Re: Tax Cuts

Wick, gotta disagree. The problem isn’t the tax cuts and the solution isn’t higher taxes. If we’re going into a recession economy, the last thing we need is more taxes slowing things down further. We’re taxed plenty enough, good and hard. The problem is the spending. And the Republicans are worse than the Democrats. Bush II has expanded government faster than both FDR and LBJ. Heck, guess which party has the three biggest earmark snouts, according to Citizens Against Government Waste? Yep, the GOP.

We’re paying enough in taxes. Even God doesn’t ask for the rate of tithing the federal leviathan demands. What we have to change (end) is the spending — and that means everything from health care and welfare (individual and corporate) largess to maintaining military forces around the globe.

I think the solution lies in something Milton Friedman once said.

The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.

Tax Cuts: The New Religion

The sainted Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison may have a point in her News op-ed today about not eliminating the Bush tax cuts during a recession. However, she quickly lowers herself into the same tired — and easily discredited — mumbo-jumbo that comes directly from the Republican Nat’l Committee, circa 1985. First, dear Kay, “tax-and-spend” is preferable to the borrow-and-spend philosophy of the current GOP administration, which has created the highest deficits and the largest increases to the national debt in our history. Second, if the Bush tax cuts are responsible for the economy’s job creation, why did the Clinton-era tax increases result in even more jobs? Third, besides opposing a redesign of the Bush tax cuts, what exactly do you, as a United States Senator, propose to do to restore fiscal sanity to a federal government whose spending has run amok during your last seven years in office?

Really, this has gotten to be too much. This is a party — my GOP — that wouldn’t even raise taxes to pay for a war. It is locked in an ideological mind-set whose chief attribute is recklessness. It stands against everything that conservatism once stood for: pragmatism, prudence, and the idea of safeguarding our country’s patrimony to future generations. (And, beloved Senator, what have you done today about Medicare and Social Security, besides, of course, voting to expand its costs?)

Re: Magazine Welcomes New Managing Editor

Glad to be here, thanks for the welcome.  I expect you all to be nice for the next two days, then I know all bets are off. (Side note: Bob Schieffer has the softest hands of any man I’ve met.)

“The Carsonist(s)” Captured by Dallas Police … Then Another Car is Set on Fire

Dallas Police arrested four people over the weekend in connection with the string of car fires in South Dallas. (They didn’t realize the car they doused in gasoline was parked directly in front of an unmarked DPD vehicle.) Awesome, right? Except that another fire happened Monday morning. That makes, I believe, 27 such fires. And still, no one has bothered to target my vehicle. Someone put it out of its misery.

Vandals Savagely Attack Deep Ellum Residence

Gregg Fussell and Gianna Madrini have themselves a cool compound in Deep Ellum. Very secret garden. The picture you see here is of their curved wall that faces Main Street, site of the just-concluded Deep Ellum Arts Festival. At various points along the street, the festival organizers had left small buckets of chalk for kiddos (and adults) to leave their mark underfoot. My own personal kiddos did some good work at the corner of Main and Pryor, thank you very much. As we were leaving, I spotted the Fussell-Madrini wall, which I assume was fair game for chalk — right? Will rain wash all that chalk off the rusty surface of the steel?

Bob Schieffer Makes Fun of Dallas

He kicked off a fundraiser for TCU with a performance from his band Honky Tonk Confidential. The Star-T has video and lyrics from HTC’s anti-Dallas song, which is actually pretty entertaining. (Side note: you know who looks pretty darn fit for his age? Bob Schieffer.)

Magazine Welcomes New Managing Editor

Today is Kristiana Heap’s first day as managing editor of D CEO magazine. She’s been here four hours and hasn’t run screaming from the building yet, so I’m taking that as a good sign. A native of Odessa — her family owns an oil-field-supply business there — Kristiana comes from Park Cities People, where she worked first as the paper’s society editor, then as its real estate editor. She’s a TCU grad and also has a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York. So, she’s really smart and accomplished. Come to think of it, with credentials like that, she actually may be angling for my job as CEO editor. Kristiana, are you trying to take my job?!

MetroPCS Edges Up After Great First Quarter

Dallas-based MetroPCS Communications — which provides flat-rate wireless calling services — is apparently beating trends, having signed up nearly 450,000 net new wireless subscribers in the first quarter while lowering its churn rate to 4 percent. But they can’t expect to keep up that rate, Forbes notes. Still, good on ‘em for now.

Technical Issues on DMag.com and FrontBurner

Hello, patient, kind, and understanding FrontBurnervians. Some of you may have noticed some pop-ups and odd behavior on our site. We apologize for that. Here’s an explanation of what’s going on from our extremely capable and hard-working Online Developer & Programmer Josh Pearson:

Since Friday we’ve been experiencing some virus issues with our main Web server that hosts the D Magazine and People Newspapers Web sites. It started off just serving pop-up ads that were not related to our sites in any way, but has since progressed into serving executables and trying to prompt downloads of malicious software. We have a temporary fix in place that cleans our server every few minutes, but you may still experience this issue for brief periods of time until we are able to eradicate the virus altogether.

