Tag Archives: Dallas Morning News

State news

Here is why early voting sucks

A major Texas newspaper has just validated my reasons for hating early voting.

The Dallas Morning News has rescinded an editorial endorsement it had made because a candidate for a Dallas County Commissioners Court seat was revealed to have set up a trust fund for his children if they married white people.

The candidate is Republican Vickers Cunningham. The revelation came to light on the eve of the runoff election for the commissioners court seat. The Dallas Morning News was so incensed at the racially loaded matter that it pulled its endorsement.

This is what I’m talking about! I have said for many years that — banning my actual absence from my voting precinct on Election Day — I always choose to vote on that day. Why? Because I hate being surprised by learning something terrible about my candidate after voting for him or her.

The matter involving Vickers Cunningham falls into that category of unwelcome surprise.

The Morning News said it backed Cunningham because of his experience as a district court judge. It didn’t know about the compact he made with his children until “the final days of this campaign.”

I know that Election Day voting doesn’t prevent such surprises. I merely want to minimize to the best of my ability the impact of such a surprise by waiting until the last day of an election campaign to exercise my right as a citizen.

media news, political news, State news

Obscene tweet a ‘breaking point’? If only …

a-texas-official-is-walking-back-an-obscene-tweet-about-hillary-clinton-png

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller’s obscene tweet about Hillary Rodham Clinton is the “breaking point” for at least one Texas voter.

Is it for others who have been entrenched in the Donald J. Trump camp since the zillionaire business mogul announced his Republican presidential candidacy?

Do not take it to the bank.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2016/11/02/agriculture-commissioner-sid-millers-c-word-tweet-hillary-clinton-breaking-point

A tweet that went out under Miller’s name referred to Clinton as the “c-word.” It’s too vulgar to repeat. As Jacquielyne Floyd of the Dallas Morning News writes in her blog, Miller came up with a package of lame excuses: a staffer did it; someone hacked his account.

Miller said he didn’t do such a thing. The tweet was pulled down right away, which I guess is saying something about the commissioner.

Then again, this guy has been making a spectacle of himself ever since he took over the TDA office from fellow Republican Todd Staples in 2015. I wish Staples was still on the job, frankly.

Miller has emerged as Trump’s chief Texas cheerleader.

Floyd writes: “My weary, overworked outrage meter is idling in low gear, like persistent background static on the radio. I can only summon a tired wonder that Miller, whose newest contretemps is perhaps the most egregious but far from being the first rodeo of disgrace and embarrassment he has attended, is the kind of damage Texas keeps inflicting on itself.”

Texas, though, seems bent on inflicting these wounds. We have sent a number of folks to Congress who keep spouting off without engaging what passes for their brains.

Now we have an agriculture commissioner — who ought to be focused primarily on promoting Texas farm and ranch products and helping them improve their harvest yields and getting the most money they can from the livestock they send to market.

The voter — Kathleen Lyle of Rowlett — who was offended beyond measure by the tweet, wrote a letter to Miller. According to Floyd: “Lyle demanded an apology for every woman and every schoolchild in the state of Texas: “‘You are obligated to behave decently in public once elected,’ she told him.”

Floyd continued: “It was a letter that summed up not only one woman’s frustration over one elected official’s outrageous violation, but spoke for countless Americans who are appalled by the ugliness, the unhinged vulgarity, the puerile bullying shoutdown to which the political conversation has devolved.”

The tweet that went out under Sid Miller’s name is just the latest example of all the above.

If only more of us would feel as outraged as Kathleen Lyle.

legal news, State news

No real surprise; Texas high court endorses do-nothing school policy

SCHOOL_FINANCE_TRIAL_TEXAS_50498503

At one level — had I been following this case more closely — I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Texas Supreme Court had ruled the state’s public school funding system to be “constitutional.”

I’ll admit that I haven’t been as avid a follower of this issue as I should have been.

The court ruled this week that the state is doing all it should be doing to finance public education. Never mind that previous courts, previous judges and educators across the state have said the state does far too little to support public education.

