17 March 2007
Sheila Jackson Lee heads for Sen. Clinton's cameras
We all know how Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee loves a camera, so it was amusing to read Isiah Carey's post this afternoon:
Several Houston news photographers were very upset with Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee. Those present at a Houston visit by Senator Hilary Clinton say Jackson Lee would not remove herself from in front of the camera. They said everywhere Clinton went Jackson Lee was there with her hair in the way.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/17/07 04:29 PM |
The consequences of bad choices
Things have been a little slow lately, as far as the type of fodder that generally captures our attention.
What we have seen all too much of in the news recently, though, are tragic stories of people making stupid, devastating choices, such as this one:
Prosecutors have more questions for a 21-year-old Houstonian accused of killing a woman waiting for a bus in a February hit-and-run.
Harris County Assistant District Attorney Warren Diepraam said Monica Aguilar continues to be investigated about the details surrounding the death of Lisa Garcia.
Diepraam said he wants to know if Aguilar was drinking beforehand, if she was racing another car — as some witnesses have said — and where she went afterward.
Diepraam said witnesses reported Aguilar got into another car right after the accident and left the scene.
"It might have been the car she was racing," Diepraam said.
Aguilar was charged with criminally negligent homicide and failure to stop and render assistance, but has not been indicted.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/17/07 07:36 AM |
16 March 2007
I must be a Q-Tard for helping beta the Q-Card
(rant on)
Pardon me, but there's a chronic problem with Q-Card readers and Daylight Savings Time going on, to the point where today I had 3 out of 4 bad timestamps and got nailed for yet another extra buck, and Mary Sit's blogging about METRO wasting taxpayer dollars on sponsoring movie showings and giving out free rides?
It's costing me more in blown fares and text messages to report this stuff than to just let some other civic-minded sucker take the hit.
Forget this. Frank Wilson can pry 30 day passes out of my cold, dead hands.
(rant off)
Posted by Laurence Simon @ 03/16/07 09:10 PM |
More red light cameras
KRIV-26 lists the ten latest intersections to receive red light cameras:
West S. Houston @ Bellaire
Greens Rd @ North Frwy
N. Shepherd @ N. Loop West
SW Frwy @ Wilcrest
S. Main Street @ S Loop West
E. Frwy @ Normandy
Monroe @ Gulf Frwy
Scott @ S Loop E
Antoine @ NW Frwy
North Frwy @ Rankin
Watch your rear end out there!
The Chronicle's Kristen Mack has details today of the latest efforts by Texas lawmakers to curb the revenue-generating devices.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/16/07 05:13 AM |
LiveJournalists celebrate Sunshine Week...
...by focusing on the U.S. president. Talk about missing an opportunity!
Much closer to home, the Chron editors could have pointed to our own METRO as an example of a government institution with less-than-transparent tendencies.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/16/07 05:03 AM |
15 March 2007
Show us your basketball knowledge
Commenter Greg544 emailed earlier and asked if we were planning on an NCAA tourney contest along the lines of our football pick'em.
We hadn't originally planned on doing so, but since he did us the favor of setting it up, why not?
You can make your picks here.
You'll need a CBS Sportsline account. The password for the bracket is bloghouston. Picks are due by noon on March 15.
We don't have any prizes to offer this time, but maybe we'll do a post-tourney gathering at Byzantio and I can buy the winner drinks.
Good luck!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/15/07 06:55 AM |
14 March 2007
FoB Mincberg: Fix those potholes!
City of Houston housing guru and Friend of Bill David Mincberg has really been making the (news) rounds lately. Here's a dispatch from the Chronicle's Seshadri Kumar:
The city of Houston will soon have an ordinance on the habitability of apartments to ensure that rental units are fit for people to live in.
David Mincberg, special assistant to the Mayor for Multi-Family Housing, announced the new ordinance Tuesday at a business and community leaders breakfast meeting hosted by Southwest Houston 2000 Inc. and the Brays Oaks Management District.
The proposed ordinance would state that apartments should not be overrun by trash or be infested with rats; should have no leaky roofs; area streets should not have potholes; and the complex should have proper plumbing, electrical and mechanical fittings, Mincberg said.
Every apartment unit in the city would be inspected every three years by the Houston Fire Department. An inspection fee charged apartment owners will help fund the program, he said.
Currently, once an apartment complex receives an occupation certificate from the city, there are no further inspections — even if the apartment complex is 20 or 30 years old, Mincberg said.
The ordinance is being written and will be sent to City Council in a couple of months, he said.
