If you’re fleeing police (bad idea) in Texas (really bad idea), try not to rear end anyone, because there’s a good chance they’ll get out of the vehicle and take your ass to the ground.
The dumbass criminal is lucky he didn’t rear-end someone with a CHL…
Will Franklin of WILLisms put up an interesting link on his Twitter feed: A PDF of Texas relocation data from the Texas Association of Realtors.
There’s lots of interesting information to be gleaned:
The 2014 Texas Relocation Report shows that Texas continues to be a national leader in relocation activity and a sought- after location for households moving out of state.
According to the report, Texas gained more out-of-state residents than any other state in 2013, with 584,034 people moving to Texas from out of state. A majority of these residents originated from California (66,318), followed by Florida (32,619), Oklahoma (29,169), Louisiana (29,042), and Illinois (28,900).
Texas ranked third in the nation for number of residents moving out of state in 2013 (409,977), coming in behind California (581,689) and Florida (423,995) and topping New York (401,440), and Illinois (304,674). Like with incoming residents, a majority of the residents who moved out of state moved to California (32,290), followed by Oklahoma (27,391), Florida (24,226), Colorado (23,490), and Louisiana (21,747).
Overall, Texas had a net gain of out-of-state residents in 2013, with 138,057 more people moving into Texas than Texas residents moving out of state in 2013.
So roughly twice as many people moved from California to Texas as vice versa.
Other nuggets from the report:
What does this mean politically? As Ace of Spades noted in their ginormous .PNG, conservative areas of the state are gaining population, while liberal strongholds are losing ground. The two largest liberal counties (Bexar and Travis) to gain population were outpaced by population growth in conservative Denton County alone.
Conclusion: Despite Democrats talking up demographic shifts, don’t expect Texas to turn blue anytime soon…
Dallas County Commissioner and longtime influential Dallas black politician John Wiley Price has been arrested:
Price was under arrest, charged with eleven counts of bribery, mail fraud, and tax fraud.
His life, and his image, had permanently changed.
“All told, Commissioner Price took in more than $1.1 million that he did not report to the proper authorities,” said Sarah Saldana, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas.
“Mr. Price allegedly defrauded the citizens of Dallas County, the state of Texas, and the federal government,” said Diego Rodriguez, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Dallas.
Kathy Nealy, a Dallas political consultant and long-time associate of Price, was prominent in the indictment. The charges allege she paid Price to sway votes before the Dallas County Commissioners.
“At the same time, Ms. Nealy was paying bribes to Commissioner Price, she actively evaded nearly $600,000 in income tax, which she admittedly owes,” Saldana said.
Between them, Price and Nealy face 16 counts of bribery, mail and tax fraud.
The FBI has been investigating Price for more than three years.
A few more details are dribbling out about the alleged Plano gas pipeline bomber.
Among the most interesting:
No job, backpack, hates technology. Let’s see: Who does that description fit?
Is it too soon to guess at an Occupy Wall Street connection? Probably. There’s only a few shreds of evidence. And yet, want to guess what the most recent concern on the Occupy Dallas website was?
Would you believe “Protecting our Community from Gas Drilling”? Indeed it seems to be a continuing concern.
Certainly other Occupy [Place Name Here] factions have been indicted in bomb plots. And as for the bomb detonating prematurely and injuring the bomb maker, well, let’s just say that such incidents are hardly unknown among the radical left.
This is all very speculative and tentative, and the bomber could still be a lone nut. But at least the Occupy Dallas connection would explain the bomber’s motivation.
Here’s a small virtual bucket for a few pieces that I didn’t catch earlier:
I meant to post on the defeat of Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos in the Republican Primary. This was not an issue of ideology so much as incompetence and abuse of office. For the full details, check out Dwight’s pieces on Whipped Cream Difficulties and keep scrolling. (Or do the same at the Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center blog, which has been following the Lykos story for a long time.)
Now a few more John Wiley Price tidbits:
In 2002, when I asked Nealy what she did with all the money sluiced into her account by the Citizens Council candidate, she called me a racist.
It’s strangely heartening to learn that black political functionaries are just as eager to play the race card on their fellow liberals as they are on conservatives.
