Monthly Archives: July 2015

local news

Big day awaits at City Hall

This could be a big day at Amarillo City Hall.

No matter how it turns out.

City Council members have this item on their agenda, to discuss the “status” of City Manager Jarrett Atkinson.

At least two council members — new guys Mark Nair and Randy Burkett — want Atkinson to quit. The third new guy, Elisha Demerson, hasn’t stated his preference. Two other council members, Mayor Paul Harpole and Councilman Brian Eades, want him to stay. The council is facing a potentially serious fracturing among its members. All that harmony has given way to a cacophony of voices trying to outshout each other, perhaps reflecting the mood across this city of 200,000 residents.

Does the city manager quit? Does he stay on the job? Does he force the council to vote to fire him? If he gets canned, how much of a severance package is he going to demand, if he even deserves one?

And what does all of this mean for Amarillo’s march toward the future with its downtown revival plan already started. Construction has begun on a new Xcel Energy office complex. A large tract across the street from City Hall has been vacated to make room for a planned multipurpose event venue. Another tract has been wiped clean to make room for a downtown convention hotel. The hotel developer is waiting to see what happens with the MPEV.

All those plans are really what’s at stake here.

The new guys — or at least two of them — have acted recklessly with their call for Atkinson to quit. They barely know their way around City Hall, yet they’ve demanded radical change. City Attorney Marcus Norris is out, having given the city two weeks’ notice before he clears out.

My own hope — from my perch out here in the peanut gallery — is that the new guys will have settled down a bit from their giddiness at having been elected to the council. Councilman Eades has asked them to rethink their Atkinson-must-go mantra.

Yes. A big day awaits us at Amarillo City Hall.

Uncategorized

Cosby likely will need all that money he’s earned

2011_Bill_Cosby

There you have it, or so it now appears.

A comedic icon known for his good-guy image, his upstanding moral character and his distaste for the way some contemporary comedians lace their acts with four-letter words has been revealed as the sexual predator his victims have accused him of being.

So long, Bill Cosby.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/lawyers-cosbys-drugs-sex-admission-could-help-womens-suit/ar-AAcErQw

The Associated Press has obtained heretofore sealed documents that contain admissions from Cosby that he drugged women and then had sex with them. The documents appear to bolster the contentions leveled by several women that he did some terrible things to them over the course of many years.

This story is heartbreaking in the extreme for those of us who have laughed until we hurt at Cosby’s comedic genius. Now we hear that he quite likely betrayed his own image.

I recall sitting at West Texas A&M University’s event center not too many years ago in a packed house roaring at Cosby’s jokes. My wife and I watched him needle students in the audience, poke fun at then-WT President Russell Long and finish his two-hour routine with his classic routine about having to function with his mouth shot full of Novocain.

Now, after seeing this report from the AP, it was all a lie.

Not once did Cosby ever say while the allegations piled up that he didn’t do those things. He hasn’t ever denied it. That was a clue to some of us who were waiting for the magic words: I didn’t do it.

Well, the man has acquired significant wealth over the years.

My bet now is that he’s going to need most — if not all — of it to settle with the women he has defamed (allegedly) by accusing them of lying.

political news

Sen. Sanders shows spunk, however …

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U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has put it on the line.

The candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination said flat-out he will raise individual tax rates if he’s elected president next year.

The Vermont independent senator said this on CNN over the weekend: “Yes, we have to raise individual tax rates substantially higher than they are today, because almost all of the new income is going to the top 1 percent.”

http://nypost.com/2015/07/06/bernie-sanders-will-raise-taxes-if-hes-elected-president/

As much as I admire Sen. Sanders’s spunk and his courage on some things, I feel compelled to remind him of a little political history, even though I know he’s aware of it.

In 1984, former Vice President Walter Mondale was nominated to run for president. During his acceptance speech at the party convention in San Francisco, he said this: “Mr. Reagan will raises taxes and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

“Mr. Reagan,” of course was the president of the United States.