A couple of points about the bolded portions: 1) Area streets should certainly not have potholes -- while the ordinance presumably will focus on streets within apartment communities, we're all for fixing potholes citywide. Strangely enough, it just seems like something the city should be doing. 2) What are the odds the inspection fee charged apartment owners will, in actuality, fund the spending priorities of the Mayor and his Council, and the Houston Fire Department won't really see much budget expansion despite the expansion of its duties?
PREVIOUSLY: KUHF: Residents skeptical over program to remodel some apartments.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/14/07 10:46 PM |
Promises, promises
The Chronicle's resident plagiarist promised us a months-long sabbatical, and all we've gotten is a steady stream of updates from a San Antonio trial.
Oh well. Maybe it will end soon.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/14/07 10:28 PM |
What was that?
Is it just me, or does this read like a draft thrown together about ten minutes before deadline?
Seriously, that thing really might have benefited from a few more revisions and the helpful hand of a good editor. It even seemed to give the poor headline writer difficulty (unless that headline was *gulp* supplied). I don't think this one was inspired by the Washington Post.
But perhaps my assessment is mistaken. Do feel free, as always, to enlighten in the forum if you disagree (or if you agree).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/14/07 10:19 PM |
13 March 2007
KUHF: Residents skeptical over program to remodel some apartments
KUHF-88.7's Laurie Johnson did an important story today on Mayor White's big new program to boost "affordable housing" in the city. It seems that some of the people who are the intended beneficiaries of this grand program are pretty skeptical:
[David Mincberg] presented the plan to a community group in the Fondren/Southwest area, where the grant money will be targeted. Complexes between 10 and 35 years old are eligible. At the end of the presentation, several people brought up concerns that the initiative will not take care of the much older, dilapidated housing projects. Kerry Chambers is the president of the Cattails Homeowners Association, which is off of W. Bellfort.
"My main concern is the eyesore and the high crime. Just this past weekend it was on the news about ten people shooting out down at Sandpiper and W. Bellfort, which is right down the street from here. So if we're going to have gangland wars, something definitely has to be done down there to come and demolish and tear these apartment units down so that those people that are concerned with safety could pass through there safely."
Chambers says this initiative will ignore the very oldest and poorest complexes, which means they'll degenerate even further. [Mincberg] says the city simply cannot invest grant money in those complexes because it wouldn't be financially feasible to do so, which leaves it up to the owners to decide what to do with those properties.
"Those owners or those financial institutions are going to have to make very difficult financial decisions as to what they want to do with it. But it was our feeling that we would not be doing this neighborhood or any other neighborhood a favor by putting money into an old, dilapidated project and buying five more years of life when perhaps the best decision maybe, is that it's obsolete."
In other words, the program really isn't going to have much of an impact on the worst properties in some of Houston's worst neighborhoods -- the sorts of places that breed the surging gang activity described in a good Texas Monthly feature from a few months ago, a surge that Houston's leaders prefer to ignore.
David Mincberg, by the way, is the former Harris County Democratic Party chair and an important Friend of Bill. His wife Lainie Gordon is the marketing director for the Houston Chronicle. It's always kind of interesting to keep track of the network of technocratic-progressive elites who are hard at work fixing problems in our city.
PREVIOUSLY: Mayor White names assistant for multifamily housing, Watching history repeat itself..., Friend of Bill no substitute for diligent oversight.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/13/07 11:03 PM |
12 March 2007
Chron: "Pleasant, energetic" new county judge to focus on mobility
The Chronicle's Bill Murphy reports that newly selected-not-elected Harris County Judge Ed Emmett plans to focus on mobility during the rest of Robert Eckels' term, and (he hopes) beyond:
[I]f things work out the way he envisions — and that includes winning election next year — he will make his mark as "the regional mobility guy."
He sees himself building coalitions in and out of the county that will add more toll roads, better freeways and secondary roads, more light-rail and bus lines and a freight-train system that doesn't cause traffic snarls.
"The entire region is going to continue to grow in terms of population and commerce," said Emmett, a pleasant, energetic man who looks younger than his age — 57. "We will have more people and more freight. And we will need to add all modes of transportation to accommodate growth."
Upon our first read, we almost didn't recognize this "pleasant, energetic" fellow, since almost every story we saw during his whirlwind ascension to head of Harris County government referred to him as political insider Ed Emmett (as if his mother had named the poor lad "political insider").
It's actually somewhat reassuring that a Harris County official plans to make regional mobility a priority. Perhaps he'll be able to exert some influence over the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Texas (METRO), which for many years has been the nearly exclusive political plaything of Houston mayors.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/12/07 09:58 PM |
11 March 2007
How those who have never seen Houston see Houston
On Friday, a new photographic exhibit, "Never Been to Houston," opened at the Lawndale Art Center.
