Articles about Politics
How the EPA Lost a Big Battle in Texas
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.
Bill Keffer Needs a Copy Editor
Yesterday I had a little fun with Tincy Miller’s campaign mailer. In response, an alert FrontBurnervian sent along a mailer from House candidate Bill Keffer. Click to make it bigger. Then read the first bullet point.
Tom Leppert Scores, Ctd.
And so did I — a brand new collection of completely unfair (but that is in no way going to stop me) screen grabs that I have conveniently located after the jump.
Leppert Scores with “Empty Suit” Spot
The DMN’s Robert T. Garrett is wrong about Tom Leppert’s new Senate-primary ad, where the former Dallas mayor dismisses his opponents as “empty suits.” Garrett says the spot is weak. But it’s actually the best one Leppert’s done yet, perfect for the TV-commercial genre, where a punchy, superficial, easily grasped message is prized above all. (Since Leppert’s talking about suits, though, shouldn’t he really have been wearing his trademark gangster one?)
ExxonMobil Is the Nation’s Top Taxpayer — Big Time
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.
The New, “Gentle” Racism of Farmers Branch
Of course you remember the fight over immigration going on in Farmers Branch for the last half decade. According to this story (paywall), the city has spent nearly $5 million fighting to keep in place the city ordinance requiring prospective renters to prove they are legal residents of this country. (Several Federal judges have ruled the ordinance unconstitutional, noting that immigration enforcement is up to the Federal government.) Now though, Bill Glancy, the 71-year-old mayor, while saying he still supports the ordinance, is also promoting the city’s citizenship classes. He says he’s even looking for corporate sponsorship of the program, pointing out that, “People say we have all these illegals. Well, they are not all illegal. They just don’t speak English.” That’s the gentle side.
Dianne Solis’ story also includes an email from city counsel member Michelle Holmes. In that email, Holmes suggests that R.L. Turner High School “will not see marked improvement” until “we see a change in our demographics.” It’s OK though. Holmes told a recent meeting of Republicans that she isn’t racist. She just opposes illegal immigration and believes the school will be better with fewer minorities. See? That’s completely, totally different than discriminating against certain people based on their race.
Craig James Polling Decently In Personal Race to Have His Maker Give Him a Fist Bump, According To Him
Via Dallas Voice, from Friday night’s debate, after being asked if his personal faith would get in the way of supporting same-sex civil unions (something supported by 61 percent of Texans):
“You know, I have said also, as I start every speech that I’ve done now for four months, my goal in life is that when I meet my maker, he says, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant, period.’ It’s not to become a United States senator. So whenever I make the decisions and the things that I just talked about there [in the clip], all of us are free to make decisions in this country, and all of us will be accountable to God for those, including me. I do support the marriage between a man and a woman, and my faith is my core, and anyone who doesn’t support their core and what they believe … This country was founded on the principles of Christianity, and I’m never gonna back away from that.”
At least it’s good to know James’ goal is not to become a United States senator, because that’s going pretty poorly.
Tom Hicks, George W. Bush Team Up for Global Health
In Dallas’s tony Preston Hollow neighborhood, businessman Tom Hicks’ 33,000-
square-foot estate — the priciest spread in Big D — backs up, literally, to Hicks pal George W. Bush’s place. So the former president didn’t have far to go Sunday afternoon for an event at Hicks’ home that raised money for the Global Health Corps. GHC is a nonprofit outfit promoting “health equity,” co-founded by Laura and George’s daughter, Barbara Pierce Bush.
While Hicks mingled with the likes of Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett, energy magnate Trevor Rees-Jones, civic leader Tom Dunning and banker Elaine Agather, Laura and George posed good-naturedly for photos. W (pictured) pumped hands with some guests, winked at others, and joked drolly about his mother’s recent comment that he wasn’t easy to rear. “That’s right,” Bush said. “She was trying to say that stay-at-home moms have a job — it’s hard work. And she had to bring me into it. I used to say I’m the reason she had white hair.”
The Prophecies of Glenn Beck
The May issue of Vanity Fair has an interesting article about Glenn Beck’s move to Dallas and his exodus from the mainstream, and how, in many ways, he is bigger than ever. From Todd S. Purdum’s piece:
“He is, in fact, busier than ever, and perhaps more influential than ever, with some 10 million radio listeners a week; a nonprofit venture called Mercury One, which aims to fix America ‘one town at a time’ by connecting volunteers with organizations that need manpower; a patriotic line of American-made logo-wear called 1791 (for the year the first 10 amendments to the Constitution were ratified); a reality series, Independence U.S.A., about a family preparing to live off the grid in rural Pennsylvania; and a new weeknight Web TV show that made its debut last fall and landed him on The Hollywood Reporter’s ‘Digital Power 50′ list of the most significant Internet figures, along with such unlikely bedfellows as Sean Parker and Mark Zuckerberg. To his paying acolytes Beck sends out daily e-mail updates with subject lines such as ‘Michelle Obama insults troops, tells fit soldiers what to eat’ and ‘Catholics Ready to Battle Obama.’ The new Web-based TV channel launched with about a quarter-million subscribers (now up to 300,000), each paying between $5 and $10 a month for access, generating annual revenues that some experts believe could eventually top $100 million.”
