You’ll recall that two years ago a federal magistrate judge ruled that Andy Beal used a bogus tax shelter to create $153.6 million in tax losses for 2001. The judge also ruled, however, that the IRS had missed the deadline for disallowing those 2001 losses. A win for Beal.
Late last week, that win turned into a loss in the Firth Circuit Court of Appeals. Looks like the IRS didn’t miss its deadline after all. If you believe what the feds say, the loss on the 2001 tax year matter will cost Beal $70 million in tax and penalties. A pittance compared to the $5 billion his ex-wife wanted. (Of course, Beal’s ex is represented by Larry Friedman, which is all you need to know about which side you should root for.)
Between the poorly handled case against Range Resources and his recently released “crucify” comments, it was a matter of time before Al Armendariz either resigned or got fired. Whether it’s justified or he is a fall guy in a perpetual battle between the EPA and its enemies or both is up for debate. Either way, he’s out.
Dallas Needs To Accept Failure: The Super Bowl bid, DART, our ability to hit clean air standards — Michael Lindenberger might as well just tag on the Trinity River Project (no thanks to the Trinity Parkway), downtown revitalization, NFL drafts, and a litany of other ballyhooed projects to his editorial that says (paywall) that Dallas needs to learn to accept failure. But his key point is long overdue: Dallas’ fidelity to its own hype inhibits us for making key adjustments in civic planning to realize real goals. And while I like how the editorial tells us to refocus DART on moving people, and to listen to Jim Schutze more, Lindenberger kills his own argument when he says Dallas is still not “ready” for some more challenging ways to address key issues. After all, doesn’t this off-repeated attitude that Dallas is “not ready” for truly innovative policies and initiatives go hand-in-hand with Dallas’ denial of its shortcomings?
Off-Duty Dallas Police Officer Arrested For Firing Gun From Car on Highway: I suppose it was just another Saturday night for Rafael Mendoza, the three year veteran of the Dallas police department who was arrested early Sunday morning after driving around with his sidearm dangling out the window, smoking weed, and taking potshots at cars on Interstate 30.
Business Odds And Ends: Someone got paid today: the Dallas-based pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, dropped a cool $5.3 billion acquiring Philadelphia-based Sunoco Inc. And A.H. Belo Corporation announced its first quarter 2012 financials, reporting a net loss of $0.18 per share, which is less than expected, says Robert Decherd. I suspect Wick will be around to slice and dice Belo’s numbers in greater detail.
A few weeks ago I mentioned the fact that the EPA had settled what looked like a landmark case with the fracking industry in Texas, a case involving a Parker County man who could shoot fire from his garden hose. At the time, it sounded like there was probably a lot more to the story. Well, the Dallas Observer’s cover story this week, “Fire in the Hole,” gets at the rest of the story. Spoiler alert: fans of the EPA will not be pleased.
To his Dallas supporters he’s a heartening source of hometown pride, a guy who’s doing the Lord’s work at the Environmental Protection Agency. To his critics he’s an activist environmentalist in regulator’s clothing, a progressive ideologue who, given his druthers, would run roughshod over one of Texas’s most important industries. Now Al Armendariz, who heads the EPA’s region 6, has just given his critics a lot of good ammunition.
In a speech, Armendariz said, “The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.” And, the former SMU prof added, that tack’s a good one for going after energy companies, too.
Armendariz apologized after a video of his talk emerged. But that hasn’t stopped some from calling for his head. The same calls went up several years ago after W’s HUD Secretary, Alphonso Jackson, said something equally stupid in a speech in Dallas that was reported by D CEO’s now-managing editor Christine Perez. Jackson was rightfully “crucified” for that, pardon the reference. Doesn’t Armendariz deserve equal treatment?
For the first time, executives at Village Voice Media (which owns the Dallas Observer) and the Dallas-based Backpage.com have allowed outsiders to watch the screening process used for their prostitution ads. Liz McDougall, the new in-house counsel for Backpage (she used to work for Craigslist) allowed cameras from Nightline into a screening room in an undisclosed location (probably Phoenix) where both an automated key word-catch system and real live employees monitor each ad before it goes up.
The report, which features two women who were trafficked underage using Backpage and several officials who want to see the escort section of Backpage shut down, also includes a sophisticated defense of the ads. While classified ads likes those on Backpage make both buying and selling sex easier, McDougall argues, Backpage can also be part of the solution, working with police and investigators to put human traffickers in prison.
Of course, it’s more complicated than either side wants to admit. Yes, online advertising makes it safer for the women (and men) who voluntarily sell themselves — and, everyone agrees, these people are responsible for the majority of Backpage prostitution ads. But the marketplace, an “open casbah” one politician calls it, also makes the industry easier and more profitable for pimps.
Talk about an anticlimax. Blockbuster, the down-on-its-luck video-rental chain, is moving its corporate headquarters from McKinney to Denver, taking a bunch of good-paying jobs with it. Meantime Jim Keyes, the former CEO who led the company into bankruptcy, said the other day that he’s working on a start-up retail operation, but isn’t ready to announce anything yet. Presumably it won’t involve renting movies.
Dashboard Cameras Catch Police Officers Breaking Law, So Officers Want To Quit Reviews: Dallas police squad cars’ dashboard cameras have two roles 1) to protect citizens against excessive force, and 2) to protect officers against wrongful accusations. But the cameras also catch officers speeding, breaking traffic laws, not turning on their lights, and other infringements that, you know, sometimes end up killing people. But who likes the man breathing down his or her neck? That’s why officers and police associations have pushed to cease regular reviews of the dashboard videos (pay wall).