I want to point out that black southern Dallas has consistently voted against honesty, against progress, against inter-ethnic neighborhood cooperation and against any kind of civic responsibility in citywide elections.
But we are told nevertheless — we are beaten about the ears, in fact — that it’s everybody else’s job to clean up and bring prosperity to the black precincts.
After decades of watching this dismal scam operate, you may have to forgive me if I have become a bit jaded. I look at the editorial campaign of The Dallas Morning News, 10 holes in the bucket or something, about all the stuff it’s my job to clean up in South Dallas, and I can’t help wondering if this isn’t part of the same old sleazy political deal.
You know what? I’m starting to wonder if maybe it isn’t time for southern Dallas to clean up its own crap and leave me the hell alone.
Mr. Schutze and I might differ over our respective definitions of “progress,” but I suspect the rest is accurate.
Maybe it’s time for the rest of Dallas to start consciously and deliberately voting against southern Dallas, as long as southern Dallas continues to support the Price/Nealy machine. How the hell can we be expected to fix all the holes in southern Dallas’ damn bucket if we don’t fix the holes in our own first?
Moving from the specifics of the Price case to the issue of urban black machine politics in general, a few politically incorrect questions:
Sometimes you know there’s a big, juicy story swimming just under the threshold of public consciousness, but don’t have the tools, sources or knowledge to bring it to the surface. Such is the case with the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, a powerful, long-serving fixture in the Dallas black political power structure. Right now the story involves current Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and money that may have improperly made it’s way from Rawlings’ campaign chest to Price’s pocket via political consultant Kathy Nealy. The FBI raided Price’s office last year.
The lefty Dallas Observer is more blunt in what the FBI is alleging: “The affidavit claims a pay-for-play scheme existed in which businesses would pay handsome consulting fees to Nealy’s company at about the time they were seeking to win a contract with Dallas County. A portion of that money would be funneled to Price, who would steer the favored contractor through the Commissioner’s Court.”
Not living in Dallas, the first time I ran across John Wiley Price’s name was in connection to the previous mayor of Dallas, then-aspiring Senate candidate Tom Leppert. Leppert and Price seem to have cooperated in killing Richard Allen’s Inland Port project, Leppert allegedly because it competed with a similar project by backer Ross Perot, Price allegedly because Allen wouldn’t pay Price and his cronies $1 million in shakedown money. I should hasten to add that Price, who has been a fixture on the Dallas political scene long before Leppert even moved there, is to the best of my knowledge not one of Leppert’s cronies, or even particularly close to him. However, Willis Johnson, who was allegedly part of the shakedown effort, is one of Leppert’s cronies, and was (along with the late Lynn Flint Shaw) one of Leppert’s conduits into the Dallas black community.
Price has an, ahem, interesting history. He was arrested for felony assault charges, of which he was acquitted just after the Rodney King riots. And his protege Aaron McCarthy is a member of the New Black Panther Party.
But if Price committed the crimes alleged in the FBI affidavit, the question is: How deep does the corruption go? How many other Dallas political players were paying off Price, and in exchange for what? Price has been in office a long, long time. It’s quite possible he has enough skeletons in his closet to make it an ossuary.
I don’t have the answers, and I don’t even have the knowledge or connections to properly dig for those answers. But I suspect we’re going to find out in the near future anyway…
Wednesday night I finally got a chance to interview Craig James, so I hope to have the video of that up next week (though I have to warn you in advance that the technical quality is not as good as it could be, as the location (the Rudy’s on south 360) was less than ideal for filming, sound-wise). I also hope (if he has the time) to post an email mini-interview with Ted Cruz specifically focused on the Supreme Court taking up the ObamaCare case.
I must admit that I have not kept up with the doings of the New Black Panther Party. I knew of the Philadelphia voter intimidation case, and involvement in the various corrupt practices the likes of ACORN and their ilk get up to (voter fraud, etc.). And it doesn’t surprise me that the New Black Panther Party might be pretty weird, since the original Black Panthers were quite weird themselves. (Search for “Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, bullwhip”…but not while at work or eating.)
