Unca Darrell

SEPTEMBER 4 / We're No. 15! We're No. 15!

"FORBES" PUTS Houston at No. 15 on its Top 200 "metro areas with the best business climate." That's bad enough. Salt in the wound is that Dallas is . . .

SEPTEMBER 3 / Do not! I repeat . . .

. . . do not buy tickets to the Alley Theatre's first offering of the new season -- "The Old Friends." 

The problem is not (with one exception) the acting. The problem is not the proscenium stage at the University of Houston, the Alley's home during a massive remodeling project. The problem is . . . 

SEPTEMBER 2 / For the moment, Crockett is Unca D's favorite . . .

. . . Texas city. 

That's because . . .

AUGUST 21 / How lonely the Houston Chronicle . . .

. . . finds itself on the Perry indictment. Our local newspaper, which hates Rick Perry the way MSNBC hates Fox News, is all in. String'im up! 

Note to reader: This blog post busted out of the corral before I had finished working it. Check back later. I'll finish it when I can. DDH 

But other progressive and liberal newspapers -- USA Today, the Washington Post, even the New York Times -- and honest liberals all across the fruited plain are . . . 

JULY 13 / Living Water International is . . .

. . . a most worthy charity. It provides clean drinking water in Jesus' name to folks who otherwise might drink from polluted lakes, streams, or near-surface wells. And it's based in our area, which means that you may already know people who contribute or who travel overseas to help drill or maintain the wells. 

LWI is having cash-flow problems this year, so this would be a good time send a check to Living Water Internaional, 4001 Greenbriar Drive, Stafford, Texas 77477-3922. 

 

JULY 2 / Charles Murray on the important distinction between . . .

. . . liberals and progressives.

A few weeks ago . . . I shared drinks and dinner with two men who have held high positions in Democratic administrations. Both men are lifelong liberals. There's nothing "moderate" about their liberalism. But as the pleasant evening wore on . . . I was struck by how little their politics have to do with other elements of the left.

JUNE 18 / An "A" for effort to the Houston Chronicle for . . .

. . . its front-pager yesterday on wait times for doctors at Veterans Affairs hospitals and in private hospitals and doctors' offices. (Sig Christenson, "Long VA doctor waits sign of times?" Houston Chronicle, June 17, 2014) 

It is a serious story reported seriously, with detail piled upon detail. And the yarn is just plausible enough to be true, that waiting times for medical care are long and getting longer everywhere we look, not just in VA hospitals.

MAY 28 / States with low tax burdens prosper and states with . . .

. . . high tax burdens don't. There are a lot of ways to prove this proposition. One of the most ingenious is by Tavis H. Brown, a Missouri political consultant, in "How Money Walks," a collection of essays by him and like-minded writers.

Using IRS data, he looks state-by-state at how aggregate individual income went up or down between 1995 and 2010. Texas, for instance, gained $22.1 billion while California lost $33.8 billion.

Mr. Travis says stunning amounts of aggregate income "walked," away from the high-tax states  to the low-tax states.

If you are losing your working wealth to other states, you are losing your most precious cargo. These are your earners, your workers . . . 

MAY 16 / Texas political intelligence from . . .

. . . the Wall Street Journal:

Michael Quinn Sullivan is a proud Lone Star son -- on his desk he keeps a map that shows "Texas" and "Not Texas."  That helps explain why the conservative activist is leading a charge to use this year's election to "trade up" Texas politicians, replacing the state's already conservative majority with new Republicans, all raring to propel Texas to the front of the state-reform movement.

"Texas has things to be proud us," says Mr. Sullivan, who runs Empower Texas, a political group that is playing big in the state's primaries. "Then again, we're like the least drunk guy at the bar. California is drooling on itself, Illinois is passed out in the corner. We look good simply because we can walk a straight line. We should be leading the way."

. . . .

Empower Texas and other free-market groups have focused their ire on moderate Texas House Speaker Joe Straus and his coalition for dragging their feet on budget, social and education reforms -- failing to flex powerful House and Senate GOP majorities. Facing a voter uprising, eight Straus-aligned Republicans chose not to run for re-election, leaving open seats in red districts to be filled by more conservative candidates. Another seven were routed in Texas's March primary. The grass roots also defeated one moderate Senate incumbent outright and pushed another into a May 27 runoff.

Scott Turner, a charismatic young House Republican from Fisco (north of Dallas), has meanwhile announced that he's running against Mr. Straus in January. Whatever the outcome, Mr. Sullivan argues that athe flood of new conservative members, sent by unhappy voters, will dramatically raise the pressure on the Texas chamber to perform. With Republican Greg Abbott well positioned to win the governor's mansion this fall, reformers are starting to think big on spending limits, property tax reform and a charter-school agenda.

(Kimberley Strassel, "Potomac Watch: The GOP's 'Trade-Up' Election," wsj.com, May 16, 2014)

File this under "Houston Chronicle, More Stuff That You Will Not Read In the . . . ."

MAY 13 / Who knew?

WALL STREET JOURNAL editors yesterday gave University of Texas regent Wallace Hall's side of his conflicts with the the UT administration. I don't have a dog in this fight, but I do have a citizen's concern about both interests at stake here: on one side, academic freedom; on the other, appropriate political oversight of a public university.

Reporters and editors at the Houston Chronicle present Mr. Hall as a bully, a yahoo, a . . .