The 2014 Turkey Awards award a large number of Tarrant County and Texans the coveted Turkey Award, including one of Tarrant County's favorite Turkeys, Bud Kennedy.
You can go to the online version of FW Weekly's 2014 Turkey Awards and read about all the Turkeys, but I want to focus on just one Turkey Award....
The Perks of Pedigrees Turkey Award
Thanksgiving is all about family and making sure your relatives have jobs at places that are a clear conflict of interest to your elected or appointed position. Wait — we’re thinking of Fort Worth’s rampant year-round nepotism, not Thanksgiving. When it comes to getting a high-paying cushy job in this town, seems that the best way to get ahead is to be related to some alleged public servant.
The Trinity River Vision staff reads like a social directory for the offspring of local politicians and high-ranking officials: Most notably U.S. Rep. Kay Granger’s son J.D. is its executive director, and the Tarrant Regional Water District’s head honcho Jim Oliver’s son Matt is the TRV’s public information officer.
Mayor Betsy Price was all over television shilling for the Ed Bass-led effort to get taxpayers to pay for his pet project, an absurdly high-priced arena. It would have been Fort Worth knowing (to borrow from those commercials) that her son-in-law works for Ed Bass’ real estate company and sits on the board of the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo.
I have been asked once, maybe twice, why I would say something as outrageous as to suggest that Fort Worth's Congresswoman, Kay Granger, is a corrupt politician.
Let me answer that corrupt question quite simply.
A non-corrupt politician, when told her son was going to be given a job in her district, for which he was totally unqualified, being the executive director of a public works project, with that project relying on attaining federal pork barrel earmark money to fund it, well, a non-corrupt politician would immediately object, saying you can not do that, it would be wrong, it would look bad, it would be nepotism of the worst sort.
But, Kay Granger willingly signed on to her unqualified son being given a cushy, high-paying job where he could act out as a textbook case of a frat boy with arrested development, organizing floating beer parties, concerts, junkets and all sorts of other nonsense that has nothing to do with the construction of a flood control project.
In reaction to FW Weekly's 2014 Turkey Awards there were several comments, including one from a guy named Roy, which said, in part...
So what is it about the stunning nepotism at the Trinity River Vision? I have wondered for years why the most qualified person to run that boondoggle is apparently the son of the politician who corrals the jack for it. And NOBODY seems to notice or say anything about it. Is that what they mean when they say something is being done “the Fort Worth way?”
I find it gratifying that I am no longer alone in referring to the Trinity River Vision as a Boondoggle. In fact, I believe the number now is quite large who refer to this ill-conceived, poorly executed, never voted for by the public, public works project as a Boondoggle.
I have long shared the puzzlement that Roy is expressing, that being that NOBODY seems to notice, in a meaningful way, that something is dire wrong about how Fort Worth has gone about and continues to go about foisting the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle on the people who have never voted for it.
And yes, Roy, I have been told repeatedly that this is what is known as the Fort Worth Way. A corrupt town run by a corrupt oligarchy of good ol' boys and girls, who operate primarily in their own self interest, not in the interest of the majority of the people of Fort Worth.
All of them Turkeys worthy of an award.....
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