got one last week. The Recession officially became the fourth "owner" of this arts hall, at least Phase 1. It seems that the $19 million, McKinney-shaped hole in the budget has been filled by lower estimates courtesy of a terrible economic downturn. Who'd a thunk it?

That leaves the Arts of Collin County just a few million dollars short of its target to begin building. Arts hall in the midst of a terrible economy, you say? Doesn't that seem wasteful?

No! A thousand times, no. More kids participate in fine arts programs than athletics in Collin County, and building now -- or soon -- will create a legacy that will last through dozens of economic downturns in the future.

Read the whole press release below:

I don't know if readers feel this way, but I often have the sense of playing catchup in terms of what's going on in Washington. The Big Story is replaced by the next Big Story replaced by the next Big Story.

Last week, the Big Story (interesting that the initials for that would be the BS) was the stimulus package's one-year anniversary. Now everyone's rushed on to create -- and report -- sound bites leading up to the health care summit.

But before I move on, I hope to engage my colleagues on what the stimulus did and didn't do.

Amid all the "stimulus didn't create a single job" criticism last week, a number of reports did note that most economic analysts continue to agree that the stimulus preserved or created 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs and is expected, ultimately, to add a total of roughly 2.5 million (some sources say 3.5 million) by the time the spending ultimately plays out. But, grimly, unemployment is still a crisis and, the NYT reported today on some reasons why that stubborn number likely will remain high and what that means for our country:

We're working on editorials now for tomorrow's page having to do with how Texas can best deal with its looming budget deficit and what seem to be the Obama administration's stepped up emphasis on the virtues of nuclear energy.

(As an aside, a key essay in yesterday's Points section provides a great back drop for our editorial regarding nuclear energy. I'd link to it here, but Foreign Policy magazine doesn't allow us to do so. Check out the essay in the pulp product, back of the Points section: It's worth the effort.)

Read on in the extended section for more detail about these two editorials and which Editorial Board member is crafting each. And please use the comments section to share your thoughts.....

Quite a flurry of print activity this weekend on our Dallas County constables, boosted by the confluence of the Danny Defenbaugh's report release early in the week and early voting beginning the next day.

Kevin Krause and Ed Timms had the Page One lead Sunday with a look at County Judge Jim Foster's quest to oust Constable Jaime Cortes through a fairly rare civil removal process. The same day, Gromer Jeffers had the Metro cover lead with a look at how the constable saga is affecting two Democratic primaries, county judge (with Foster running for re-election) and county commissioner Precinct 4 (with Elba Garcia, ironically the wife of Cortes' lawyer, the front-runner).

We followed with an editorial in today's paper taking District Attorney Craig Watkins to task for, in effect, dragging his feet on a criminal investigation that forced the Foster-led commissioners' civil investigation, which led to the Defenbaugh report, which can yield no criminal charges before voters determine Cortes' fate in the primary, which is the real election since the Republicans have no candidate.

That's a lot of words to plow through, but taken collectively, they give you a fairly complete picture of the political mess this has become.

I'm still sorting, but here's a snapshot of today's e-mail:

Lots of election letters, both for and against the candidates recommended on our Sunday pages. Look for these on our editorial and community opinions pages. And yes, there are two separate elections, to answer one writer, and you have to choose to vote.

Health care -- a few, both for and against.

Several letters on the pilot who crashed into the IRS offices in Austin. Most of them decried the act. Several criticized the linkage of the Austin case with the Tea Party movement.

Stephanie Mueller's column on the property tax drew letters on both sides.

The candidates for governor have been less than forthcoming about how they would correct Texas' budget shortfall next year. Perhaps they are lacking in details because the state can't get out of its $10 billion to $15 billion budget hole without real pain. As the list of cuts that rolled out of state agencies last week showed, we can't get there without reducing spending on colleges, hospitals, prisons and schools.

I don't dispute the need for those cuts, which total about $2.1 billion. Maybe some items on that list don't belong there, but by and large those reductions are the type we must endure. The Legislative Budget Board, which consists of the governor, lieutenant governor, speaker and other members, would be right to approve those they can constitutionally before the 2011 session begins. That way, we can get on with reducing the deficit.

But those cuts aren't nearly enough to balance the budget. We must find savings elsewhere. As interim committees work on this problem, they should pursue this strategy:

We asked our Sounding Off list members:

What down-ballot race in the March 2 primaries makes you want to get to the polls?

If the spirit moves you, feel free to respond to this question in the comments section here. Or, if you'd like to join the Sounding Off print respondents, click this link to send your full contact information to communityopinions@dallasnews.com.

Also, check out past Sounding Off questions.

