Pondering The Fort Worth Star-Telegram Al Capone Mary Kelleher & Me

Til I read the quote on the left, brought to my eyes this morning by the Fort Worth Connie D, I had no idea I had anything in common with Al Capone, besides being late paying my income tax a time or two.

This morning I learned, via Elsie Hotpepper, that the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has made a 180 degree turn in its covering of the Tarrant Regional Water District board controversies.

You can read this turnaround yourself in an editorial in today's Star-Telegram titled Uncomfortable times ahead for water district.

Basically the Star-Telegram opined that the people spoke, turned out in record numbers, elected Mary Kelleher with the most votes of any candidate.

And that the other board members need to get on board.

The first 5 paragraphs of the Star-Telegram editorial give you a good idea of how big a change this is in the Star-Telegram's coverage of this issue...

The main thing the four multi-term members of the Tarrant Regional Water District board of directors must remember about recently elected member Mary Kelleher is that she won.

In fact, she won the May 11 election handily, pulling in more votes than any of the seven candidates in this year’s race for three spots on the board. Board President Vic Henderson and now-Vice President Jack Stevens were re-elected to the other two seats.

If that’s not enough to make the veterans respect the rookie, they should note that 59,889 people cast ballots in the water district election this year, up 61 percent from the 37,286 who turned out in 2010, the board’s most recent previous election.

That means a lot more people were interested this time around, and Kelleher’s place as the top vote-getter signals great voter interest in her message.

That message, voiced by Kelleher and two other candidates who were not elected, was clear. Putting it mildly, they said the TRWD has some explaining to do. Voters need to know more about how the board and the district operate, and they want to know whether it’s the most effective and efficient operation it can be.

Just like with Al Capone, weak is not what you are going to get when you are not kind to a well regarded person like Mary Kelleher.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram antidote known as the Star-Telegraph made note of today's Star-Telegram editorial in a blog post titled Who is the Tool?

In that blog post the Star-Telegraph summed up the issue quite succinctly with...

Mary has been flooded, railroaded, threatened and bullied. She's not going anywhere and neither are the people that elected her.

That's a fact, Jack.

Finding Ma & Pa's 50th Anniversary Party Is A Bit Depressing

I think I've mentioned I've been going through all my web files, making changes.

I have been making web files since the early 1990s. Web files created since around 1998 still exist, for the most part, and are located in hundreds of folders stored in my durangotexas domain.

Going through all the web files I am finding all sorts of things I'd forgotten I'd done. Such as making a webpage with a few photos that I took at my mom and dad's 50th Wedding Anniversary Party, back on August 11, 2001.

No one, but my two oldest nephews, knew I was driving myself up to Washington for mom and dad's anniversary. This was to be the last time I have driven back to Washington.

Even though the 50th party was on the 11th, my mom and dad's actual anniversary is August 6, the same day an angry America dropped the world's first atom bomb on a town in Japan named Hiroshima.

My mom and dad always seem to have their significant anniversary parties on August 11, rather than Hiroshima Day. I remember the 40th was also on August 11, out on Samish Island.

This coming August 6 Hiroshima Day will be mom and dad's 63rd Anniversary, if I am counting correctly.

Looking at the Ma & Pa's 50th Anniversary Party webpage is sort of depressing. Several in the pictures are no longer living. Like my Grandma Vera, Uncle Mel, Glen Youngren, Kate the Brit and her boyfriend, Jack and Rosie the Rat Dog.

And I could see my Aunt Mike in one of the photos. At that point in time Aunt Mike was in good health, still running and biking, looking younger than her years, still a blonde.

And now, just a few short years later Aunt Mike is in an assisted care facility with Alzheimer's.

Like I said.

Depressing.

A Couple Minute Afternoon Deluge Downpour On The Last Friday Of July

You are looking out my computer room window, the afternoon of the last Friday of July of 2013.

You are looking past thick blind blades,  past 3 panes of glass, with the outer pane looking as if it is frosted by ice, but what that outer pane is actually frosted by is the results of a downpour that poured down in the last few minutes.

Hardest rain I've seen fall in recent memory. Though, it did not last long. Maybe this was just the first wave, with more to fall.

So far I have heard none of the predicted thunder booming.

Currently the outer world has returned to dead calm. Calm before a bigger storm?

I suspect not....

Taking Another Tour Of My Neighborhood's Industrial Wasteland With Signage

Rain dropped on me while I was getting wet swimming this morning. More rain is predicted to drop later today, along with lightning bolts.

