Category Archives: local news

local news, political news

Cruz needs to be shown the door

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Of all the men and women I have watched in politics over many years as a journalist and now as a civilian with a keen interest in public policy, Ted Cruz stands tall among them as the most loathsome.

The junior U.S. senator from Texas keeps getting sliced and diced by the state’s largest newspaper — his hometown sheet, in fact — over this and that policy issue. The Houston Chronicle has peeled the bark off Cruz’s backside most recently over his blocking of high-speed Internet service coming to Texas.

But in reality, the Cruz Missile is now trying to rebrand himself as a bipartisan senator, someone with Democratic friends and colleagues. My goodness … this guy is utterly without shame.

He has spent the bulk of his nearly dozen years in the Senate doing two things: trying to advance his own political ambition and trashing Democrats at every opportunity.

He damn near lost his first re-election bid in 2018. Now he’s facing another Democrat who’s abandoning his House seat to challenge him. The foe this time is Colin Allred of Dallas.

Oh, how I want Allred to win. I want another senator who can work with pols on the other side of the still-great chasm. Our state’s senior senator, John Cornyn of San Antonio, at times shows promise in steering clear of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.

Cornyn needs a partner in that bipartisan effort. From my vantage point, it doesn’t appear to me that Ted Cruz is wired in that manner.

Which is precisely why I want Colin Allred to give Ted Cruz the boot in the backside.

local news, media news

Lamenting media’s sorry state

It is time for me to lament the sorry state of three newspapers where I worked full time as a print journalist.

Two of them are still in “business,” but barely so; the third one — the first newspaper that hired me as a young sportswriter — is gone, kaput, history.

I started work at the Oregon City, Ore. Enterprise-Courier in the spring of 1977. My first job was a temporary gig; it became permanent when a staff member resigned, and I took his place. I stayed there until the spring of 1984.

I moved to Beaumont, Texas, to work for the Beaumont Enterprise. I stayed at the Gulf Coast newspaper until January 1995.

Then I moved to the other end of Texas, to the Panhandle, to work for the Amarillo Globe-News, which at the time published two daily newspapers. The afternoon paper was folded into the morning paper in 2001. I stayed there until August 2012.

Since my departure, the Globe-News and — I must add — the Enterprise have devolved into shadows of their former solidness. Neither paper achieved true greatness, although the Globe-News — or more specifically, the p.m. Globe-Times — was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service in 1961.

That was then, when the communities served by newspapers depended on them to tell the communities’ stories. They were part of people’s lives. Their readers depended on them to keep them informed, to tell them about the world we all call home.

Alas, no more.

It has gotten so bad that I no longer look to either the Globe-News or the Enterprise to see what is happening in the communities where my family and lived. How sad is that? I’ll answer it for you. It’s very sad … at least it is to me.

The media climate has destroyed a once-great American institution. I was so very proud to be a part of it as I practiced my craft with great joy and dedication to following the rules of accuracy and fairness.

It’s not all gloomy, though. I remain in the game as a freelance reporter for a chain of weeklies in Collin County. I still am having more fun than I deserve.

Americans across the land have turned to other sources for information. Is it as reliable as the info we provided in Oregon City, in Beaumont and in Amarillo? I fear it is not.

That is to the shame of those who have wrecked what used to be the pride of many communities … and to those who have embraced this new media climate.

local news

Eclipse enthralled us all

Few pictures I have snapped over the years have filled me with the pride of the one I am showing with this brief blog post.

On the Eighth of April, 2024, we in North Texas got a lifetime thrill when the moon traveled in front of the sun and gave us this view. It lasted a little more than four minutes.

To be honest, I awoke that morning dreading what I believed would happen. That we would be blanketed by heavy cloud cover. The weather forecasters were talking the previous night about rain falling on us in the D/FW area.

I looked outside and saw a clear sky with the sun rising in the east … just like it’s supposed to do!

The day progressed and the clouds kinda/sorta rolled in. They were spotty. Plenty of breaks in them as they traveled overhead.

I had my eclipse-viewing glasses at the ready. I looked up and saw the edge of the moon starting its path across the sun.

The rest is history. I was so glad and thrilled to be able to witness it as it occurred.

local news, political news, State news

Cruz seeks to rebrand himself … yeah, right

Rafael Edward Cruz, aka Ted Cruz, is trying to pull off the biggest rebranding effort in U.S. Senate history.

The Republican firebrand now calls himself a “bipartisan” member of the Senate, citing his working relationship and friendship (if you dare believe that) with leading Senate Democrats.

It’s a joke, I’m tellin’ ya. Except that I ain’t laughing at it … except perhaps in derision.

Cruz is in for another tough re-election fight, this time against Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas, who — according to many leading polls — is in a dead heat with the two-term senator. Cruz was first elected in 2012, then won a bitter re-election battle in 2018 against former Rep. Beto O’Rourke by about 3 percentage points.

