Thomas Allen
                             

11/26/06  So much to cover, so little time.

A few weeks ago, my pc started acting strange.  Then, it got worse.  Then, I got my IT guy involved.  The Dr. checked out my poor little Dell and pronounced it in need of intensive care - hospitalization.  My system had been hacked!  Whoever did it put an "administrator" on my pc and infected the poor thing with some Trojan virus.  I thought Trojans were supposed to prevent disease.  What moron came up with that name for a pc virus?  Unfortunately, my hacker moron was pretty damn talented.  My IT guy could not contain his appreciation for the complexity of the virus that had control of my Dell.

Long story short -- my pc had to be wiped clean, and it took over a week to get it back.  That's why DallasArena.com has been inactive, but I'm back.

First things first.  Congratulations to my friends, Sarah and David, on their engagement and upcoming marriage.  Talk about a power couple!

Then there's the Corp of Engineers raining on the Trinity Trough parade.  We may wind up with 3 string thing bridges over the same old sewer trough we know and love.  Since the deal was always more of a road project than about flood control or recreation, there may be a real problem for the Trinity hucksters. 

Here's how Belo covered it:

Trinity project faces bump in road  Dallas: Planned parkway may harm levee, must be tweaked, corps says Friday, November 17, 2006 By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News

Dallas officials and North Texas Tollway Authority project managers are working to tweak the alignment of the proposed Trinity Parkway, after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined it might compromise the Trinity River's eastern levee.    The corps says it will support the tollway ? a key part of the city's landmark Trinity River Project ? only if design elements don't put the city at risk for flooding. ... The parkway project "absolutely cannot happen if the structural integrity of the levee is damaged in any way," said Col. Christopher Martin, commander of the corps' Fort Worth district. ... But not everyone on the Dallas City Council wants these puzzle pieces to fit. District 14 council member Angela Hunt is opposing the tollway because of its proximity to the long-awaited parks project. ... The Trinity River Project is, first and foremost, a flood-control measure, Col. Martin said, and the tollway plan is an added bonus. It's the corps' job to make sure that the project's main intent ? protecting Dallas residents from high water ? is not compromised, he said. ... the first parkway sketches he saw "could've potentially violated the structural integrity" of the eastern levee, along which the tollway is designed to run. ... "We have to have a road to relieve 85,000 cars a day from the Mixmaster ? the minimum to fulfill our traffic needs," said City Council member Ed Oakley, chairman of the council's Trinity River committee. ... Trinity River Project director Rebecca Dugger said ...  "After [Hurricane] Katrina, the corps is obviously looking very carefully at their levees, and making sure nothing is going to impact their ability to fight floods." ... Mr. Oakley said the council has jumped this hurdle before ? right after Laura Miller was elected mayor. Even she, originally an ardent opponent of the project, realized there was no getting around a new roadway adjacent to the park, he said. ...

Here's how Jim Schutze at The Dallas Observer covered it:

A Trinity ?Tweak?? Impending Disaster?s More Like It.