Along with the story, VF released this nifty quiz, in which you can guess at whether a quote is from Glenn Beck’s prose or a crazy subway pamphlet.
Leading Off (4/16/12)
Money Flowing To New Congressional District Race: The competition for the new District 33 congressional seat is thick, and it is being cast by some (paywall) as a showdown between African-American and Hispanic voters for greater minority representation in Washington. Gromer Jeffers sifts through the early fundraising reports, and Dallas Dentist David Alameel leads the pack, thanks to a $2.2 million personal loan, the candidate already spending $600,000 on his campaign. That’s double what the next wealthiest candidate, Domingo Garcia, loaned his campaign. Garcia has spent $121,000 of his $300,000, and Rep. Marc Veasey has fundraised over $127,000 without relying on personal loans.
Project Pegasus Is Dead. Where Does That Leave the Trinity Parkway? Dallas Morning News editorial writer Rodger Jones lends a bit of context to last week’s release of the NTTA report on the proposed alignment of the Trinity Parkway. As of 2007, the levee road was sold as part of the larger Project Pegasus, which was planned to relieve congestion in the Mixmaster. But now that Pegasus has been scrapped by the Regional Transportation Council, the Trinity Parkway needs to be justified as an efficacious transportation project in and of itself. Tall order.
Mud Run Claims Runner: The body of a thirty-year-old Tony Weathers was discovered Sunday in the Trinity River after he disappeared after Saturday’s military-style obstacle course race in Fort Worth.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings Slams “Second-Rate” States That Compete With Texas for Film Business
Dallas Film Commission director Janis Burklund probably wouldn’t have used the exact words
that Mayor Mike Rawlings did last night, when he talked about states that compete with Texas for film projects. But she liked his point about staying competitive in the battle for movie business.
Addressing the opening-night crowd at the Dallas International Film Festival, the Dallas mayor (pictured with his wife Micki) drew a rousing ovation when he said, “I’m a businessman by heart, and we can make money in film in Texas.” A little later he added: “We must lobby to make sure we’re competitive with second-rate states around us.”
My Four Favorite Hand Gestures/Expressions From Tom Leppert’s New Campaign Commercial
I was just thinking of making fun of Tom Leppert this morning and, as if on cue, he gifts me with a new campaign commercial. This time it’s set in a warehouse of some sort, full of people working because he is a job creator and, even though he didn’t create those jobs, per se, he has created jobs — so many jobs, you guys, you don’t even understand. Anyway, as usual it is stuffed to the brim with Leppert’s usual arsenal of sweeping hand movements. I’ve picked out my favorite four, which you might have noticed I already mentioned in the headline. If you didn’t, I’m not sure why you read this far.
Report: Mark Davis Is Out at WBAP
Mark Davis, the conservative talk-show host and favorite whipping boy of DFW progressives, is apparently leaving WBAP-AM after 18 years. The Star-Telegram’s Robert Philpot says Davis’s contract was not renewed.
Alice Walton Didn’t Endorse Craig James
Last week Tim noted the news that the Wal-Mart heiress endorsed Craig James in his run for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate, but now Alice Walton says she did no such thing. She’s endorsed Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for the job. The James campaign has set the video that they’d been using as proof of the endorsement to private on YouTube. Robert Garrett of the Morning News describes what it contained:
In fact, the video, as I noted last week, has very bad background noise and is hard to make out. The campaign’s on-screen snippets of transcript, purporting to be what Walton said, were not entirely reliable. However, toward the end of the 86-second video, she can be heard saying, “You’re my friend and I’m going to support you” — though it’s not clear in what context she said that.
I’ve asked the James campaign to reactivate the video — out of “respect” for readers, who ought to be able to listen to what’s become a campaign issue. Listening and viewing, though, probably won’t help them sort out the mess. It’s clear that the videographer, who’s holding a camera of some kind in Walton’s direction, is making her uneasy. Supposedly, the video was shot in the kitchen of a Fort Worth residence where a James fundraiser was held a few weeks back. And it’s clear that James is, for lack of a better word, sucking up to her, big-time.
Art Laffer Rips Idea of Energy Independence
Don’t tell T. Boone Pickens, but Arthur Laffer, the so-called father of supply-side economics, says U.S. energy independence is the most “daft idea” he’s heard of in his life.
“It’s kind of like Minnesota trying to become banana-independent from Costa Rica,” Laffer joked with an audience in Dallas today. Even though the sellers of foreign oil may be “bad guys,” he went on, that’s no reason to shun their natural resources.
“You use political weapons to solve political problems,” Laffer said. “You should never use trade as a weapon, because it has all sorts of unintended consequences. Take North Korea; that’s really worked well! Or Cuba; that’s really worked, too! Economic tools do not work to solve political problems.”
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