The gallery's website describes the interesting premise behind the exhibit:
Imagine a city that you've only seen in reproductions or perhaps have merely heard about. A place, like many others, that exists only through rumors, stories, novels, the nightly news, magazines, movies and the Internet. Using these secondhand clues as firsthand research material, invited worldwide contributors-who have Never Been to Houston- will photographically document (without leaving home) what they imagine Houston to look like. Contributors will upload their photos daily to an on-line Flickr site, which will be projected as a slideshow in Houston's Lawndale gallery. Anything that anyone might take a photograph of is fair game. Just as long as it feels like Houston.
The entire description is here, although it's a bit wordy.
This is an utterly fascinating experiment, and I'm looking forward to taking in the exhibit. It will be interesting to see which photographers merely project silly stereotypes of Houston, and which photographers actually try to present Houston as Houston might present itself.
From the Chronicle coverage of the exhibit, I'm definitely drawn to this photographer:
Elena Perlino, a professional photographer in Saluzzo, Italy, became fascinated, as she researched the city online, with the gritty, urban side of the city — its immigrants, its minorities, its youth. In Italy and France, she shot photos that to a Houstonian look more like Houston than like Italy or France: a brown-skinned kid in a hoodie, surveying a wall of graffiti; three black-skinned guys in gimme caps, slumped in chairs in a white-walled room, waiting for something we don't see.
"People in my pictures," Perlino e-mailed, "are living in a place that doesn't belong to them." Such people look the same everywhere.
The Lawndale Art Center is on Main, in the museum district. This exhibit continues through April 14.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/11/07 10:43 PM |
Mobility Response Team gets nice press, won't deploy for months
KUHF-88.7's Laurie Johnson reports that Mayor White's latest effort to imitate Chicago's Mayor Daley is proceeding apace:
Houston Mayor Bill White first proposed the idea of a traffic mobility team last spring. The past ten months or so were spent drafting policies and hiring 24 civilian mobility officers. White says the team will respond to traffic congestion and help ease the flow in spots where traffic is backed up.
[snip]
The civilian officers will be uniformed in khaki with lime green vests. They'll drive marked vehicles, mostly scooters, a few vans and two lift bucket trucks to assist with fixing broken traffic signals.
Khaki and lime green. Oooh! Take that, Mayor Daley!
The Lime Green brigade will not actually deploy for a few months yet:
The Mobility Response Team, including officers, engineers, equipment and supplies will have a budget of approximately $1.8 million per year. The team won't be operational until July 1st.
RELATED COVERAGE: KHOU-11 (hmm, do you get the sense the administration's press team worked the press last week?)
ADDITIONAL RELATED COVERAGE (03-12-2007): The Chronicle finally chimes in.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/11/07 10:15 PM |
Chron op-ed: There's a cop shortage
The Chronicle ran an op-ed by Alan Helfman, Jay Wall, and William A Wolff today.
The auto and real-estate guys have discovered we're short on cops and could use some leadership at HPD.
Agreed!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/11/07 09:55 PM |
Parker: Inertia, embarrassment keep city from dealing with problem vendor
Last month Isiah Carey highlighted the problem of a city vendor that has been audited several times, the results of each suggesting the city has been overpaying for services and products.
Today, the Chronicle's Matt Stiles continues the story, detailing the city's seeming inaction in dealing with the vendor:
Last summer, the city's top finance official demanded nearly $1 million in restitution from a local contractor after three audits and a police investigation concluded that several departments paid too much for high-tech gadgets and services.
Yet the city has continued doing business with the contractor, Texas Procurement Center.
Late last week — faced with pressure from City Controller Annise Parker and inquiries by the Houston Chronicle — city officials acknowledged that transactions with TPC have not been documented well enough to support recovery of more than a fraction of the restitution demanded last year.
City Attorney Arturo Michel said that the $968,000 demand sent by Judy Gray Johnson, the city's finance and administration director, was "probably premature from a legal perspective of what you can recover in court."
He said the city, which is still considering legal action, might be able to recover only about $70,000.
That's because the contract with TPC did not require the company to provide detailed records, Michel said, and because city employees approved years of payments without seeking adequate documentation.