For a sickening example of local kiss-up media carrying water for the Trinity River gang, please read today?s story at the top of The Dallas Morning News metro front, ?Trinity project faces bump in road,? by Emily Ramshaw. The deck for this story reads, ?Dallas: Planned parkway may harm levee, must be tweaked, Corps says.?    Tweaked? Tweaked? I don?t see tweaked in anything the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said. I see moved off the levee. That?s not a tweak. That?s an earthquake.    As of this summer, a new guy is in charge at the regional office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Obviously he has taken notice of the findings in New Orleans?that, for decades, the Corps, in order to get contracts and have work for itself, whored itself out to local real estate scammers who wanted cheap levees thrown up in a hurry so they could sell swampland to suckers. Later, suckers died, and New Orleans was destroyed.    What the Corps has told the city of Dallas is that the city cannot go ahead with its plan to build a highway on top of the levees on the east bank of the river, the levees that protect downtown Dallas. The new highway would weaken the levees, especially where the levees and the highway both have to crowd under the same bridges together.    Eventually as this unfolds, we will see confirmation of what I have said for years?that the whole business with the Calatrava bridges, supposedly an exercise in ?public art,? is an attempt to get around severe flooding issues caused by jamming a freeway under the existing bridges.    The ?tweak? they?re talking about now is taking the freeway off the levees and sticking it right next to or on top of all those lakes and boardwalks Mayor Laura Miller keeps promising. That will destroy the park they told us we were voting for in 1998.    I see Ed Oakley quoted in the News story with his tired old big fat lie about how this road is necessary to relieve congestion on downtown freeways. A raft of studies has shown there are several other much more effective and less destructive ways to relieve congestion without pouring a single lane of new concrete next to the river. This is a real estate scam to kite land values along the river in the old Trinity River industrial district, some of which is owned by members of the extended family that owns The Dallas Morning News.    Emily Ramshaw is a good reporter. But she knows this story was not about a tweak. The editors who worked on this story are good editors. They knew it wasn?t about a tweak. The word, tweak, in fact, is a lie intended to keep Belo CEO Robert Decherd happy in his penthouse.   But if that bad road gets built, if the park is destroyed and the city exposed to mortal threat from flooding, Ramshaw and the editors she works for will go to their graves with some of the mud on their souls. The first person they?ll meet at the end of the tunnel, by the way, will be D publisher Wick Allison, grinning with his bow tie in flames.    Bottom line? If the people of Dallas let themselves get suckered the way the people of New Orleans did, they will wind up in the same boat on the same river: Styx. ?Jim Schutze

That comment about Wickless is so great, it deserves to be repeated:

The first person they?ll meet at the end of the tunnel, by the way, will be D publisher Wick Allison, grinning with his bow tie in flames.

There's another story that bothers me mucho.  The DISD student population is 6% White.   Exactly how can anything done to or for white kids be discriminatory when there are so few of them in the DISD system?

Here's the Belo take on the situation:

DISD principal found to have segregated school 11/17/2006 By ANABELLE GARAY  / Associated Press

A federal judge ruled Thursday that an elementary school principal segregated students by assigning English-speaking Latino children to classes and programs separate from white children and must correct the inequities by January.    Teresa Parker, principal of Preston Hollow Elementary, was found to have violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by creating classes and hallways that were divided based on ethnicity. However, the school district, its board and superintendent were not legally liable, Judge Sam A. Lindsay said in the ruling.    The judge ruled that Parker must integrate non-core classes and stop placing students in programs, such as English as a Second Language, based solely on their national origin or ethnicity. The changes must be made by Jan. 17, Lindsay said.    "The most important thing that's going to happen now is that they're not going to be segregated," said attorney Davis Urias, with the Mexican Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Classes will be "based on actual educational needs."    Latino parents sued the Dallas Independent School District, its board of trustees, Superintendent Michael Hinojosa and Parker in April 2006.    The plaintiffs said Hispanic children who were proficient in English and didn't need bilingual education or ESL classes were shuffled to ESL classes at Preston Hollow. Meanwhile, white children with the same language skills were placed in general education classes. Classrooms with mostly minority students were located along separate hallways from those with mostly white students, the lawsuit alleged. ... Attorneys for the plaintiffs said the actions were an effort to stop white flight from the school. ... The suit was filed by MALDEF on behalf of three students and an organization of Hispanic parents whose children attend Preston Hollow Elementary, a school in a predominantly white neighborhood. ... The district is made up of about 6 percent white students, 63 percent Hispanic students and 30 black students.

The main reason this bothers me is the comment "Hispanic children who were proficient in English and didn't need bilingual education or ESL classes were shuffled to ESL classes at Preston Hollow."  Being able to speak English is not the same thing as "proficient".  