But I didn’t realize just how weird until I read this Jim Schutze piece. (Schutze was the source for this critical look at Tom Leppert’s term as mayor of Dallas.) It turns out that Dallas City Council member John Wiley Price has a protege named Aaron McCarthy (aka Aaron Michael) that Price wanted placed on the “homeland security advisory committee” (“whatever the hell that’s supposed to be” says Schutze). And it turns out that Aaron McCarthy is a member of the New Black Panther Party.
And what is it the NBPP believes? Well, hold on to your hats for this quote from NBPP leader Khalid Abdul Muhammad, speaking at a protest in Baltimore, Maryland, February 19, 1994: “Our lessons talk about the bloodsuckers of the poor. … It’s that old no-good Jew, that old imposter Jew, that old hooked-nose, bagel-eating, lox-eating, Johnny-come-lately, perpetrating-a-fraud, just-crawled-out-of-the-caves-and-hills-of-Europe, so-called damn Jew.”
Wow. Even by the very low standards of Black Nationalist rhetoric, that’s a pretty breathtaking dose of Julius Streicher by way of H. Rap Brown antisemitism. If I put that in some of my fiction, an editor would reject it as being an unbelievable caricature. Hell, I think Al Sharpton would send that back to his speechwriter as being beneath even his standards of subtlety and tact.
But wait! There’s more where that came from! Take a look at this fine, grade-A rant from King Samir Shabazz, head of the NBBP Philadelphia chapter:
I hate white people. All of them. Every last iota of a cracker, I hate it. We didn’t come out here to play today. There’s too much serious business going on in the black community to be out here sliding through South Street with white, dirty, cracker whore bitches on our arms, and we call ourselves black men. … What the hell is wrong with you black man? You at a doomsday with a white girl on your damn arm. We keep begging white people for freedom! No wonder we not free! Your enemy cannot make you free, fool! You want freedom? You going to have to kill some crackers! You going to have to kill some of their babies!
You might think these are just some made-up quotes from a random weekly alternative newspaper. (And I would agree that anything that appears in The Dallas Observer should be taken with a grain of salt unless verified elsewhere.) But no, those quotes are directly from the leftist-friendly and conservative-hostile Southern Poverty Law Center, and you can be pretty sure they’re not just whistling Dixie.
While these are particularly virulent quotes, how many times has the media just decided to ignore the latest racist or antisemitic rants from the black community? (Here’s one from today of a black radio host refusing to shake the hands of a black GOP candidate because he doesn’t want her “whiteness” to rub off on him.) How many times has the MSM passed on reporting on corruption and cronyism in the black political community out of political correctness, or because black America is such a reliable vote farm for the Democratic Party?
It doesn’t fit the narrative.
Before I interviewed Tom Leppert, I wanted to research several controversies that came up during his term as Mayor of Dallas. Unfortunately, because of The Dallas Morning News paywall (and, as you can read below, possible DMN involvement in some of those controversies), information about them was hard to come by.
Lacking a good Dallas political connection to pump for information, I ended up reaching out to Jim Schutze, one of the writers for the Dallas Observer‘s Unfair Park section on local Dallas politics. Schutze had foolishly generously offered to dish the dirt on Leppert’s term as mayor, and when I called him up I was evidently the first person who had taken him up on the offer. I ended up talking to Schutze on the phone for over an hour.
I’ve edited the notes from that phone call into the semi-coherent form found below, and the material in block-quotes represents the gist of what I was able to transcribe from Schutze’s description (I can only type so fast, so word-by-word transcription of a one-hour phone call in real time is quite beyond me). I’ve also included some links to columns where he covers some of the issues we discussed.
I should point out that neither The Observer (which is the Dallas equivalent of The Austin Chronicle, but not as sad) nor Schutze could be considered conservative (though Schutze says that a quarter-century of observing local politics firsthand has “beaten the bleeding liberal” out of him). As such, everything said below should be taken with a grain (or several grains) of salt, and adjusted as needed for bias. However, while Schutze’s version of events should not be treated as gospel, all of the below seem to be real controversies that occurred during Leppert’s term as mayor, and I believe all should be looked at and investigated more thoroughly than they have been heretofore.