Not so, said the state’s highest civil appellate court.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20160513-editorial-school-finance-decision-could-spell-disaster-for-texas-education.ece

The Dallas Morning News editorial I’ve attached to this blog post lays it out pretty well. The Texas Supremes have set an amazingly low bar for state public education.

The court has declared in its unanimous ruling that taking care of public schools rests exclusively with the Texas Legislature.

Here is what I do know about the state of public school financing in Texas.

The Legislature has dramatically cut state spending on public schools over the past several sessions. Do the Supreme Court justices now believe the Legislature is going to reverse itself, that it’s going to find more money to distribute equitably among the more than 1,000 independent school districts around the state?

Of course, the political ramifications must be factored in.

Republicans control — by wide margins — both legislative chambers. They also occupy every statewide office in Texas. That includes the nine individuals who comprise the Texas Supreme Court.

Who out there really thinks the justices ever were going to buck the policies set by their GOP brethren in the other two branches of state government?

Here’s part of what the Morning News said: “In refusing to intervene, they’ve placed an enormous responsibility to fix our system of school finance on the shoulders of state lawmakers, the same lawmakers who have refused for decades to do what is needed. As a result, Texas’ 5 million public school children will be the ones who most directly bear the costs of the high court’s refusal to fix a system that it concedes requires ‘transformational, top-to-bottom reforms.'”

The justices have recognized the state’s public education system is broken but they won’t do anything to fix it.

The ball’s back in the Legislature’s court. Again.

Do something, lawmakers, to repair the system you’ve broken.

legal news, media news, political news, State news

Texas AG slams door on transparency

paxton

Ken Paxton’s tenure as Texas attorney general has gotten off to a rocky start.

First, a Collin County grand jury indicted the Republican politician on charges of securities fraud, accusing him of failing to report income he derived from giving investment advice to a friend. The Securities and Exchange Commission followed suit with a complaint of its own.

Bad start, man.

Then the attorney general accepts the resignations of two top aides and agrees to keep paying them. What’s worse in this case, according to the Dallas Morning News, is that the AG isn’t explaining why he’s continuing to pay the ex-staffers.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20160509-editorial-ken-paxton-should-answer-our-reporters-questions.ece

The Morning News accuses Paxton of bullying the newspaper’s reporters who keep asking questions about the payments. He’s not willing to explain why he’s using these particular public funds in this manner.

The newspaper has blistered Paxton in an editorial. It demands, correctly in my view, that he hold his office — and himself — accountable for the actions he has taken regarding the resignations of these individuals.

The Morning News asks a pertinent question, noting that state law allows public agencies to grant paid leave when it finds “good cause” to do so. Paxton decided to categorize their departure as paid leave, thus justifying the continued payments to folks who no longer work for the state. The paper asks: What’s the good cause? The attorney general isn’t saying.

The paper offers this bit of advice to the public as it ponders the AG’s behavior: “Voters should take note.”

 

national news, political news

Hatred won’t end just because we demand it

malia

Leona Allen has written a terrific blog post for the Dallas Morning News.

Sadly, though, it won’t accomplish what she has demanded: an end to the racist epithets aimed at the family of Barack and Michelle Obama.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2016/05/enough-of-this-racist-and-insensitive-tripe-about-the-obamas-interracial-marriage-from-trump.html/

Allen has taken appropriate note of the hateful reaction from those who commented on Malia Obama — the older of the Obamas’ two daughters — deciding to take a year off before entering Harvard University. She writes: “Instead of celebrating the kid’s hard work, anonymous trolls took it upon themselves to disparage her with racist epithets.”

Fox News took down the comments after its website was filled with comments from the racist haters who took time to disparage Malia’s accomplishment.

The president’s policies are open to criticism, as are the policies of all presidents. It goes with the territory. They all know their public policy record is fair game.

What is not fair game, though, is the hate that is thrown at public officials — and their families.

We’ve seen far more than enough of it for the past nearly eight years. As Allen notes, the Obamas have done an admirable job of maintaining their dignity in public in the face of the comments that have been hurled at them.

If only the blogger’s demand to cease and desist the hatred would be met.