A young man in my neighborhood flunked the 8th grade a few years ago.  He failed almost everything.  You know why?  He couldn't read English.  His verbal English is and was very good.  The teachers were totally unaware of his inability to read English with any comprehension.  He had been taught to read phonetically, so he could pronounce the words.  He just didn't understand what he had read.  I spent most every Sunday that summer tutoring him.  I taught him to read like my grandmother taught me -- from the newspaper.  The topic of interest that summer was the missing Baylor basketball player who wound up being the victim of another basketball player's jealousy.  By letting him read stories that related to what he was hearing on TV (in Spanish) and his own interest in basketball, the words began to mean something to him.

He should have been in ESL classes.  He would have benefited from the extra attention.  He would have prospered in a class where he didn't feel "slower" than the rest of the students.  Just because his school is predominantly Hispanic does not mean all the other students shared his situation.  His father speaks English, but is not comfortable in the language.  His mother speaks no English.  At home, it's all Spanish.  To his parents, he was very proficient in English.

I understand the local LULAC chapters passed on this whole Preston Hollow much ado about nothing.  So, some Hispanic parents got MALDEF involved.   Here is text from an e-mail that came in this week from an Hispanic friend:

You know he has a point.  Why would anyone look to Ren?Martinez for anything.  The guy is such a self-promoter.  He used to be the "go to" Hispanic in town.  He was put on this board and that board.  He ran through several businesses.  Last I heard, he actually worked for the DISD, but that was years ago.

I don't know the answer to the Preston Hollow situation.  It looks like Judge (former City Attorney) Sam Lindsey is going to force them make some changes, which means that 6% white student figure is likely to get smaller very soon. 

I do know my early lack of enthusiasm for Dr. Hinojosa has been proven to be valid.   He's a great success story and certainly a wonderful role model for Hispanic school children.  Unfortunately, he is hurting in the back bone department.  Then, there's his lack of oversight over the DISD management.  It's been one scandal after another under his watch.  Being able to delegate is a great skill, but delegation requires some minimal effort at supervision. 

Dr. Hinojosa's got a "it's not my job" mentality that comes from a career in bureaucracy.  I am convinced that a school superintendent should be someone with business experience in a FOR-PROFIT operation.  When City Managers and School Superintendents work their way up through the bureaucracy, they never see taxpayers' money as anything but a bottomless money pit.

In the FOR-PROFIT world, underachievers get fired and failures get replaced.  In the bureaucratic world, underachievers are the norm and failed programs get expanded with the assumption that more money will make it work.  That's not to say there are no achievers in the bureaucratic world because there are plenty.  It's just there are so many more underachievers who gravitate to a perceived safe job in government.  

In the FOR-PROFIT world, go-getters are noted and promoted.  In the bureaucratic world, go-getters are resented and undermined.  Dr. Hinojosa clearly is a go-along, gregarious guy who sees no evil until someone points it out to him, as in a computer geek like Allen Gwinn (www.Dallas.org) who actually was the original person to find  the credit card abuse.  Dallas is so lucky to have someone like Allen Gwinn.

One of the most dedicated and hard-working men I know is Darrell Baker.  A retired city employee (Park Department management level).  His energy and enthusiasm will wear you out because he's always looking for new projects.  Still, Darrell was not the norm in the city bureaucracy.

One last thing, a dear friend who got caught up in a political turf war involving a city TIF operation has finally been able to get a job after doing what she does best -- helping people help themselves. 

I'm a long way from "caught up" after my hacking nightmare.  Unfortunately, this is going to be the week from Wickless' future residency.  We are moving my office back inside the city limits of Dallas.  It's  not like the old days when you just called a mover to come "pack us up and move us".  Now, you must coordinate with telephone cable people, IT people, etc., etc., etc. for a fee.  You can't just unplug your copier/printer.  It's got to be done by their support people, for a fee.  You can't just pack up your computer net work.  Its got to done by someone who knows what he's doing, for a fee.

Problems, problems.  Still, it's great to have my pc back in order.   It's even better (or worse) that the DISD looks like they will be giving people like me so much to cover, not to mention how much fun will be coming from County Government screw ups after January 1.  Fun times for government watchdogs!

sb