In my investigative piece into the Tarrant Regional Water District Board, I questioned why the Fort Worth Star Telegram ignored citizen requests over a five-year period to investigate allegations of corruption at the agency. I found it especially odd considering the TRWD’s offices are in the same building as the newspaper. I found it even [...]

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BloggerNews has learned of a broad-ranging, long-term property seizure scheme in Texas’ Tarrant County Regional Water District, in which District employees have abused eminent domain privileges, forced homeowners and businesses off their properties, and awarded no-bid contracts via secret meetings that are never reported to the public. Background The Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD) was [...]

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I’ve been doing some research into Texas Appleseed. It looks to me like a pretty good organization that helps kids and families.  Unfortunately, one of its employees is making some illogical statements about payday loans.  Honestly, I sometimes wonder if every state should require a class in basic logic given how often logic seems to [...]

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Tod Roberrson of the Dallas Morning News attempted to rebut my editorial on payday lending in his blog. I don’t like to make lengthy rebuttals, but I will because Robberson is the first to actually try and take me on point-by-point. For that, I give him credit. I apologize if I harp on what seem [...]

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Gerald Britt’s column on payday loans gets several facts wrong, and the solutions he offers would eliminate short-term credit options in Texas, forcing borrowers to more expensive options they’ve already rejected. He claims SB1247 fails to address three issues: “Cycle of debt”: There is no cycle of debt.  The OCCC reports that the most frequent [...]

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I remember when I had my first car.  I was so overprotective that I only took it the dealer for maintenance, even though it was expensive.  One day, during a routine service, the repair dude told me the engine mounts were worn and it was probably a good idea for them to be replaced.  Now [...]

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It took me a long time to realize it, but whenever somebody shouts, “Something has to be done,”, legislation doesn’t actually make things better.  In fact, it usually makes things worse.  Of course, I’m thinking about payday loans but other things as well. Okay, so a bunch of people don’t like payday loans.  Well, why [...]

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Welcome to the First Virtual Church of Our Lord and Savior, Steve Jobs. As you enter the sanctuary, please do not make eye contact with anyone. Keep your eyes focused on the screen of the mobile device of your choice. We are relevant and practice diversity here, which is easy since no one will even [...]

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“You oughta get better locks around here if you don’t want people taking your private information, Mr. Squirl. It’s up to you to do something preventive….” “Mr. Mercer, I’m Jack Squirl, President of Data Miner Servicing, y’ know, ‘Servicing You With a Smile.’ Our security guard detained you one hour ago, and we are holding [...]

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It is the fearful, unthinking herd instinct and the forces that exploit it that are making us such a polarized nation. You don’t have to have a sick religion or be a right wing Republican to be delusional. Twitter is dripping with delusionalism in politics and atheism. And just try to convince me that Oswald [...]

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We read about one incident of a lunatic shooting people in a theater, a lunatic shooting people at a school, a lunatic crashing jetliners into skyscrapers. Then we conclude that all strangers are lunatics, too dangerous to connect with. So we stay alone, unconnected, and slowly we become a nation of benign lunatics.    I see [...]

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One week from today on November 16, the first international event will be held at the brand new Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. The COTA is the first purpose-built Formula One track in the U.S., so its opening has been highly anticipated for several years. The F1 event officially begins with practice day [...]

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This is a case where your vote absolutely counts. Control of the Texas State Senate rests in your hands. Texans in state senate district 10 need to get to the polls on Election Day and vote the conservative Dr. Mark Shelton to replace Liberal Wendy Davis. The district’s demographics are in Dr. Shelton’s favor, and [...]

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“So JFK is going to be the new president. Right? Not so fast. Some goober decides to drive up to the Kennedy compound with dynamite in his car….” I have a long memory, so I’m still unwilling to bet that Mitt Romney will win or keep the Republican nomination, much less the election. I know [...]

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With the subtitle Plant, Grow, and Eat the Best Edibles for Texas Gardens there isn’t any question what this book is about or the intended audience. Gardening in Texas with the weather and landscape diversity isn’t easy, but this book is designed to assist any Texas Gardener in the state. It features both container gardening [...]