Ted Cruz angles for a bipartisan rebrand | The Texas Tribune

Allred, serving his second term in the House, has established a bipartisan reputation in the lower chamber and says Cruz’s effort is a bald-faced sham. Allred told the Texas Tribune: “I don’t think Ted Cruz is fooling anybody,” Allred said. “He spent 12 years being the most divisive — and proudly so — partisan warrior in the United States. And I think it’s kind of laughable actually that at this point, when he’s in a close race, that he wants to now stress, ‘Oh, actually I have been working in a bipartisan way.’”

He’s nothing like the bipartisan statesman he is portraying himself to be. Recall how he filibustered in the Senate in trying to kill the Affordable Care Act. He has been a front-row election denier, questioning the validity of the 2020 presidential election that gave us Joe Biden as president. He has been virtually silent about the 1/6 assault on our government and has endorsed the 45th POTUS’s bid to win back the White House after losing to President Biden in 2020.

According to the Tribune: “When I first arrived in the Senate 12 years ago, there was such a thing as moderate Democrats. They existed. You could work them,” Cruz said at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Texas Policy Summit last month. “There aren’t any left. The Democrats, they hate Trump so much their brains have melted, and what’s happened is they have gone crazy off the edge to the left.”

Now he wants us to believe he’s willing to work with Democrats whose “brains have melted”?

Hah!

environmental news, local news, political news

Politics enters eclipse coverage

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Leave it to the TV network talking heads to inject contemporary politics into discussion about the historic wonder of a total solar eclipse.

I was taken aback … but not surprised.

Listening to the eclipse run-up early this afternoon, an MSNBC commentator noted that an eclipse actually prevented a war from erupting in ancient Greece. I didn’t catch the name of the adversary facing down the Greeks.

Then she wondered out loud whether during these contentious times that we could have a similar peace-finding result from the eclipse that swept across the eastern third of the United States.

We all know the answer to that one. No! It won’t end the sniping, the backbiting, the innuendo here at home and the wars that rage in Europe and the Middle East.

It’s kind of a quaint thought, however.

The old-time Greeks didn’t have social media to take their minds away from Mother Nature’s splendor back in the day. Nor did they have cheap tinhorn politicians who play to TV cameras whenever someone — anyone! — turns on the lights; oh sure, they had their tinhorns, but they were motivated by simpler means.

Here’s my immediate takeaway from what we witnessed today in North Texas.

For a few minutes in the early afternoon, I wasn’t worried at all about what mere mortal politicians were doing or saying in the halls of power. Not in Congress, or the White House, or City Hall or the county courthouse. My focus was straight up as I watched the moon block the sunlight shining on Earth.

Nothing else mattered. Nothing!

environmental news, local news

A gigantic event awaits

Epochal events, by definition, don’t come around often, but when they do it is good for the authorities to prepare for them with all the resources they have on hand.

North Texas is about to be the scene of one of those events on Monday. It will occur shortly after 1 p.m. when the moon passes in front of the sun, turning the bright daylight of a mid-spring day into the blackness of night.

The last total solar eclipse I can recall occurred in the early 1980s. On that day the sky was overcast, just as the weather service is predicting for much of Texas on Monday. But the sky over Oregon got dark during that earlier event, as it will on Monday here in Princeton, Texas, where I am hanging my hat these days. I remember then hearing about how zoo animals cowered in the dark, how wolves howled and dogs barked.

The TV stations, plus all the cable networks are planning wall-to-wall “team coverage” of the event beginning around noon. I heard one of the local TV stations is planning to launch drones presumably to get above the cloud cover to take pictures of the moment the moon darkens the sun’s glow.

Police departments and Texas transportation officials are planning to make their presence felt on our streets, roads and highways to ensure motorists are paying attention to the traffic and avoiding the temptation to look skyward, even though the weather guys and gals say there will be nothing to see.

I obtained my eclipse-watching glasses. I am staying home that day. I’m going to look skyward at just the right time … hoping that a break in the clouds might occur in correct spot to get a glimpse of the event.

And no, I will not peer with unprotected eyes at the sun the way the 45th POTUS and his wife did some years ago when they looked at an eclipse that appeared over the East Coast.

However, I am ready to be thrilled by this event that won’t repeat itself in this country until I am long gone.

business news, local news

Traffic woes to mount

The more I think about the decision to bring a huge new shopping complex to Princeton, Texas, the more I also have to think about one of the consequences of that massive new business endeavor.

Traffic, man!

When I travel through this part of Collin County, I hear a bit of chatter about how Princeton is becoming a city motorists should seek to avoid. Why? Because the traffic along US 380 becomes impossible … and impassable!

Just yesterday, in fact, I was coming home from an outing in Tarrant County. I drove across Fort Worth, along the Sam Rayburn Tollway and then high-tailed it to US 75 northbound. I made the exit onto US 380 in McKinney and started to head east toward the house.

Then I stopped. And waited. And waited some more for the traffic to move. It did. It took a while!

The Princeton City Council has approved a 91-acre parcel to be developed into a major shopping complex on the north side of 380. I favor the decision. I want the business to come to the city I call home. I also wonder about the wisdom of the council’s decision. Why is that? Well, I covered a Farmersville City Council meeting a couple of years ago and watched that council reject an apartment complex because — here it comes — of the traffic problems it would create.