There's much more in Stiles' story, which should anger Houston taxpayers. As of now, the city is weighing whether or not to terminate the contract with TPC and pursue legal action.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/11/07 06:14 PM |
This is what happens
Take a large multi-national corporation. Abuse it, make it the focal point of illogical political attacks. Subject its every move, every action to public scrutiny, ridicule, abuse, and scorn, regardless of whether or not it is warranted. Make it a political hot potato, abuse its friends, defenders, allies, officers, managers, and even employees. Create a regulatory environment so bad, it can't make money in its home area. Tolerate people becoming so unhinged that their reactions to a person is to pillory them as the fourth coming of Adolf Hitler just for mentioning that they work there. (Everyone knows that Bush and Cheney are the second and third comings of Herr Hitler.)
What do you get?
A middle finger and a great big "So long!" Don't kid yourselves people. That's what Halliburton just gave the good ol' U.S. and the city of Houston. They're moving, and it's not just a minor administrative matter; they're moving the world headquarters and the CEO, president, and chairman of the company to Dubai.
In a stunning piece of news, the company said the new headquarters in Dubai will help Halliburton strengthen its presence in the Middle East, Asia and Europe, where it's business is growing. But it casts doubt on the future of the company's current headquarters in Houston.
Demoting Houston's facility from "World Headquarters" to "Hemispheric Headquarters" is the best we can hope for. And that's going to mean the loss of jobs and tax revenue to the Houston/Harris County/Montgomery County areas.
"The Eastern Hemisphere is a market that is more heavily weighted toward oil exploration and production opportunities and growing our business here will bring more balance to Halliburton's overall portfolio," [CEO David] Lesar said today at a regional conference in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
This is how bad it is folks. The announcement wasn't even made at the headquarters or even in the U.S. It was made, by the CEO, in the country where they're going to relocate. Let me translate a few of those words: "More heavily weighted toward oil exploration and production opportunities" means, "doesn't have a regulatory environment that makes it impossible to do anything." It's been 50 years since we built a new refinery from scratch in the U.S. Even the disruptions caused by twin hurricanes 2 years ago hasn't changed that.
From ABC News:
Lesar's announcement appears to signal one of the highest-profile moves by a U.S. corporate leader to Dubai, an Arab boomtown where free-market capitalism has been paired with some of the world's most liberal tax, investment and residency laws.
In a city where the mayor just got slapped down by his neighbors for regulatory overreach, maybe there's a lesson to be learned there. So, what's the reaction? Typical Halliburton-bashing in the press, and in Congress:
The military contractor accused of wasting taxpayer money on no-bid contracts in Iraq is moving its HQ. "They'll be avoiding U.S. taxes," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-N.H., says. "I'm sure they won't stop insisting on taking their profits in cold hard U.S. cash." Federal investigators last month alleged Halliburton was responsible for $2.7 billion of the $10 billion in contractor waste and overcharging in Iraq.
Like the federal government would have done a better job, right? (Just for the record, the problem is with KBR, which Halliburton is selling off, as it has been nothing but political and public-relations trouble). Let's be clear, Senator. No, they won't be taking their profits in cold hard U.S. cash, they'll be taking them in the currency of Bahrain. They'll be operating in a country where business is king, where people like yourself don't make absurd populist statements that have no basis in logic or reality, and where every politically-ambitious mayor doesn't try to impose regulations beyond his legal authority.
And we will be that much poorer.
Posted by Ubu Roi @ 03/11/07 05:24 PM |
Jason Spencer still doesn't like Terry Abbott
Speaking of HISD, on the Chronicle's School Zone blog, Jason Spencer takes on one of his favorite targets: HISD spokesman Terry Abbott.
Spencer doesn't like Abbott's aggressive style. He doesn't like that Abbott sends out press releases suggesting positive stories. He doesn't like that Abbott provides tips for other school districts on how to get good news stories on-air or in print.
It's quite an unusual post, to say the least. We certainly don't see the Chronicle getting too worked up about the aggressive PR machine that runs Mayor White's City Hall. Nor have we seen much fretting about HPD's portrayal of bad crime stats as "only bad if one lives in a hot spot." And we certainly don't see the Chron wringing its hands over Metro's PR efforts -- heck, sometimes it seems as though the Chron's editorial board is in charge of Metro's PR efforts!
Then Spencer posts this comment:
I expect a certain amount of spin in press releases. But I have a problem with HISD's press office when the folks there refuse to hand over information that is clearly public in a timely manner. This newspaper had to get lawyers involved to find out how much money individual teachers were paid under HISD's bonus system, for instance.
