Sunday, January 28, 2018

Plot To Lure Amazon To Fort Worth's Web Of Boondoggles

Recently Bud Kennedy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram editorially opined one of the many things Fort Worth needed to do to fix its identity crisis was to get over the town's Dallas fixation.

Around this same time Bud Kennedy's employer spewed an Embarrassing Fort Worth Dallas Rivalry Editorial which really made no sense and which regurgitated more of Fort Worth's nonsensical delusional Dallas rivalry fixation.

I know I have blogged more than once regarding the reason I repeatedly verbalize snarky opinions about Fort Worth and the town's pitiful newspaper of record. That being it is the town's delusions, as reflected in its pitiful newspaper of record, which have grated ever since I was first exposed to it.

It's the bizarre hucksterism, the delusional bragging, based on, well, delusions, and the out and out misrepresenting reality which I have long found to be pitiful and have long thought does a great disservice to the citizens of the town.

I remember one astounding incident from a few years back where those who have been to other downtowns in America were shocked to learn, via the Star-Telegram, that Downtown Fort Worth is the Envy of the Nation.

I long ago gave up trying to understand why Fort Worth, as represented by the town's pitiful newspaper of record, and its inept town leaders, persist in so much wanton hucksterism, trying to portray sleepy Fort Worth as something it is not. And probably never will be, or could ever possibly be.

Vancouver of the South. Envy of the Nation. Best this that or the other thing.

Which leads us to this Luring Amazon a good reason to drop Big D rivalry editorial. It being the latest iteration of the ongoing delusional nonsense in the Star-Telegram, despite that newspaper's Bud Kennedy wisely suggesting such be knocked off because all it does is make Fort Worth appear small and petty to those observing from outside the town's Zone of Delusion.

The subject of this latest delusional editorial is the fact that Amazon included Dallas in it list of 20 finalists to be considered as locations for Amazon's HQ2.

One of the Star-Telegram's ongoing delusions, ever since Amazon announced the HQ2 thing, has been that Fort Worth had a chance to be the HQ2 location, and that that location would be on the industrial wasteland bizarrely called Panther Island. A location where Amazon decision makers would find no island, no mass transit, few amenities, streets without sidewalks and parks with no modern facilities, such as running water, let alone modern restrooms, and three simple little bridges which have been under construction for years, over dry land, to one day maybe connect the Fort Worth mainland to that imaginary island..

So, this Star-Telegram editorial suggests Fort Worth drop the Big D rivalry for the bigger goal of securing Amazon HQ2 somewhere in the D/FW zone.

Recently during the spate of articles and opinion pieces about Fort Worth's identity crisis and the spending of hundred of thousands of dollars to try and figure out the obvious, we learned, via comments made by those not subjected to the Fort Worth propaganda, such as people who live in Dallas, that they had no idea there was a rivalry between the two towns. Time and again people living outside of Fort Worth opined they did not know this was a thing.

And then we have this latest Star-Telegram editorial with its premise largely based on the misconception there is some sort of rivalry between Dallas and Fort Worth.

The first paragraph of this Luring Amazon a good reason to drop Big D rivalry editorial...

There’s been a lot of posturing lately as the historic rivalry between Dallas and Fort Worth resurfaced.

I think I have already mentioned I find the delusional nonsense to be pitiful. An "historic rivalry"? Really? Historic? And such has re-surfaced? After being dormant? Really? This is an imaginary historic rivalry which exists only in the deluded imaginations of some in Fort Worth who, I don't know, don't get out much to see other towns, including Dallas.

And then the following paragraphs...

When a recently released economic development study said Fort Worth needs to up its game or be perceived as a Dallas suburb, many of our Cowtown citizens went ballistic.

“Don’t Dallas my Fort Worth,” some of you said.

This Star-Telegram Editorial Board also weighed-in when a Dallas Morning News columnist suggested Fort Worth should embrace its junior status.

We said, Fort Worth is junior to nobody, and “we aren’t sitting at the kiddies table.”

