Thumbs up, down
Another holiday downpour brings flooding, and the ag commissioner starts a major beef.
Why does it always seem to flood on holidays in Houston? Eight inches of rain transformed the Fourth of July into a day of damp, indoor misery. Houston police said they removed and towed 167 vehicles from inundated streets, and thousands upon thousands of hot dogs went ungrilled, beers undrunk and Frisbees untossed.
Luckily the clouds parted in time for a downtown fireworks display, in addition to hundreds of other smaller, unscheduled fireworks performances around town that we can only presume were properly approved by the authorities.
Get an Independence Day raincheck from your favorite pitmaster? Just make sure Sid Miller isn’t around when you show up for BBQ. The agriculture commissioner has been slapping fines on barbecue joints that don’t register their meat scales with him. Just one problem, as Chronicle reporter Andrea Zelinski wrote this week: A 2017 state law requires Miller to leave such establishments alone. Now the Texas Restaurant Association is planning to take the commissioner to court. Miller faces Democratic challenger Kim Olson in November, so he’d better settle this beef soon or risk ending up Texas toast.
There must be a particularly damp place in hell for businessowners who exploit natural disasters to gouge consumers. Now, four dozen gas stations caught jacking up prices during Hurricane Harvey have agreed to issue refunds. No, gasoline didn’t really cost $8.99 per gallon, despite what some charged. Most of the stations, by the way, were in the DFW area.
Looks like the billion-dollar buyer landed in million-dollar trouble. A construction firm filed a $20 million lien against Tilman Fertitta’s new, swanky Uptown hotel. They’re alleging Fertitta’s company Landry’s Inc. hasn’t paid the contractor and several of its subcontractors for work on the $400 million building. Shouldn’t a lifelong restaurateur know you never run out on a check?
Well, things could have been worse for Fertitta. At least he wasn’t covered in hundreds and hundreds of bees. A Liberty County man can’t say the same. Tom Mizell, 81, was attacked by a swarm while mowing a field last month and he tried to escape by running for a nearby pond. “My heart was pounding as I went toward that pond,” Mizell said. “Still fighting the bees, I jumped into the pond but I could still hear the bees under the water.” Turns out some of the bees had burrowed into his ears and ruptured his ear drums. Mizell eventually made his way to his family, and then to the Cleveland Emergency Hospital for a healthy dose of Benadryl and to have the stingers removed. “God had a plan for me,” he said. It must have been plan B.
Once they’re done abolishing ICE, how about getting the TSA next? Those princes of pat-downs and sultans of security are adding a new requirement to airport screenings: Now you have to remove snacks from carry-ons and put them in plastic bins for separate analysis. Apparently food sometimes looks like dangerous materials and the Transportation Security Administration wants to avoid mixups. We’ve heard of cherry bombs, but this is ridiculous.
In this week’s edition of things that would make front-page news in any other presidential administration, Bill Shine was hired as the White House’s new communications chief. Where’s the twist? He was forced out of his last job at Fox News for abetting in rampant sexual harassment. There used to be a time when “White House hires man who enabled sexual predators” could fuel a week’s worth of news.