A couple days ago in a blogging titled In Seattle Protesting Pot & Impeaching A Mayor I mentioned something along the line of the fact that I will be reading a west coast newspaper online, like the Seattle Times or Post-Intelligencer or San Francisco Chronicle and think to myself, well, that is something I would never read in the Star-Telegram regarding such a thing happening somewhere in Texas.
In that same blogging I also opined, "Protesting is something I have long made note of being absent, for the most part, at my current location on the planet, where there would seem to be so much to protest about. Fracking earthquakes come to mind."
Well, this morning it happened again. That which you see above is a screen cap from this morning's Seattle Times. Yesterday, thousands of teachers, and others, staged a protest march in Seattle during a one day strike.
Over the weekend hundreds of kayakers protested a Shell Oil rig being floated into Seattle's Elliott Bay before heading north to poke holes in the Arctic seabed.
Meanwhile, in Texas, yesterday the new governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, signed a bill into law which he claimed "protects private property rights from the heavy hand of regulation".
Last year a Texas town made national news when that town's voters voted to ban fracking in Denton. This upset the oil and gas industry, which pretty much controls Texas state government and so the oil and gas industry got their Republican lackeys, that they'd installed in Austin, to pass a bill banning Texas towns from banning fracking.
Denton banned fracking when that town's people got tired of the heavy handed gas industry abuse of their private property due to shoddy operations causing things like a well explosion, and noisy drilling near homes and schools. Along with earthquakes and air pollution.
So, why are not freedom loving, independent, free-thinking Texans who live in Denton not staging massive protests over this heavy handed gas industry usurpation of their right to have a say over what is allowed in their town?
Denton is a college town, for gawd sakes. Why have the college students in Denton not shut the town down in protest?
Greg Abbott is already a national joke. Achieving that status far faster then his two predecessors.
If the people of Denton staged a massive protest march, such as you see above, it would get national attention, with the nation's outrage focused on the outrageous bill which yesterday the Texas governor signed into law.
What you are looking at here is a 66 pound 12 ounce King Salmon.
The catcher of the big fish is Spencer Jack's Favorite Uncle, my Favorite Nephew Joey.
I am guessing the location of the Big Catch is either somewhere in Washington's San Juan Islands, or further north, in the Straits of Georgia or Charlotte zone of British Columbia, near Vancouver Island.
Vancouver Island is a real island, not an imaginary island of the sort Fort Worth imagines and then takes four years to build three little bridges, over dry land, from the mainland to the imaginary island.
No bridge connects Vancouver Island to the mainland. That would take one mighty long bridge. Ferry boats are how you get your vehicle to Vancouver Island.
Joey inherited the Jones Family fishing gene. Joey's brother, Jason, did not inherit the fishing gene. Nor did I.
I do not know if Spencer Jack takes after Joey or Jason and me in the fishing gene department.
Spencer Jack's Uncle Joey smokes a lot of the salmon he catches. It is safe to eat the fish you catch in the waters of Washington and British Columbia.
Unlike my current location, where, for the most part, fish you catch are not safe to eat, particularly if caught in the Trinity River.
I have a box of smoked salmon in my kitchen which arrived last Christmas. That smoked salmon did not come from my Favorite Nephew Joey.....
A couple days ago I was commiserating with a fellow former Pacific Northwesterner about how so much of what goes on in Texas is so different from what we'd long experienced whilst living on the west coast.
I wondered if it is just a Southern thing, myriad cultural differences, passed on through the generations from long ago, which seem so alien compared to our experience in a more progressive, liberal, free-spirited, highly educated part of America?
And then my fellow former Pacific Northwesterner said a word that made no sense to me.
Borderers.
Huh? What does that mean?
Borderers?
I Googled "Borderers in America" and soon had some understanding of the Borderer concept and how it applies to Texas.
One of the links that came up from Googling "Borderers in America" was a book titled The Texas Right.
Below is a blurb from that book...
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A degree of conformity within the community. With a suspicion of outsiders and a tendency to preserve local control over the behavior and beliefs of the community members.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Some links about "Borderers in America"-----------
Apparently Chief Seattle is watching what Shell Oil is up to in the Pacific Northwest, what with Shell Oil moving a big oil rig into Seattle's Elliott Bay.
Watching video of the massive protests taking place in Seattle this past weekend, contrasted with the massive herd of sheep who populate, for the most part, where I am currently located on the planet, well, it has me wanting to move back to a location in America where most of the people graduate from high school without needing the state's governor to negate graduation exams.
In Seattle, well, in the entire Pacific Northwest, well, let's expand the area to include the entire west coast, if a local congressperson's unqualified son were hired to oversee a public works project the public was never allowed to vote on, well, the outcry, the protest, the demand for a criminal investigation, would be so immediate that no idiot would even try to pull off something so absurd.
Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, Congresswoman Kay Granger's son, J.D., formerly a low level Tarrant County prosecutor, is nearing starting his second decade of being paid well over 100K a year, to oversee America's Biggest Boondoggle, currently taking four years to build three simple little bridges, over dry land, to connect the mainland to an imaginary island.
With the locals, apparently, having no problem with this embarrassing bit of nepotism, so used are they to the Fort Worth Way of their town being run as an oligarchy, where local elected officials can finagle sweetheart deals to rescue bankrupt friends by buying said friend's contaminated property for double market value, paying for the property with taxpayer funds and then finagling to build on that property the world's first drive-in movie theater of the 21st century.
Is the corrupt public official who finagled this deal currently under investigation or charged with a crime?
No.
In Fort Worth he magically gets re-elected with an improbably large landslide.
With nary a protest to be heard.
Meanwhile, in Seattle, a town filled with people who care about the environment, about social issues, about basic human values, this past weekend, and continuing on this week, we see what you see in the below video, something you would never see in Fort Worth, unless you called it a Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube Float.
I have opined a time or two, or maybe three, about the stark differences between my old home zone of the state of Washington and my current home zone of the state of Texas.
On Sunday, yesterday, reading the Seattle Times, online, those stark differences were starkly noticeable.
First example.
The mayor of Bothell, with Bothell being a Seattle suburb, is in hot water due to what some, apparently, believe to be ethics violations over the purchase of something to do with a golf course.
Resulting in impeachment signs sprouting around town.
Meanwhile, in Texas, in Fort Worth, the voters, and law enforcement, apparently, have no problem with an elected official finagling to rescue a bankrupt friend by arranging to use taxpayer's money to buy said friend's contaminated property for double market value.
In Texas such a thing does not cause an impeach impulse, it triggers a re-elect in a landslide impulse.
Supposedly.
Protesting is something I have long made note of being absent, for the most part, at my current location on the planet, where there would seem to be so much to protest about.
Fracking earthquakes come to mind.
Meanwhile in Seattle.
The Seattle locals, and other Pacific Northwesterners, are not happy with the idea of oil drilling rigs poking holes in the Arctic Ocean. Shell Oil moving an oil drilling rig into Puget Sound, and Seattle's Elliott Bay, is what set off the massive 'kayaktivists' protests this past weekend.
Which leads us to Washington's pot problem, a problem we do not have in Texas, because pot has not been legalized in the Lone Star State, where the Lone Ranger and Tonto regularly used marijuana to calm their jangled nerves.
I did not know that legalizing marijuana in Washington included pot snacks and confections, with those pot edibles migrating across the country to "dry" states.
Texas is a dry state, pot-wise. And also in the not totally over Prohibition-wise. I live in what is known as a Texas wet zone where beer, wine and liquor can be sold. A short distance from my location one enters a dry zone where one can not buy beer, wine or liquor.
If Texas legalized marijuana, which has been considered lately, would pot be legal in the dry zones?
The recent TRWD Board Election featured the most ridiculous mud slinging smears I have ever had the pleasure to witness.
The TRWD Board incumbents have in their employ, for election time smearing, a professional character assassin named Bryan Epstein.
Mr. Epstein came up with the genius tactic of informing voters that an evil Dallas businessman was plotting to take Fort Worth's water while digging up a World War II veteran's grave and if voters did not vote for the incumbents they would soon be drinking toilet water.
Yeah, it's sort of funny when you sum it up like that. But it wasn't so funny finding this absurd propaganda in my mailbox. Or that Fort Worth's highly educated, highly intelligent voters, supposedly, were easily able to be influenced by lies, smears, propaganda and an irrational fear of Dallas.
I do not know if Mr. Epstein was practicing his craft back in 1884. What I do know is the presidential campaign of 1884 had some character assassinating of the sort that some TRWD Board incumbents would be totally okay with.
Corruption in politics was the big issue in the election of 1884, just like it should have been in the Tarrant Region election of 2015.
Grover Cleveland was the reform candidate, a Democrat, with a spotless reputation. James G. Blaine was the Republican candidate. Blaine had a reputation for corruption and scandals being linked to him.
As the campaign began it was said that not since George Washington had a presidential candidate been so renowned for his rectitude as was Grover Cleveland.
Then the Republican character assassins struck.
Something unseemly had been discovered in Cleveland's past.
In cahoots with a publicity seeking preacher named George Ball, the Republicans accused Cleveland of fathering a child without marrying the mother, whilst he was a lawyer in Buffalo, New York.
The Republican's campaign chant became "Ma, Ma, Where's My Pa?"
Cleveland quickly admitted he had been paying child support since 1874 to Maria Crofts Halpin, who claimed Grover was the baby daddy of a boy she named Oscar Folsom. Apparently Miss Halpin led a busy social life, "friendly" with several men, including Grover's friend and law partner, Oscar Folsom, after whom she named the boy.