That was good-natured ribbing. (Most of it.)

Oh yeah, what hilarious jokesters, enjoying some good-natured ribbing, which makes sense to no one outside the Zone of Delusion. Cowtown citizens went ballistic? Fort Worth is junior to nobody? And won't be sitting at the kiddies table? How many times over how many years has it been opined that Fort Worth needs to grow up and start acting like a city of its size, wearing its big boy pants? So delusional.

In addition to delusional verbiage the Star-Telegram also just gets the facts wrong, like in this paragraph...

When it comes to the really big things that matter — when there are millions of dollars and up to 50,000 high paying jobs on the table — we should all support and applaud regional collaboration. Even if Big D gets top billing.

It is not millions of dollars. The Amazon impact would be billions of dollars. Billions. Amazon has spent billions just on its downtown Seattle campus. And that's just the campus. There are multiple other Amazon buildings all over downtown Seattle. And the dollar impact for the local Seattle economy is a number in the dozens of billions. Even this inept Star-Telegram editorial included the info that Amazon has pumped $38 billion into the Seattle tax base.

And then we get another paragraph with more of the aforementioned delusional nonsense...

The Fort Worth Chamber’s Vice President of Communications Andra Bennett says the Chamber is still trying to clarify whether in naming “Dallas” Amazon means it’s considering a site location within that city, or if it’s shorthand for looking at sites throughout the region’s communities, including Fort Worth’s Panther Island.

Can you really imagine any sane businessman, like Jeff Bezos, for instance, looking at the industrial wasteland Fort Worth currently insists on calling Panther Island, and think this was a location to build a new corporate headquarters?

And then we get to the most pitifully deluded three paragraphs in this overall pitiful editorial...

Fort Worth is being mentioned in national media coverage as a player for one of the biggest economic development “gets” in years.

Bennett said the Chamber’s economic development executive Brandom Gengelbach was interviewed more than a dozen times in the past week and included in media reports around the country.

“Fort Worth’s visibility has been raised,” she said. “It would take a lot of marketing dollars to get that.”

Do some of the Star-Telegram's readers actually believe this embarrassing hucksterism? Due to Dallas being considered for Amazon's HQ2 Fort Worth's visibility has been raised? And it would take a lot of huckstering marketing dollars to get that type visibility?

Really?

I have read multiple articles in multiple legitimate publications about the Amazon HQ2 subject. Not once. Not a single time. Never ever, have I seen Fort Worth mentioned as a contender. Or included in any mention of Dallas.

Not once.

The only place I have seen where Fort Worth is considered a viable HQ2 contender is in the Star-Telegram's propaganda.

Could the Star-Telegram please provide us some instances of where Fort Worth is being mentioned in national media coverage regarding Amazon HQ2?  One of the Fort Worth Chamber's hucksters has been interviewed more than a dozen times in the past week? With those interviews appearing in media reports around the country? Really?

Note that the Star-Telegram makes no mention of what those interviews are about. We are left to assume the interviews had to do with Amazon HQ2. That is what is implied. Again, can the Star-Telegram please provide the information as to who did these dozen plus interviews with this Fort Worth Chamber huckster? And what media reports, around the country, did those interviews appear in? If such actually happened, this information should be easy to provide.

This type nonsense is precisely why I have developed such a disgust for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

This pitiful newspaper ill serves the people of Fort Worth, creating illusionary, delusionary misrepresentations of the reality of a perfectly ordinary town with a large population, with the civic mentality of a small town.

A small town with a small downtown with no department stores, no grocery stores, few residents, meager public transit, with the rest of the town having streets with few sidewalks, parks without running water, but plenty of outhouses, and host to America's Biggest Boondoggle, an inept public works project which has been limping along for almost two decades, with nary a mention made in the town's newspaper of record of this boondoggle's various scandalous missteps.

Yeah, that sounds like a town one of the world's biggest companies, with the world's richest man, would want to locate to for a second headquarters.

Delusional....

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