Union Round-up: Lockheed Machinists To Strike, American Airlines’ Flight Attendants Picket Bankruptcy Hearings: North Texas goes Rust Belt this morning with some rare union activity. Lockheed’s machinists have thrown a wrench in the ongoing F-35 fighter jet program (you know, the ga-billion dollar debacle), refusing a new contract, in part, because of the threat to eliminate pension benefits to new employees (pensions, what a quaint concept). Meanwhile, fight attendants are picketing as American Airlines goes to court today to try to get a U.S. judge to throw out union contracts so that it can trim $1.25 billion in employee costs, including freezing pension plans. Come on people, this is the new America. It’s every old person for himself / herself. Invest in bullets, not pensions. Yee-haw! U-S-A!
Remains May Be Related to Starved Boy Case: There’s an update to that stomach-turning story involving the missing boy who was allegedly starved to death by his parents in Ellis County. Remains were found in a creek bed Saturday, but police cannot confirm their identity until after DNA testing.
That’s the buzz about a semi-mysterious press release from an outfit calling itself Planetary Resources, which will reveal its intentions at a semi-mysterious announcement on Tuesday in Seattle. Because the press release says the company’s efforts will involve “space exploration” and “natural resources,” the guess is that this is a serious effort at making asteroid mining a reality.
Among those involved in the effort are Ross Perot Jr. (he of Hillwood and trading lawsuits with Mark Cuban), the Google founders, and filmmaker James Cameron.
I say it’s about time. When that asteroid threatened Earth in 1998, Bruce Willis and his team only had terrestrial drilling experience when we shot them into space to try to stop it. There’s no wonder it turned out the way it did, with a noble sacrifice required to get the job done. That awful Aerosmith tune plagued our airwaves for years.
If Planetary Resources gets up and running, we’ll be better prepared next time.
For a while, Frisco-based Genband has been a bright star on the local technology scene. But now, the star may be fading a bit. The telecom-equipment supplier reportedly has laid off a good chunk of its work force, which could translate into hundreds of job cuts. D CEO’s tech columnist, Phil Harvey, has the details over at his day job, called Light Reading.
I’ll be the first to admit that, at times, I have been pretty critical of the Transportation Security Administration. The phrase “security theater” has come up. That said, this story about Don Williams, the TSA officer at DFW who noticed a passenger drop an envelope containing $9,500 in cash and then didn’t keep it, is pretty cool. (Thanks to stories like this and this, you still won’t catch me carrying much in the way of valuables through an airport.) Words to live by from Williams though: “always do the right thing, and that way you can live with yourself.”
Spencer Ackerman at Danger Room calls it “a classic of the genre.” Apparently the way to sell the public on the most expensive weapons system in human history is to clad some Fort Worth teenagers in skinny jeans and hoodies and have them screech your pr-department’s lyrics on a sound stage.
One thing the lyrics don’t mention: with cost overruns, maintenance costs, and assorted other expenses, the disaster known as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is expected to run to $1 trillion. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney wants to increase defense spending to 4 percent of GNP. So maybe we can get the costs to run even higher.
Where does the money go? A large chunk of it, we should note, goes to pay the salaries of the estimated 20,000 jobs associated with the project in the Dallas area. Those who live off the hog should perhaps not complain too loudly when they find it feeding at the trough.
Not only that, it paid the highest corporate percentage, with an effective tax rate of 42 percent. If you think paying your taxes on April 15th hurt, think about the corporate treasurer in Irving who signed a check for $27.3 billion.
No wonder Exxon has an army of lobbyists in Washington. Steve Coll at The New Yorker recently gave some background on how the company became a financing arm of the Republican Party. Ideology had nothing to do with it. The company is as analytical in its political decisions as it is in its drilling decisions, and sometimes the methodology has not worked to its favor.
Two days ago, I noted that Centennial Beverage Group was hit with a $4,756,702 state tax lien. A company spokesman was less than forthcoming when I asked him to explain the matter. So I’m not going to bother calling him this time around, when I tell you that the tax lien is only half of Centennial’s problem. An alert FrontBurnervian points to the TABC site, whereon you can see which joints owe their wholesalers money. Centennial owes Glazer’s, Republic National, and others $5,441,947.
One Centennial store in Dallas owes Glazer’s, Republic, and Serendipity a combined $302,276.35. A Centennial-owned Majestic Liquor (store #178) in Fort Worth owes the same three wholesalers $398,845.99.
Looking at all these big numbers, I can’t help but wonder: will I get out of work early enough today to grab a beer before my son’s baseball game?
In 2010, Laray Polk wrote a story for us about Harold Simmons titled “Dallas’ Most Evil Genius.” It was about the Dallas billionaire’s efforts to bury radioactive waste in West Texas — with a little help from politicians to whom he contributed money. At the heart of the matter is whether the site Simmons has chosen is an appropriate place to bury that kind of waste. Polk spent a fair amount of time digging around in West Texas, trying to figure out whether the dump site lies atop an aquifer.
Now State Representative Lon Burnam is trying to answer that same question, just as the radioactive waste is being prepared for shipment. Polk doesn’t think Burnam will get his answer. But based on research she did for our story, she sees trouble ahead. Buckle up for some hydrology talk after the jump.