More post-Super Tuesday results and election tidbits.
Posts Tagged ‘Dallas’
More Post-Super Tuesday Election Updates
Thursday, March 3rd, 2016John Wiley Price Update
Tuesday, April 14th, 2015Remember John Wiley Price, the longtime Dallas Democratic political fixture arrested on bribery charges?
Well, he’s now on his second court appointed lawyer.
At taxpayer expense.
Price is accused of taking $950,000 in bribes over a decade from businesses seeking county contracts or other approvals. He earns $141,236 a year as a county commissioner and owns various cars and two Oak Cliff houses.
Federal agents seized more than $450,000 from Price in 2011 as part of their investigation. Price had about $11,000 in cash on him when he was arrested in July, authorities said.
Yeah, that sounds like some serious grinding poverty Price is facing. (Just for balance, the lefty Dallas Observer says that politicians getting public legal aid after indictment is not all that uncommon. And Price’s case is complicated by having so many “assets” tied up via civil forfeiture.)
Maybe he and Hillary Clinton could compare notes on being broke…
LinkSwarm For February 13, 2015
Friday, February 13th, 2015Still recovering from this cold. Enjoy this Friday LinkSwarm compliments of the management:
#AskJen: Given Obama's Nobel peace prize, which area of the world would you say is notably more peaceful than when he took office?
— BattleSwarm (@BattleSwarmBlog) February 11, 2015
#AskJen: Which would you say is Obama's more awesome foreign policy triumph: Libya or the Ukraine?
— BattleSwarm (@BattleSwarmBlog) February 11, 2015
#AskJen Obama cited Yemen as a success story in the war on terror: http://t.co/UzkCKEHmsT Could you expand on our "success" in Yemen?
— BattleSwarm (@BattleSwarmBlog) February 12, 2015
Screw You, We’re From Texas
Wednesday, February 11th, 2015If 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…
A Quick Look At Texas Migration Patterns
Thursday, October 2nd, 2014Will 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…
Breaking: John Wiley Price Arrested
Saturday, July 26th, 2014Dallas 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.
More Plano Bomber Tidbits: Occupy Wall Street Related?
Tuesday, June 19th, 2012A few more details are dribbling out about the alleged Plano gas pipeline bomber.
Among the most interesting:
- “Neighbors also said the son who lives there is often out and about and doesn’t seem to hold down a job.”
- “They said he typically carried a backpack with him.”
- “One neighbor told News 8 the son seemed to change over the last couple of years. He said his neighbor started running at night, saying he ‘was in training.’ That same neighbor said the young man lived a minimalistic life, saying he was against modern technology, but would then talk about spending hours on his computer.”
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.
Texas Political Metro Tidbits: Pat Lykos and John Wiley Price
Tuesday, June 5th, 2012Here’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:
- How pervasive is this type of black political machine corruption in other cities with significant black populations?
- To what extent has black America’s overwhelming allegiance to the Democratic Party created such corruption, since it prevents the sort of inter-party competition that could sweep the corrupt from office?
- To what extent has the Democratic Party’s need for black votes encouraged such corruption, by making them turn a blind eye to it as long as they votes keep rolling in?
- Fair or not, the impression I get from the Price case, from the decades-long mismanagement of Detroit, etc., is that a significant portion (and perhaps a majority) of the urban black community is just fine with pervasive political corruption, as long as it’s black politicians that are the ones with their fingers in the pie. Is this impression correct, or is it too cynical even for me?
Just How Far Does The John Wiley Price Corruption Story Reach?
Monday, June 4th, 2012Sometimes 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…