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Visiting urban oasis

FORT WORTH, Texas — This is what downtown living should look like.

We’re here for a quick visit and are enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of an urban environment that other cities should emulate.

Indeed, Amarillo — where we live — is seeking to do precisely that. On a smaller scale, of course.

Fort Worth has the Bass family to underwrite a lot of projects. Amarillo doesn’t that kind of resource available. Our city is seeking to use Fort Worth’s urban revival as a model. It cannot have picked a better one.

The Trinity River walking/jogging paths are a lovely attraction. Amarillo doesn’t have that kind of natural wonder running through it. We enjoyed a quiet walk this morning before the heat settled in. It was quiet and serene.

Downtown proper has its famous Sundance Square, which is a hopping and happening place at night. Can little old Amarillo replicate that? I have no clue at this point.

City planners are seeking to do what they can with what they have. Fort Worth’s success has become something of a legend among urban planners.

The downtown district bustles once the sun sets. Amarillo’s is busy enough during daylight hours. At night? It’s not happening, at least not yet.

I remain hopeful. We love coming to Fort Worth whenever we can … if only to dream about what our city one day hopes to become.

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Texas pulls in a big 'fish'

Score one for Texas.

Toyota announced that it is moving its U.S. headquarters from California to a site in Plano, just north of Dallas. The move means an estimated 3,000 job are coming to the Metroplex.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is touting the state’s business-friendly environment as a reason for the move. Even though I’ve been critical of the governor’s job-poaching forays into other states, I do commend him — and the state — for creating circumstances that attract high-dollar companies, such as Toyota, to set up shop in the Lone Star State.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/04/29/texas-touts-lighter-regs-wooing-california-firms/

Texas has no state income tax. It doesn’t place burdensome regulations on businesses. The cost of living in Texas is significantly lower than many other states, such as California. You can get much better housing for the money here than you can in California and that has to be a huge selling point for prospective employers.

However, as the Texas Tribune reports, wages in Texas are lower than they are in other states. We are a “right-to-work” state where unions aren’t particularly strong.

I hasten to note that many of these aspects about doing business in Texas are well-known to Fortune 500 companies throughout the world. Thus, Gov. Perry did not need to venture to California or other so-called “high tax” states to poach jobs.

Still, the news about Toyota is good for Texas and it likely will signal a huge wake-up call to California and other states to do a better job of keeping their own businesses.

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Benghazi is back

Benghazi is the story with no end.

It’s back in the news, thanks to some emails uncovered by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group. The emails purport to buttress the idea that the Obama administration lied about what happened at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012.

They contend the administration engaged in a willful cover-up of the “truth,” whatever it is, about the violence that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/04/benghazi_white_house_emails_did_the_obama_administration_engage_in_a_cover.html

I’ve never believed in a cover-up. I do believe the administration made some big mistakes in trying to report what happened in that chaotic fire fight. They trotted out the U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, to say things about which she wasn’t briefed sufficiently. Rice had a set of talking points that turned out to be incomplete and wrong.

That constitutes a cover-up? Is it a deliberate deception?

No. It was a bungling attempt to get ahead of a still-developing story.

Still, the right-wing mainstream media has sought to keep this story alive and kicking — particularly if the then-secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, decides to run for president in 2016. It’s looking as though she’s going to run and that, all by itself, is reason enough — in the eyes of her critics — to keep hammering away at Benghazi.

Never mind that independent analyses have concluded there was no deliberate lying; they conclude that the U.S. embassy security network failed, but only because officials misjudged the intensity of the fight that was ensuing at the consulate; Clinton herself has taken responsibility for the failure to protect our personnel, but that’s not good enough to satisfy her critics on the far right.

The story will continue to boil and bubble. Were it not for Hillary Clinton’s still-budding presidential candidacy, it would have faded away long ago.

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Waiting for the next big horse race

Horse-racing buffs know that this is Kentucky Derby weekend.

I’m not one of them. I’ve never really gotten into horse racing, let alone betting on the ponies. As for racing’s Triple Crown, well, I don’t care much about that, either.

Except when a certain thing happens. I begin to care about when the same horse wins the first two races of the Triple Crown: the Derby and the Preakness.

Then comes the Belmont Stakes and that is when I get interested. I usually tune in to the final Triple Crown race to see if the Derby and Preakness winner can win the Triple Crown.

The first time I got really interested in this three-horse event occurred in 1973, when Secretariat astounded the world by winning the Belmont Stakes — and the Triple Crown — in utterly astonishing fashion. (See link attached to this blog and you’ll see what I mean.)

Of all the great stories and observations about that race I’ve heard, my favorite came from jockey Ron Turcotte.

As Secretariat galloped into the home stretch, Turcotte has said, he noticed he couldn’t hear any other horse noises; no horses grunting, no hooves pounding … only the sound of his own horse’s hooves pounding along at a record pace.