Princeton’s council seemingly doesn’t have such concern, as it approved a mammoth apartment complex a few hundred yards east of where the shopping complex is planned. Work on that project still appears to be far from finished, but when it’s done, it also will spill hundreds of vehicles onto the highway every day.

Maybe I should look at this issue more strategically. Texas transportation planners are hoping to build a freeway bypass around Princeton …. eventually! It is designed to relieve traffic congestion on 380. Last I heard, though, the state is a long way from turning over any dirt on that project.

That work likely will outlive this old geezer’s time on Earth.

Don’t misunderstand me, as I am not going to reverse myself and oppose the business complex. I am a pro-biz guy and the revenue the shopping complex will generate will be very good for this city.

We’d all better prepared ourselves, though, for some major teeth-gnashing as we seek to get home in time for dinner.

local news, media news

Memoir work ramps up

Because I have been making command decisions left and right, here’s another one for you to ponder.

I have decided to recommit to finishing a piece of work I’ve been toiling over for many years, a memoir I am writing for my family.

The memoir was my beloved bride’s idea. Kathy Anne told me I needed to memorialize the people and events in my career and give the finished product to our sons and their families. I began work on it some time back.

This week I added two more entries noting two individuals I whose paths I crossed while working as a print journalist for nearly 37 years. Then this morning, I took another step toward organizing my work.

I looked at the list of people and events I had penciled in and noted all those I had entered into my draft memoir. I counted those entries and learned that, by golly, I am about two-thirds of the way through my list.

Then again, more names pop into my noggin, usually without warning. So, I will add them, too, to the lengthy list of famous and infamous individuals I have been blessed or cursed to meet along the way.

Some of my friends have asked me if I intend to publish it. Hmm. I have thought about it and to be honest, I haven’t yet decided. There well could be enough text to fill a small paperback if I choose to go that route.

I had a joyous ride pursuing my craft. When Kathy Anne made the pitch to write it all down, I didn’t need persuading. I thought, “You know, I have met some fascinating individuals and the circumstances of those encounters themselves are worth remembering.”

I’m not entirely sure why I am sharing this with you. Maybe it’s my way of revealing how I plan to spend my time re-crafting my life into something entirely brand new.

I do want to share the ups and maybe even some of the downs I encountered while doing something I truly loved doing.

Wish me well …. please.

environmental news, local news

Staying put for this one

Command decision time, which means I have decided to stay home for The Eclipse. There. It’s done and I ain’t moving.

I keep reading in the local newspapers about how the cops are going to be out in force the afternoon of next Monday to make sure everyone’s behaving behind the wheels of their vehicles. They express concern about motorists not paying attention to the traffic while the sky darkens above them.

Fine. Let others hassle with all of that. I am staying put. It’s going to be the kitties — Macy and Marlowe — and me in our house in Princeton, Texas. which is in the middle of Ground Zero of the eclipse event.

My son who lives with me will be at work. So will my other son who lives in nearby Allen. My granddaughter will be in school close to their home and my daughter-in-law will be home, too, presumably staying safe.

The National Weather Service is predicting overcast skies that day. It’ll still get plenty dark for about four minutes sometime after 1 p.m. Eclipse watch parties? Getting together with friends to marvel at the universe? Forget about it!

I am staying where I know I’ll be safe from the nut jobs out there.

local news, political news, State news

House speaker is no ‘liberal’ … period!

I need to clear the air on a Texas politician I do not know personally, but who is someone I trust implicitly to run a state legislative chamber with conscience and competence.

House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, has become a prime target of the Club for Growth, a national right-wing political action committee that aims to spend $4 million in ads to defeat the legislator who is in the midst of a runoff election.

The Texas Tribune reports: “From failing to support school choice to allowing radical liberal Democrats to chair committees, Speaker Phelan is a certified RINO with a long record, and he will be held accountable by the voters in the runoff,” said David McIntosh, president of Club for Growth’s Super PAC.

Phelan is nothing of the sort that Club for Growth describes. The speaker let his Republican colleagues vote their conscience — and their constituents’ conscience — in opposing Gov. Greg Abbott’s dream of siphoning off public education money to a voucher plan that would enable parents to enroll their children in private schools.

Why the opposition from Republican legislators? Because they represent House districts that depend mightily on the strength of the public school systems that serve their constituents.

Why is that worthy of the attacks that Club for Growth and other hardline right-wingers plan to hurl at the speaker? I don’t see it.

Club for Growth wades into Texas primary battles | The Texas Tribune

As the Tribune reports: Over two regular legislative sessions, the House under Phelan has passed some of the most conservative legislation in the chamber’s history, including allowing permitless carry of handguns and a near-total ban on abortion. Phelan has come under particular criticism from many within his party for the House’s failure last year to approve a school voucher bill favored by Abbott.

Dade Phelan clearly considers himself to be a conservative. I guess he is not conservative enough to suit the one-issue zealots who think it’s OK to gut our public school system.