Fort Worth's Mayor Mike Moncrief & All The King's Men

I watched the last hour, or so, of All The King's Men, whilst eating tacos this afternoon.

Blue corn tacos with tofu/beef and Wisconsin Sharp Cheddar.

I don't know why I digressed to tacos.

All The King's Men is about corruption in a southern state, I'm not sure which one. Louisiana? Texas?

Willie Stark is the Governor/King. Willie started off with good intentions, but gradually got more and more corrupt. And did ever worse bad deeds.

Willie was able to con the people with his platitudes and by building a lot of public works that he put his name on, like hospitals and roads.

I don't know if Governor Willie built any fake lakes from any rivers in his state. Or if he ran any bogus flood diversion channels to try and con some money from the Federal government.

Eventually impeachment charges were brought against Willie, which he successfully fought, only to be shot by one of the people he'd run roughshod over.

Yesterday I spent a couple hours with good citizens concerned about the corruption that permeates to varying degrees throughout the area known as the Barnett Shale, with the locus of corruption seeming to be Fort Worth and the county of Tarrant, of which Fort Worth is the county seat.

The corruption seems to spread, like a cancer, a malignancy seemingly impervious to any known treatment. Calls for the FBI to investigate go ignored.

Pointing out that the Mayor of Fort Worth, makes over $600,000 a year from the various gas drillers poking holes in Fort Worth, those being gas drillers who Mayor Moncrief helps in various sundry ways, which is clearly illegal, clearly a conflict of interest, seems to not matter.

Minimally Moncrief should have recused himself from having any part of any decision affecting any business from which he gains monetarily. Moncrief should have had to unburden himself of the conflicts of interest by divesting himself of any holdings in the gas driller companies.

And then there is the corruption in the boondoggle known as the Trinity River Vision. The vision has been being funded mostly by money that Congresswoman Kay Granger has been throwing Fort Worth's way via earmarks stuck on spending bills. That is now a big no no. Where will the TVR get money now?

Another point of obvious corruption regarding the TRV is the fact that Kay Granger's son, J.D. Granger, was put in charge of the TRV project, a job for which he had zero credentials. What Kay Granger did is what is known as nepotism. Nepotism is a big NO NO in civilized parts of America.

The TRV has never been put to a public vote. And yet eminent domain is being abused to take property for the supposed public good, purchased, I guess, with the ill gotten gains of those Kay Granger earmarks.

Near as I can tell, the cancer continues to spread, more politicians are being bought off in various ways, newspapers co-opted, even newspapers, thought to be safe from being co-opted, seem to have been corrupted and co-opted by the Bad Boy powers that be.

What can stop this ever growing cancer? I don't think radiation or chemotherapy is an option. Radical surgery seems the way to go. An honest person needs to penetrate the Good Ol' Boy Network and throw open the closed door, opening the books, naming names, pointing fingers, insisting on a Federal Bureau of Investigation investigation.

I thoroughly believe that Fort Worth will not be well until the various tumors are removed. I think the Mike Moncrief tumor is a very good place to start. How to go about that operation? I have no idea....