I conducted the interview with Leppert on September 19, and I really meant to have all this up considerably earlier, ideally just a week or two after that interview, but events intervened. I’ve been both busy (including a new job) and lazy, and this material needed considerable editing, which meant it got put on the back-burner while I grappled with the endless press of current events.
Angela Hunt (East Dallas progressive City Council member) put up a referendum on wonk infrastructure issues. Leppert mischaracterized it as an attempt to kill the toll road, but it was really a debate over where to put it: outside the flood plain or (as Leppert wanted) inside the flood plain. The 1998 election to authorize the bonds for the original project didn’t say “highway,” it said “park road” on top of the levee, not a highway. When it became a freeway, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said you couldn’t build one on the levees, because it was unstable and too big a risk. Plan B was to build the highway between the levees. None of the numbers for this road work, because the road is way too expensive for the amount of traffic to be carried.
Angela Hunt referendum said the road would flood, and the plan would diminish the carrying capacity of the floodway and increase flood risk. Five rightaways were under consideration, only one in the flood plain. A levee collapse would be worse than Katrina.
In 2007, Leppert was anointed by the business leadership to defeat the Hunt referendum as Job One. Leppert could sell any board of directors on anything. He was a developer in Hawaii. He was the one who moved to Dallas, Turner Construction didn’t. He wasn’t CEO for long, and I [Schutze] don’t know why he left.
Carol Reed (of a consulting company now called The Reeds) lead the campaign to defeat the referendum. Leppert said the Corps of Engineers had signed off. But the Corps said: “We haven’t signed off on anything.” The North Texas Toll Road Authority told reporter Michael Lindberger they hadn’t signed off on the money. The Dallas Morning News sat on the story; the owners are landholding families in favor of the road.
The referendum was narrowly defeated, meaning the road stayed between the levees.
The estimated $400 million turned out to be $1.4 billion (2007), $1 billion over budget, now over $2 billion. (Leppert’s dodge: “I am very comfortable with their [the Corps’] position.”)
Leppert said there were fewer issues with a toll road than there actually were, and promised numerous recreational facilities would be built as well. Angela Hunt said that “Leppert’s not a liar, he’s a salesman, and he believes his pitch.”
After Katrina, the Corps of Engineers reexamined levees and said they were useless even in a hundred year flood.
Urban Crime statistics have been dropping nationally. When Leppert came into office in 2007, Dallas had the highest crime overall per capita for cities of over a million people. Leppert vowed to change that. Leppert called in Police Chief David Kunkle (a tough, respected chief) and said he wanted the crime numbers down. DPD changed the way it reported crime statistics to the FBI for the Uniform Crime Statistics. Dallas Morning News did a terrific series of investigative news on the process. For burglary, an incident would no longer be counted unless something was stolen. Most other cities disagreed with the Dallas redefinition and called it a “Lawyering of the language.” As soon as they put in the new guidelines, crime rates dropped, and Dallas was no longer number one.
Another Leppert crime controversy was the creation of SAFE (Support Abatement Forfeiture and Enforcement) teams: A team of cops, code inspectors, health department inspectors, etc. would “wallpaper” cheap apartment complexes with code violations in order to seize properties. The Property Owners Association got involved, since property rights were being trampled, and in some cases apartment buildings were turned over to connected city council friends.
Built by the city, owned by the city, funded by bonds, unless there’s enough revenue. Trammel Crow was against it and said the Dallas hotel market was flooded. Leppert pushed it forward anyway.
What role did Lynn Flint Shaw and Willis Johnson play in Leppert’s campaign and administration? And what role did they have in steering/approving minority business contracts with City Hall and/or DART?
Shaw was a black woman who was well liked by sophisticated white arts people, a liaison between rich white Republicans and poor blacks. That vote has been important in pushing big Business Establishment initiatives (sports stadiums, etc.). Shaw was chair of Leppert’s fundraising committee.
As soon as he was elected, she sent an email to all business contacts to go through Willis Johnson (then a radio DJ). The email said that all requests for minority contracts with the city should go through Shaw, Johnson and a small cabal of black leaders who called themselves the “Inner Circle.” Willis Johnson is at the center of an FBI investigation as a major minority contractor and lobbyist. He had a regular weekly meeting with Leppert when he was mayor.