So far, in the noon time frame, it does not appear that rain will be dropping any time soon.

Today I did not feel like driving anywhere to hike or bike. I'd already acquired sufficient endorphins via aerobic swimming to get me through the day in a state of peaceful bliss.

Instead of driving anywhere I walked to my neighborhood Albertsons.

You know how sometimes you stop noticing something because it sort of becomes background noise that you no longer notice?

Well, in the Albertsons strip mall parking lot north entry off Boca Raton Boulevard there sits the beat up, damaged sign you see above and on the right, that I'd ceased paying attention to because it has been so many years, now, since I first noticed this eyesore.

Would you not think that the businesses mentioned on this sign, including Albertsons, would want to have better signage representing them?

On the other side of this sign the Mr. Jim's Pizza part of it is totally faded. Mr. Jim's Pizza is the nearest business to this sign.

Would you not think that a city like Fort Worth, renowned in the minds of some locals to be one of the world's greatest cities, would have an ordinance that requires signs, such as this, not to become long standing eyesores?

Directly across the street from this sign is the industrial  wasteland I have made mention of previously, that being one of my two neighborhood Chesapeake Energy Barnett Shale gas pad sites.

I'm thinking maybe the sad condition of this sign fits with the industrial wasteland theme we seem to have going  on in my neighborhood....

Biking To A Gateway Park Cliff Above The Trinity River Trying To Get Elsie Hotpepper To Go Floating With Me

Those are my handlebars looking over a cliff at the Trinity River in Gateway Park.

Today was my first time back on the Gateway Park mountain bike trail since recent rains muddied dirt trails in my neighborhood.

The only excitement on the mountain bike trail today, other than pedaling fast, came from a way too close encounter with a squirrely squirrel.

Doesn't the soothing green water of the Trinity River look inviting?

Later today 100s of water lovers will be floating on inner tubes in the Trinity River, at the north end of downtown Fort Worth, where the Clear and West forks of the Trinity River become one. And where a magical island has popped out of nowhere, along with a pavilion, that has propelled Fort Worth to its rightful status of having the leading waterfront music venue in the world.

I may be hyperbolizing. The actual fact may be that this is the leading, I mean, only waterfront music venue in Texas.

I may still be hyperbolizing. Maybe the actual fact is that this may be the only waterfront music venue in Fort Worth.

I think I've blogged about the hubris involved in the inflated claims attached to that which is called Panther Island Pavilion and the Rockin' the River Inner Tube Happy Hour Floats. I'll see if I can find those bloggings.

Easy to find one of the bloggings. Titled The Propaganda Panther Rocks Tonight With J.D. Granger's Big Dose Of Hubris.

I can't find the blogging where I quoted  J.D. Granger making the claim that the Panther Island Pavilion Music Venue is the only urban waterfront music venue in Texas.

I also have not been able to get Elsie Hotpepper to agree to go to downtown Fort Worth with me this evening to go float on inner tubes in the Trinity River for an hour of being happy whilst drinking Trinity River Vision Boondoggle Beer that only costs $3 a bottle....

Where Funkytown Gets Down Rockin' The River Live On The Trinity With Clean Swimmin' Dirty Livin'

When I saw the advertisement on the left in this week's DFW.com Ink edition I wondered whether these brilliant ads are produced in house by the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle, or does the TRVB out source this to an advertising agency.

We are now into the 3rd summer of 100s of people floating in the Trinity River every Thursday.

If I remember right the original version of this activity was called the Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube Float.

For summer of 2013 it is now "Rockin' the River Live on the Trinity".

No mention of "Happy Hour" or "Floating".

However the ad does inform us that the TRVB will sell you alcohol in the form of beer for $3. And that you are forbidden to float your own beer in a cooler.

The slogans in the ad are very clever.

"WHERE FUNKYTOWN GETS DOWN".

"CLEAN SWIMMIN' DIRTY LIVIN'".

I'm thinking "DIRTY SWIMMIN' CLEAN LIVIN'" would make more sense.

When did Fort Worth go from being known as Cowtown to being Funkytown?

Fort Worth is Funky? How? Where?

The ad does mention floating, even if floating is no longer in the name for the event. At the top of the ad we are advised to "FLOAT UP TO FRONT ROW SEATS AT PANTHER ISLAND PAVILION."

Has anyone located Panther Island yet? Or figured out what the pavilion is?

I have to admit, now that we are in the 3rd summer of 100s of people floating in the formerly polluted river, that a few things surprise me.

