media news

Found: a title for memoir

Some of you know already that I am working on a memoir that I intend to give to my immediate family.

I have some good news. First, I am making good progress on it. Most of it is drafted. I still have some more entries to include in the finished product.

Second, I have come up with a working title for it. I am calling it “My Life in Print.” Snappy, eh?

This memoir intends to chronicle all the people I met and some of the occasionally harrowing, but always zany, experiences I had during my nearly 37 years as a print journalist.

It started in Oregon, the state of my birth and where I lived for the first 34 years of my life. I took a couple of years away from home to serve my country in the Army, went to war for a time, came home and re-enrolled in college. Dad asked me what I wanted to study. I told him I didn’t know. He suggested journalism. Why? Because he said the letters I wrote from Vietnam were so “descriptive” that he thought I had a talent I needed to develop in college.

OK, so I enrolled in some journalism courses … and fell in love with the study and the craft.

My beloved late wife, Kathy Anne, proposed the idea of a memoir shortly after I left my craft behind in August 2012. So, I am writing it for her and for my sons, my daughter-in-law, my granddaughter, my sisters and anyone else who might want to know how I spent my days — and many nights too! — for more than three decades.

It is “My Life in Print.”

Now, I have to get busy.

Uncategorized

Where must city manager live?

It’s pretty cool to have sources who tell you things that you can check out with a simple internet search … such as what happened this very day.

A snitch told me that the Princeton city manager is not required to live in the city where he or she administers public policy. My eyes widened — or so I was told by another person in the room.

I blurted out “What? The city’s top administrator isn’t required per the city charter to live in Princeton, Texas?” My friend/snitch said, “That’s right.”

Wow! I couldn’t stop thinking about that jewel of information as we talked about other matters. So, what did I do when I got back to Princeton, where I live? I looked up the Princeton City Charter on the city’s website. I scoured through it and found the chapter and verses related to the city manager.

Section 5.04 states: It shall be the duty of the City Manager to submit an annual budget not later than thirty (30) days prior to the end of the current fiscal year to the City Council for its review, consideration and revision. 

You know what that means, right? It means the city manager must recommend how much of our tax money we must pay to fund the annual budget. Yet the manager isn’t required to share our pain as we are forced to pay it.

The current city manager is a young man named Mike Mashburn, who came to Princeton from Farmers Branch. The City Council hired him immediately after meeting him for the first time just this year. It then gave him a five-figure pay increase in base salary just a few weeks after hiring a fellow who hadn’t done anything yet.

And yet, nowhere in the City Charter, which Princeton voters endorsed just this past year, does it stipulate any residency requirements for the city manager.

I long have believed that cities should require chief administrators to live in the communities they serve., Those administrators, such as city managers, also should require their top deputies and other key departments heads — whom they hire — to do the same.

Police chiefs, fire chiefs, financial officers — and the city manager — should bear the burden that city councils demand of those of us who pay the bills. Hey … fair is fair!

economic news

Harris, Trump agree? Wow!

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Who’da thunk this could happen, that Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump would agree on a significant public policy issue?

Both candidates for POTUS agree that service workers who rely on tips shouldn’t have to be taxed on that portion of their income.

Trump tossed the idea out there first. Harris has followed suit. Trump, though, is contending that Harris “stole” the idea from him and is trying to win favor with voters by casting this notion as her own.

Holy taxman!

I happen to agree that tip income need not be taxed. If you’re working as a server in a restaurant, you’re already earning something below the national minimum wage. Tips are meant to supplement the meager wage these folks are earning.

Harris wants to take the issue a step further. She wants to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, something that Trump opposes. Spoiler alert: I support Harris’s idea.

But really, there’s no “theft” involved in one candidate endorsing an idea pitched by an opponent. Then again, I tend to believe Donald Trump is going to take a lot more credit that he doesn’t deserve on issues that Harris endorses along the way.

national news, political news

Crowd size doesn’t matter

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Donald J. Trump keeps crowing — apparently falsely — about the size of the crowds to which he has been speaking.