And our lawyers are currently fighting the HISD administration's refusal to give us access to school board meeting agenda information as soon as it is prepared. Without this information, we can't do our jobs properly. For instance, the policy proposal that was the subject of Abbott's e-mail press release from last Sunday was made available to school board members no later than the Friday before. But the press office makes us wait until Monday to see the official proposal. That way, we're forced to either hold the story and get beaten by our TV news competitors, who are willing to regurgitate the press release, or report on the issue without all the facts.
I'm fine with spin. It's obstructionism and delay tactics that I have a problem with.
Would the Chronicle please -- please! -- put Spencer in charge of overseeing all Metro stories?? That way, Tom Bazan won't have to wait MONTHS to get his TXPIA requests filled. Shoot, Spencer's crying about having to wait a couple of days; I'll bet Tom Bazan wishes he only had to wait a couple of days to get his requests filled!
The weird part of Spencer's post is when he complains that Abbott sent out a press release last weekend. KHOU-11 posted the information to its website on Sunday, but the Chron (apparently) was forced to wait until Monday to print a story because HISD didn't release the official proposal until then. And Spencer didn't want just to reprint a press release (something that hasn't been a problem for the Chronicle in the past).
The irony is that Spencer has gotten himself all worked up over an HISD proposal that he calls "marginally newsworthy." Well, if it's so marginally newsworthy, then what's the problem? Why does he care what other news outlets are doing?
Because Abbott is good at what he does, I guess. And Spencer has had a beef with HISD for quite a while now.
Meanwhile the systemic problems that plague this district don't get nearly the attention HISD gets. Let's see Jason Spencer throw some real resources and outrage in North Forest ISD's direction! HISD has been working for several years now to improve the education it provides its students. The same can definitely not be said for North Forest ISD.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/11/07 03:35 PM |
Gayle Fallon, role model
You may have read of HISD's bonus error -- giving part-time teachers the same bonus amount as full-time teachers. Houston Federation of Teachers President Gayle Fallon is telling teachers who received more money than they were entitled to that they should not pay it back. Really!
Laurence Simon delivers the needed smackdown.
Perhaps Gayle Fallon's attorney son, whom HFT pays to represent teachers in grievance issues, can help out.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/11/07 08:52 AM |
10 March 2007
Main Street bath reopens, quote still wrong
The Chronicle's Rad Sallee reported earlier this week that the frequently broken (but still world class!) Danger Train Main Street Fountain is functional again:
After six weeks and more than $75,000 in repairs, the Main Street Square fountain is again flowing and splashing near car lanes and light rail tracks in the heart of downtown.
The big attraction in a downtown plaza that was supposed to lure lunchtime strollers and commercial development, the fountain has been ridiculed by light rail skeptics, battered by wayward motorists and put to various uses by street people, revelers, pigeons and grackles.
And the bursts of water that were intended to arch gracefully over the passing trains had to be shut off when trains pass because they might interfere with the train drivers' visibility and leave water spots on the rail cars.
It's not the fountain's connection to the light rail trolley that has been ridiculed so much as the utopian notion that somehow a fountain would be a linchpin of a downtown plaza, miraculously "lur[ing] lunchtime strollers and commercial development" (instead of mainly serving as a handy bath for the vagrants who overrun downtown).
Amusingly, Rad Sallee reports today that, in typical fashion, the city didn't even manage to get the quote right on a sculpture overlooking the fountain:
An office worker strolling on Main Street Square noted the inscription on a sculpture that overlooks the fountain there: "As we build our city, let us think that we are building forever."
Not to pick nits, the man observed, but shouldn't it say "building for forever?"
We asked Bob Eury, executive director of the Houston Downtown Management District, which takes care of the fountain. He said the quote is from British author John Ruskin.
The quotation, placed there by artist Michael Davis, comes from a plaque at City Hall that quotes Ruskin in Seven Lamps of Architecture, Eury said.
"Actually, I believe Ruskin's quote was, 'Let us think that we build forever,' " he said. "But Davis intentionally used the City Hall version."
Kevin Morrison, a Rice University graduate student, searched through Ruskin's works and found this: "When we build, let us think that we build for ever."
Nothing is quite as world-class as getting the quote wrong on the sculpture overlooking the fountain that is being counted on to drive a downtown renaissance. Well done!
BLOGVERSATION: TBIFOC.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/10/07 02:45 PM |
Score one for KPRC-2
Houston Texans defensive end Mario Williams has placed his home, which was once owned by disgraced TSU administrator Priscilla Slade and figured prominently in the spending scandal that led to her ouster, up for sale.
That's not especially interesting news, but we were amused with the conclusion of the story posted on KPRC-2's website:
Among the amenities listed is "lush landscaping".
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/10/07 02:24 PM |
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