Is Fort Worth Grand Jury Investigating A Local Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization?

Outrage over the Tarrant Regional Water District payoff to former TRWD Executive Director, Jim Oliver, has opened a can of worms that has long been in dire need of being opened.

A Grand Jury investigation is underway.

Maybe this will finally lead to a RICO investigation. (Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations)

Apparently at the latest TRWD board meeting it became apparent that some of the board members have no understanding of even the simple type of corruption known as nepotism.

Fort Worth's new actual real news source of the investigative journalism sort, Fort Worth Report reported on the TRWD Grand Jury Investigation in Grand Jury Investigating Tarrant water district.

Having a real news source in town seems to have motivated the Fort Worth Star-Telegram to act more like a real newspaper.

The above is a screen cap from the front page of the online version of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram with a link to an article about the TRWD Grand Jury investigation titled Grand jury investigating Tarrant Regional Water District after complaint about settlement.

It will be interesting to see where this Grand Jury investigation goes...

Trip Down The Memory Lane Of Fort Worth Racketeering

 A couple days ago the DFW entity who goes by the name, sometimes, of Elsie Hotpepper, sent me an email, part of which you see screen capped above.

The subject line says "A trip down memory lane". There was no further explanatory text. Just six attached PDF files. It took me awhile, and a phone call from the aforementioned Hotpepper, before I understood that the point of these PDFs is they are sort of appalling evidence of how long Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision and the town's other instances of corruption have been Boondoggling along.

We will go through these PDFs one by one, gleaning what we can, starting with the one on the left in the top row...

The first one is from way back in 1995, an article in D Magazine titled "Who Runs Fort Worth?" Okay, basically the article makes the case that the Bass Family to a large degree runs Fort Worth, treating the town like it's their own little fiefdom, remaking parts of the town to suit their whims, well, mostly the whims of Ed Bass.

The next PDF shows us the payroll of the Tarrant Regional Water District from 2013. From that we learn that way back then J.D. Granger was being paid 74.80 an hour. The employee with whom J.D. had an extramarital affair, and later married, Shanna Cate, was making 38.23 an hour. The ostensible boss of J.D. and Shanna, Jim Oliver, was making a whopping 146.63 an hour.

The next PDF goes back five years to 2008 with another TRWD payroll, but this time we learn the yearly salary. In 2008 J.D. made 140,000 a year. Girlfriend, Shanna, made 64,200, while their boss, Jim Oliver, made 275,000 a year.

Moving on, the next PDF is an article titled The Uppity Dumpties written by Richard Connor that was in the Fort Worth Business Press way back on November 27, 2006. This article details the cronyism of the group of Fort Worth insiders, like Kay Granger and her son, J.D. and Bryan Eppstein, who benefitted from multiple contracts of the no-bid sort with the water district, including managing the water board campaigns of Jim Lane and Marty Leonard.

The next PDF is an article in The Texas Observer from October 20, 2000 by P.A. Humphrey titled Bringing Home the Bacon. This article details what seems to amount to a form of insider trading by Kay Granger helping finagle pseudo public works projects which would benefit property owned by Granger.

The source of the info in the final PDF we are a bit unsure about. It's an article written by Matt Pulle on September 11, 2005, titled Einstein? No, Eppstein: Fort Worth Republican plays both sides of the fence. At the end of the article we see "Photo of Bryan Eppstein on this page courtesy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram."

So, we can say for certain the photo is from the Star-Telegram. But the article? The Star-Telegram is not known for articles like this which details the tangled web of Eppstein's dealing with the Fort Worth political machine.

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So, there you go. The main thing I got out of these six PDFs is how amazingly long this stuff has been going on. How does one bring about a RICO investigation? RICO, as in Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

More Local Control Over Fort Worth Star-Telegram Hit Pieces

Yesterday I opined that in my opinion the Fort Worth Way was in dire need of a RICO racketeering investigation. The day before yesterday I blogged about an aspect of that racketeering problem in a blog post about America's Biggest Boondoggle's new marketing manager.

The blog post about the new marketing manager generated an example of the racketeering mindset from someone whose name is Unknown...

Unknown has left a new comment on your post "What Will America's Biggest Boondoggle's New Marketing Manager Manage":

Really dude? Honestly WTF is your problem really? Get over yourself. Or how about you move on back to good ole DC and leave Ft Worth alone? We like it just fine! 

Aunt Kay won't let me  move back to DC. Aunt Kay insists I stay in the Fort Worth area to keep a watchful eye on cousin J.D.

It must be a comfort to Unknown to be able to speak for all the people of Fort Worth, people who Unknown thinks like Fort Worth just fine. Yet somehow over the years I have come into contact with many lifelong natives of Fort Worth who are totally disgusted with their town and the corrupt Fort Worth Way's inept shenanigans, such as that which has become America's Biggest Boondoggle, or little  things, like being unable to "fix" the park in downtown Fort Worth dedicated to Fort Worth's heritage, Or a big thing, like becoming the world's biggest experiment in urban fracking.

And then, last night the most recent example I have seen of the Fort Worth Way's racketeering. A guest editorial opinion piece from the soon to be ex-board president of the Tarrant Regional Water District, Vic Henderson, with this opinion editorial being an irresponsible slanderous hit piece attacking fellow board member, the up for re-election, Mary Kelleher.

You can read this embarrassing propaganda hit piece by going to Our local water board should have local control.

I am not going to detail all the bits of misinformation, out right lies and slander. See how many you can find yourself if you can tolerate making it through the entire editorial.

The reason behind this hit piece is the fact that the TRWD board must be kept under the control of the existing cadre of TRWD conspirators. Any means possible are used to keep control.

The fraudulent  results of the most recent  TRWD board election is what set off the biggest  election fraud investigation in Texas history, due to wanton vote harvesting using bogus absentee ballots. In the previous TRWD board  election  Marty Leonard and Jim Lane were re-elected with a record breaking vote count, around 10,000 more votes than any previous TRWD board election.

And around 10,000 of those votes were absentee ballots. That is approximately half the votes. Hence the obvious fraud and the followup ongoing investigation.

Marty Leonard and Jim Lane have retained their position on the TRWD Board, despite the obvious fraud. Mary Leonard and Jim Lane are solidly in the Gang which runs Fort Worth in what is known as the Fort Worth Way.  As is incumbent  Jack Stevens.

Jack Stevens and Marty Leonard are basically puppets, voting the way they are told to vote. Jim Lane is less of a puppet, but plays along because it is useful for him to do so, what with being on the TRWD Board has allowed Jim Lane to be helpful to his friends, like the guy who was having some money woes with La Grave Field, so Jim Lane finagled to have the TRWD buy property from the beleagured ballpark owner and helped turn that property into the world's first drive-in movie theater of the 21st century.

Have I mentioned the dire need for a federal RICO investigation into all the shady corruption in Fort Worth?

The possible election of non-puppets to the TRWD Board, joining non-puppet, Mary Kelleher, presents such a threat to so many that pretty much all levels of corruption are resorted to.

As in election fraud, slander, editorials full of lies and disinformation, propaganda filled mailers.

Because, the bottom line here is the racketeering likely is at the criminal conspiracy level, You know the type thing people go to jail for with huge fines.

Now do you get the motivation behind the bad behavior of the TRWD Board's majority members? And the higher up employees of the TRWD?

Basically they know if they lose control of the TRWD Board, the jig is up....