He calls them “the largest anyone’s ever seen.” His critics, led by Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz, accuse him of (what else?) lying about the size of the crowds.

Allow me for just a brief moment to put the issue into another perspective.

Crowd size doesn’t matter. Size might matter in a lot of different contexts — if you’ll take a moment to ponder them — but not the size of crowds.

When I returned home from the Army in 1970, I got politically active. I guess you could call me a member of the “Vietnam Vets Against the War” in Vietnam. In 1972, we rallied behind a candidate who vowed, if elected POTUS, he would end the war.

Sen. George McGovern spoke to huge crowds all across the land. They were gigantic. They set unofficial records, as I recall.

In Portland, Ore., where I grew up, McGovern held a rally in downtown Portland. Huge crowd, man! Thousands of people gathered. I was one of them.

McGovern got us all fired up. We were ready to kick ass and take names … you know?

You’ll remember what happened on that Election Day. Sen. McGovern lost 49 of 50 states to President Nixon.

This is my way of saying that Donald Trump’s empty boast about big crowds means absolutely nothing …. particularly when he lies about it!

Uncategorized

Looking ahead to key meeting

Every so often, events align in such a way that enable to get a first-hand look at what a governing authority intends to do about an issue I am discussing on this blog.

Monday night, the Princeton City Council is convening to discuss the fate of a hideous eyesore that occupies a parcel next to Wal-Mart along US Highway 380. It’s that apartment complex that has gone seriously to seed over the past many months.

The city has declared that it suffers from several code violations. It’s unsafe. It is in fact rotting before our eyes.

A contractor started work on the massive luxury apartment complex. Then he got into a beef with the developer and walked away.

The city council, acting as a housing standards authority, must decide what to do about. For me, the session occurs at 5 p.m. Monday and I am going to be there as a Princeton resident/blogger.

The Princeton Herald will assign a reporter to cover it. Me? I get to watch it unfold in real time.

The city, I suppose, could decide Monday on the fate of the project. It could take it all under advisement and reconvene later for a decision. The decision might be to knock it down. Or … they could decide the site is worth rehabilitating.

I’ve stated already I believe the project needs to vanish. It’s not my call. It belongs to the city. I’m just an interested observer with a lot to say on what the city council decides.

crime news, national news

Who’s dumber?

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The dumbest individual to ever be elected president of the United States never should question another public figure’s intelligence.

Never! Not ever should he go there. But … Donald Trump has ventured down that blind alley.

He said this week that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris isn’t intelligent enough to stage a press conference with national media. He said President Biden is “smarter” than the person he wants to succeed him in the White House.

This, of course, comes from an individual without a single forward-looking policy agenda. He has offered no plan on how he intends to govern, other than to exact revenge on his political foes by siccing the Justice Department on them.

He hasn’t developed a single constructive thought. He doesn’t understand how government works.

Republicans have nominated a certifiable dumbass — oh, and a convicted felon — to be their nominee for president of the United States.

I believe I am going to scream!

national news

Two dates coincide historically

For the life of me I never gave this issue a first thought — let alone a second one.

Aug. 9 is important for two unique reasons, yet they both occupy huge spots in our nation’s history.

On that date in 1945, the U.S. Army Air Force dropped the second of two atomic bombs, this one on Nagasaki, Japan. The first one exploded over Hiroshima, Japan, three days earlier, President Truman wanted to send a message to our remaining World War II enemy that further resistance was futile and could be a very deadly to the Japanese.

Give ‘Em Hell Harry ordered the second bonbing and … well, there you have it. Japan waved the white flag five days later and the street dances commenced all across our nation as we celebrated VJ Day.

The world never would be the same.

Twenty-nine years later, on that date in 1974, President Nixon quit the office to which he was re-elected in a historic landslide just two years earlier. In June 1972, some doofus burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex in D.C.; they rifled through some desk drawers, looking for dirt on the Dems.

