Happy Thanksgiving
Now get off the computer and go spend some time with your family.
We’ll be right back after this holiday weekend. Unless I get bored or a wild hair.
Free Mark Cuban, Part Troix
The appearance of bias is getting stronger — read the angry emails between Mark Cuban and the SEC’s Jeffrey Norris back when Cuban was considering distributing “Loose Change”.
Meanwhile, the case against Cuban appears to be getting weaker.
In Print: My Thanksgiving Column
I didn’t even realize it, but my column wherein I try to explain Thanksgiving to my 5-year-old ran in Sunday’s Dallas Morning News.
Let me know what you think, dear readers.
Monday Roundup: DISD in a Nutshell, Bush’s Point Man on Corporate Welfare
- Poor management? Check. Sloppy book-keeping? Check. Poor leadership at most every level? Big check. Kent Fischer pretty much covers everything you wanted to know about what created the financial crisis Dallas ISD is facing. Another problem? Good intentions, poor follow-through.
- If you’ve been responsible with your home-buying decisions and conscientious about paying your mortgage, apparently you’re a sucker. And you’re going to bailing out people have been neither. Happy bailout.
- Here’s your go-to guy for corporate welfare.
Free Mark Cuban, Part Deux
William Norm Grigg has an exceptionally researched and far-reaching piece on how Mark Cuban is getting hosed by the SEC and the feds.
Dallas Taxpayers: Dig Deep, Pony Up, and then BOHICA
Sam Merten explains why Dallas taxpayers are going to be boned when the $550 million convention center hotel goes tango uniform. Per Councilmember Angela Hunt:
It seems to me that the mayor needs to be honest with taxpayers and let them know that if this hotel gets in trouble, taxes will go up if we have to dip into the general fund to pay off the debt because the reserve doesn’t protect us.
Friday Roundup: Beggars Want to Be Choosers, DISD Funding & A Friday Feelgood
- So if you’re getting affordable housing subsidized by taxpayers, who are you to complain about where it is? What, exactly, is wrong with locating all the housing for low income people in one general area? Why should you get to demand subsidized housing in a nicer neighborhood that someone else worked hard to move to? Look, it’s not a politically correct fact, but the reality is low income neighborhoods have higher crime rates. That’s not to say low income earners are more criminally motivated — it’s just there are more criminally motivated people in the low income demographic. So centralizing low income housing seems smart on two levels. “The group has argued that most of the local apartment complexes financed with housing tax credits are in urban areas with high concentrations of poverty, crime and blight.” Chicken or the egg?
- DPD gets new uniforms with embroidered badges and plastic buttons. Good in terms of dry cleaning cost savings, but the worry is with the number of cases of people impersonating police to stage robberies, home invasions, and roadside rapes — will this complicate things?
- Given its well-documented troubles, why is DISD helping fund million-dollar parks?
- Dear Leader apparently has a litmus test for appointees that baffles even his supporters, and is a window into his soul on the issue of Second Amendment rights.
- Why am I a shameless cheerleader for free enterprise and big business? That’s why.
Thursday Roundup: Green Fearmongers, MADD’s Jihad & More
- I wrote a column a few months back in the Dallas Morning News on how pols and special interests use fear to push their agendas. Odd culprit of the day: environmentalists who want water companies to stop using chlorine gas to purify drinking water. “Millions of people remain unnecessarily vulnerable to toxic terrorism,” said Reece Rushing, the center’s director of regulatory and information policy.
- My friend and fellow Dallas writer Jacob Sullum discusses some of the ominous tendencies of the president-elect’s pick for attorney general. Meet the new boss…
- The Texas Lege is just months away, and the crusaders at MADD are gearing up. They want sobriety check points and mandatory ignition interlocks for anyone convicted of a DWI. What’s the problem with that? Cue my attorney Robert Guest, who has the lowdown.
- Here’s your peak into the world of the full-time, employed journalist.
Wednesday Roundup: Ripped Scrotums, Cats and Bats, Star Trek Lives & More
- In what possible universe is getting 60 stitches to the scrotum not, in fact, “permanent damage”?
- In English: cat, bat; in French, chat, Rambo. It really is quite obvious, don’t you know?
- I pretty much thought alarm systems are standard issue these days. Apparently not. Who doesn’t have one already? Why wouldn’t you?
- And now a special treat for my fellow geeks:
Free Mark Cuban
That’s the takeaway from William Norm Grigg this morning, and he makes several key points:
- Cubes treated the SEC like he does lazy NBA officials, and this looks like retaliation.
- The evidence appears to be hearsay.
- Cuban ticks off Bill O’Reilly, which is a virtue itself.
- How can any organization that bans short-selling be taken seriously?