Cleveland was the only bachelor among the men who had been "friendly" with the baby mama, so he took responsibility for the baby, so as to spare the other's marital woes.
Shortly before the voting took place in the 1884 election the Republican press published an affidavit from Miss Halpin in which she claimed that until Grover corrupted her she was "Pure and spotless and that there is not, and never was, a doubt as to the paternity of our child, and the attempt of Grover Cleveland, or his friends, to couple the name of Oscar Folsom, or any one else, with that boy, for that purpose is simply infamous and false."
Voters in 1884 were not as easily duped by sleazy campaign tactics as Texas voters, well, Tarrant Region voters are in 2015, because Grover Cleveland won that election. At the victory celebration the celebration chant became "Ma, Ma, Where's My Pa? Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha!"
Grover Cleveland went on to win the popular vote in two more elections.
But he did not become president for a second term after winning his second election.
Even though Grover Cleveland won the popular vote in his second presidential race he did not get to continue being America's president.
New York's infamous Tammany Hall rigged the election.
Tammany Hall was able to deny Cleveland the electoral votes of his home state, giving the presidency to Benjamin Harrison, who did not do too well on the job, so the voters re-elected Grover Cleveland in 1892, with Tammany Hall unable to stop Grover a second time.
New York's infamous Tammany Hall corrupted New York, and national, politics for a long time, from after the Civil War, well into the next century, rigging elections, shady business deals, graft, bribery, all sorts of corruption.
Fort Worth's Tammany Hall equivalent is known as The 7th Street Gang.
I do not know how long this gang has been in control of Fort Worth. Or how many elections they have rigged......
Long ago, almost every Saturday, I took my handlebars to Gateway Park to roll over the mountain bike trail before going treasure hunting at Town Talk.
Well, due to excessive mud the Gateway Park mountain bike trails are currently not rollable, but the paved trails are.
What you are looking at over my handlebars is Gateway Park's Trinity Falls, currently with the Trinity River running high, rendering the Trinity Trail bridge over the river uncrossable.
I don't know why a road has been scratched through the levee, scratched all the way to the river. I saw construction activity today in Gateway Park in addition to the scraped levee.
I found the sign my handlebars are pointing at above to be a bit amusing. Sanitary sewer relocations? Hasn't that old sewage treatment plant in Gateway Park been abandoned for decades? They're relocating it? The Sanitary Sewer Relocations are for the Trinity River Vision - Central City Project & the Trinity Uptown Service Area?
Whoever made this sign must not have gotten the memo that America's Biggest Boondoggle is now called Panther Island.
Trinity River Vision Central City Project Trinity Uptown is so last decade.
Continuing on I came to some new paved trail damage on the Gateway Park trails. The flooding river has done some fresh trail undermining.
It has been quite a few years since the remnants of Hurricane Hermine flooded the Trinity River and did the original damage to the paved trail, which the latest flood has enhanced. Is the damaged trail finally going to be fixed? I have no idea.
Continuing on, arriving back at the mountain bike trail soccer baseball parking lot, I saw the sign you see below.
America's Biggest Boondoggle loves its signage. For years now there has been a HUGE installation of Boondoggle signage by the Gateway Park dog park.
The above sign tell us....
"As part of the Trinity River Vision Master Plan, we're counting down to the launch of some major improvements to Gateway that will make 2015 a big year for progress. Improvements have already been launched in both east and west Gateway Park, many of which are scheduled to be complete this year. Thanks to the project partners for making Gateway Park a world class park for our city!"
Oh the hubris, the raw galling hubris. World class park? Counting down to the launch of some improvements? Improvements have already been launched? I thought we just read we were counting down to the launch?
I'm stuck on "world class park"
What exactly is a "world class park" I am wondering?
Can a "world class park" be world class if it sports dozens of outhouses like Gateway Park currently sports?
In the middle of the sign are two illustrations of the progress coming to Gateway Park, including that which you see below.
The above illustration tell us "This scenic river observation deck is one of many amenities going into Gateway Park East in 2015, thanks to the City of Fort Worth Parks Department".
Fort Worth is finally going to repair the long boarded up boardwalk eyesores which have been an embarrassment in this world class park for a decade or longer? Or is this to be a new overlook at a different location, with the existing boardwalk remaining a boarded up eyesore?
Last summer I made a video of the boarded up boardwalk in Gateway Park East. Let me see if I can find that video. I'll be right back. Okay, I found it. I'll stick the video in at the end, but first let's look at what we learn on the right side of the sign.
A comprehensive list of those aforementioned "improvements" which have either launched or will soon launch.
The sign tells us that coming in 2015 to Gateway Park East we will see new benches & tables, extra security lighting, additional restrooms, pedestrian bridges, new picnic pavilions, trail extensions, a new trailhead and something called "sights and sounds of nature" children's learning area.