If there was a more stupid political stunt ever conceived, you would have to explain it to me. Nixon was cruising to his huge victory, yet the Committee to Re-Elect the President, aka CREEP, just had to break the law.

Nixon got into trouble by covering up the crime when he ordered the CIA to intervene on his behalf. The House of Representatives then would prepare articles of impeachment against him. An impeachment was a done deal; so was a Senate trial conviction.

Nixon got the word from his Republican allies in the Senate that he was toast.

So … he resigned, becoming the first POTUS ever to leave office in this shameful manner.

Both of these events stand alone as monumental episodes in our nation’s long and complicated history.

Let’s not allow either of them to repeat themselves.

media news

Go for it, Lawrence O’Donnell

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Lawrence O’Donnell has earned a gold star, a blue ribbon and a hearty “you go, young man” from High Plains Blogger.

The MSNBC host of “The Last Word” decided Thursday night to devote the first half of his broadcast to take down all the news networks that were on hand to ostensibly “cover” a press conference called by Donald J. Trump.

According to O’Donnell, they did nothing of the sort. They allowed Trump to lie to the public without ever fact-checking the GOP presidential nominee on the lies that flew out of his overfed pie hole.

And, yes, he included his own network in the criticism.

I watched O’Donnell’s takedown likely with a stunned look on my puss. I should not have been surprised. In 2016, when Trump was campaigning for POTUS the first time, O’Donnell emerged as the first national news anchor to call Trump’s falsehoods what they were, and what they are today: They are lies told deliberately by a politician who feels somehow protected by the media he despises.

Imagine that for just a moment.

O’Donnell said it was difficult to find a single sentence that Trump uttered during his hour-long presser that didn’t contain a lie. And yet … the reporters gathered at Trump’s estate never saw fit to challenge a single lie.

The reporters’ negligence forced O’Donnell to slam his papers on his desk out of disgust. I must add that O’Donnell wore his anger openly.

“It is 2016 all over again,” O’Donnell kept repeating.

Let us hope that the 2024 election campaign produces a vastly different outcome than what we got eight long years ago.

local news

Carters’ work thrives

I cannot help but think of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter whenever I drive past a short street in Princeton, Texas.

It is a street where crews are building the second in a series of houses for Habitat for Humanity, a program promoted vigorously by the former 39th president of the United States and his late wife.

President Carter is about to turn 100. He’s already lived far longer than any man who served as president. He said recently he wants to live enough to cast his next presidential vote for Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for the nation’s highest office.

This blog post, though, is about the legacy that President Carter will leave for many worthy families across the nation and to the nation itself. Other houses will go up eventually on Harrelson Street and they will be occupied by families that qualify for receiving the gift of home ownership.

If only he was well enough to travel to North Texas to see the work being done for Habitat for Humanity and, in an important way, on behalf of the project for which the Carters were fierce advocates.

national news

Harris reshapes election

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Kamala Harris’s stunning 11th-hour arrival in the center of the US political conversation drives home a point I want to make about the length of our election process.

It need not drag on for months and months!

It’s almost impossible to comprehend, but the vice president has been campaigning for president for less than a month. Less than one month!

She and her team have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, she has picked a vice-presidential candidate to run with her, she and Donald J. Trump have agreed to a debate on Sept. 10, Harris is formulating an economic strategy.

All of this and more has occurred in less than a month.

Circumstances overwhelmed the previous presumptive Democratic frontrunner, President Joe Biden. He pulled out and endorsed Harris to take over the top spot. If there has been a more perfect roll-out of a presidential campaign, then someone will have to show it to me. Because this one looked like perfection in real time.

It all just goes to demonstrate that we need not drag this process out forever and then some!

I’ve never wondered aloud how we could shorten the length of time we devote to political campaigning. Would it require a federal law enacted by Congress? An amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Does each state have the power to ban campaign activity?

We ought to look at all of the above.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience