Category Archives: Uncategorized

Bunni Pounds – Swamp Creature Running to Join the Swamp

The Texas Observer reports on Bunni Pounds’ run to replace retiring Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TP-Flower Mound).  TO takes issue with Pounds’ claims that she is headed to Washington to help clean up the swamp after a full decade of groveling for money for Hensarling and others from well-heeled GOP donors in North Texas.

Pounds set up her own political fundraising and consulting shop in 2015 and within two years had turned it into a half-a-million-dollar business with nine employees, according to her campaign website. The site also boasts that Pounds “is now seen as one of the top fundraisers in North Texas from Fort Worth all the way to Tyler.”

This background raises questions not only about Pounds’ qualifications for office, but about whose debt she’ll be in should she become a member of Congress. Groveling to donors day in and day out is enough to compromise your average politician, to say nothing of someone whose expertise that was before they became a politician.

 

Today in Texas History – May 18

Album THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY de BUDDY HOLLY sur CDandLP

From the Annals of the Biopics  In 1978,  the movie “The Buddy Holly Story” starring Gary Busey as Buddy Holly had its world premiere in Dallas.  The movie received excellent reviews, did well at the box office and revived interest in Holly’s incredible music.  Critics were impressed by Busey and fellow actors Charles Martin Smith and Don Stroud who sang and played instruments (with overdubbing help).  The story follows Holly’s meteoric rise in the music world beginning shortly after high school graduation until his untimely death at age 22.  One can only watch the film with wonder and sadness at what might have been.  Red’s favorite Holly songs are Oh Boy! and That’ll be the Day.

Quote for the Day

“After all, the devil fights under great disadvantages, and has to carry weights in all his races which are almost unfair.  He lies as a matter of course, believing thoroughly in lies, thinking that it is by lies chiefly that he must make his running good: and yet every lie he tells, after it has been told and used, remains as an additional weight to be carried.  When you have used your lie gracefully and successfully, it is hard to bury it and get it well out of sight.  It crops up here and there against you, requiring more lies; and at last, too often, has to be admitted as a lie, most usually so admitted in silence, but still admitted, -to be forgiven or not, according to the circumstances of the case.  The most perfect forgiveness is that which is extended to him who is known to lie in everything.  That man has to be taken, lies and all, as a man is taken with a squint, or a harelip, or a bad temper. He has an uphill game to fight, but when once well known, he does not fall into the difficulty of being believed.”

Anthony Trollope, Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite

Trump and his lawyers, Cohen and Giuliani, for all their many faults, at least no longer have to worry about falling into the difficulty of being believed.

 

 

 

Today in Texas History – May 17

Grand jury indicts 106 in Waco biker shooting - CBS News

From the Annals of the Shoot-outs –  In 2015, members from the Bandidos and Cossacks  motor cycle gangs and other bikers began fighting at the Twin Peaks restaurant off Hwy 6 in Waco.   Police were monitoring the scene and after gunshots were fired a major shoot out commenced.  As one of Red’s friends cynically reported at the time, “No one was injured – (sotto voce) – nine bikers were killed.”  In fact, nine gang members were killed and twenty others injured.  Unraveling the sequence of events has been challenging.  It does appear that most of the dead were killed by police fire.  More than 150 were arrested at the scene, but there has been but one trial of Bandido leader Jake Carrizal more than two years later.  And that ended in a mistrial.  The overall impression is that the McClellan County District Attorney’s office was overwhelmed with the extent of these cases and has badly bungled the investigation and prosecution of some who clearly committed crimes and others who did not.

Today in Texas History – May 16

From the Annals of Civil Disobedience –  In 1968, 400 high school students from Edgewood HS in San Antonio walked out of class and marched to the Edgewood ISD administration office.  The EISD was overwhelmingly Hispanic with 90% of students of Mexican heritage.  The students were complaining about inadequate supplies and unqualified teachers.

The walk-out resulted in further action.  In July, Demetrio Rodríguez and seven other Edgewood parents filed suit on behalf of Texas schoolchildren who were poor or resided in school districts with low property-tax bases.  The problem resulted from the numerous school districts in Texas.  Bexar County incorporates all or part of 19 different school districts – many of which were set up to segregate students of different races.  EISD had one of the highest tax rates in the county but raised only $37 per pupil, while Alamo Heights, Bexar County’s wealthiest district, raised $413 per student.  Because of the vastly different appraised value of the property in the districts, the tax rate per $100 property value needed to equalize education funding was only $0.68 for Alamo Heights but a punishing $5.76 for Edgewood.

Thus, began the decades long fight over school funding in Texas.  The Rodriguez case ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court which ultimately ruled against Rodríguez, holding that Texas’ school financing did not violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution and punted the issue back to Texas.  The Court also held that the state would not be required to subsidize poorer school districts.  But this was not the end as most observers know and the fight over school funding continues.

Will the Beaver Eat the Gator? Buc-ee’s claims Choke Creek’s logo is too similar

Mega-roadside store chain Buc-ee’s has sued its much smaller competitor Choke Creek claiming that CC’s cowboy hat wearing alligator logo is too similar to Buc-ee’s baseball cap wearing beaver.   The trademark infringement suit was filed in December of 2015, but is being tried this week in U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison’s court in Houston.

Red for one has never confused a baseball cap with a cowboy hat or a beaver for an alligator – especially an alligator sporting some awesome “guns.”  Just saying.

Today in Texas History – May 15

From the Annals of the Writers –  In 1890, Katherine Anne Porter (nee Callie Russell Porter) was born in Indian Creek.  At age two, her family moved to Kyle after the death of her mother in child birth.  They lived with her paternal grandmother Catherine Ann Porter – whose name she later adopted – until her death when KAP was 11.  After that the family moved around Texas and Louisiana.  She received little formal education beyond elementary school but did attend the Thomas School in San Antonio.  She left home at 16 married a well-to-do scion of a ranching family who physically abused her.  They divorced after about a decade and she had her name changed to Katherine Anne Porter in the divorce decree.  After her divorce she spent time in New York and Mexico where she became acquainted with Mexican leftists such as Diego Rivera.  She made her living ghost writing and doing publicity work for movies.  Her first published story was Maria Concepcion in The Century Magazine.  In 1930, she published her first short-story collection,  Flowering Judas and Other Stories.  After an expanded edition of this collection was published in 1935, she began to receive true critical acclaim.   Her only  novel Ship of Fools was a best-seller and the movie rights made her financially independent.  She continued to write short stories including Noon Wine, a collection of short stories set in Central Texas.  Today she widely recognized as a master of the short story genre.   The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (1965) won the Gold Medal for Fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award.  She died in 1980 and her ashes were buried along side her mother in the Indian Creek cemetery.   She is a must read for all lovers of Texas literature.

Lost Texas

Texas A&M Press has published a new book by photographer Bronson Dorsey.  Lost Texas is filled with 179 photos of buildings across the state that have been abandoned.  These structures are mostly from small town Texas and show the faded and crumbling glory that the state has lost with its rapid urbanization in the last 75 years.  Red has tried to photograph a few of these same buildings over the years, but defers to a real master in Dorsey.   Dorsey has a companion website at www.lost-texas.com.

Today in Texas History – May 14

From the Annals of the Freedom Loving Germans –  In 1854, delegates from various local German political clubs met at the annual Staats-Saengerfest (State Singers’ Festival) in San Antonio.  The meeting might otherwise have escaped notice, except that the delegates adopted a declaration against slavery declaring it to be evil. The declaration went on to state that abolition was to be the work of the various states who should seek help from the federal government (in the form of payment for freed slaves) to help end the moral abomination of chattel slavery.  The Texas Germans were falling in line with other organizations such as the Freier Mann Verein (Freeman’s Association) from Northern States who had enacted similar declarations.  As one might imagine, the declaration was not well received in the strongly pro-slavery (and virulently racist) Texas of the time.  In conjunction with ongoing antislavery newspaper articles in the German language press, many Anglo-Texans grew more and more hostile to their German-Texan neighbors.  This was clearly evidenced at the outset of the Southern Rebellion by the murder of many German Texans who were attempting to go north to fight for the Union.