It was then that Turcotte turned around and saw that Secretariat was running all alone. The second-place horse was about 20 lengths back. I should add that at no point in the race did Turcotte hit his horse with the whip jockeys use to make their beasts run faster.

I’m sure some folks will get all excited about the Kentucky Derby. I’ll get excited if the Derby’s winner pulls off another win at the Preakness.

Then I’ll get excited.

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Dust is tough to mow

A word to the wise is in order as the Texas Panhandle recovers from this latest dirt/wind/mud-rain episode.

When you crank up the lawnmower, be sure you’re wearing some kind of mask.

I did precisely that — cranked up the mower — this morning and learned the lesson the hard way.

Every fourth pass I made with the mower across the lawn was downwind, meaning that the dirt that was embedded in the grass blew into my face. I should have known better than to try this chore without adequate protection.

I got the job done, then had to re-bathe to wash the dirt away.

All this is worth mentioning only to remind us all of how it used to be around here, many decades ago.

The Dust Bowl.

Its very name conjures up hideous memories among those old enough to recall when the sky filled with dirt from horizon to horizon. It blackened the sky. It blotted out the sun.

Those who didn’t flee to calmer locations, usually out west, stayed and fought their way through it. They were still standing when the dirt stopped flying. It took years for the weather to cycle its way back to something approaching “normal” around here. But it did.

When I think about that level of suffering, I don’t feel so bad about having to cope with a little dirt flying out of the grass as I cut it.

Still, a mask would have been nice.

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Hey, let's pray for some rain

Happy National Day of Prayer, everyone.

This is the day we set aside to pray. In reality, every day should be a day to pray. They’ll make speeches in Washington and in other places around the country. The president will make some remarks about prayer and how faith in God bolsters us when we’re down.

It’s been said the “least we can do is pray.” It’s also been said prayer is “the most we can do.” It shouldn’t be a last resort, but rather a first resort.

No matter which faith we follow, the power of prayer — while it is undefined — is there to be felt.

Those of us who live in the Texas Panhandle have a particular prayer, I’m thinking. It’s for rain. Other Americans today have had more rain than they can handle and they are praying today for the Almighty to make the floodwater recede and to give them relief from that misery. I wish that their prayers come true. Others are praying for strength as they struggle to recover from tornadoes that tore through their communities. Death has come to those places and we should pray for them as they battle through their grief.

For us, though, our needs are different. We’ve had precious little rain for, oh, about four years in a row. We’ve been suffering a different kind of misery. Blustery wind in recent weeks has kicked up dirt in volumes many of us who live here haven’t seen before.

We went through some kind of hell on Tuesday. There’s no other way to say: It was ugly out there, giving us just a dirty taste of what the Dust Bowl must have been like eight decades ago.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry drew some ridicule a couple of years back when he called on Texans to pray for rain. He made a big deal out of the power of prayer. The governor didn’t deserve the needling he got from critics over what he sought.

People of faith — and they comprise a large majority of us — rely on prayer to get us through difficult circumstances.

So, let’s pray for some rain today. Will it work? Will the sky open up as we ask God for relief? If it does, can we say without question that prayer had nothing to do with a positive result? I prefer to think we can proclaim that prayer works.

And if it doesn’t bring immediate relief, we also can assume God is at work — on his schedule.

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No such thing as 'private conversation'

An old axiom is even truer in today’s world.

It is that one should never say anything that he or she doesn’t want repeated.

Welcome to the 21st century, Donald Sterling.

The Los Angeles Clippers owner has been banned from the National Basketball Association for life. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver imposed the ban and fined Sterling $2.5 million because he went off on a disgusting, racist rant in what he thought was a private conversation with his, um, girlfriend.

The rant, which has become the talk of much of Planet Earth, has consigned Sterling to a most unwelcome role of pariah. He’ll likely have to sell his team. He is no longer able to participate in any team or league activities. He’s a goner.

What does this mean, though, in terms of privacy? It means that in this world of instant communication, where everyone has a camera or a listening device, one must take the greatest care to keep from saying something he or she doesn’t want known. He likely didn’t know he was being recorded and he surely didn’t believe his girlfriend would be the one to reveal the conversation, which I am certain is the case.

Sterling went off for about an hour, telling his girlfriend he doesn’t like her associating in public with African-Americans; he said he doesn’t want her bringing African-Americans to games involving his team. He made an absolutely disgusting spectacle of himself and in the process made a hero out of Commissioner Silver, who acted decisively — and correctly — in issuing the harshest sanction possible against the team owner.

Recent history is full of examples of public figures being “outed” by people with cameras or audio recorders. For example, Mitt Romney fell victim to a recording of his infamous “47 percent” comment about Americans who vote Democratic because they depend on government. Others have had their private behavior exposed for all the world to see. They have said things they’ve later regretted.

Donald Sterling provides the latest shining example of the price one pays for speaking from the depths of his soul, which in this case has been shown to be a dark place, indeed.