For some of the responses to this week's question, keep reading ...

State lawmakers have been scrambling for ways to protect the buying power of the fuel tax even as cars get more efficient and require less gas. The concept under discussion in Austin has been to index the tax so it would automatically rise with inflation or the cost of construction.

But that's looking to be old school even before Austin gets seriously close to acting.

In Virginia, lawmakers are already looking at a newer idea of indexing the gas to the average fuel efficiency of the cars on the road. That's yet another way to make sure that car owners produce a steady amount of revenue and keep up their per-mile tax support for roadways.

What gas tax is the best gas tax? The one we have or something new? Read more and comment on the Dallas Transportation blog.

First and most important among our weekend lineup -- Sunday inside the Points section you will find an expanded Editorial Page that wraps up every single race we've made a recommendation in for the March 2 primaries.

Tomorrow we're writing off what must have been terrifying for people working in that Austin IRS building -- the suicide pilot. We write: Some times crazy people do crazy things. Those isolated, unexpected outbursts of violence are the ones that are the most difficult to stop and difficult to fathom. We're all just left searching for answers that just aren't there. But here's one message we can take away from the suicide pilot in Austin: please don't let anyone make him a hero. Tod writing on behalf of the board.

Monday we comment on the aftermath of the recent report about Constable Cortes: If nothing else, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins now has a 92-page bound document that could provide fascinating bedtime reading. Nominally, it's the first report from Danny Defenbaugh, a former FBI special agent, on transgressions by Precinct 5 Constable Jaime Cortes.In reality, it's a road map. As Watkins is quick to point out, if anyone is going to investigate allegations that county constables broke the law, it's going to be him and his office. By statute, that's his call, and he won't be pushed into anything by any county commissioners or outside critics. No special prosecutors or Attorney General's Office busybodies need apply. So get to work, Mr. DA. Mike writing on behalf of the board.

Also Monday we revisit Gov. Perry's decision to sue the EPA and explain why this may be good politics but bad policy -- and bad in many, many ways for Texas. There's no head room here, folks. This tactic has been tried and found not to be true. There are climate change issues at play here and Texas is the leading producer....don't fall for the false choice.... It's not a question of clean air and no jobs. Clean air brings different jobs. Jim writing on behalf of the board.

Just got an e-mail with this as a headline. It was just so good. I had to pass it along.

I have a partial answer to the question in the language of golf: He's no longer behind a tree, but he is still in difficult high grass. But let's face, this appearance is the first public phase of a media/image re-building strategy. Tiger apologized to his wife, sponsors, charities and then set some real boundaries for tabloid intrusion into the day-to-day activities. It's smart and also very appropriate. It's a step on the road back assuming that there aren't other secrets, such as performance enhancing drugs, which he directly denied using.

In the end, the sponsors and charities will want proof that they're not tied to a person who has no hope of regaining credibility. The immediate public reaction to Tiger's appearance, which I expect will be slightly more positive than negative, will be an early gauge of the public's temperature and capacity to move on. Iif he stays away for a few more months passing up the opportunity to appear in a his cherished "majors," and the returns as someone who is sincerely making progress, I think Tiger will rehab enough of his public image to at least be relevant off of the golf course.

We probably won't know for years whether Tiger's rehab work will pay off, but I was impressed with his statement today. He doesn't strike me as a guy who does humility or self-revelation well, so it wouldn't be natural for him to get up in public and acknowledge his mistakes. Cynics will say he's just doing it to get his money back from sponsors. Maybe so, but he came across as a guy who's trying to own his misdeeds. I see nothing wrong with that.

I love that the Golf Writers Association of America is boycotting the Tiger Woods show that is coming up in just a few minutes. I am willing to root for Tiger again. So that's not my issue. But I like that this group is sending him a message that he doesn't get to dictate how his return to the spotlight will go.

The basid issue here is hubris. Tiger thought he could do anything he wanted, and judging from the way this press conference is being handled, that major character trait of his seems completely unchanged. Do I expect him to always be cocky and arrogant, aloof and robotic? Sure. But he can't expect his fans and the press to simply play by his rules anymore. His actions ended the portion of his life where he was given a free pass. The loss of his marriage and a strained relationship with his children for life is his biggest punishment, but this is part of the package, too.

When you can't get an actual human to endorse your candidacy, the next best thing is to get Simone to do it. Remember Simone, from the Al Pacino movie? She's a virtual robot who will pretty much say anything you type into her mouth. So Jerry Ray Hall, who is seeking to replace Rep. Ralph Hall in District 4 using an odd truth-be-damned campaign strategy, went to oddcast.com and, voila! Instant endorsement.