Shaw had no official roll in City Hall, and an unpaid role at DART.
Lynn Flint Shaw and her husband, columnist Rufus Shaw, were found dead of an apparent murder/suicide on March 8, 2008.
Shaw was about to be indicted on a fraud charge that had nothing to do with politics, on a debt/signature forging issue. Circumstances of her death are mysterious. She had started to run for the council, then lived on the campaign funds, and made up phony expenses. Police determined there was nothing there to investigate. She was still Leppert’s campaign chair at the time of her death.
Richard Allen in California buys up 5,000 acres, says he’ll create an “inland port,” a transshipping hub in south Dallas that will create 65,000 jobs. This would compete with a Ross Perot initiative in Ft. Worth. (Perot was a big Leppert backer; Leppert had his mayoral victory party at Ross Perot, Jr.’s pad). Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, longest tenured and most powerful among Dallas’ black politicians, stopped the project. He said there needed to be more planning, and Leppert backed him up. Allen had been planning for six years. Price sent cronies (the SALT group), including Willis Johnson, demanding $1 million to be paid to them, and 15% cut of profits. It was a classic shakedown. Allen refused, they blocked the project, and now Allen is in bankruptcy. (Note: The FBI raided the offices of John Wiley Price on June 27, 2011.)
Despite all the foregoing, Schutze wasn’t universally negative on Leppert. He said Leppert’s friends thought he was a good guy, more of a chamber of commerce guy than a politician, and would would probably be naturally somewhat shy and retiring if he weren’t in politics.
As soon as this goes up, I’ll send a query to the Leppert campaign to let them respond, and I’ll post their reply (if any) unedited here.
At the Texas Tribune Senate Candidate Forum back on June 8th, Tom Leppert said that he could be counted on to be a staunch budget cutter in the U.S. Senate, and for supporting evidence claimed that he had cut or eliminated several government programs as Mayor of Dallas.
Since I have been somewhat skeptical of Leppert’s conservative bona fides, this claim piqued my interest. So i wrote his campaign to see if they had a list of programs he had eliminated as Mayor.
It took a couple of reminders, but i was finally able to get a reply from Leppert’s Communications Director Shawn McCoy. Below is his reply verbatim, save for some WordPress list formatting and removing his phone number and email address:
Lawrence,
Sorry, it has taken a while to pull all of this together.
One of Tom’s greatest accomplishments as Mayor was working to make substantial cuts to the civilian budget in order to increase the size of the police force. He did this without raising taxes. In response, the crime rate dropped by double digits, with violent crime plummeting 30 percent.
Tom’s trimming of the civilian payroll led him to eliminate over 1400 positions. Pay was also reduced for the remaining civilian employees.
Tom’s consolidation or elimination of city departments took the city from 31 departments down to 23.
This included:
- Sustainable Development and Construction
- Development Services
- Building Inspection
- Housing & Community Services
- Housing
- Environmental & Health Services
- Management Services
- Public Information Office
- Intergovernmental Services
- Strategic Customer Services
- Efficiency Team
- Office of Emergency Management
- Fair Housing
- Office of Environmental Quality
- Trinity Watershed Management
- Trinity River Corridor Project
- Streets/River Levee Operations
- Public Works/Floodplain Management
Additionally, the zoo was privatized.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions.
Best,
Shawn
Shawn McCoy
Communications Director
Tom Leppert for Senate
Thanks to Shawn McCoy and Tom Leppert for providing this information.
I am very far indeed from an expert on Dallas’ budget process, but I hope to take a look at the official budget numbers over the next few days to confirm the information above. My first impression from the FY2011 budget suggests that they may very well be credible, as official numbers show Dallas budget was cut by just 1.5% between FY2010 and FY2011, showing at least fiscal restraint here in the midst of the Great Obama Recession.
At some point I also hope to take a look at the mentioned Trinity Watershed Management, a subject that includes the controversial Trinity River Toll Road project, a complex subject on which I don’t feel I yet have a firm handle.