Of course, the Obamas are the only targets of the hatred. The blog notes that others have taken aim at interracial couples. Allen noted that U.S. Sen. John McCain’s son, Jack, is married to an African-American woman and has lashed out at the haters simply by posting pictures of himself and his wife on social media.

We’ve all heard about the “toxic” political atmosphere in Washington.

Many of us salute the progress we’ve made in the realm of race relations.

This latest spasm of hatred aimed at an accomplished young woman who happens to be the daughter of the president of the United States only shows us how far we have to go.

 

national news, political news

Trump’s innuendo will live on

cruzandfamily

Donald J. Trump has done many seemingly “impossible” things while getting to the brink of the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

Heck, just getting to this stage of the campaign — as the presumptive nominee of a once-great political party — ought to stand as the premier impossible accomplishment.

It isn’t, though. Instead, Trump managed to make Sen. Ted Cruz a sympathetic figure.

How did he do that? By tossing out the innuendo that Cruz’s father had some kind of relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who shot President Kennedy to death in 1963.

Cruz’s campaign for the presidency is now over. But the utterly hideous assertion about the senior Cruz’s supposed “role” in the JFK murder lives on.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/

Dallas Morning News blogger Jim Mitchell calls it a “new low” in a campaign full of new lows.

Trump used a National Enquirer story into a talking point on his campaign. That’s correct. A supermarket tabloid offered grist for Trump to assert something about a member of an opponent’s family.

As Mitchell writes: “What Trump did is what makes him such a loose cannon. He reads or hears something and then repeats it as the truth. Imagine President Trump making policy on hearsay, or an outright lie, or a plotline he picked up from a television show the night before. I can imagine waking up and having a President Trump explaining why he ordered a nuclear strike with this rationale.”

In truth, I cannot even imagine the words “President” and “Trump” next to each other in a written or spoken sentence.

The Cruz/Oswald innuendo is likely to stand out in the endless list of ghastly assertions Trump has made on his way to becoming the Republican Party nominee for president of the United States.

Unbelievable.

 

national news, political news, State news

Kasich gets the nod from a major media outlet

kasich

Newspaper editorial boards have at times been accused of being “homers,” sometimes favoring the home-town or home-state candidates over more qualified challengers.

The Dallas Morning News has chosen, however, to make its recommendation for the Republican presidential nomination — and it’s not U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

The DMN’s nod goes to Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

The paper likes Kasich’s record of accomplishment and believes it would suit him — and the nation — well if he were to be elected the next president of the United States.

What’s most compelling — to me, at least — is the paper’s nod to Kasich’s ability and willingness to work with Democrats. He did so while serving in Congress, where he chaired the House Budget Committee and helped craft a balanced federal budget.

One does not do such a thing in a vacuum, and Kasich showed his bipartisan chops in that regard.

I’m glad to see the Dallas Morning News climb aboard the Kasich bandwagon, such as it is in Texas.

* *

But what does a newspaper endorsement mean?

More than likely not a damn thing, at least not in this election season.

The leading Republican candidate for president says outrageous things about his foes, other politicians in general, the media, the voters, women — he uses amazingly grotesque language to describe one of his leading opponents — but, what the heck. That’s OK. He scores points for tossing aside “political correctness.”

Kasich remains one of the grownups in this GOP primary contest. A newspaper editorial board endorsement likely won’t be singularly decisive in determining whether he wins the state’s primary on March 1.

I just hope Texas Republicans heed the rationale behind the recommendation.

local news, religious news, State news

Why the fuss over ‘God’ decal?

decal

“In God We Trust,” according to some folks, is a religious statement.

The way I interpret the phrase is that it has become almost a stock line, a virtual clichĂ©. It now adorns the police cruisers in at least two Texas Panhandle communities — in Childress and Hutchinson counties. The phrase has drawn criticism from anti-religious zealots.

My question is this: Can’t you find more worthy opponents to take on?

Dallas Morning News blogger Jim Mitchell has weighed in with his view that the phrase doesn’t belong on police cars.

In God We Trust can be found on our currency and on public building. Mitchell has no problem with that.

