Housewives Extraordinare!

08/28/03 You can take the girl out of the kitchen ....

This was a day for contradictions. Up was Down! Wrong was Right! Stupid was very In!

Before I go any further into today's City Hall disaster, John Loza was just outstanding . So, was Bill Blaydes and Mitch Rasansky and Sandy Greyson and Mayor Miller. But, John Loza was just outstanding.

Loza made the motion to amend the motion to approve all direct appointments so that Al Lipscomb's nomination would be voted on separately. Bill Blaydes seconded Loza's motion. Neither one of them backed away for a second. It was typical of Blaydes and Rasansky to be strong, but John Loza just rocked. I was too shocked to take notes or I would quote some of his comments. He was eloquent, he was kind, he was firm. He was right. The Police Review Board is the wrong place for Al Lipscomb.

Carolyn Waters:
It's about time someone other than the Mayor realized that worthless Police of Chief was out of control. Thank God she was reelected.
Bolton was made Chief for one reason only, to control the Black community. How little did they know that a many Blacks did not like him, even if he had the Al's of Dallas backing him.
The party is over. Hooray, Hooray. May our wonderful city select the best this time.

This morning the vote was 8-7 AGAINST Lipscomb. Lois Finkelman and Veletta Lill sold us out. They both have fantasies of being Mayor. They both said their constituents did not want Al Lipscomb on the PRB, but they were smarter than their constituents. Veletta Lill all but told Don Hill she could feel his pain, and that had convinced her to vote to put a CONFESSED & CONVICTED BRIBE TAKER on the Police Review Board.

When Finkelman starts waxing, my eyes glaze over and she usually says pretty much the same thing that Lill says and vice versa.

Finkelman and Lill pulled the plug on tightening the financial disclosure rules for city officials. The rules got changed anyway by the state legislature. With this vote today, it is clear that both of these Housewives Extraordinare have a very loose grip on integrity. How does Lill tell her son not to steal now, since she voted to put a CONFESSED & CONVICTED BRIBE TAKER on the Police Review Board?

A bigger disappointment was Ed Oakley. I knew he would vote for Al Lipscomb because he wants to keep the African-Americans in his district on his team. He claims to owe some debt to Old Al for putting him on ZOAC (Plan Commission sub-committee). Ed has never felt a debt owed to the people of NW Dallas who gave him his margin of victory in his District 6 election. Any debt Oakley owed to Lipscomb was cancelled when it was disclosed that Lipscomb had taken several bribes as a city councilman.

I expected him to vote and keep his mouth shut, but he had to justify selling out the city for his own political expediency. He told the ZOAC story, blah! blah! blah! Didn't buy it when he told it to me the first time. Then he said "I DON'T KNOW IF MR. LIPSCOMB IS GUILTY. . .". That's when he crossed the line and became a public LIAR! Unless Oakley has been living in a cocoon for the past 4 years, he knows that AL LIPSCOMB CONFESSED in Federal Court to taking bribes. Ed also knows that Floyd Richards went to prison for paying bribes to Al Lipscomb. Ed also knows that Nick Rizos testified in Federal Court to paying bribes to Al Lipscomb.

Then he compounded his lie by saying this wasn't the first time a felon had been put on a city board. He said Mayor Kirk and Councilwoman Donna Blumer had appointed felons to city boards. Kirk appointed Joyce Brown whose conviction was overturned and she was found innocent of the charges against her and her record was expunged. She never confessed to the crime she was charged with and of which she was finally acquitted. The man Donna Blumer appointed also had a full pardon and his record was expunged because evidence was found after his conviction that proved his innocence, and he never confessed to the crime he was charged with.

Al Lipscomb CONFESSED he took bribes as a councilman. He even told then Dallas Observer reporter Laura Miller that he regularly took money from Mayor Annette Strauss while they served together on the council and from lots of other rich white folks.

Ed deliberately made a misleading statement at the horse show. It was not necessary, and it makes him no better than Al Lipscomb.

You were probably as shocked at the way those speakers addressed the Mayor. So-called Men of God! Those old men may thump a Bible on Sunday, but they are just politicians.

They kept talking about some conspiracy between Miller and the DPA and Benavides to fire Bolton. Why would there need to be a conspiracy? Bolton has given Benavides all kinds of reasons to fire him in the past 4 years. We will know on Thursday what specific reasons caused Benavides to pull the trigger, but I want to make a guess. I think having the Chief of Police playing the race card and warning of street riots in case he gets fired forced the City Manager's hand.