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What Is A Payday Loan? Payday loans are short-term loans offered in small dollar amounts.  The term of the loans is around 14 days, give or take, because the due date is when the customer receives their next paycheck.  Loans are usually for less than $500. A person might need a payday loan because they [...]

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The editorial “Payday Profits” (7/27/12) is riddled with inaccuracies regarding payday lenders. It perpetuates myths regarding the mechanisms, value, customer satisfaction rate, and repayment rate of short-term cash advances, and mischaracterizes the intent of the legislation cited in the editorial. Instead of relying on countless non-partisan, unbiased studies of the cash advance product, and the [...]

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As we rapidly approach vacation season, I would like to offer a little tourist information about my hometown of Austin and the nearby Texas Hill Country. This candid insider’s viewpoint includes a few places and activities of interest, including a few details traditional sources may accidentally on purpose neglect to mention. You can find the [...]

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A recently launched Save Voice of America Tibetan Radio website (www.savevoatibetanradio.com) and a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/savevoatibetan) urge supporters to contact their congressmen with a message to oppose elimination of Voice of America Tibetan radio by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. federal government agency which oversees VOA broadcasts and wants to silence VOA [...]

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Long familiar to readers via the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series novels Texas author Bill Crider has assembled a short collection of previously published stories featuring the good sheriff Dan Rhodes.  The Blacklin County Files: 5 Sheriff Dan Rhodes Stories read just like the good novels in that the stories feature humor, mystery, and the extensive [...]

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Women posing with guns are not something new. There are plenty of sites on the Internet that depict this as well as several TV shows that specialize on this topic. But usually it is a case of women wearing bikinis or less, firing automatic weapons at some target, while literally everything moves in slow motion. [...]

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“Traumatic grief, with its unanswered questions, its numbing shock, its horror, its ability to sear disturbing images into our souls that cannot be erased by sleep or by time–this process follows the same general path both for persons and groups.” When 12:30 struck, none of us fourth graders knew that our young president was being [...]

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Principals didn’t stop school bullies and now there are more school bullying-caused suicides.  In all of the cases I’ll describe, there were differences in the bullies’ methods of harassing and abusing their targets.  But what was the same was that the parents complained and the responsible school teachers and principals didn’t protect the children in [...]

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I almost swallowed my teeth. The Headline states: Earth Day Facts: When It Is, How It Began, What to Do There it was, a large photo heading an article on the NatGeo webpage: The caption accompanying the photo states: Ira Einhorn—a leader of nonviolence, drug, and free-love movements in the 1960s—speaks at Philadelphia’s first Earth [...]

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Several students have insisted that the university is not a Christian institution and is a private, independent university. This is the statement on the Trinity University website under About Us. and it adds that it has a self-perpetuating board of trustees. There is also another statement which is extremely telling and that is that the university has a [...]

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I have heard some hugely asinine things in the past two weeks, but this tops the cake with burning candles…A Christian university–Trinity University–in Texas is being asked by students to remove “In the year of our Lord” from their diplomas. Let’s see… what part of Christian University is not understood? What part of Christian leaves out Jesus? Naturally it would be [...]

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I have many ethical problems with the Obama Health Care bill. But the real story that is being ignored about Obama’s health care bill is that it kowtows to big insurance and big drug companies, who stand to make a killing from the bill. Reuter’s review of “winners and loser” should give you pause: hospitals [...]

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I live in a housing village on Fort Hood.  On November 4th, at approximately 1:30 PM, the emergency alarms went off.  I was expecting to hear that this was a test of the “Emergency Alert System.”  Instead, I heard, “Attention.  Seek shelter immediately.  Close all doors and windows.  Turn off all ventilation systems.  Seek shelter [...]

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I was going to get back to pontificating on what I believe this week, but have been so angered by the media coverage of the Islamic terrorist attack on Fort Hood that I felt the need to speak on this top. First, and foremost, my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and the [...]

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The NYTimes has an article on “violence” at Fort Hood. At Army Base Some Violence is All To Familiar” the headlines cry. Yes, one more “Ain’t it awful” report on how violent veterans are, without mentioning that the “violent crime” rate is still lower than that of Chicago. The problems of violence on military bases [...]

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