I would have thought by now there would be incidents of people acquiring a bad rash from being in that water.

I would have thought by now there would be incidents of people getting sick via contact with E.Coli bacteria in the water.

I would have thought by now there would be incidents of encounters with water moccasins, garfish, turtles or alligators.

But, as far as I know, there have been none of the type incidents I thought would likely happen when 100s of people decided it was an okay thing to go floating in the formerly polluted Trinity River.

So, today, with it being Thursday, I am pondering if I want to go Rockin' the River Live on the Trinity tonight and have myself some of that beer and food  available for purchase, mentioned in the ad.

I'll see if Elsie Hotpepper wants to go floating live with me tonight....

Tonight I Re-Learned That Victoria Is The Fort Worth Of Southwest Canada

Tonight I found myself searching my blog, trying to find info from the past, the details of which I have forgotten, hence the search.

A year or two or three ago I was asked about property adjacent to Gateway Park. I'd been asked to meet up with someone in regards to this property. I remember taking a photo of this property from a vantage point on the Tandy Hills.

The subject of property adjacent to Gateway Park came up again today, which is why I have been searching my email and blog.

I tried "lawyer" as the search keyword.

That brought up way too much about Chesapeake Energy, Carter Avenue and an inept Fort Worth judge named Sprinkle.

Then I remembered that "I-30" would likely have been mentioned in the blogging.

Again, that turned fruitless.

But, during the course of what did pop up, I came upon some amusing bloggings, like the one from February 12, 2010 titled Taking A Snow Covered Tour Of My Zone Of Texas, Fort Worth, The Arctic Of The South.

Above is one of the pictures from that blogging. A pool surrounded by snow, which I swam in for an hour this morning. One forgets, as one is chilled by almost non-stop air-conditioning, that it can get real cold at this location on the planet, naturally.

And then there is this other blogging I came upon, from October 14,  2009, titled Vancouver, British Columbia, The Fort Worth Of The North.

Apparently I have been complaining about the ridiculous Trinity River Vision Boondoggle for a long time.

I have no memory of this particular blogging, which really is a sad commentary on the state of my memory.

I would think I would have remembered this blog post due to the message from someone named Martha and the extremely amusing comment from Steve A.

What did Steve A say?

Steve A said...
Actually, as has been pointed out to me, Vancouver is in the Southwest unless you're an Imperialist American. Further, I'd say Victoria is the FW of SW Canada - Vancouver is Dallas.

Yikes! That seems kind of harsh to suggest that Victoria is the Fort Worth of Southwest Canada. Victoria is a very scenic town. With an extremely well done, well, cultural district....

In Fort Worth The Public Can Not Look At Public Records Without Special Permission From The Ruling Oligarchy

On the left you are looking at this afternoon's version of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's front page, online version.

This morning when I did my daily check of the Star-Telegram to see if anyone has been arrested yet in any of the local corruption scandals I saw a headline link to a report about Monday's Tarrant Regional Water District board meeting.

I read the Star-Telegram article. What I read did not much match what I'd been told happened at that meeting. The Star-Telegram reporter seemed fixated on the absurd defensive assertions, made mostly by board member, Jim Lane, regarding the TRWD's private hunting preserve. And the TRWD's luxury helicopter.

Then this afternoon I read this week's Fort Worth Weekly's take on Monday's meeting.

Fort Worth Weekly's version matched what I'd been told about the meeting.

I then went back to the Star-Telegram to re-read their article about the TRWD meeting. The link on the front page is no where to be seen. I could not find the article anywhere.

Did someone like Jim Oliver or J.D. Granger or Jim Lane have one of their foot stomping episodes, demanding the Star-Telegram get back in sync with the party line, hence the article deletion?

Below is what Fort Worth Weekly had to say about Monday's meeting, in Fort Worth's only real newspaper, in its weekly Static column....

Damming Up Public Records

The Tarrant Regional Water District’s newest board member is learning what Fort Worth Weekly and many others have learned over the years: Getting information from this secretive bunch isn’t easy.

Mary Kelleher was sworn in on June 18, and that same day she requested the water district counsel’s legal opinion on whether the board has been meeting in compliance with the Texas Open Meetings Act.

“It was ignored,” she said.

Later that month, she asked for public records from a staff member. When she returned for the information, Keller said water district general manager Jim Oliver met her and gave her a red-faced tongue-lashing. (He describes it differently.) Any future requests for information, he said, would have to come through him. She responded by suggesting the water board should ask for his resignation or at least require him to take anger-management training. That request went nowhere.