In the first place, the Dallas Police Association did not endorse Miller or MPossible. They hate Miller and MPossible opposes "meet and confer". So, there was no deal with them! Why would she have a deal with Benavides? As much as we all may have wanted, Mayor Miller couldn't fire him.   Jim Schutze explains it in this week's Dallas Observer story:

Get Ted Scorned black council members will go after the city manager next
BY JIM SCHUTZE

. . . . What's the next step? The black council members are going to go after Benavides' head. They'll at least float the notion of getting him fired. Why? Because in giving up the city's first black chief, Benavides welshed on his deal with them.
. . . Chief Bolton, the city's first black chief, has been propped up in office by the four black council members, with an assumed assist from the Hispanics.
   Neither the mayor nor the city council can hire or fire a police chief in Dallas. Only the city manager can do that.
   Neither the mayor nor a simple majority of the city council can hire or fire a city manager in Dallas. Only a two-thirds vote of the council--10 out of 15--can do that.
   So six votes on the council are all the city manager needs to keep his job. The only thing the chief needs to keep his job is the protection of the city manager.
. . . So how did four black council members out of 15 protect the chief? Easy. They protected the city manager. That was the deal. As long as Benavides protected Bolton, the black council members protected Benavides.
. . .   He actually had seven. There are three Mexican-American members of the council, for whom it would be very uncomfortable to vote to fire a guy named Benavides. . . .

The only conspiracy at City Hall was to cover Bolton's large hiney! If you want to talk about conspiracies, there's that little number that was done us by African-American City Manager John Ware and African-American Mayor Ron Kirk to deceive Dallas taxpayers and voters about the hidden parts of the arena deal with Perot and Hicks. That was a conspiracy.

All in all, I thought Laura Miller was incredibly cool today under fire. When those same wackos used to show up at City Hall to blast Con Jerk, he just left the room or started walking around chatting with staff and other council members. Mayor Miller just stayed in her chair and stared them down. Ted Benavides seemed to be much more rattled and annoyed than her.

So, about this recall of our Mayor. With the last election, there were 1,197,623 registered voters per www.dalcoelections.org. Only 120,599 people voted. I believe 10% of the registered voters at the last mayoral election must sign a petition to effect a recall. 10% of 120,599 (actual voters) is 12,059 signatures. That's quite a few folks, but 10% of 1,197,623 registered voters is 119,762 signatures. Oh, my!

If there was any doubt that Terrell Bolton is a complete nut case, he is no longer calling for race riots to get his job back but now he is planning to run against Laura Miller for Mayor. He must think those 200-300 loudmouths who showed up at council were going to sweep him into office.

If you think Laura had decisive wins over Dunning and Mpossible, just imagine the turnout she would get against Bolton.

Love & Kisses II:
   Although within their focus to embark on, any recall efforts by the African-American community will ultimately fail. They would need the vote of the majority of registered voters in Dallas.
   I doubt the White vote would be there, and I seriously doubt they would have the Hispanic vote. We saw the comments made and placards carried by several African-American critics at City Hall. One sign said "Dirty Wet Backs."
   If the recall effort gets enough signatures to call for a vote, the recall supporters would not gather more than 25% to 30% of the vote. The other side wins by 65% to 70% and thereby solidifies the onslaught of what is yet to come, the presence and power of the Hispanic vote.
   We will then be in position to successfully work other issues with the prevailing block of voters who will say NO to recall.
   It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that combined vote will then be known by one ethnicity as the "Slam Dunk Coalition" or the "White/Hispanic Coalition".
   The Bolton supporters will then see a divided Dallas for a long time.

Some poll claims Bolton had 56% job approval city wide -- must have been taken in his church.

Stan Aten:
African-American community only makes up 20% of the population of Dallas. They do not vote in high numbers and don't have much economic power. With current trends in demographics, their high point as far as political power has already come and gone. Unless they learn to get along with others, their power will dwindle in the future.

The past few days have been pretty eventful, with lots of passion and fury. We had the City Manager finally show some COJONES. We had some on the council sink to new lows, but we had 6 council members show real courage and concern for our city -- Miller, Blaydes, Greyson, Griffith, Rasansky and JOHN LOZA.

Don't you wish we had at least one local talk show host who knew something about Dallas politics so we could have some lively discussions about all this excitement?