Additional restrooms? Since there are no public restrooms in Gateway Park, of the modern indoor plumbing sort (except in the baseball park, open only when games are being played) are these additional restrooms more outhouses? I would assume so.
Outhouses are the restroom facilities at one of the world's premiere outdoor music venues, The Boondoggle's Panther Island Pavilion, where there is no island or pavilion.
Does it not strike you, as it does me, that these are rather meager park improvements? Is it really necessary to install a sign letting park visitors know more outhouses are being added in 2015?
I have grown tired of typing, so I will keep the Town Talk talk short. Suffice to say, I got a lot of good stuff today.
Anyway, below is the aforementioned video of a walk on the current Gateway Park East boarded up boardwalk....
A week ago an election took place in Fort Worth Weekly's vicinity. However in this week's post-election Fort Worth Weekly no mention is made of the TRWD and its foes and their part in the election.
Only in the STATIC column was tepid mention made of the election.
Methinks, no, mefears, that Fort Worth has lost its only vestige of a real newspaper. Something has gone awry with Fort Worth Weekly.
This week's cover article asks that Simon & Garfunkel question from a half century ago, Are You Going to Scarborough Faire? With a sub-heading telling us that The Renaissance is still all the rage in Waxahachie.
The article came across to me like one extremely long advertisement, with a lot of photos. This article, about a family oriented venue, also marks the first time I have noticed an FW Weekly feature article featuring barnyard vulgarisms and the F-word.
I made an F-word free webpage of my visit, years ago to Scarborough Faire. That webpage managed to generate the most comments, some with the F-word, of anything I have ever done. You can read some of them, freed of profanity, in Scarbo Feedback.
Now back to TRWD v. FOES.
This morning an interesting comment showed up commenting on a blogging yesterday about Ballot Bandits....
Just got an automated survey asking about how I voted in the TRWD election. Seems inquiring minds want to know... This could get interesting.
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An automated survey? Over the phone? How would that work? I voted in the TRWD election. But I don't recollect leaving my phone number anywhere.
A week ago if you'd asked me if it were possible to steal an election in modern day America I would likely have opined that such a thing would not be possible, what with me assuming there must be a lot of checks in place to assure the validity of an election.
Who could get away with such a thing?
Well.
A week later, methinks something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
I mean Texas.
Regarding rigging an election the following is what The Economist had to say about election day frauds...
With so many possibilities for subtle rigging, it may seem odd that the crude stuff remains so popular. Perhaps election-rigging is a hallmark of ill-run political systems, where corrupt local officials instinctively revert to the malpractice that comes naturally. Or perhaps, since the clever stuff can go wrong, ballot-stuffing is a safety valve. Politicians in shoddy democracies are learning what leaders in real ones have long known—you can fool only some of the people, and only some of the time.
A Washington Post article titled How to Steal an Election has some interesting information about stealing an election, along with a revealing graphic...
It's easier to rig an electronic voting machine than a Las Vegas slot machine, says University of Pennsylvania visiting professor Steve Freeman. That's because Vegas slots are better monitored and regulated than America's voting machines, Freeman writes in a book out in July that argues, among other things, that President Bush may owe his 2004 win to an unfair vote count. We'll wait to read his book before making a judgment about that. But Freeman has assembled comparisons that suggest Americans protect their vices more than they guard their rights, according to data he presented at an October meeting of the American Statistical Association in Philadelphia.
What if I told you that it would take only one person—one highly motivated, but only moderately skilled bad apple, with either authorized or unauthorized access to the right company's internal computer network—to steal a statewide election? You might think I was crazy, or alarmist, or just talking about something that's only a remote, highly theoretical possibility. You also probably would think I was being really over-the-top if I told you that, without sweeping and very costly changes to the American electoral process, this scenario is almost certain to play out at some point in the future in some county or state in America, and that after it happens not only will we not have a clue as to what has taken place, but if we do get suspicious there will be no way to prove anything. You certainly wouldn't want to believe me, and I don't blame you.
Well now, what to make of all this? Does it explain the inexplicable in the recent Texas election? I don't know.
This morning I was surprised and a bit puzzled by the advertisement you see here on the back cover of this week's Fort Worth Weekly.
The Arlington Convention Center is hosting a Green Rush Texas event where you can learn how to start up a marijuana business?
Did I do a Rip Van Winkle and wake up in a Texas which has legalized growing marijuana?
When I went to sleep not even medicinal marijuana was yet legal in Texas, and the only states where recreational marijuana and medicinal marijuana has been legalized is my old home state of Washington, the state I was born in, Oregon, a state I have fished in, Alaska and a state I have mountain climbed in, Colorado.
So, with that pattern in place it makes sense that the state I have lived in for over 15 years, Texas, would also legalize marijuana.