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'Money is not speech'

The late President Gerald Ford chose well when he selected John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1975.

The former justice today provided proof of President Ford’s wisdom.

Justice Stevens went to the Senate today and told senators that “money is not speech,” and that anonymous unlimited campaign donations harm the democratic process.

Good for you, Mr. Justice.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/30/john-paul-stevens-campaign-finance_n_5240779.html

Stevens, in a rare appearance by a former court justice before a congressional committee, said: While money is used to finance speech, money is not speech. Speech is only one of the activities that are financed by campaign contributions and expenditures. Those financial activities should not receive precisely the same constitutional protections as speech itself. After all, campaign funds were used to finance the Watergate burglary, actions that clearly were not protected by the First Amendment.”

At issue is whether unlimited campaign donations give rich donors greater access to power than average folks, such as, you know, you and me. Stevens said “yes.”

Billionaires are giving huge amounts of money to Democrats and Republicans alike. They are hiding behind the anonymity that recent Supreme Court decisions give them.

At the very least, there needs to be full disclosure of these donations. The public needs to know who’s giving the money. Citizens deserve to understand their motives for giving it and what they perhaps expect in return for those enormous cash gifts.

A better solution would be to limit those donations to reasonable amounts.

What is so un-American about leveling the playing field and giving all interested voters a shot at influencing those who would seek to lead our country?

As the Huffington Post reports: “Recent Supreme Court rulings have permitted individuals and corporations to write unlimited checks to independent political committees, while other groups can accept cash and disclose the donors’ identities months or years later, if ever.”

Mitt Romney said famously during the 2012 Republican primary presidential campaign that “Corporations are people too.” Actually, they are not. They are juggernauts that are able to trample the political process.

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Oklahoma botches an execution

Clayton Lockett is dead.

To some, it’s no big deal. He was a murderer who was sentenced to die for a hideous crime. He didn’t depart this world quite the way the state of Oklahoma desired. He suffered terribly in a botched execution.

Still no big deal? Well, it is.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117585/clayton-lockett-execution-botched-problem-lethal-injection

Oklahoma executioners used a drug cocktail for the first time. They thought they’d administered the lethal injection, only to have the condemned man lurch on the gurney, gasp, choke, thrash about before succumbing.

Hey, he was a killer who deserved to die, right? Some have even ventured that he should have suffered the same level of agony he delivered to his victim.

Well, the government is supposed to be above that kind of barbarism. States that execute inmates for their capital crimes should do so humanely. That’s what civilized governments prescribe for this kind of punishment, isn’t it?

It appears that the individual who inserted the needle into Lockett’s arm missed the vein. The drugs began to flow, but not into the man’s bloodstream. Thus, the suffering occurred and it has caused state officials to look deeply into the methods they use to carry out these punishments.

None of this should be grist for jokes, or snide comments about whether a condemned criminal has gotten “what he deserved.” If states are going to execute inmates for these capital crimes, it is imperative they develop fool-proof methods that do not produce the kind of ghastly drama that played out this week in Oklahoma.

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Donald Sterling (cont.)

If the Donald Sterling saga continues — as I’m sure it will for some time — I am hoping it can veer toward the whole issue of race in America and the conduct not only of celebrities, but of all of us.

The National Basketball Association has banned the Los Angeles Clippers owner for life because of his hideous racist rant overheard in a phone conversation with his much younger girlfriend. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver took the bold step today and also fined Sterling $2.5 million. The owner will face immense pressure from other team owners to sell his team, presumably to someone outside his family.

That’s a good first step.

But then I heard a New York Times sports columnist, William Rhoden, take the discussion a bit farther as it relates to African-American athletes..

Rhoden, who also is African-American, called on highly paid professional athletes to begin honoring themselves by stop using the “n-word” in locker rooms. He said it’s common for these athletes to use that despicable word to each other.

Given that I am not black, I suppose I cannot quite understand why intelligent human beings would use such language … even as some kind of inside joke.

Of the many African-American friends I’ve had over many years of living, I’ve never heard any of them refer to each other with that highly pejorative term. Even in the Army back in the late 1960s, when I was bunking with black soldiers, I cannot recall a single time hearing it.

I’ll take Rhoden at his word — as well as others who’ve reported it over a great length of time — that the word can be heard in locker rooms.

Professional athletes of all racial and ethnic backgrounds have been rightly offended by what has transpired in recent days regarding the hateful speech spewed forth from this particular team owner. They’ve protested by tossing warm-up jerseys on the floor, worn black socks while competing, made statements condemning the words that came from Sterling’s mouth and called for a national discussion about race relations.

One prominent black journalist, though, made a brief point in a TV interview today that deserves to be heard over and over.

It is for African-American athletes — the targets of one team owner’s reprehensible tirade — to start speaking with respect to each other. The “n-word” must be silenced.

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