On July 5, she made a motion that the board seek an independent legal opinion on whether it was complying with requirements for open meetings. She wanted an outside opinion because “I don’t have much faith in our counsel,” she told Static. She was referring to the water district’s lawsuit against Oklahoma over water rights, which was tossed out in June by the U.S. Supreme Court after six years and $6 million in legal costs. Her request went nowhere.

At this week’s meeting, the board discussed a new and convoluted policy that prohibits individual board members from asking district employees for public information. The new policy requires a board majority to justify asking district staff to prepare reports derived from district records. Kelleher is the only challenger who won a seat in the May election, and she now serves with four long-tenured incumbents who are not the least bit hesitant to butt heads with her while resisting her attempts to make the agency more transparent.

“Given the public perception of the secrecy at the Tarrant Regional Water District, denying a board member access to records does nothing to dispel that perception,” she said.

Water district board meetings have been sparsely attended in recent years. Residents describe them as rubber-stamped dog-and-pony shows with little insight or discussion. That’s changing, thanks to Kelleher’s dogged attempts to shed light on this powerful agency with about $160 million in its general fund. The water district is charged with making sure this region has plenty of water in the future. However, it has become known more for using its eminent domain powers to push the Trinity River Vision project, which seems to be aimed mostly at making money for already-rich people while doing little for flood control or any other truly public purpose.

Who Is At The Center Of Fort Worth's Culture Of Corruption?

I don't see TRWD board member Marty Leonard clutching her pearls in the above illustration. But that does appear to be Jim Lane at the Center of the Culture of Corruption.

Today I did not feel like going walking or biking in the HOT humidity. I was already overheated in my abode, due to being annoyed regarding what I was being told about yesterday's Tarrant Regional Water District board meeting.

Apparently, at some point in the meeting, board member Jim Lane berated Mary Kelleher over campaign claims made in mailings in the last election. Lane acted like a hostile bully, disgusting many in the packed meeting room.

It has been a month since the TRWD Olivergate Scandal erupted. I blogged about Jim Oliver's bad bully boy behavior in The TRWD Olivergate Scandal Takes Another Scandalous Turn With Denials, Lies & Cover-Ups.

The Olivergate Scandal came about because newly elected TRWD board member, Mary Kelleher, had the raw gall to request some TRWD records. TRWD employee, Jim Oliver, then had what amounted to a hissy fit, directed at Mary Kelleher.

And now what do I learn today?

A month later and Mary Kelleher has received few of the records she requested.

It gets better.

Yesterday Mary Kelleher's fellow TRWD board members voted in a new operating procedure regarding the viewing of TRWD records.

The new operating procedure requires a board member to get the approval of the other board members in order to view the public TRWD records.

Huh?

What have these people done that they are going to such lengths to keep from being public information?

I am also wondering what it takes to trigger a federal racketeering type investigation. One of those deals where a grand jury hands down indictments, with dozens of elected officials and public employees taken to jail in handcuffs and ankle chains?

Is Fort Worth too much of a remote backwater for the FBI to bother with?

Big Tex & T-Rex Should Not Ride The Range Together In Texas Textbooks

I saw the above, on Facebook, a couple minutes ago, brought to my eyes by one of my favorite Facebookers, Pete Charlton.

Apparently Cretinist Creationists are somehow threatening to bastardize Texas textbooks with goofy nonsense.

A Texas entity called the Texas Freedom Network is working to stop this latest Texas idiocy infection by having people "sign" an online petition to send the following message to the Texas State Board of Education---

Texas students need classroom materials that are based on modern, mainstream science and prepare them to succeed in college and the jobs of the future. That means politicians must stop trying to undermine instruction on evolution and climate change. The State Board of Education must approve science textbooks that are based on sound, peer-reviewed scholarship.

The aforementioned Pete Charlton summed it up really well on Facebook...

The Texas State Board of Education has begun the process of adopting new science textbooks. If we let the far right have its way, Big Tex and T-Rex will ride together into those books.

The Creationist attitude is beyond arrogance. When, without a shred of proof a idea that is clearly ridiculous is imposed on others, then that is a raw and vicious use of power. 

It is certainly alright for an individual or individuals to want to believe something is true no matter how unlikely it may be. Everyone is entitled to their own illusions and dementia. 

It's another matter to try to impose those delusions on others and boldly claim their is any rational basis for those silly ideas.