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?
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 Observeris 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.
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…
Micky Kaus, the Thinking Conservative’s Liberal, has been suggesting that the traditional thinking that the economy must be good at least six months before an election for the President to have a chance is wrong. His contention is that the Feiler Faster Thesis, the idea that the Internet has made it possible for much rapider media cycles to change people’s minds about things more quickly, will save Obama’s bacon even if we only see notable economy recovery, say, three or four months out.
I think the Feiler Faster Thesis is correct in general, but is mistaken in this particular instance. (And let’s temporarily ignore that I don’t think any economic recovery is in the offing at all this year.)
The problem is that this recession has been too long and deep for the Feiler Faster Thesis to save Obama even if the economy does pick up a few months before the election. People’s feelings about the economy are deeply tied to their personal experience. The people they know who are unemployed, the prices they pay at the grocery store, the foreclosures and lingering FOR SALE signs on their own street, the business and plants closings in their own city all trump the news cycle. While the Feiler Faster Thesis may explain rapid opinion changes about Iraq or Lady Gaga, it can’t override people’s own insecurity. Nobody cares about brightening economic indicators when they can’t pay their own bills
Which is not to say some people won’t pick up on economic news more rapidly. I’m sure that stock traders and hedge fund managers are working on faster cycles than ever before. But voters, especially independent and undecided voters, are still far more attuned to their own economic anxiety than to media narratives about a “recovery summer” they can’t see with their own eyes. Consumer confidence is considered a lagging economic indicator, which makes it precisely the sort of thing immune to the Feiler Faster Thesis.
The only people who think the Feiler Faster Theory might save Obama’s bacon are liberals who want it to.
I’m well aware that politics is a blood sport. The “working for Communist China” smear was pretty weak sauce, but at least there was a tiny grain of truth there. But the amnesty smear was just made up out of whole cloth. Neither Cruz, nor the groups mentioned, ever supported illegal alien amnesty. David Dewhurst and Team Dewhurst were simply liars to push it. Now the MSM confirms what anyone paying attention already knew.
But to drive the point home even further, never mind Polifact, here’s the Sex Pistols (NSFW. Duh.):
How about a nice slice of EuroDoom to ease you into the weekend?
With all the post-primary news, the European Debt Crises news has been chugging along for a while now. let’s look at some, shall we?
Heh. “The Euro cannot be destroyed by any craft that we here possess. It was made in the fires of Frankfurt. Only there can it be unmade. It must be taken deep into the heart of the European Central Bank, and cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came!”
If the Leftists win the next round of voting in Greece, they promise to cancel the EU-sponsored bail-out and re-nationalize banks and companies. Way to calm the markets, dude! Not to mention reenacting Clevon Little’s famous scene from Blazing Saddles. “Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn from no other.”
It’s a winner-take-all world. Countries that do well have to do a few things extremely well. Germany makes the world’s best machine tools, some of the best heavy engineering equipment, not to mention autos. German manufacturing dominates innumerable key niches. The Spanish don’t do anything well. They haven’t done anything well since the Spanish Empire outsourced its manufacturing to Flanders in the 16th century.
As a journalist told me yesterday, he worries whether the money in his pocket will be worth anything a year from now. Others worry about Germany’s increasingly negative image among recession-hit southern and eastern Europeans. Americans will understand this feeling well: you pay and pay to help others, only to have them turn on you in hatred and wrath, accusing you of horrible hidden motives and denouncing your selfishness.
Numerous nuggets of non-Senate race information and observation on Tuesday’s election:
Two years ago, Michael Williams and Elizabeth Ames Jones were both on the Railroad Commission. Sixteen months ago they were serious U.S. Senate candidates. Now each has missed the runoff for their respective down-ballot races, U.S. CD 25 and Texas SD 25, respectively. (Donna Campbell made the runoff with Jeff Wentworth for SD25.) Evidently the Railroad Commission is a poor stepping stone to higher or lower office. Or at least for the 25th District of anything…
Even Paul Burka has has wised-up to fake Dewhurst internal polls. “Well, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twenty times, shame on me. The Dewhurst campaign has made too many claims about why a Dewhurst victory was inevitable without backing them up. The only poll that matters is the one that will be taken on July 31.”
Speaking of polls, both PPP and UT/TT polls were in the ballpark for the Republican race, but horribly off for the Democratic side. Any ideas why?
Finally, the Obama Choom Gang story finally breaks through in the one medium the MSM can’t possibly ignore: wacky Taiwanese animation.
Again, the issue isn’t that our 44th President used to regularly get baked out of his gourd, the issue is why the MSM was unwilling to investigate and report such stories in 2008, and the hypocrisy of Obama carrying out a futile War on Drugs and imprisoning people for the same laws he used to habitually break.
Now put your hands down, because you’re all damn liars.
Yarbrough has no website, no Facebook page, no Twitter feed. (I looked. Repeatedly. Hell, I even looked on Bing, just to be sure, such is my dedication.) He might as well be Keyser Soze. And yet he’s in the runoff? Did they think they were voting for the guy from Sanford & Son?
Can anyone explain this to me? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
(One possibility: He’s the only Democratic candidate who bothered to fill out the Texas League of Women Voter’s Questionnaire.)
And Sean Hubbard, the guy who’s been running the longest, who stayed in the race when Ricardo Sanchez was The Anointed One, the one who was participating in debates and finally getting press as Sadler’s biggest challenger, came in a distant 4th with 16% of the vote. Ouch!