My only gripe about the phrase on police cars is that the cops could have chosen another phrase to place on its cars. How about “To Protect and Serve”?

But the phrase “In God We Trust” doesn’t, in my mind, say anything offensive. The term doesn’t suggest that cops are going to interrogate motorists they pull over about their religious faith, or ask them if they believe in God.

The phrase appears to be merely a statement that the relevant police agency trusts in God — which, incidentally, can be an ecumenical deity that takes in people of various faiths.

As for those with have no faith in God, well, the phrase means nothing to them. That’s fine, too.

But to protest it? Get a life … please.

national news, political news

Isn’t America still ‘great’?

ballcap trump

Tod Robberson, writing a blog for the Dallas Morning News, poses a question that’s been nagging at me since I first heard Donald Trump make a certain proclamation.

Trump has promised to “make America great again.” He’s been wearing a gimme cap at campaign rally with the words written across the front of it.

My thought always has been that the United States is a great nation. It’s a superpower with unprecedented military capability. It’s economy remains — for now, at least — No. 1 in the world.

And people from other nations are flocking here — yes, even legally — to start new lives. As Robberson pointed out: “In fact, the very immigration issue that Trump has made the focal point of his campaign belies the assertion that America isn’t great. Why would millions of people risk their lives to come to this country, legally or illegally, if there weren’t something of overwhelming value drawing them specifically here? It’s actually a lot easier to migrate to Canada, Europe, Costa Rica or Brazil. But for some reason, people want to come to America. That’s because we are still the greatest nation on earth.”

Trump, though, is suggesting that the United States no longer is “exceptional,” to borrow a popular Republican mantra of past campaigns against the current Democratic president.

Robberson also shoots down the notion that during the Ronald Reagan years in the White House that the United States stood as the model for greatness that today’s GOP seeks to emulate.

It’s worth a look: http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2015/08/make-america-great-again-trump-needs-to-rethink-his-rhetoric.html/

I’m just wondering how Trump gets away with asserting the United States of America isn’t still the greatest nation on the planet.

 

 

media news

Newspaper jargon is changing

You know what “jargon” means, yes?

If not, I’ll tell you: It’s an esoteric dialect that only those who practice the craft being described can understand.

Doctors speak to each other in jargon; so do lawyers; same, I suppose, for accountants, automobile salespeople or restaurant managers. They can use language only they get.

Well, newspaper editors and reporters have jargon, too. It involves words and phrases such as “burying the lead,” “head bust,” “cutline,” or “filling a hole.”

Those of us who toiled in the newspaper business know those terms and what they mean.

Well, it’s been determined that newspaper jargon is changing. It’s not even unique to newspapers any longer. It has become a form of digital-speak.

The Dallas Morning News this past week announced buyouts involving 167 newsroom employees. Some of them are well-known names to those who read the newspaper.

http://dallas.culturemap.com/news/city-life/07-24-15-dallas-morning-news-buyout-familiar-names/

Perhaps the most telling comment came from a friend of mine, who happens to be an old-school, ink-stained newspaper guy in eastern New Mexico, who said that the phrase “‘We’re all salespeople now’ never should come from a newspaper editor.”

Yet that’s what came from the mouth of DMN editor Mike Wilson in announcing the buyouts.

The Dallas Morning News is going to emphasize its digital operation. Wilson said the personnel being bought out were going to be replaced by individuals who will be more digitally minded. He called the replacements “outstanding digital journalists.”

According to a story posted on an online site: “In a recent digital-lingo-filled interview with Columbia Journalism Review, Wilson said that the staff would need to be better at building audience online, stating, ‘We are all salespeople now.’ He described categories such as education and the (Dallas) Cowboys as ‘verticals,’ and used the verb ‘curate.'”

Verticals? Curate? What the … ?

Some of the bigger newspapers in the country are going digital. The Dallas Morning News is just the latest.

There once was a time when print journalists were secretly proud that they could talk to each other in a language no one else understood. Well, folks, those days appear to be over. Whoever is left standing after all these purges is going to learn a whole new language.