Houblog

Well, Steven den Beste gave in to temptation and posted an article on the mess the Democrats have made of their nomination process. I started this as a letter back to him, but given its length and how it wanders around, I finally decided to just post it here, as an article.

One […]

The following e-mail just appeared in my mailbox.
Joint Email to City of Houston Employees
City of Houston and HOPE Reach Tentative Agreement on Contract
We are pleased to announce that the City of Houston and the Houston Organization of Public Employees (HOPE) have reached a tentative agreement in contract negotiations. This agreement reflects our mutual commitment […]

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. The Houston Chronicle is part of the problem in Houston. We badly need an alternative news outlet, and the Houston Press isn’t it.

blogHOUSTON reader “Royko” (a.k.a. Tom Bazan) was kind enough to upload the results of his constant TPIA requests made to the City of Houston and Metro for sales tax revenue. Because numbers make the eyes glaze over, here is his data in a more visual format. It’s pretty clear that the Mayor should […]

In prior segments of this series, I’ve hinted that the new “heavy trash pickup fee” (which we should really be calling the “garbage service tax”) may be impossible to administer fairly. Today, I’ll discuss why, but be warned–there’s a lot of parenthetical comments coming because there are so many interrelated side issues, it’s not […]

A while back, in the discussions over at blogHouston’s forums, we were having a discussion about the garbage tax, and I made a response to correct the mistaken impression of another reader that we were already paying for garbage with our water bills. While blogHouston has a much larger readership than Houblog (even when […]

Unsurprisingly, the Houston Chronicle came out today with an editorial in favor of the “Waste Reduction” fee. No one should be surprised by that; the Chronicle has never met a bit of social engineering it didn’t like. Needless to say, it heaped praise upon the idea’s friends.
Even so, council members including the conservative-leaning […]

Rorschach sent me a link to an ABCNews.com story about how the big cities in the northeast are facing a serious breakdown in their potable (i.e.: drinking) water delivery systems. Seems that they’re getting old and crumbling, leading to some serious water leaks. New York probably has the worst. Bear in mind when […]

The Municipal Channel (a.k.a. Administration Propaganda Station) has an exciting slate of programs for us all this month. Whoo-weeee, I might have to pass up on the Super Bowl to watch these. Might even have to pass up on the Super Bowl commercials.
Mayor’s State of the City Address — 2007 […]

You decide.
U.S. exit polls have been wrong before. In fact, according to the Edison-Mitofsky report, they have shown a consistent discrepancy favoring the Democrats in every presidential election since 1988. And while the 2004 discrepancy was the highest ever, they were almost as far off in 1992. More specifically, the “within precinct error” […]

Controller Anise Parker has posted the Fiscal Year 2007 audit plans on the city’s website. Notably missing from the list is any operations of the Housing and Community Development Department, which have proved to be so embarassing in the past, despite the evidence that little has changed. (Item #40)
Just as an aside, you […]

That was, I think, the title of a fictional role-playing game being played by several medieval fantasy heroes sitting around a table, killing time between orc-killing expeditions, according to a comic in the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide. They role-played clerks and managers in a fictional techonological society, which of […]

The last few weeks have seen Mayor White’s latest brainstorm almost slip by unnoticed behind the controversy over supporting illegal immigration and using red-light cameras. Well, I was just going back through some old posts over at BlogHouston when I ran across this tidbit, quoted by Kevin from Jay Aiyer’s campaign blog last […]

KHOU points out that the construction on I-45 will make for serious bottlenecks during another evacuation, even if contraflow lanes are used.
Traffic bottlenecks at FM 1488, where construction begins. It is there where drivers fear traffic will come to a standstill should a hurricane evacuation be called.
“It’s probably going to happen like […]

The prior article in this informal series was, in some ways, out of order, and it originally carried the same title that this one now does, as I changed directions on the fly, but didn’t catch the details. I discussed the general anger at both parties, but concentrated on the anger of the electorate with the Republican Party. In doing so, I referred time and again to a belief structure known as Jacksonianism. And while I’ve provided the links, not everyone wants to read a scholarly article of the length that Walter Russel Meade wrote. Nor does everyone have the time to read the nearly as lengthy (but thought provoking) writings of the first person to tell the two parties to take a flying leap. So, briefly, what makes a person a Jacksonian, then?