Vice President Mondale got a rousing cheer at the convention.

President Reagan was re-elected in a 49-state landslide.

Raising taxes doesn’t play well out here, Sen. Sanders.

 

local news

One down at City Hall … how many more to go?

Amarillo City Attorney Marcus Norris has quit.

He’ll be gone in two weeks, leaving the city with either zero legal counsel or a new lawyer who’s got to learn the ropes the way Norris did when he became the city’s legal eagle.

There’s really no sugarcoating this resignation. Norris is a casualty of the new regime on the City Council. One of the new guys, Mark Nair, took the oath of office and barely put his hand down before calling City Manager Jarrett Atkinson’s resignation. Another new guy, Randy Burkett, called for the resignation of the entire Amarillo Economic Development Corporation board.

Oh, and today’s joint City Council-AEDC meeting? Neither Nair or Burkett were present.

That’s leadership, yes? Well, no.

That is the kind of chaos facing the senior City Hall staff. Norris would have none of it.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/29482341/amarillo-city-attorney-resigns

So, he’s out.

As for Atkinson, the council is set to meet Tuesday to discuss his status. I have no clue what the smart money on the street thinks will happen. My own hope is that Atkinson stays on the job.

And as for Norris, he’s had his fill already of the recklessness exhibited by at least a couple members of the city’s governing board.

There’s a lot more at stake than just a handful of public service careers. The city’s forward movement as it relates to its downtown revival effort might be in jeopardy if the “agents of change” seek to do too much too quickly.

Let’s not pussyfoot around this matter, either.

If Atkinson quits or is fired, the city’s top administration is left without a leader at a time when it needs leadership. The city is on the cusp of starting a bold effort that it’s never considered before. Yet the naysayers have gotten cold feet, their hands have gone clammy, they’ve hurled accusations out and about over alleged nefarious motives and a so-called “lack of public input” into this multi-faceted project.

And now some folks dislike the way the city runs?

One key city staffer is heading for the exit. Today was not a good a day at City Hall. I fear more bad days are coming.

 

religious news

A ‘Christian nation’? Never have been one

I heard it said over the weekend that “we aren’t a Christian nation … anymore.”

It took me aback.

We’ve been hearing a lot of that of late, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that state bans on gay marriage violated the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment and the “equal protection clause” contained within it. Therefore, gay marriage should be made legal in all the states, the court said.

Back to the point: Are we a Christian nation? Have we ever been one?

No and no.

I keep reading the U.S. Constitution and so help me, I cannot find the word “Christian” anywhere in it. Some of my friends on the right keep asserting that if the Constitution doesn’t say something specifically, then it’s not germane to a constitutional discussion. A former colleague of mine keeps asserting, for instance, that the Constitution doesn’t even mention “marriage,” but it does mention “the right to keep and bear arms.” That’s his way of affirming that the Second Amendment’s literal verbiage carries weight over the court’s broader interpretation of what’s allowed and what’s prohibited.

I am quite aware of the argument that the founders were driven by religious principles. I remain undecided, though, on the issue of whether they were devout believers in Jesus Christ, as some have asserted, or whether they were deists who believed in a more ecumenical God, or supreme being or “higher power.”

I also am quite aware that after considerable debate at the constitutional convention that produced our governing framework that they produced a document that is devoid of religious references … except for one mention. It says — in Article VI, Paragraph 3 — that there shall be “no religious test” for anyone seeking public office.

The founders’ immediate forebears fled Europe to escape religious persecution and to be free of state-mandated religion. That’s why they wrote a Constitution that spells out quite clearly that this would be a secular nation, governed by laws written by fallible human beings.

A Christian nation? Well, we’re a nation comprising citizens who are mostly Christian. They remain free to worship as they please. So are non-Christians, just as it’s always been since the beginning of this great republic.

God bless America.

local news

Nothing secret about downtown plans

Shall we put to rest a falsehood that’s been banging around Amarillo in recent months?

Yes, we shall.