We have had reports of people accessing FrontBurner and getting download prompts and malware warnings. We believe this is tied to accessing FrontBurner from the D Magazine site, since all of the blogs are hosted separately and are not vulnerable to this particular virus. If you access FrontBurner directly via bookmark or by referencing the http://frontburner.dmagazine.com URL, you should experience no issues. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this issue once and for all.

If you continue to have trouble or have other questions, Josh’s email address is joshp AT dmagazine.com. Please be kind to him, and apologies again for the trouble.

Re: AFI: The Closing Night

Yes, Tim has already posted pictures from Saturday night’s AFI Closing Night party, and Adrienne has posted extensively on the Spree. But! My pictures are better. The House of Blues wasn’t that crowded, even though just about every media person in town that we know was there (David Ninh, Amy Vanderoff, Gary Cogill, Brendan Higgins), so Stephanie and I (along with Tim’s wife for a few songs) stood right in front of the stage and danced our hearts out all night long. Artist Rolondo Diaz was down in front, too, really getting down. It was my first time seeing the Spree perform, and, of course, I want to be one of the girls in the choir. Especially because if I were one of those girls, I would have a better chance of dating that curly-haired trumpet player, shown at left. If you want to find out how they opened the show and who got onstage, please jump.

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AFI Review: Polyphonic Spree’s Closing Concert and Overall Recap

I know Tim posted pictures (a lot of them, in fact), but here are some words from, you guessed it, Adrienne Gruben. It’s another thoughtful, personal recap of another AFI event, the last one, in fact. Thanks, Adrienne, for all of the hard work and good works you turned in. You keep shining and don’t be a stranger, ‘k?

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FrontBurner Madness Update

We’ve narrowed it down to two. If Kansas wins tonight, Whoopi Goldberg takes the $200 gift certificate to Texas de Brazil. If Memphis wins, DTF will be eating meat. Your leaders going into the final game:

1. Whoopi Goldberg
2. The Revenge of Abraham Lincoln [so close, yet –]
3. DTF
4. Old East Dallas
5. ILikeSports
6. Donkey Punch Bowl
6. Throat Yogurt [again, murmur]
8. Scissor Me Timbers
8. IDGAF
10. VSBB [thank you for using an acronym]

Re: A Monkey. With A Gun.

The only time I met Charlton Heston, Trey, he was sitting in the living room of a Highland Park manse maybe seven years ago, making small talk for some charity event. In front of him was a coffee table with a number of lit candles around a spectacular display of fresh flowers. Suddenly one of the candles flared up, and the flower arrangement caught on fire. Just as fast some quick-thinking guy bolted across the room, grabbed the blazing bouquet and tossed it into the fireplace. Then somebody made a joke about “Moses and the burning bush” and the room, Heston included, cracked up.

The Need For A Dallas-based Research University

The News has an excellent editorial today about the lack of a tier-one research university in Dallas. Please read the whole thing. As a UT graduate, I feel comfortable laying the blame directly at the doorstep of the UT Board of Regents, which has exibited a parochialism completely unsuited to the exigencies of a state with the 8th largest economy in the world. This magazine made its own proposals in 2000. Read “How To Create An Economic Engine for Dallas” here. Read “How To Create A Research University” here. Key paragraph:

Cities without research universities are the Rust Belts of tomorrow. No city that does not have a vibrant intellectual climate that attracts and engages bright minds will be a long-term player on a major scale in the new economy.

Lowell Cannaday For Sheriff

The Republican run-off election is tomorrow. Here Park Cities People lays out the case for Cannaday. In summary,

Lupe Valdez is a disaster, Jim Bowles is an angry old man. It’s time for a manager to run the sheriff’s department.

AFI Review: What Just Happened?, Plus Art Linson

Here’s one more review from Adrienne Gruben, with a twist. Gruben takes a look at the work-in-progress, Robert de Niro-starring What Just Happened? But she also had a sitdown with the man whose life the movie is based on, legendary producer, director, and screenwriter Art Linson. It’s just a click away…

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AFI Review: Snow Angels

AFI Dallas is over, but we have just a couple more reviews from the more than capable Adrienne Gruben. Think of it as tidying up after the party. Here, her thoughts on Snow Angels, directed by Richardson native David Gordon Green. If readers of Gruben’s reviews for us think she hasn’t seen a movie she didn’t love, Snow Angels nips that notion in the bud. Check it out.

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Leading Off

1. A gunman in Fort Worth decides he hasn’t built a strong enough case for going to Hell, so he shoots up a little girl’s birthday party, killing two, including a 5-year-old.

2. It looks like Plano will soon be one of the first cities to “regulate the size and placement” of nets protecting homes near gold golf courses from errant Titleists, and the issue is becoming divisive. This news comes on the heels of a recent office discussion about white people having more invented worry than other races.

3. People like local construction executive Bill Marcom are worried about “the Greater Depression,” so they’re buying hats and holding the eff onto them. Also on their shopping lists: silver coins, satellite phones, and remote cabins.