It's weird beyond weird. I think even the Tea Party that he claims to represent would be appalled if they were organized enough to know that he's out there claiming to represent them.

I tried to embed Hall's video here, but it doesn't embed properly. So go to Jerry Hall's campaign Web site and enjoy the new world of virtual endorsements, which meshes nicely with Hall's "virtual truth" description of his academic, business and charitable accomplishments.

(By the way, oddcast.com also allows you to be endorsed by that little baby boy who appears on those E-Trade commercials. Or you can have Flo from Progressive Insurance endorse you. I think you can even get someone from Avatar to endorse you from an entirely different planet. The sky galaxy's the limit! Go Jerry!

He also apparently believes in virtual identities and credentials (law degree, doctorate). Hall wrote me two emails this week under his own name, using his jerryhallforcongress.org email address. But the IP address on the email was exactly the same as a posting we received earlier this week from a commenter named "Bill" who used the fictitious email address texdt@gmail.com.

Interest rates are still incredibly low so the Fed's decision to increase interest rates isn't a complete surprise. They had to do something to avoid re-inflating the cheap money bubble any longer than necessary.

Besides, an uptick in interest rates now is hardly going to deter economic recovery. The bigger economic issue is the lack of certainty on taxes, healthcare reform, energy and financial regulation. I'm sure I missed listing another ball dangling in the air, but you get the picture. Businesses don't know what they' ll be facing and therefore are doing less, rather than more. especially on the jobs creation front.

As a student of the Great Depression, Fed chief Ben Bernanke is making the calculated risk that it is time to slowly readjust interest rates, which went real low as an emergency measure. I'm guessing the other side of the wager is that he wants to stop the "emergency" mindset and thinks moderately higher rates will not be factor as stimulus dollars flow through the economy. Builders might not like it, but let's face it, there is excess capacity in real estate markets.

The surest sign of a political campaign in trouble -- other than a candidate regularly placing his foot in his mouth -- is the defection of so-called professional staffers.

The Shami campaign, such as it is (or was), has hit that rut.. Today's story notes the departure of several staffers over "strategic differences."

In other words, too many voices, no unifying theme or idea, and a candidate who strikes me as someone who has been comfortable pursuing his way in life without taking much advice from anyone. Is a campaign meltdown the inevitable outcome when an extremely successful self-made executive attempts to transition from the autocratic style of a company chairman who can operate in his comfort zone to a political candidate who must deal with issues that he has not thought about, let alone thought through.

In some ways, that was the curse of the Perot presidential run, but at least he had ideas and a clear purpose to his run. I haven't found any of that with Shami, and I think that is yet another in growing list of reasons Shami's campaign is in shambles. Even the Tony Sanchez campaign in 2002 had a clearer reason for being than Shami's and I might even rank Clayton Williams' ugly, insulting campaign ahead of Shami..Yikes.

I went to Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Peter's here in Munich last night. And like a good German, I showed up right on time for the service. I was shocked to find standing room only - the place was packed.

It was a reminder that while Europe as a whole may be fairly Godless, there is a European Bible Belt that runs right through Bavaria and other Catholic areas, like Poland. While I wouldn't say that people are as fervent in their beliefs as they are in the American Bible Belt, religion still has a big influence on the culture here.

All over Bavaria crucifixes hang in restaurants, bars and stores. Instead of saying "Guten Tag," folks here say "Grüss Gott," which translates roughly as "greetings from God."

Then, just like in the American Bible Belt, sometimes religion gets twisted, resulting in inane rules and regs. For instance, on Halloween Bavaria has a Tanzverbot, meaning that dancing after midnight (which is when All Saints Day officially begins) is strictly verboten. So all the clubs and bars have to close early.

Sadly, church attendance is on the decline here (it's dropping much faster than in the U.S.). And church life in Bavaria - or anywhere for that matter - can't rival the vibrancy of Dallas' religious community.

However, yesterday's service was a pleasant reminder that not all of Europe's cathedrals are empty.

President Obama's selected two really good people to head his new debt-reduction commission: former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson and former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles.

Simpson comes out of the era when parties duked it out but still put together compromises, like the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill he passed. That was one controversial bill, but he worked it through with Reagan's support.

Bowles comes out of the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. He is a business guy more than a politician, which sometimes cost him as chief of staff. But he understands how deficits drive up interest rates and threaten the economy's growth.

Great picks by Obama. The next step is naming more members to the panel. Here are two suggestions: Former Texas Democratic Rep. Charles Stenholm and former comptroller general David Walker. Both are not shy about promoting reforms that could get us out of this hole.