It has to do with the canard that the downtown Amarillo revitalization project has been carried forward in darkness. That the city is advancing a proposal with zero to little public input. That it’s been done without prior notification and that the public has been deprived of the chance to speak out.

http://downtownamarillo.publishpath.com/Websites/downtownamarillo/files/Content/5143768/Report_PublicOutreach.pdf

The link attached here is lengthy, but I think that’s by design. It’s meant to illustrate all the meetings, public hearings, testimony and public conversation that’s occurred since 2006 about downtown revival plans.

I think what’s happened is that many of today’s critics weren’t paying attention nine years ago when this stuff first came to the public fore. They were occupied with other matters. Hey, that’s all understandable.

What’s not understandable is why the critics today are leveling unfounded accusations and assertions against the city, its business community and its civic leadership that they’ve all conspired to foist something on residents that they don’t want or need.

The media have done their job in posting these events in advance. They have given the public ample advance notice of these events. The public has had plenty of opportunity to speak up and speak out.

We can debate the merits of what’s been proposed. Let’s do so without leveling accusations of underhandedness.

They are falsehoods intended to spread fear.

 

entertainment news

Down with the rebel flag … in most places

I totally understand the outcry and backlash against the Confederate battle flag in the wake of a recent massacre.

The flag has come to represent hatred, bigotry, bondage … all things of which the nation shouldn’t be proud. It has become the symbol of arguably the nation’s pre-eminent hate group, the Ku Klux Klan.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/motorsports/nascar-fans-defend-display-confederate-flags-at-daytona/ar-AAcARfX

This weekend it became an attraction at a NASCAR race at Daytona Speedway, the Taj Mahal of the sport.

Racing fans flew the flag proudly, proclaiming it represents — to them, at least — Southern “heritage.”

Whatever. To many of us, it represents a lot of other things that have nothing to do with heritage.

But I’m wondering about why a certain television network, TV Land, has decided to discontinue showing “Dukes of Hazzard” reruns on its affiliate stations because it depicts a car driven by two redneck cousins that has a battle flag image painted on its roof.

If ever a show poked good-natured fun at some aspects of Southern culture, that TV show was at the top of the heap. Every one of the characters on that show was a caricature of sorts. The Duke boys, Uncle Jesse, Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane, all of ’em were intended to make fun.

I never recall anything remotely racist being depicted on that show.

Yes, the flag need not fly on the statehouse grounds in the very state where a racist murderer gunned down nine people with whom he was studying the Bible in Charleston, S.C. It need not be depicted on motor vehicle license plates, or should it fly on public property anywhere in this country.

But to target a light-hearted TV show?

I don’t get that one. Someone will have to explain that to me.

Uncategorized

My wife: bird whisperer

I am married to an extraordinary woman.

She’s smart, intuitive, loving, pretty — and she’s got this way with birds.

I saw evidence of it once again this weekend.

There have been three distinct encounters with birds that tell me she’s got this interesting gift with our feathered friends.

* The first time occurred many years ago, in Portland, Ore. I wasn’t there to see it. She told me about it. I believe her account. It involved a large crow that ended up in our dining room. It was making that loud sound that crows make. She managed to talk the crow out of the dining room, into the living room and out the front door.

* The second time occurred in Amarillo. It was about 2003 or 2004. Our kitties were still young and spry. Our little female, Mittens, stalked a cluster of sparrows that were scarfing up some dropped bird seed among my wife’s day lilies. Mittens crept forward, then sprinted and leaped into the flowers. The birds scattered. All but one, which ended up in Mittens’ jaws. Our cat looked at me wide-eyed and then sprinted into the house, bird in mouth. She dropped the bird, which then flew into our bedroom. My wife talked the bird into a corner, where she picked it up, inspected it for injury. Seeing none, she let the bird go and it flew away to join up with its pals.

* The third time occurred just this weekend. A blue jay had come down through the chimney and ended up atop our kitchen counters high above the floor. We managed to coax the bird into the dining room. My wife grabbed a broom and nudged it under the jay’s feet. It then flew to a ledge over our front door. I opened the screen. My wife nudged the broom under the jay’s feet once again. It climbed onto the business end of the broom as my wife spoke soothingly to it. She lowered the broom — and the blue jay flew off to points unknown.

Hmmm. I’m now wondering: Is there a market for a bird whisperer?

military news

Bastrop County preps for ‘invasion’?

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Here’s an interesting take on the upcoming military exercise planned by U.S. Special Forces, including Green Berets and SEALs, in Bastrop County, Texas.

It comes from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who served in the Clinton administration Cabinet.

***

As the U.S. military prepares to launch one of the largest training exercises in history later this month in Texas, many of the residents of Bastrop County suspect a secret Obama plot to spy on them, confiscate their guns and ultimately establish martial law. They aren’t “nuts and wackos. They are concerned citizens, and they are patriots,” Albert Ellison, chairman of the Bastrop Republican Party tells the Washington Post. Bastrop’s former mayor, Terry Orr, says the fear “stems a fair amount from the fact that we have a black president,” who people believe is primarily concerned with the welfare of “illegal aliens” and blacks. “People think the government is just not on the side of the white guy.” The current Bastrop mayor, Kenneth Kesselus, says the distrust is due in part to a sense that “things aren’t as good as they used to be,” especially economically. “The middle class is getting squeezed and they’ve got to take it out on somebody, and Obama is a great target.”

An economic recovery that only enriches the top breeds bigotry and invites scapegoating. It has happened before in history.

What do you think?

***

Here’s what I think. I think Reich’s comment about nature of the current recovery breeding “bigotry” and “scapegoating” is right on target. I also believe that’s just part of what’s fueling this mistrust of the military. I think some of it involves visceral loathing of the commander in chief by those who’ve bought into the myriad conspiracy theories surrounding his election, re-election and his service as president of the United States.

The crackpot Internet baloney that went viral around the world about the so-called Jade Helm 15 exercise being part of some plot by President Obama to declare martial law is a symptom of what’s become of the flow of rumors that get passed around as “information.”

Those who read this stuff, buy into it and then pass it along to gullible friends and acquaintances are contributing to the poisoning of what used to be considered reasonable political discourse.

And look at the comments of the former Bastrop mayor who suggests some of it stems from the president’s racial heritage. Is he right? You be the judge.

International news

‘No’ means no, in Greece

In Greece, they celebrate something called “Oxhi Day.”

“Oxhi” — and this is the rough spelling of the word, given that the Greek alphabet looks nothing like ours — is the Greek word for “no.”

It’s meant to mark then-Greek Prime Minister John Metaxas’s refusal to let Italian troops use Greek ports during the early years of World War II. Metaxas told Italian dictator Benito Mussolini “oxhi!” to his ultimatum; Mussolini then invaded Greece on Oct. 28, 1940 — and promptly had his troops slaughtered by the Greek army as they sought to advance south from Albania.

The Italian invasion stalled in the face of the ferocious Greek resistance. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi troops came in to rescue Mussolini from further humiliation — and conquered Greece.

Oxhi Day has been a big deal for Greece.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/greece-enters-uncharted-territory-after-referendum-no-vote/ar-AAczLKj

Now the word takes on a fresh meaning. The Greeks have said “oxhi” to demands for more austerity, which was a condition of more bailout money from the European Union.

The result might be that Greece leaves the EU, becoming — in the words of some observers — a “fringe nation” in Europe.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras vows to renegotiate a better deal for Greece. His left-wing government has grown weary of the austerity demands that others have placed on his country.

But to be candid, the Greeks seem to need some more austerity to help them curb their spendthrift habits. They have spent themselves into a tremendous debt crisis that they cannot solve — seemingly — by themselves.

I wish my the people who live in the country of my ancestors had voted the other way. The future of a once-vibrant nation now appears at best to be murky.

Just saying “oxhi!” might not be enough to save this proud country from ruin.